**************Beginning of Beating around the bush part***********************
Hello guys. I am new to this forum, but I did look it up a bit and felt that such a topic did not exist and that I should start one.

I have been a long time fan og gnome 2.3, but since gnome 3, I have been looking for alternatives.
I am find xfce good, but have heard and read so much about KDE that I really want to give it a serious try.
**************End of Beating around the bush part******************************

Now, coming to the point, I tried Chakra OS (version 2012.09 Claire) a while back (about a month). However, the cpu temp would stay at 50+ deg. C under normal usage and would easily go to 70+ deg. C when watching a normal video (not HD).

My laptop details are as under:
HP Pavilion g6-2005ax
AMD APU A8-4500M
Dual Graphics AMD Radeon 7640G+7670M.
Ram 4 GB

I would like to mention that with xfce, the temperatures with normal usage stays well under 45 deg. C and even with watching HD Videos stays well under 55 deg C at all times.
The CPU temperatures are similar when running windows 7 with maybe +5 deg. C added occasionally.

If KDE is more resource hungry than even windows, then please tell me so. So that I know that I can only try KDE on a desktop and not on a laptop.

If there was something wrong with Chakra or KDE at the time that I tried it, then please tell me so. So that I can wait for the problem to be fixed and try KDE once again, once the problem is resolved. Also, If there is some other distribution with KDE that keeps the cpu cool, I would be willing to give it a try.

Thankyou for your precious time in reading this topic. I would appreciate it if someone gave me definitive answer to my query above.

I could be wrong about this, but an idling cpu should be at a similar temperature regardless of the operating system (let alone, desktop environment) in use. Based on that, I'd conclude that your kde environment was doing something with the cpu, while the other environments weren't.

Chances are that this process is a background process and a typical culprit in this regard is the strigi indexing service. Before we do anything, you might have to do some research. First, when you are next in kde, open up system monitor and see if the cpu is idle or if there is any process running and using the cpu. If there is such a process, note its name. Nepomuk/Strigi processes have names starting with "nepomuk". The backend database (virtuoso-t) may also be seen hogging cpu time. If you also see processes starting with "akonadi" using up cpu time, note that. Second, it might be possible that your cpu is being used for desktop effects. A quick way to toggle it is to use Shift+Alt+F12. You can also, of course, turn it on or off in the system settings. See if turning your desktop effects off makes a difference.

Finally, how do you monitor your cpu temperature? I ask because on my desktop, I have sensors on the motherboard and in the cpu itself. The motherboard temperature is understandably lower than the cpu temperature.

Report back and we'll troubleshoot from there.

As to your top level query of whether a kde system runs heavier than windows 7, I don't know (not a windows user, sorry!). Your kde system is highly configurable and you can set it up to run very resource heavy or very light. There are simply too many factors that can affect it. I can tell you that I run it across a fairly broad spectrum of devices (a high-end desktop, an old laptop and a mid-range netbook), with nearly the default settings and have no complaints about responsiveness on any of the systems.

P. S. The only thing I would complain about is the inordinately long login time, but I don't logout very often (I use suspend), so I don't see that very often.

Thank you karthikp, I had uninstalled chakra. Now, I will download it again and install it. If KDE can run on older systems, I believe that there was definitely something that was wrong with my configuration.
As for the sensors, I do not know much, but I used the KDE inbuilt widget for the purpose. It displayed the information from three different sensors and all were almost the same.= with barely 2 deg. C between them.
I will revert back in a couple days after having installed it again and done the things you told me to do and will let you know the results. Thank you for taking the time to help me out. I really like the way KDE looks and would love to be a long time KDE user.

jitenderdogra wrote:If KDE can run on older systems, I believe that there was definitely something that was wrong with my configuration.

Yes. I'd say that it should be able to run perfectly well on systems bought in or after 2005. If you bought it in this decade, don't even bother thinking twice about it.

As for the sensors, I do not know much, but I used the KDE inbuilt widget for the purpose. It displayed the information from three different sensors and all were almost the same.= with barely 2 deg. C between them.

That should be fine. Incidentally, if you have lm_sensors installed and set up, you can also get detailed temperature information by simply typing in the command sensors in a terminal...

I will revert back in a couple days after having installed it again and done the things you told me to do and will let you know the results. Thank you for taking the time to help me out. I really like the way KDE looks and would love to be a long time KDE user.

I hope you do get to be a long time kde user! Good luck!

Moved to Discussions & Opinions.

is cpupower configured correctly? which governors do you use? (performance/ondemand/powersave etc)
please check your daemons arrays on /etc/rc.conf

also you can control cpupower behaviour with laptop-mode-tools, e.g powersave governors when on battery and ondemand governors on ac.

as for another distro to try, check openSUSE

I checked up the chakra OS known Issues and it says that it is unable to turn off some of AMD's Hydrid Cards.
That could be the Issue.
I tried opensuse and Arch linux earlier, but due to some driver Issue, it could not start even the live session in either.

If there is another distro someone could suggest, I would be willing to give it a try.

"YMMV" is always going to apply with laptops and linux distros I've found. You could try Sabayon 10 CoreCDX (base install cd) and from there download KDE (or any other DE). Use equo install kde-meta to get, and then don't forget to edit /etc/conf.d/xdm to change DISPLAYMANAGER="xdm" to DISPLAYMANAGER="kdm"

I found the full Sabayon KDE dvd ran like turd on my laptop, but the CoreCDX route worked better. Again. YMMV.

Well, I have manjaro linux currently installed and it works like a charm. I think I will just install KDE in manjaro itself and see how it works. This will also save me a lot of formatting time. should be done within a couple days as I will need to discuss a few things with people over at the forums at manjaro.

Hey guys, installed KDE on manjaro. And yeah, in manjaro, even KDE works like a charm.

Its totally awesome.
KDE is just as light as xfce.
My computer is as cool as ever.
The problem was totally with chakra not being able to turn off my dedicated graphic card (I believe it to be so).

I am so a KDE user now.
Thanks for all the help and support guys. I had almost given up on KDE. But now, KDE will be my way to go.

Thanks again.

Cool. Glad it sorted itself out!

From my own experience, though KDE is the heaviest linux DE, Windows 7 still uses more memory.
On my old laptop, I used to monitor my old kde arch linux installation and windows 7. I would have 1.2 gb of ram used up after logging into windows.
With kde, I was around 750 mb of ram.