much of KDE freezes for 20 seconds (includes strace output)

[hans at mesoscopic.mines.edu (Hans Ecke)]

> You'd be surprised.

I believe you have seen quite the variety by now :-)

> Is desktop-effects or compositing enabled?

Neither. In fact, my xorg.conf says 

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option         "AIGLX" "off"
EndSection                      
Section "Extensions"
    Option         "Composite" "Disable"
EndSection

> Have you tried reproducing without nvidia driver and/or using vesa driver?

Fair enough question. I now switched to "nv". I should have an answer in 
half an hour or so - the problem never takes longer to appear.

Thank you

Hans