Why does KDE feel faster than flux?

Message

confusion · Post by **confusion** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 10:24 pm

Ive been running fluxbox ever since the install, using gaim for IM and firefox for the web, pretty much nothing else. The whole desktop seemed kind of sluggish, the most notible sluggishness when swapping desktops (redraw time really slow).

I've just switched to KDE and everything seems a hell of a lot more responsive. Not as responsive as win mind you, but not that far off either. Now im wondering what im doing wrong. Maybe using gaim (why is gnome so unresponsive?) was a bad idea, or maybe kde is doing something during the startup to speed things up a fair deal.

I also notice all the fonts are perfect and openoffice _seems_ (i stress seems, it is just anecdotal) faster than it did in flux.

If anyone has any setup tips for flux (as im a big fan of it) i'd appreciate it because the reponsiveness of KDE is killing me here. lol.

Maybe its just that firefox+gaim are complete hogs compared to kopete+konq.

Anyone let me know how i could setup my xinit so that flux runs 'kde friendly'?

Cheers,
-John

MdaG · Post by **MdaG** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 10:37 pm

I'm running Fluxbox and everything is lightning fast. A lot faster than running KDE (on Mandrake though, but still).

confusion · Post by **confusion** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 10:41 pm

MdaG wrote:I'm running Fluxbox and everything is lightning fast. A lot faster than running KDE (on Mandrake though, but still).

Hmm... maybe it _is_ the apps i was using. I'll try switching back in a bit.

nsahoo · Post by **nsahoo** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 10:46 pm

I've just switched to KDE and everything seems a hell of a lot more responsive. Not as responsive as win mind you, but not that far off either.

I guess these kind of experience vary a lot .. so, something like "why does kde feel faster .. on my machine?" would describe the situation better.

I am yet to see a machine, where windows is more responsive than kde. Seriously! the start menu, right click menu, native programs startup etc, everything comes up faster in KDE.

I am sure the rest of this thread will be full of similar experiences just to counter the claim that flux < KDE << windows.

P.S. If you are talking about startup time of kde programs in flux v.s. their startup time in KDE, then it because of kdeinit processes. If it is different than that .. I am more inclined to believe that it's in your imagination only.

DocterD · Post by **DocterD** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 11:08 pm

Dont know if the Issue still exist that i had. Fluxbox was getting slower and slower with many installed Themes. Removing increased the Speed really great. Try to unmerge all those Fluxbox Themes in the Portage.

confusion · Post by **confusion** » Mon Nov 15, 2004 11:16 pm

There are a few small things where ive noticed windows is more responsive. In opening configuration dialogues and such, aswell as a few startup times (yeah i know win preloads a hell of a lot). Its not these performance differences that bother me though. Right now im really happy with just how _responsive_ kde is.

I think im primarily talking about redraw time when switching virtual desktops. In flux i was waiting comparitive eons for gaim and firefox to redraw, and responsiveness went down the pan when i had a few windows open.

I should perhaps correct myself and state that im finding kopete and konqueror a hell of a lot 'speedy' a combination than firefox and gaim. Which is a shame, because i like msn file sends and i love firefox.

I'm gunna have a propper go of setting up flux soon just the way i want it. I'll report back when im done.

Cheers guys, and remember, this aint no OS/DE slagging match, im very fond of both kde and flux.

Cheers!
-John

nsahoo wrote:
I've just switched to KDE and everything seems a hell of a lot more responsive. Not as responsive as win mind you, but not that far off either.
I guess these kind of experience vary a lot .. so, something like "why does kde feel faster .. on my machine?" would describe the situation better.

I am yet to see a machine, where windows is more responsive than kde. Seriously! the start menu, right click menu, native programs startup etc, everything comes up faster in KDE.

I am sure the rest of this thread will be full of similar experiences just to counter the claim that flux < KDE << windows.

P.S. If you are talking about startup time of kde programs in flux v.s. their startup time in KDE, then it because of kdeinit processes. If it is different than that .. I am more inclined to believe that it's in your imagination only.

nsahoo · Post by **nsahoo** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 12:13 am

I think im primarily talking about redraw time when switching virtual desktops. In flux i was waiting comparitive eons for gaim and firefox to redraw, and responsiveness went down the pan when i had a few windows open.

I should perhaps correct myself and state that im finding kopete and konqueror a hell of a lot 'speedy' a combination than firefox and gaim. Which is a shame, because i like msn file sends and i love firefox.

OK .. i believe you .. i guess i was in a flammy mood or something .. had a bad morning sorta ..

Frodg · Post by **Frodg** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 12:19 am

"On my Machine" Fluxbox was definitely faster then KDE so KDE no longer exists...... but for a few needed dependencies to run K3B.......

gnuageux · Post by **gnuageux** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 12:21 am

Ive generally found that *box window managers are faster than the fuller featured ones. However Im using gnome 2.4 at present (on a SuSE install here @ work) and I've had no performance issues.

