Hello everyone.

I searched a bit on the forums for a similar topic, but I couldn't find anything, so please be gentle if there are already discussions on it that I missed.

So, my problem is that the startup is very, very slow for my eeePc 901 netbook with Archlinux, using KDE 4.2 and now with 4.3. The startup time of vanilla (from the KDEMod repositories) startkde is around 25-35 seconds (with X's start time included: <4seconds). Of these 25-35 seconds, the last 10-15 seconds are from the session restore as far as I noticed (by removing the splash screen).

I would appreciate any kind of advice on:
1. how to profile the startup so I can isolate bottlenecks.
2. already tried methods of speed-up
3. details of similar setups (Atom 1.6GHz with 1GB RAM) that have better/worse startup times - and maybe reasons for that (tweaks, distro, etc). My problem could be generated because of bad packaging...

What I have tried so far is tweaking the startkde script to remove anything that I didn't consider essential (mainly keeping just kwrapper and ksmserver). This achieved a bit of a speedup ~5-8 seconds.

I also tried starting kde without kdm. This didn't bring any significant speedup, but I couldn't restart/halt the system anymore(due to lost policy kit session I believe).

Also I must mention that these startup times are with a minimum of KDE services and auto-started apps.

So if anyone has advices or suggestions please reply.
Thank you in advance.

why don't you just suspend to ram? you should get pretty instantaneous restarts

remember your fsb, ram and processor aren't exactly barn burners and the hd is 5400rpm (desktops are 7200) so you are handicapped from the start by your hardware

fyi this article addresses the boot process and how to speed it up http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux ... -boot.html

Yes s2ram works great. What I want, is a fast cold boot.

I forgot to mention that I have the SSD version which is not bottlenecked by the 5400rpm hard-disk.

I wasn't complaining about the boot-up speed. Archlinux goes from bootloader to login prompt in ~10 seconds (I can get it to below 5 seconds using quick-init). My gripe is with KDE starting up slow.

The 25-35 seconds I mentioned earlier, are from pressing CR after startkde until KDE has finished loading, ie. the splash screen makes way to the desktop.

I would like to add my voice to say that I'm finding the same *very* *slow* (26.7s avg) startup of 4.3.3 on my AA1 (A150 -1g RAM).

I don't see hardware being the main issue --e.g., minimum requirements are more than satisfied. The load process needs to be tuned.

If the icons on the splash screen relate to load processes, the majority of time (+-10s) is spent on the last icon (i.e., the KDE logo). If anyone comes accross this can you confirm if this is where the services are being started?

Yes indeed - the time spent on the splash-screen is by far the most time my systems needs to get to the desktop.

I used to think that was due to my tinkereing with the configs, but if that is the case, I wouldn't know what causes this. I don't have many plasmoids running, I don't have anything but the ubuntuone-client in autostart.

Maybe I'll take a look at whats going on next time I log in, but since everything in kde gets a little harshly compressed into single-processes, it's not that informative to just see "a plasma-desktop takes ages".

Would be cool, to get the kde startup as fast as booting. On the other hand, I mostly suspend to ram anyways.

Of course, the start speed is perceived to be faster if you disable the splash screen.

But this means that for 10-15 seconds the desktop will be unresponsive until everything finishes to load up.

I want to bump this as I think it's an issue that needs to be discussed.

If you are also frustrated with the slow startup please add your voice.

Are there any devs out there who can answer any of marius's 3 questions or provide a heads up we can follow to attempt solutions?

This may be related to the same bug which has been resolved:

https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=206788

Fix will be in 4.4 though a patch is available to try on 4.3 (see #6 & #9 in the bug report).

@marius
Not sure if you already came across this. The same issue being discussed on update from 4.2 to 4.3:

viewtopic.php?f=15&t=76325

--EDIT--
I suspect the above are red herrings. I can't reproduce the bug (e.g., by booting with wallpaper different to image type), which makes me suspect that Arch has already incorporated the fix. Whatever the case is the startup is still too slow. Thoughts anyone?