Hi gang,

I'm running KDE 4.1.3 (release 4.11.1) on a little old Dell Inspiron 1300 laptop under openSUSE 11.1. I'll include the lspci below. Everything runs pretty well. Desktop compositing seems to work, mostly anyway. Desktop cube does, too, but mouse control of the cube is erratic unless I employ a workaround.

By itself, click-and-drag to move the cube seldom works (workaround excluded) and when it does, there's no real control. The cube either doesn't move or occasionally it moves wildly and uncontrollably here and there, like the movement problems of a person with severe Parkinson's Syndrome. The magic workaround is to have at least one window open and not minimized that has some ongoing activity. If there's continuous activity in the window, control of the cube is as smooth and responsive as you can possibly wish for (it works amazingly well for such low-end hardware). Open a shell and type "ls -lR /" and everything's great while the ls output continues. Now enter "while date; do sleep 1; done", and with output divided into one second chunks, control is still pretty good with some jerkiness apparent. Enter "while date; sleep 2; done", dividing output into two second chunks, and control becomes jerky and erratic... parkinsonian for a descriptive adjective. Increase the sleep interval and "parkinsonism" increases, as well. At least one app's window has special powers, though: Amarok. With Amarok's window open, even when Amarok is apparently idle, control of the cube is good -- music has charms, I guess. If you close or minimize the window, "parkinsonism" returns. Restore the window and smooth control is restored, as well. It was Amarok that inspired the comparison with parkinsonism; music sometimes brings order to their erratic movement for some Parkinson Syndrome patients.

Is this is known problem? Is there a known solution?

Many thanks,
Larry

P.S. lspci for the Dell Inspiron 1300 follows:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 03)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
02:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

Post slightly edited for spelling and grammar

I strongly suggest you upgrade to a more recent KDE version, current stable is KDE 4.3.5. Also KDE SC 4.4 is to be released soon, so your version is totally outdated.