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 9:14 am

kde preload kde applications, to make them run faster, i rememeber seeing a script to execute at fluxbox startup to enhance kde applications startup ...

stahlsau · Post by **stahlsau** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 10:35 am

maybe you just didn´t enable the correct display driver? Once i thought my bios went to failsafe-mode (underclocking fsb to 33MHz) because all those windows-redraws n stuff where damn slow (i could nearly watch the lines)

turned out that i misconfigured xorg to use "nv" instead "nvidia"

sear · Post by **sear** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 10:39 am

i think if you want to use a fast desktop like fluxbox it is only fast if you use fast apps to, which are based on fast libaries.

if you use kde (it is really fast, i agree) all the qt libaries are getting cached at startup and like this programms getting launched quite fast.

but you use gtk apps, this is quite mysterious...

maybe you should try dillo or such a browser for you fast-fluxbox desktop.

tristure · Post by **tristure** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 1:26 pm

I find it interesting to see that minds are progressively changing towards KDE.

A few months ago everyone would laugh at the simple idea of comparing KDE and Fluxbox speed.

Since 3.3 such comparisons are not as dumb as they used to be.

KDE is still a resource hog and it's still really bloated (which is no problem for me, I like that!), but the developers managed a great speed improvement since the 3.3 release!!

I haven't booted XP in a while, last time I checked KDE (3.2) felt slower than XP, I'm not sure it would be true now.

The KDE guys are really doing an amazing job, I think (even if everyone is free to like what they do or not).

NB : Konqueror loads definitely faster than firefox. Firefox is great, but I still can't figure out why it takes really ages to load. Damn it's supposed to be "lightweight". Now you might notice than Konq doesn't render some pages well. E.G. if you use the "All Music Guide" (www.allmusic.com) : it definitely doesn't work in Konq.
So firefox is slower but in a way it "works better".
On the other hand Konq is a file manager (and a great one) at the same time, and you can access ftp as well.

Personaly I use and love both!

Evangelion · Post by **Evangelion** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 2:13 pm

tristure wrote:I find it interesting to see that minds are progressively changing towards KDE.

A few months ago everyone would laugh at the simple idea of comparing KDE and Fluxbox speed.

Since 3.3 such comparisons are not as dumb as they used to be.

And 3.3.1 is even faster than 3.3 was (they made some serious optimizations to Plastik)

.

KDE is still a resource hog and it's still really bloated (which is no problem for me, I like that!), but the developers managed a great speed improvement since the 3.3 release!!

I don't think KDE is a resource-hog. When my system is up & running, the system is consuming about 130megs of RAM. And that is standard Gentoo with some background-services, framebuffer-console, X.org, KDE with some services, 4 virtual desktops and few apps (Konqueror, Konsole, Kopete) running. And this is a 64bit system, so the mem-consumption is a bit higher than with 32bits.

And once KDE is running, it's fast as hell for me.

Not bad at all IMO.

JackDog · Post by **JackDog** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 2:57 pm

Yeah I would have to agree.

KDE for me is very fast, but even better, very powerful. Nothing wrong with running a minimalist WM like fluxbox but when I need to get work done, it more or less has to be in KDE so I can use the ioslaves and file manager (konq of course). KDE is just as fast as fluxbox, that argument really doesnt hold true anymore. Just because an app is smaller in terms of bytes on disc doesnt mean its faster or "better". The smallest HDs you can by at Beast Buy are 40G now. That is more than enough for any OS/WM. Fluxbox obviously does take up less resources though and that is its primary strength now.

Firefox is noticibly slow on my machine. Takes 4x the amount of time to startup compared to konqueror. I know this is because konqueror preloads, but that doesnt change the fact that it loads faster. Once the new gecko plugin is completed, konqueror will be hard to beat. Being able to switch renderers on the fly will be pretty neat. I do like the firefox layout though for the browser, Konqueror although far more powerful, is a bit cluttered.

I run fluxbox on my slower machines because they only have 256MB of RAM and it works pretty well. Not as configurable though, find myself editing conf files by hand a lot, but its the best on a resource limited machine.

Illissius · Post by **Illissius** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 5:12 pm

I just checked, and KDE3.3.1 + Opera with like 20 pages open + compiling some random things in a seperate vt consumes ~200MB memory (also + kopete + foldingathome + probably stuff I don't remember in the background). I don't know whether that's lots or little, but I think Windows used more iirc.

vdboor · Post by **vdboor** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 7:35 pm

JackDog wrote:Firefox is noticibly slow on my machine. Takes 4x the amount of time to startup compared to konqueror. I know this is because konqueror preloads, but that doesnt change the fact that it loads faster.

There is one other thing... The firefox GUI is written in their XML-UI format, and rendered through Gecko. And this is slow! IMHO the biggest mistake they made (although it makes firefox a quite powerfull and extensible browser)

JackDog · Post by **JackDog** » Tue Nov 16, 2004 7:51 pm

vdboor wrote: There is one other thing... The firefox GUI is written in their XML-UI format, and rendered through Gecko. And this is slow! IMHO the biggest mistake they made (although it makes firefox a quite powerfull and extensible browser)

Yeah the decision to use that XML UI framework is a little strange given that they want firefox to be atomic and fast. About the only thing that they layout manager helps with is themeing. I have seen/developedon many applications utilize XML layout managers and firefox is by far the slowest. Even compared with Java apps. Usually people dont even realize that an application has a layout manager is in use until they are told.

