i found kde4 slow too... i have a dell studio 1535 with core2duo t8100 and ati3450.. i know this video card is quite a bad card, but i really can't have a fast experience with kde4, just like i remember kde3 was on my old laptop..
i don't know if the problem is about configuration, but i have not so much time to spend, so that i switched to gnome, even if it didn't solve the problem at all...
i am really wondering how can i solve this

On my setup, it's slow compared to Vista SP2.For instance, Dolphin takes 1 or two seconds longer than Windows Explorer to open up, with all desktop effects disabled.

Maybe upgrading to 4.3.3 will speed things up a bit(I'm on 4.3.2), maybe not; but I won't be upgrading based on a toss-up,given the fact that my monthly traffic is pretty limited.

maybe kde4 is slow but also subjectively a lot of improvements could be made, take for instance the unminimize from tray animation, I always first see my background inside the window before the window content is drawn. I really do not get why? I have thumbnails enabled, why aren't the thumbnails enlarged, this would seem a lot smoother even when in reality it would take a bit longer

delete a file or move it to trash from your desktop and you will actually see some twirling animation for a second or so on your desktop, nice work but this actually gives the impression of the desktop being slow

edit on the other hand, not 1 single app, no plasmoid running (excpet for the one useful one: ihatethecashew) on my p4 2.4 ghz when I go to a vt and run top plasma-desktop consumes around 10% and kwin% 5% cpu, and an assortment of processes another 5% that's quite a lot actually for doing absolutely nothing (or almost 500MHz for doing nothing), epsecially considering nothing needed to be drawn at all (since I went to a vt)

I updated my nvidia drivers and things seemed slower. Then when i disabled desktop effects I can now get reasonable performance. I still think things are a bit slow. My my documents folder takes a moment to show all the files, dolphin takes a moment to start and worse yet kate takes a moment to start. I am a developer so I like text editors to pop up instantly. Its as if there is a 2 second delay to all kde applications. When I go back to my XP desktop the speed feels amazing.

Could this really be bad graphics hardware/drivers? Should I juice my system up? I don't mind that much(i am a huge KDE fan, and an occasional gamer of sorts.).

The funny thing is I felt this same slowness on windows with kde applications. KBlocks doesnt even work fullscreen(too choppy).

Are there plans to improve performance of KDE? It would be mighty nice to have the same speed that I had with KDE 3.x but now with bling. Anyhow Ill keep updating and getting latest graphics drivers until problems are resolved which I am sure they will be.

see http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?t=117805 (though thanks bcooksley from this forum for the tips)

On my old laptop Pentium M, 1.2 512ram it's as fast as 3.5 ever was. Of course I'm not running any 3d effects and keep it pretty clean and lean. I am using the rather quick sidux distro tho.

I installed Kubuntu to its own partition(9.10), after having a 9.04 Wubi install. Now the speed is amazing!!! its like a blur!

So as a note: WUBI INSTALLS ARE SLOW

This speed is break neck... i can hardly keep up

I had been using Kubuntu 8.04 with KDE 3.5.10 in this computer, a 2.8 GHz Celeron with 512 MB of RAM @ 500 MHz (I guess) - yes, it sucks. It didn't run very fast, but at a reasonable speed.

Then I upgraded to 9.10 - which uses KDE 4.3.2. It is somewhat slower: the startup does not take much time, but, after opening Opera and Amarok, the system starts to slow down - worst than in Kubuntu 8.04.

I don't know whether this is because of Kubuntu or KDE.

last week i had to reinstall my pc, so once again i chose opensuse 11.0(because newer versions doesn't work with i845 graphics card) with kde 4.0 on the livecd. when did the first boot in kde 4.0 it seemed lightning fast compared to kde 4.3 or 4.4.
so why does this happen? i remember i read that Qt4 was supposed to be faster that Qt3 and that Qt4 newer versions would also increase speed(and so will new kde versions), but after updating kde 4.0 to kde 4.3 and Qt4.6 it feels much more slower and it clearly no graphics driver issues because Qt and kde were the only packages i updated.

mehrmor wrote:Dolphin takes 1 or two seconds longer than Windows Explorer to open up, with all desktop effects disabled.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Dolphin is not preloaded in the computer memory as Windows Explorer is. For a similar (but not quite) experience, you should check the start up speed of Dolphin the second time you launch it. (ie, Open Dolphin, close it and open it again).

When I first tried KDE 4 in early 2008, it was completely unusable because it would always crash shortly after the desktop appeared. Back then, I was trying it on an IBM NetVista 6578THU (Pentium III Coppermine 996 MHz, 384 MB RAM, Intel 82815 Graphics Controller). Then I tried it on another box (with AMD Athlon 1.15 GHz, 512 MB RAM, NVidia Riva TNT2), and on that box it works, but it is noticeably slower than GNOME and Xfce with the same hardware. This applies to KDE 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, and 4.3 (all of them).

TOTPD!

marius wrote:

mehrmor wrote:Dolphin takes 1 or two seconds longer than Windows Explorer to open up, with all desktop effects disabled.

You're comparing apples to oranges. Dolphin is not preloaded in the computer memory as Windows Explorer is. For a similar (but not quite) experience, you should check the start up speed of Dolphin the second time you launch it. (ie, Open Dolphin, close it and open it again).

Who cares to the casual user Explorer seems faster, btw this tip works for me quite well: http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?p=732793#732793

I find KDE 4.3 to be fast in Mandriva (and Kubuntu, sidux, Fedora, Arch) dual core 3GB RAM. Even with all effects on while multi-tasking on several desktops (4 to be exact). I've had good results

Who cares to the casual user Explorer seems faster, btw this tip works for me quite well: http://forum.mandriva.com/viewtopic.php?p=732793#732793[/quote]

I care, because Windows COMPLETE boot time is horrendous, waiting for everything to pre-load.

If you install preload and have Dolphin pre-loaded, then it takes about a milisecond for it to open. WE is pre-loaded, and Dolphin is not (by default). From my experience in both Windows Vista and KDE4 on the same computer, Dolphin is always faster anyway. With or without it preloaded. Plus, Dolphin has more features than WE. I really don't see what the problem is.