Extremely Poor Desktop Effects - 10.10/KDE SC 4.5.2

[sblass]

Hadn't planned to upgrade to 10.10 and KDE SC 4.5.2 so soon. However, grew tired this A.M. of 4.5.1 problems and having to log out and log back in to get window headers again.

Now in 64-bit 10.10 and KDE SC 4.5.2, desktop effects are very herky-jerky (using 'present windows, all desktops' for window switching and top/middle left screen edge effects), and even when pulling the mouse down to activate the hidden panel. Nowhere near as smooth as I was experiencing with KDE SC 4.5.1 under 10.04.

Is there some change to Desktop Effects configuration, requiring user intervention, that I'm unaware of?

I'm using a Dell 1501 (dual AMD Turion TL-50 CPUs) and ATI RS-482 (Radeon Xpress 200M) for graphics.

[slush1000]

Re: Extremely Poor Desktop Effects - 10.10/KDE SC 4.5.2

I upgraded to 10.10 and experienced poor performance with the desktop effects as well. I upgraded KDE to 4.5.2 which had no improvement.

Nothing I've tried has helped but will let you know if I learn anything.

I'm running it on a AMD Phenom II X4 940 Processor and ATI Radeon HD 3200 embedded video.

[schnelle]

Re: Extremely Poor Desktop Effects - 10.10/KDE SC 4.5.2

This helped me:

1) Go to System Settngs > Desktop effects > All effects and turn off blur effect.
2) Press Alt+F2 and type "oxygen-settings". Under widget style go to animations tab and disable them all. Under window decorations section uncheck "enable animations".
3) Go to System Settings > Application Appearance > Style > Fine Tuning. Change the "graphical effects" to "Low Display Resolution And Low CPU"

Then reboot your system and you should have smooth desktop effects.

[sblass]

Re: Extremely Poor Desktop Effects - 10.10/KDE SC 4.5.2

Schnelle: Thanks for your suggestion, but No Joy!!!

The system settings and oxygen-settings manipulations didn't have the desired effect. Instead, now I have no (as in zero) desktop effects. I backed out all the system settings and oxygen-settings changes; rebooted my laptop; and I CANNOT reenable the desktop effects.

Clicking on 'Resume Desktop Effects' in system settings elicits the following response: 'Desktop effects have been suspended by another application.' Nothing I've tried, including the Alt-shift-F12 key sequence makes them available again.

[craig10x]

Re: Extremely Poor Desktop Effects - 10.10/KDE SC 4.5.2

for me, the desktop effects work fine but they just won't stay locked in...i hit "apply" and they work fine during the session, but when i reboot the computer, they are turned off again...hope there will be a bug fix for this in the near future...seems like many are having problems relating to the desktop effects...

[The Liquidator]

Re: Extremely Poor Desktop Effects - 10.10/KDE SC 4.5.2

Hi sblass

I have assumed you have a separate home partition and so have retained all your settings, rather than wiping everything and restoring your data?

Your post implies there was already something wrong with your KDE installation before you upgraded. Simply installing a new version is just as likely to do nothing or make things worse as it is to fix it. You could try renaming the config folder in (IIRC 'coz I'm at a (work) windows machine right now) home/.kde/share/apps. Then logout and login again.

You will have a clean kde installation. It will need to be reconfigured (and if you are running any kde apps on first run you will need to reconfigure those too) but it will enable you to rule out config errors.

Have you checked under kmenu/system/hardware as to whether any proprietary drivers are shown as being available for your graphics card? Is it a fairly old card? If so it may be that AMD/ATi have dropped support for it in their catalyst drivers for Linux and if that's the case you will have to use the open source drivers which might not have 3d support (although I don't have an ATi card so I'm not sure which one are and are not supported). However, if a clean kde setup doesn't fix the problem, you've got to be looking at the graphics card.

[sblass]

Re: Extremely Poor Desktop Effects - 10.10/KDE SC 4.5.2

Liquidator: Thanks also for your recommendation.

Not wanting to lose all KDE configuration settings, I went into .kde/share/config/ and simply renamed kwinrc. Logged out and attempted to log back in, but system froze shortly after PW input. Had to power down and then restart.

