I have install Kubuntu 11.04 and I cannot activate the desktop effect.
Plasma and aero is disable automatically, and when I activate forcefully it makes the system very slow..as slower that I cannot open the window or firefox.

I think it is graphics problem...so please help me because I don't want to switch to other OS.....

Which version of KDE are you using, and which graphics driver?

I am using KDE 4.6 and graphics card is Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller, actually I don't know which graphics driver I am using.....thanks for your reply..

Try switching from XRender to OpenGL or vice versa to see if that improves performance.

I've been using Kubuntu KDE Plasma Netbook for some time, my netbook has the same Intel graphics chip.

Desktop effects in Kubuntu 11.04 seems to have regressed, on my system they don't work at all with OpenGL but did work on Kubuntu 10.10 and were fast.

If you switch to XRender you should see an improvement in performance but even then not very fast and only some effects can be enabled.

I don't know if this is a Kubuntu (kernel) issue or a KDE issue (Kubuntu 10.10 = KDE 4.5, Kubuntu 11.04 = KDE 4.6).

Thankyou It improved a lot .....

Just so you know, the graphics "card" you're using, isn't a card at all. It's called an integrated chipset. (I have the Intel 965 chipset which is similar to yours). Basically, the cpu does all the graphics processing instead of the gfx card, and the information is stored in the RAM not in video ram.

In other words, if you have a slow cpu the graphics will run slow.

Tanner1294 wrote:In other words, if you have a slow cpu the graphics will run slow.

This is true however it is not the issue here, with Kubuntu 10.10 the desktop effects ran fast on my netbook but after upgrading to 11.04 the performance has degraded.

It looks more likely to be a software/driver issue, but I'm not sure if it is related to Kubuntu or KDE.

I've experienced the same on my eMachines eM350 Netbook with Intel Atom N450 and Intel GMA 3150.

With Kubuntu 10.10 the desktop effects performed well. After installing (not upgrading!) Kubuntu 11.04 desktop effects performance dropped extremely so that they even become disabled automatically.
I installed Ubuntu 11.04, and Unity with all its effects ran well. I installed the kubuntu-desktop meta package over it, but had the same problem again. Even worse, Unity wouldn't even start any more.
Finally, I reverted to Kubuntu 10.10 to see if my hardware works fine and it does!

The only difference between I could find was the driver versions:
1.4 Mesa 7.9 devel --> 1.4 Mesa 7.10.2

Any ideas and inputs will be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

I've just updated Kubuntu, with no success regarding desktop effects performance.

However, I've installed mesa-utils at the same time, and the glx-gears do perform as they're expected to do at approx. 60 fps in v-sync'd mode.
When I switch between windows with [ALT]+[TAB] while the glx-gears are still running, the whole performance drops to only 1.2 fps!

I'm now almost sure that the drivers are ok, but KDE causes the problem. I'm looking forward to read your hints...!

Half-solved!!!

Found something here: http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=3116866.0

So I deactivated the "Blur" effect and performance now is like it should be.

I rechecked with my Kubuntu 10.10, which however did not confirm this. The "Blur" effect is, and has always been, activated there, and performance is good. Switching the effect off and on for testing don't change anything at all!!

Anyway, my 11.04 now runs acceptable. Maybe this helps somebody else, too...

Just stumbled into this.. I noticed a large drop in performance between 4.5 and 4.6; it is almost impossible to run the QPainter render for KStars. CPU usage goes though the roof. OpenGL works well on my system. Was there that much of a change from 4.5? There is no difference with desktop effects on or off, KDE or Compiz-fusion.