[CLUE-Tech] X-Sever/KDE "tuning"

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

Randy Arabie wrote:

> I've been using RH Linux for 3+ years now, but stayed away 
> from the GUI.  This was mainly due to the low budget, hand-
> me-down, ancient hardware (486's) I have for home PC usage.  
> And, I wasn't using Linux as a "productivity" machine...I 
> didn't need it for word processing, spreadsheets, etc....
> 
> I do have a "modern" box at home that, until Saturday, was 
> running Windoze 2000.  However, I liberated it, and it is now 
> running RH 7.1 (would be 7.2 or another 'flavor' if my @home 
> service wouldn't have died).


Good for you! I'm sure your computer appreciates it. :)


> I like the new KDE "look and feel" however, I'm not at all 
> impressed with the performance.  Things load really slow.  I 
> launch an application and then sit and wait, watch the 
> "spinning disc" icon down on the toolbar, it disappears, then 
> I wait a little longer, and then suddenly my application 
> appears.  The total time varies, but even a simple x-term 
> took 23 seconds to load.


That sounds unusually slow. There are a couple of things you can
do that will help, though...

1. Turn off extra eye-candy & such. For instance, you'll see quite
an improvement dragging windows if you change the settings to not
display contents of moving windows (in the KControl Panel). There
are a lot of extras in KDE that can be turned off to get better
performance.
2. Reduce the number of virtual desktops.
3. Upgrade KDE to 2.2.2 when @Home comes back up -- that will show
some improvement, each new release has some performance improvements.
4. Try less memory-intensive window manager/desktops. Even though I
have a monster desktop, I use XFce most of the time -- it's pretty
full-featured and it screams. It's not quite as visually appealing as
GNOME or KDE, but much, much faster. WindowMaker and IceWM are also
pretty speedy.

 
> Does anyone have any tips for improving (tunining) the 
> performance of X or the window manager?  
> 
> My system is an AMD K6II 500 with 256 MB RAM, and 10 GB IDE 
> HD.  The video card I'm using is a S3 ViRGE/DX with 4 MB 
> memory onboard.

 >

> I expect the first recommendation to be upgrade the video 
> card.  That may be an option, but I'm hoping I can find 
> another solution.  I don't play games, so I'm not after that 
> sort of performance.  I do a little graphics for webpage 
> design.  However, my wife had Photoshop 6 on Windoze 2000 and 
> the system handled that fine...shouldn't Linux be able to do 
> it too?


Yes, but... the drivers may not be as well optimized for Linux
as they were for Windows. Also, is this a PCI or AGP video card?
You'll see dramatic improvement switching from a PCI video card
to an AGP card. You can find some nice cheap cards that run
with Linux at ComputerGeeks.com.

What version of XFree86 are you using? Upgrading XFree might
show some performance improvment as well.

Take care,

Zonker
--
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier -=- jbrockmeier at earthlink.net
http://www.DissociatedPress.net/
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