Rafa Griman wrote:
(note, lots of things cut)
I've been working these past few months with KDE 4.3 and it feels very
sluggish and incomplete. I can't enable the desktop effects because that
makes things even slower. I'm doing this on a fairly decent setup, an AMD
Sempron 2 Ghz with an nVidia FX5500.
I've got a Dell Latitude D610 with an Intel VGA:
$ lspci | grep -i vga
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML
Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)
1 GB RAM
$ cat /proc/cpuinfo
model name : Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.86GHz
Using KMS for my Intel VGA.
I've got to say I've got a very snappy KDE running. Doesn't "feel" slow,
response is immediate, ...
I have about the same setup running here (Intel 915 VGA and a Pentium M processor), yet it distinctively feels slow compared to for example Windows XP or KDE 3.5.
My guess is that there's something wrongly configured or installed in your KDE
4 installation. Check this:
- deactivate nepomuk and Akonadi
- delete /tmp/k* /var/tmp/k*
- delete your .kde4 and .kde and .local dirs (you can also choose
creating a new account and see if it's "faster")
Already did those. Doesn't help.
So basically, where are we at?
KDE 3.5 is Windows XP
KDE 4.3 is Windows Vista
??? is Windows 7
When are we getting to the Windows 7 stage?
KDE 4.5? ;)
I hope so. Maybe I should have waited with my response and give KDE 4 project more time to mature, but there's also chance I would be writing this same e-mail two years in the future.
Microsoft didn't do a big advertising campaign for the launch of Windows 7,
nevertheless they delivered a big slap in the face to the Linux desktop
environments. The numbers speak for themselves, Windows 7 has already sold
more copies in its first week than Windows Vista did in its first month.
And with good riddance, Windows 7 really is better than Windows Vista.
Microsoft recognized the problems with Windows Vista and dealt with them.
And dealt with them swiftly if you ask me, doing it in less then 3 years.
MS _DOES_ have some help from IHVs ;) Those IHVs preinstall Windows on their
laptops, netbooks, ... + MS also has some very deep pockets (filled with $) to
"convince" those IHVs to preinstall MS-Windows. Not only that, their deep
pockets help them "talk" with polititians (at least here in Spain that helps a
lot ;)
That is true, but even that's not unlimited. Look at windows vista. Most OEMs still ship XP upgrades with business desktops. Though that'll rapidly diminish now that 7 is out.
Conclusion
We are losing ground. We are losing it fast. Our competitors recognize what
the user wants and delivered.
This reminds me of a time (long ago) when MS "prooved" that Win2k was faster
serving files that Linux+Samba. While the FLOSS Community was shouting and
arguing whether the benchmark was well done, Mr. Torvalds said that was good
news since now we would know where we have to apply fixes and what fixes would
have to be applied. I think this situation is similar.
Than it is a good thing that I spoke up. I am worried about the future of Linux.
* Double clicking the system icon in the titlebar doesn't always work to
close an application (the system icon is the left-most icon in the
titlebar). This bug has also been reported a long time ago and still not
fixed.
Never tried that, TBH, always use the "X" on the far right.
Partially agreed, however, my reasoning here is "don't provide features that don't work".
* I get a full 10 minutes of extra runtime on my laptop when I switched
back to 3.5
Not here.
On the forums the response was, "well duh". That being due to the fact that KDE 4 makes more intensive use of the graphics card, which I can understand. But I would have expected by optimizing hardware usage, the system would be faster as well, which is not the case.
Glenn
