Every 10 seconds the CPU load spikes to about 40%--even when I am doing nothing. Worse, any letter I was typing when it happened gets doubled, so I endd up with sentences likke this. A system monitor like "top" shows that X is the program hogging the CPU, so I can't kill it.

This only happens in KDE. I don't have the same problem in Gnome. It happens with most programs, but not all. Here is a partial list:

showimg (KDE-based file viewer): NO
the GIMP: NO
gkrellm (system monitor): NO (it's always on)
Quanta + (html editor): YES
KWrite: YES
Galeon (GNOME-based web browser): YES
Konquerer: YES
Mozilla: YES

What's more, if the programs are minimized, they don't cause the problem then either. However, if they are maximized, covering them up by a well-behaved program doesn't fix it.

Based on one suggestion, I tried changing to the generic VESA driver instead of a card-specific one. That helped (the CPU spikes were much less), but only worked at 60Hz, so the flickering caused an instant headache.

System:
Mandrake 10.0
KDE 3.2
ATI Rage 128 video card (yeah it's old, but I don't need anything better)

---Dan

Which version of KDE are you running. Cuz certain taskbar programs (like the battery one in my case) caused the CPU to spike up and effectivelky freeze your computer. This was on KDE 3.2.0. Once I turned that program off, the CPU usage went down. Try upgrading your KDE. 3.2.3 doesn't seem to have problems.

It might not actually be KDE itself, but rather famd (File Alteration Monitor daemon.) Check out 'top' to see if that's the problem. It's a known bug: http://oss.sgi.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=331

KDE utilizes famd rather extensively. GNOME utilizes rather sparringly.

Do you know if KDE 3.2.3 fixes the problem? Cuz it seems like the famd would be the problem since konqueror would keep refreshing when i'm viewing the home directory.

I DID have a problem with fam a while ago (I found a work-around), but it showed up as "famd" when I ran top. In this case, top shows X as the problem. Famd is running, but usually taking no resources.

I tried to install the latest version of KDE (3.3), but it wouldn't compile. I got a whole screenful of errors when I tried. They sound like programming errors: parse errors and undeclared identifiers. Not being much of a programmer, I can't fix those.

---Dan

From my experience, X would always show up as the resource hog. But after killing the other processes, X stops becoming selfish and the computer goes back to normal.

Well, apparantly it's not fam. I killed it and it didn't make any difference. (I've been gone a few days, so I hadn't read all the posts.)

---Dan

It's not the version of KDE either. I installed 3.3, and it didn't help.