kmail painfully slow, X at 100%

[Guest]

Hi All, since 10.04 I have a really annoyng problem with kmail. It is painfully slow, when I write a new message the letters i type will appear after few seconds and every time i type a letter I see X cpu usage going to 100%.

Closing and reopening kmail didn't solve the problems, neither disabling visual effects.

I don't know if it is exactly a matter of kmail or X server, but as far as I can see when Kmail is on (and stucked) the whole system becames slower.

I have ubuntu 10.04 64 bit on Dell XPS M1330 with 4 GB Ram and NVidia 8400GS Graphics.

Thank you 4 help

[askrieger]

Re: kmail painfully slow, X at 100%

If your hardware is working properly, it should have no problem handling kmail (unless, your system is otherwise, overloaded). The first task is to isolate the problem. Does it happen in any other app? If not, it's got to be a kmail problem. Are your mailboxes full? Have you, upgraded or modified Kmail lately? Have you changed your settings recently? If not, it may be malware. Have you opened any "strange" attachments lately? Do you ever open attachments from people you have never met face to face?

[jglen490]

Re: kmail painfully slow, X at 100%

kmail, and in fact the whole KDE PIM system uses a new method for maintaining the PIM files. It uses the akonadi and nepomuk servers along with a mySQL database. None of these products are necessarily evil, but the whole package is still not quite mature. There have been numerous discussions on the KDE forums. For some the KDE PIM works great, others have processing problems including slowness issues. It may be the way the whole thing is initially installed, or how it interacts with the hardware, or who knows.

I moved away from the KDE PIM and am using Thunderbird and Lightning, with good utility and responsiveness. Of course, my hardware platform is considerably less potent than yours, which probably just amplifies the whole effect.

You can either try to track down whatever configuration issue is giving you problems, or move on. The conversion from Kontact to T-bird/Lightning was rather lengthy -- there is no direct automated conversion of mailboxes and calendars, but it can be done manually.

Do some research first, and I would recommend visiting the KDE forums for some ideas and of course staying here for solutions.

[claydoh]

Re: kmail painfully slow, X at 100%

In the current KDE/Kubuntu, Akonadi is only used by the address book. Kmail itself should not be slowed down by that, necessarily.

Spamassasin can slow things down if that is installed, for example, but that wouldn't cause x to spike to 100%