I am running Slackware 10.2 with a 2.6.fairly recent kernel. KDE 3.5 runs so slow. The computer I am using is a Pentium M with 1.6 GHz proc and 1 GB of RAM, which seems like it should be plenty. This is the first time that I have run KDE, and I usually use Fluxbox. Is KDE just that resource intense, or does it sound like I am doing something wrong?

those hardware specs should be ok. your processor isn't the fastest but,more importantly, you have 1 gig of ram.

maybe there is a config problem somewhere.

is it a stock kernel or your own creation?

If it's a custom kernel you probably didn't compile the appropriate kernel IDE modules for your system into the kernel.

Compared to Fluxbox kde is bound to feel slow.

yeah, but it should be fine on those specs. are you sure your hardware is running ok?

Run top to see if a process is hogging CPU cycles.

I run KDE on an Athlon 1100 with 500 megs of ram and it runs very nice.
Of course, you have not really defined "slow" in any objective sense either.

Can you be more specific?

check dma is working properly.

kde 3.5 isn't the stock slackware version. So if you compiled it or d/l'd it from somewhere, it's probably a kde problem.

Its a Pent M.

You might wanna check what speed your Proc. is running at. If you compiled speedstep in and have it running in anything other than "Performance" mode, its probably running at around 600Mhz. And speeding up as "needed". I had the same problem on my laptop, as "needed" doesnt mean fast. I set it too "performance" mode (I think you can just adjust the speed too) and it fixed all my speed issues in gnome.


soule

I'm using Intel Centrino 1.4 GHz for my laptop and it's quite fast when running KDE, even when i execute updatedb in the background. In fact, the long delays was happenning when updating the shared library (executing ldconfig when boot up)

I get an error message saying that DMA is turned off and may slow down to fsck; I get this while the machine is booting up. I am running reiserfs, and I made sure all of the blocks concerning DMA were checked during compile. I still get the message.

I am running slackware-current with the most updated version of KDE that Patrick has available. I think it is actually 3.5.1, but I might be mistaken.

What do you mean?

Could you give me a little more information about this? I have never heard of speedstep? I appreciate all of the help, folks.

It's also worth checking that your video driver is correct for your card. If you've got (for example) an NVidia 6600GT and you're using the vesa driver, performance will be slower. You might not notice it as much on the "thinner" display managers.

Also, I upgraded KDE this morning and it blew away my link to the NVidia GLX lib and substituted it's own library. I had to re-install the NVidia driver and the glxgears output went from 500 to 6800 (still not lightning fast, but fine for my needs).

Pentium M processors are for laptops. Which means they have the ability to speedstep or adjust the speed they run at on the fly to conserver battery power. So if you are just browsing the internet, the processor runs at a much slower speed to conserve power and run cooler. Depending on how you built your kernel, you may have your processor set to run at 1/2 to 1/3 the speed its rated at.

Most of the time its set to "adjust as needed", which means when an app is being a resource hog, the processor speeds up. Mine didnt care whether it was plugged in or on battery, it ran at 600Mhz by default(its a 1.5Ghz). It would speed up, but usually after the app had loaded .

I could use the cpu scaling monitor in gnome to adjust it to run at full speed all the time(1.5GHz). That fixed my speed issues.

cat /proc/cpuinfo

this should show you the speed the unit is running at(it may just be the model though) and if speedstep is enable. Im sure KDE has some little app that does this like gnome, but KDE blows so I never use it.

edit: Linky


soule

I got it sped up for the most part. I had to reinstall the nvidia driver, and had some trouble. The problem was gcc. I had to recompile my kernel, and then nvidia installed with no problems.

I am still going to investigate speedstep, but for now things work fine.

Now can someone help me with my DMA issue. Why am I getting a message on bootup saying that DMA for my drive is turned off. How do I turn it on?

Normally, you'd use:
(or whatever device your hard disk is). What do you get when you run: