[Solved] Somewhat Slow

[Daisuke]

Kubuntu 9.10 is truly great. However, I have a problem with its speed. A program is not immediately highlighted when I hover over it with the mouse (it takes about a second after the mouse is there); the same thing happens when writing on a word processor or when maximizing/minimizing. All in all, it lags. Are there options to fix this, or make a bit faster? Thanks for any help provided.

[c_martini]

Re: Somewhat Slow

I have also noticed this. Especially with Desktop Effects turned on. I think in my case it could be a performance issue with the ATI Catalyst 9.10 proprietary driver and compositing.

If you have desktop effects switched on, turn them off and see if that makes any difference in performance. If it does, you may have a similar issue to mine. Do you have an ATI graphics adapter? I am going to do a bit of digging to find a solution...

[dibl]

Re: Somewhat Slow

Probably it's "all about the video" -- it's the X server and KDM/KDE4 that induce the on-screen lag. You can prove this to yourself -- Ctrl-Alt-F1 out of X, and log in at the CLI. Now issue a command that produces a nice lengthy output -- "dmesg" or "du -h" or "hwinfo" (if it's installed) or something like that. If the output just shoots back down the screen when you hit "Enter", then you've demonstrated that there is not a lag in the underlying OS, it is only in the X server and the GUI.

KDE4 is still new enough that there isn't a lot of "tuning for speed" information about it. Obviously turning off Desktop Defects as previously suggested is going to relieve part of the performance drag. If you're using OOO for word processing, there are "lighter" choices available if you don't require all the OOO features (kwrite, koffice, etc.).

If on the other hand you are pushing some older hardware to its limits and really need whatever bits of improvement you can get, there's always this stuff:

http://rudd-o.com/en/linux-and-free-...ow-to-fix-that

[Daisuke]

Re: Somewhat Slow

Allright! Both disabling Desktop Effects (and the article with the link provided by dibl) helped me a great deal. Thank you for all your help : )

[josefko]

Re: [Solved] Somewhat Slow

I just installed Karmic and experienced the same slowdown of the computer as you described. I used to have problems with my graphic card in Jaunty too, but disabling desktop effects solved them. Now the slowdown was horrible, for example starting Krusader lasted about a minute. Xorg run high mostly about 50%. The computer with Karmic seemed to be unusable.

After uninstall of default network manager due to network problem and wicd installation instead all slowdown disappeared like a magic and I have my Jaunty speed back. Or maybe restart made the job. I can even switch the Desktop effects on.

Now I understand how can somebody claim that Karmic is the worst version ever, even if I am satisfied again.