Good browser though, just curious on some of the design.

revertex · Post by **revertex** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 5:59 am

kde is faster than flux here too, (t-bird 1200, 512ddr) but i prefer a light wm because its simple to maintain.
maybe it's just me, but edit config files by hand seems easy than open kcontrol.
i recently recompiled my system changing a lot of apps, and my system seems a bit more faster.
choosing light apps helps a lot fluxbox responsiveness, example:

ark, file-roller > guitar, bash scripts
gaim, kopete > centericq, amsn
k3b > gcombust, bash scripts
thunderbird, kmail > sylpheed-claws, mutt
nautilus, konqueror > rox, cli
superkaramba, gdesklets > torsmo, root-tail.
amarok, juk > orpheus, cplay

vdboor · Post by **vdboor** » Wed Nov 17, 2004 10:08 am

I just thought about something... Each time you run a KDE app through a menu or taskbar button, etc, KDE does a smart trick to load the app faster: it doesn't start a full blown new process, does some magic with "kdeinit" (I guess it forks kdeinit) Perhaps the reason KDE is faster then flux?

This is also an interesting blog to read from a kde-developper: http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2004/10/kons ... de-is.html

emorphix · Post by **emorphix** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 8:32 pm

Hello,

I just wanted to state my two cents on this topic.
Personally I run fluxbox and firefox runs pretty quick on my machine is fully capable of running KDE I simply chose not to. Some people enjoy KDE which is great, but I honestly do not think that it's faster than fluxbox, for me the big winner for using Fluxbox rather than a DE like KDE is the compile time. QT is massive and I feel it's not worth my time to wait for it to compile so I can use KDE. Fluxbox is just as configurable as KDE, however the way you go about configuring it is much more different than KDE. If you're using linux you should be used to opening up a configuration file and editing it to your linking to have that application/daemon operate the way that you would like. On another note, the two are not even really comparable due to the fact that one is a DE and one is a WM.

if KDE works for you great use it.

If Fluxbox works for you great use it.

etc..

etc..

Thats one of the great things about Linux is the choice.

Just because you chose one application over another application dosen't mean that it's a bad choice.

JackDog · Post by **JackDog** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 8:50 pm

emorphix wrote:If you're using linux you should be used to opening up a configuration file and editing it to your linking to have that application/daemon operate the way that you would like.

I believe that is exactly the paradigm that KDE and Gnome are trying to break

I have used linux since 1995 and know linux fairly well. But there is no reason why a newbie needs to know what fstab is. Graphical tools provide an simplified interface that apply rules to editing certain aspects of the system. When modifying a system file do you always know what the format is? What if an you didnt know the difference between "user" and "users" in fstab? man it? How about just hover over a radio button an a tooltip will tell you. GUIs can provide this. (So can XML/DTD config files but Ill fight for that another day

Nothing wrong with someone's choice in WMs but we need to start giving props to WM/DEs that provide an easier interface to newbies or everyday users. People running around saying KDE/Gnome is bloated and slow are most definitely not helping. For one neither is bloated or slow, they are just as "fast" as any WM for linux. They areont bloated becaus they provide far more functionality than a standard WM. They do however use more resources. But as long as you have 256MB of RAM and a 40GB HD you wont have any problems.

I for one would definitely not want a newbie demoing linux for an exec to have someone convince them KDE/Gnome is to big and slow and they should use flux. The newbie will get frustrated and think that linux takes too much configuration and is not ready for the corporate environment. I believe in 4-6 months (better gvm and kvm support and major distros support it) that will no longer be true for linux on the desktop.

emorphix · Post by **emorphix** » Thu Nov 18, 2004 9:47 pm

I believe you are missing my point.

On a new users standpoint yes, KDE/GNOME is great becuase of it has a more GUI way to configure it's settings.

However the users we are speaking of would probably not install gentoo either.

And linux is great for the new user, I have only been using linux for the past year, and I use fluxbox, so consider myself a new user as well.

If you're speaking about new users, then yeah great, someone who installs mandrake with KDE that would work great for them, a new user wouldn't want to compile QT. However speaking from a gentoo user, I wouldn't personally want to use KDE for that reason.

If you want a user to have everything right there easy access yes then go with KDE/Gnome, but I honestly do not think Gentoo would be a good choice for a user migrating from windows to a linux OS.

So once again, the choice is that of the user.

As it's always been.

mallchin · Post by **mallchin** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 12:05 am

Your on acid?

emorphix · Post by **emorphix** » Thu Apr 07, 2005 10:50 pm

Excuse me?

On acid?

So inorder for someone to make their own choice they have to be on acid?

So if someone dosen't run with the rest of the pack then I must be on acid?

I gotta learn to stop watching these pointless posts, who would post something after the fact anyways? little late there.....