_ posted on Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:35:39 +0100 as excerpted:
> I'm considering installing the KDE 4.7.4 version on my FreeBSD 8.2
> system,
> and I'd like to ask the community about the system requirements to make
> it run:
>
> The base information for my system looks like this:
>
> Intel P4 1.8 Ghz CPU 512 MB of RAM Intel Onboard Graphics Chip
>
> Can anybody on this list give me any pointers as to the performance of
> KDE under the above hardware setup? Moreover, how much diskspace will
> KDE take?
Nobody else has mentioned the FBSD angle. I know kde still runs on FBSD,
but don't know much else about that angle either except that as I'm
following a couple xorg lists as well, I know that for newer systems at
least, some of the graphics accel stuff works best with KMS, kernel
modesetting, which is AFAIK Linux-only at this point. So it may be that
the older graphics isn't such a problem in this regard after all, since
you'd have other problems with newer graphics.
Meanwhile, I'm running kde on my gen-1.5 Acer Aspire One A150L netbook,
still the old 1.6 GHz single-core with hyper-threading n270 Intel Atom,
with the older integrated Intel graphics 945GME chip... before all the
problems with the newer 500 series that Intel didn't design itself and
thus couldn't provide proper specs for. I do have the 120 gig disk
version, so disk space isn't the problem it'd be on the 8-gig or whatever
solid-state devices. My netbook came with half a gig RAM soldered on and
a single memory expansion slot that could take a half-gig or 1-gig
stick. I filled it with a 1-gig, giving me 1.5 gig total.
I run gentoo, so build my software from sources customized for the CPU,
tho I do NOT do the building on that machine but rather on a 32-bit chroot
on my main 4-core Opteron machine (itself nearing a decade old but high
end for its age and with the CPUs upgraded as far as they'll go, dual
dual-core Opteron 290s, 2.8 GHz, running gentoo/~amd64 with 6 gigs RAM
and 4 SATA-150 disks in kernel-md/RAID, RAID-1 for most of the system
with some RAID-0 as well).
I don't keep the netbook updated like I do my workstation, however, and
AFAIK it's still running kde 4.5.5.
But, I CAN say that at least with packages built for that CPU and with
the 1.5 gig memory I have in the machine, the netbook runs KDE quite
well, including graphics effects. It probably helps that the display is
only 1024x600, not even a megapixel, however. I expect it'd not do quite
as well trying to drive the dual full 1080p HD monitors, 4.15 megapixels
total, that I have on my workstation.
You don't mention the specific graphics you're running, but as you can
see, except for the 1.5 gigs RAM I have vs. your half gig, the systems
are at least somewhat comparable. I do run Linux on mine and KMS, and
the display I'm driving is small, but as I said, it runs impressively
well, including effects so I can impress people using the cube to switch
virtual desktops, etc.
So I think you'll do reasonably well with what you have, tho as others
I'd recommend upping the memory to a gig anyway, if you can. If you do
run into issues with OpenGL effects, etc, unlike gnome3 (tho I understand
they're changing it), you can turn off kde4's graphic effects and still
run the same basic kde desktop as you'd have otherwise, just without the
fancy graphic effects. But as I said, the graphic effects run just fine
on mine, and I expect they'd run on yours too, on Linux. I honestly
don't know enough about the BSDs to say whether you'll get good effects
on them without the KMS or not, but even if you don't, you can turn that
off and still run a very reasonable kde4.
Given your memory and perhaps disk constraints, tho, if you're building
it yourself and thus can, or if you have the choice of packages built
without it, I'd DEFINITELY suggest turning off the semantic-desktop
stuff. Don't install kdepim or akonadi at all; which means using
something other than kmail (I use claws-mail), akregator (again, claws-
mail, with the rssyl feeds plugin), korganizer (I don't need an organizer/
scheduler here) and knode (I use pan as my news client).
Build without nepomuk, soprano, raptor, rasqual, virtuoso, etc. Those
are all part of the semantic-desktop stuff which will use a lot of memory
and slow your system down. Even on my workstation, getting rid of
semantic-desktop was like adding a couple more cores or half a gigahertz
clockspeed, so it's definitely worth it on a far slower machine with less
than a gig of RAM. Strigi is a non-optional component as best I can see
(kdelibs links to it), but you don't have to build any backends for it.
Disk space? I can't really say how much kde takes up, but I can say what
my system uses all together. I only have kde installed as a desktop
environment, not gnome, but do run some gtk2 apps (as mentioned, claws-
mail and pan, plus firefox of course), and as Gentoo splits up the big
monolithic module tarballs that kde ships into individual packages, I not
only don't have some of the modules (like kdepim, as mentioned) installed
at all, but for the modules I do use, I only have the individual packages
I use and their dependencies installed, not the whole module.
Given those parameters and the fact that I have my partitions setup so
everything installed by the portage package manager as well as portage's
installed packages database (but not the package tree from which I
install) is on the the rootfs...
All installed packages together with their system (but not user) config
are on my rootfs, which is 4.8 gigs in size, 3.1 gigs used. The $KDEHOME
dir which contains most of the kde user config is another 212 MB, tho a
bit of the config is stored in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME as well.
So I could probably get my working system in 8 gigs, tho that wouldn't
leave a lot of extra room around for user data like mail, news and media
storage. Especially media storage is what eats the gigs, these days.
Bottom line, with an already up and running system, no new mail storage
or whatever to allocate, and with nepomuk (the index of which can EASILY
eat several gigs by itself!), akonadi, and the rest of the semantic
desktop turned off and preferably disabled at build-time altogether, I'm
guessing you should be able to squeeze kde into 2 gigs, tho I'd be much
more comfortable with at least 4 gigs available. If you have double-
digit gigs available, there shouldn't be a problem at all, except
possibly with distribution if it's over several separate partitions and
you fill one of them up.
Oh, one other thing I should mention in this regard. I'm running
reiserfs here, with tail-packing on, so I don't have to worry about the
usual files-are-allocated-in-whole-block-sizes problem that most
filesystems would have. Given the number of small config files, etc,
that kde uses, if your filesystem allocates 1-MB blocks or larger and
only whole blocks, you'll need to add probably another 10% at least to
the figures above. But 4 gig should still do it tho with little room for
additional data, and double-digit-gigs should be fine.
When you DO get it up and running, please do consider becoming a regular
on this list. We really do need some BSD folks here as I don't think any
current regulars are BSDers and we do get the occasional question, which
current regulars have a hard time answering.
If you don't have the free time or interest for that, at least please do
post how well it works (or if it doesn't) for you and any other hints for
FBSDers you might have, as well as whether my suggestions helped or not,
or even made sense at all on FBSD, so we can at least answer /some/
questions about kde on FBSD better than we do now. It'd be /much/
appreciated by me at least, and probably even more by the various other
FBSDers with questions!
Just confirming whether the OpenGL and/or XRender/Composite effects even
work for you would be well more than I know now... and of course since
you're thinking about it as you do the install, you can take before and
after readings and report how much disk space it actually DID take for
you, something which will benefit everyone with older, smaller disk space
systems and/or on limited-space SSDs, not just BSD users. =:^)
--
Duncan - List replies preferred. No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master." Richard Stallman
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