Tips for improving performance of desktop effects in KDE 4.5 (Kubuntu 10.10)

[schnelle]

Few tips for getting smooth desktop effects in KDE 4.5 :

1) Disable blur effect in System settings>Desktop effects>All effects

2) Press Alt+F2 and type oxygen-settings. Then go to "animations" tab and uncheck "enable animations". Also under "Window decorations" uncheck "enable animations".

3) System settings>Application appearance>Style>Fine tuning tab. Choose "Low display resolution and low CPU"

4) System settings>Desktop effects>Advanced tab choose fastest texture filter.

5) If your desktop effect are disabled on every reboot then you'll have to disable functionality checks. Go to System settings>Desktop effects>Advanced and check "disable functionality checks".

6) If you are running opensource drivers (ati or intel cards) you could try to improve your desktop effects with updating your drivers from xorg-edgers ppa. If updated drivers doesn't work better, you could safely downgrade your drivers to official ones with ppa-purge comand.

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

Then reboot. If updated drivers do not work better you can downgrade them:

sudo ppa-purge ppa:xorg-edgers/ppa

7) You can upgrade KDE from 4.5.1 to 4.5.2. There are some kwin and oxygen style bug fixes which are improving desktop effects.

 sudo apt-add-repository ppa:kubuntu-ppa
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade

This tips on my laptop improve performance and smoothness of desktop effects A LOT. Note that you should reboot after doing things from tips. I tried every tip my self so I am telling this from my personal experience
Have a nice and smooth desktop effects in great Kubuntu 10.10 release !!!

Edit:
I just tried free radeon driver. Effects were very slow. Fix was to turn off vsync (I think free radeon driver has vsync always turned on. Even without vsync turned on in kwin desktop effects I had no tearing). So:

8)Go to System Settings>Desktop effects>Advaced and uncheck "Use Vsync ".

Cheers

[java_az]

Re: Tips for improving performance of desktop effects in KDE 4.5 (Kubuntu 10.10)

Thanks for the tips Schnelle. This has helped out the effects performance on my desktop.

[wizard10000]

Re: Tips for improving performance of desktop effects in KDE 4.5 (Kubuntu 10.10)

What I did was just replace kwin with compiz, which seems to be smoother, faster, more configurable and has a smaller memory footprint - plus I get to run my favorite emerald theme