Hi! let's see if someone can help me fix the following strange behavior...

The slide animations while switching between virtual desktops are quite laggy but I have found that they work perfectly and smoothly if there is any element of the KDE interface showing on the screen, that is: if there is any notification, if the Plasma menu or KRunner are displayed, if some widget from the top bar is opened (the calendar, the system tray or any other). What could be the cause of this behavior?

I have already tried changing all the possible options of the screen compositor but what seems strange to me is that, if any of these mentioned elements are on the screen, everything works like a charm and very very smooth (therefore I understand that the graphic resources of my PC are enough to run the desktop animations smoothly).

Thanks in advance!

Same observation here - actually I have never noticed that things get smooth when there is a plasma interface component visible (like the calendar) - wow indeed!

What I have observed is that, with four virtual desktops arranged in a grid of 2x2, switching vertically (up and down) seems to be always very quick and smooth, but switching horizontally (left and right) becomes very laggy. Signing out and back in helps, just `kwin --replace` seems not to help. And indeed, when the calendar is visible, even switching left and right is instant!

This is really annoying me for quite some time already. I arrange my work in virtual desktops, and the switching becomes slow in a nondeterministic manner. Would be super happy to help to investigate this and get rid of this problem!

I am on KDE 5.20.5, Debian unstable, Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th gen, UHD graphics 620.

Interesting what you explain about vertical switching between desktops but I always horizontally with a keyboard shortcut or using the touchpad gestures.

I'm using the same graphic card on my laptop but another one (Intel HD Graphics 4600) on desktop..both are Intel. I'd like to try it on another graphic card to see if this annoying behavior remains.

Did you find anything new about this problem?

Seems maybe this forum is not the best to bring it to attention. I would like to be helpful to help debug this and find a solution. Did you by chance already fill a bug? It seems bugs.kde.org is the place, need to search whether this has already been reported or we should report a new bug. Damn that system looks ancient.

Hey @call0fcode, did you find anything? Is there a better place to ask about this? Is it only us? Is it intel graphics related?

This makes me go crazy - not only switching between desktops becomes sluggish (unless clicking on the desktop grid in panel - that's still fast, or unless the calendar is open), but also alt+tab becomes sluggish.

It seems to me the slugishness is rather connected to passing the keyboard shortcut to whatever moves between the desktops (compositor?), not rendering-cased slowness.

I have to log out or even reboot once or twice a day because of this. Damn I don't want to switch DE but this is unbearable.

I have a hunch that it is caused by ibus input method (I need to type Chinese). I turned it off, now second day, still no slowing down - but it was a day off so the applications used were different. Continuing to observe now without ibus (typing in google translate -uff..).

Do you also use an input method, @call0fcode?

Indeed things got better after removing ibus.

What is the preferred input method (that supports typing pinyin (Chinese) for KDE?

I'm temporarily just removing ibus and typing in an online tool, but that's far from ideal.