Hi,
Im facing serious issues here with KDE 4.4.3 on mandriva Linux 2010.1. The problem begins when Im moving large files from partition to partition or from a pen drive to the computer. The computer really slows down (to the point that clicking a close button takes 30 odd sec to close firefox), I can hardly even change desktops. Basically what Im trying to say here is unacceptably sluggish performance.

Why Im posting here instead of somewhere else is because I also have LXDE and I tried the same copy operation on it. It gave no such problems and actually copied faster than KDE.

I really need to copy large files quite often and thus this is quite a serious bug in my opinion..
Regards,
Soumen

you should consider up'ing to 4.5.1 (or 4.5 depending on what Mandriva provides) as 4.4.3 is a bit old and then test again

when you do the copies are you doing them graphically or the command line? if graphically what app in each de? problem could be the file manager and not the de, have you tried Krusader or mc (mc must be run fron within Konsole) on KDE? if using pcmanfm in lxde what happens if you use in within KDE

How much memory does your system have? When memory pressure is high, the Linux kernel is known to have problems with I/O and system responsiveness. There are some fixes in the latest kernel to help mitigate this though.

Hi,
Ive got 1GB of RAM. 128mb out of that is shared in the X1250 graphics card I have.
Regards,
Soumen

You could try the latest stable kernel. There were some problems which should be addressed now and maybe your KDE just triggers them in your older kernel. If this won't help you could try the latest KDE then.

Hi,
In answer to the other questions asked, I tried using pcmanfm in KDE the copy happens faster, and does not hang the system. Dolphin however is so integrated into KDE (such as in the "New Devices" Menu) that it is a pain to start up pcmanfm to do transfers.
Im doing the copies graphically, not using the command-line.

Mandriva does not at this point provide (officially) packages for kde 4.5.1. If I have to upgrade, Ill have to get it from the kde repository. The point is I ran into some trouble the last time around when the official packages for kde 4.3.3 were being offered as updates to kde 4.4 (installed from the kde repository). Thats why Ive been waiting for official packages for kde 4.5 to be offered before upgrading.

In order to use the latest stable kernel, Ill have to compile it from source. I use the broadcom-wl driver which I really dont know how to compile. As such, its quite diffcult for me to look at new kernels as well.

Ill look around, If I find a way to build broadcom-wl from source, Ill think abt the new kernel, till then I suppose pcmanfm is my best bet. If any of you can think of anything, please post it..
Regards,
Soumen

I believe you should be able to add pcmanfm into device notifier actions using systemsettings -> hardware -> device actions -> add

there is some documentation for this in the Systems Settings Handbook

Are there severe IO issues if you run "kioclient copy /path/to/big/file /new/location/for/big/file"?

Yeah, its the same thing with copying with kioclient.
regards,
Soumen

This may be worth filing a bug report for, kio_file may have some issues in the handling of large files.