Ok, KDE is not an operating sytem. However, most Unix and Linux out there are 1/4 the size of Windows 7 Ultimate, but can't seem to keep up on older hardware. Have KDE developers tried Windows 7 Ultimate?

MS Windows 7 Ultimate seem to move as fast as you can click, almost anticipating your next move. With KDE there seems to be an unresponsive script in the background.

Do KDE developers have a hack for that? Or, have they fell prey to Adobe setting up Unix and Linux to appear much slower than Windows? For example Opera had a hack (for Windows Explorer signatures) to fool other websites from blocking users with Opera.

kde seems to be putting blame on everyone else xorg, nvidia but I think the main problems are qt and kde themselves. I have no problems with speed in gnome it is very fast (back in the kde3 days things seemed to be the other way around). Sometimes I think that kde is not really slow in most areas (except window resizing) but appears slow because of some effects (delete a file from the desktop in kde4.2 or 4.3 and see what I mean, they actually implemented a desktop effect which makes it seem slower, thank goodness it is removed in 4.4).

In kde4.4 it seems a bit better though

btw I reported many bugs about some of the percieved slowness of kde4: https://bugs.kde.org/buglist.cgi?bug_st ... 0gmail.com

There is another point actually, which makes kde seem slow, doing many common chores seems to take a lot more clicking and moving the mouse around tthan kde3 and other current desktops; dare I say it but plasma is a clumsy user interface. (try to add an item to the panel or move an item, this takes a lot of clicks and movement but was very easy and quick in kde3 and is quick and easy in gnome). The kickoff menu also requires a lot of clicking to find a menu item (lancelot is a lot better in that respect but still is quite slow and heavy by itself). In the olden days clicking a file in the filemanager just did what you wanted to do with it, now with dolphin you need to open a new application (wait) and then switch to it (more movement and more confusion). Also in the olden days when you wanted to accesss an external device the icon was just there in the desktop. Now you need to navigate to some icon, click it and select you device from a list, this is also a lot more work, let alone that is is very confusing for newbies)

The main problem isn't Qt and KDE, but the methods of the underlying systems they use being virtually completely unused before, and thus terribly unoptimised and slow.

This is improving over time as graphics drivers start to accelerate these methods, and generally inefficient methods are rewritten to be faster and more efficient.

Both KDE and Qt code is also being optimised at the same time, especially in areas where the code is relatively new.

Well there have been some serious performance bugs in kde (some were fixed with kde 4.3.3 and .4)

Also as I said it might not be all a lack of performance but also a loss of ergonomics of the interface many things in kde4 are slower by design intention.

It would be nice to see some proof to back these claims. Most of the slowness is not due to design intentions, but as bcooksley already said, starting to user new features exposed problems lower in the stack that were never looked at becaue of "who would ever use this?" attitude.

well just try to move an icon in the panel: unlock desktop, click thingy in panel, move icon, click X to close toolbox, lock desktop again, just to move an icon, compare this to kde3, right click icon move, done....

kick off menu look for app: click button, navigate to applications tab, click applications tab, click menu category, click back button repeat until found (this can be many categories) compared to clasic style menu, click button, hover categories until found

watch directory with pictures, open dir click picture now gwenview needs to launch and you can watch the pictures, to see another dir close gwenview and repeat process, in kde3 just enter directory and voila you can watch them

access removable media: kde4 click device manager, scroll to list of devices click device; kde3: click icon

add application to panel, kde4: navigate to panel, navigate to icon (this can be hard see above), drag icon to far right of panel (why only there!?), then move icon (this can be hard too see above); kde3 click panel, select app from popup menu done...

It's nice to see that somebody else stepped upon this clickiness. I am slowly migrating to FVWM (after several years of KDE) and I'm impressed how configurable and fast it is. KDE3.5 may die, but FVWM + (selected) KDE4 apps look like a promising future - without plasma and slow interface

aapgorilla wrote:drag icon to far right of panel (why only there!?),.

why indeed, i can drag icon on any place on the panel??
the other widgets and icon are moving away to make room for it...

Riinse wrote:

aapgorilla wrote:drag icon to far right of panel (why only there!?),.

why indeed, i can drag icon on any place on the panel??
the other widgets and icon are moving away to make room for it...

maybe there are some glitches in kde4.4rc2 now it works but the focus to where you can drag is quite small

aapgorilla wrote:watch directory with pictures, open dir click picture now gwenview needs to launch and you can watch the pictures, to see another dir close gwenview and repeat process, in kde3 just enter directory and voila you can watch them

Hmm.
I am not sure whether this is default or something I get because I had this in my old configuration, but I still get the embedded viewer when clicking images in Konqueror, just like I did in KDE3.

Cheers,
_

anda_skoa wrote:

aapgorilla wrote:watch directory with pictures, open dir click picture now gwenview needs to launch and you can watch the pictures, to see another dir close gwenview and repeat process, in kde3 just enter directory and voila you can watch them

Hmm.
I am not sure whether this is default or something I get because I had this in my old configuration, but I still get the embedded viewer when clicking images in Konqueror, just like I did in KDE3.

Cheers,
_

Yes that works here too but as long as there is no places or media or whatever panel which mounts and shows media (internal/external) konqueror is pretty useless as a filemanager and you are forced to use dolphin