End result: no change regarding inability to turn on desktop effects. Everything is grayed out, can't even begin to reactivate them.

As for any legacy ATI driver issues (and yes, this is an old, underpowered ATI device), I doubt that's the problem, but who knows?!!

I have a fully functioning system, just no desktop effects or smooth transitioning between applications. I'll just have to be content for now with the old Win-style alt-tab process. Will continue to check back for other possible solutions.

[schnelle]

Re: Extremely Poor Desktop Effects - 10.10/KDE SC 4.5.2

craig10x: Go to System Settings>Desktop effects>Advanced and check "disable functionality checks"

sblass: You can try with updating your open source drivers from xorg edgers ppa. If drivers from this ppa doesn't work you can downgrade to your official drivers shiped with maverick.

sudo apt-add-repository ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade
sudo aptitude install ppa-purge

Then reboot. If new drivers doesn't work better you can downgrade to official packages with ppa-purge command:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

[Yuri sss]

Re: Extremely Poor Desktop Effects - 10.10/KDE SC 4.5.2

Have you checked under kmenu/system/hardware as to whether any proprietary drivers are shown as being available for your graphics card? Is it a fairly old card? If so it may be that AMD/ATi have dropped support for it in their catalyst drivers for Linux and if that's the case you will have to use the open source drivers which might not have 3d support (although I don't have an ATi card so I'm not sure which one are and are not supported). However, if a clean kde setup doesn't fix the problem, you've got to be looking at the graphics card.

All open source Ati drivers support compositing, for the newer cards (including the newest Evergreen) as well as for the old legacy cards.

[slush1000]

Re: Extremely Poor Desktop Effects - 10.10/KDE SC 4.5.2

I installed the just-released ATI proprietary Catalyst drivers for my Radeon HD 3200 and performance is excellent.

Kwin compositing effects are enabled at boot and are very very smooth.

UPDATE:
- Kwin Blur effects still cannot be enabled due to very poor performance
- Plants vs Zombies under Wine poor 3D performance
- Pain Killer Demo under Wine good performance but has introduced some rendering issues
- Blender 2.49 seems to be working with very good performance
- Kubuntu splash screen for start up and shutdown has become ugly/low res

[buckeyered80]

Re: Extremely Poor Desktop Effects - 10.10/KDE SC 4.5.2

Schnelle's post earlier is what fixed mine when I was using 10.04: Disable the functionality checks. That is what got them to work on 10.04. This morning I just upgraded to 10.10 and it held that setting for me. I actually thought 10.10 made great improvements on desktop effects. Mine are all smoother after the upgrade. But, try what schnelle said, it worked before.

[claydoh]

Re: Extremely Poor Desktop Effects - 10.10/KDE SC 4.5.2

I installed the just-released ATI proprietary Catalyst drivers for my Radeon HD 3200 and performance is excellent.

Kwin compositing effects are enabled at boot and are very very smooth.

UPDATE:
- Kwin Blur effects still cannot be enabled due to very poor performance
- Plants vs Zombies under Wine poor 3D performance
- Pain Killer Demo under Wine good performance but has introduced some rendering issues
- Blender 2.49 seems to be working with very good performance
- Kubuntu splash screen for start up and shutdown has become ugly/low res

Odd, as I currently run fglrx on my Foxconn with the on-board RadeonHD 3200 and have zero problems using blur, though the splash screen is low res for me as well.

I had been using the open drivers pre-Maverick with better results, but in the change to the newer Xorg in 10.10, I am getting better results using Boxee/xbmc with fglrx. This new xorg could be what is causing the wine-related issues, as it is possible the wine folks haven't had much time with it yet.

[slush1000]

Re: Extremely Poor Desktop Effects - 10.10/KDE SC 4.5.2

I tried many things, including all the suggestions above and nothing improved the performance of Kwin for me. At best I was getting 50fps when nothing was being done. It would drop to 12fps when moving windows or changing desktops and as low as 5fps when using Alt-tab (present windows mode).

Normally I wouldn't consider installing the Catalyst drivers from ATI's site but after reading about the improvements of it on Phoronix I thought it couldn't hurt