I found this topic after having similar problems and finding what seems to me to be the culprit in my case: Dropbox. (I don't have VMWare on my PC, but I note that the OP does have Dropbox).

When my X CPU usage was at 100% after leaving the PC over Easter weekend I started closing apps one at a time to see what would reduce the resources used by X, and it wasn't until I closed the Dropbox tray icon that CPU usage dropped from ~100% to ~0%.

I can't claim to be 100% confident because as described on this thread things that seem to have an effect don't always prove to be the whole story, but the effect for me was instantaneous so even if X CPU usage creeps up again I have to believe there is a clue there.

I'm using KDE as supplied with Kubuntu 13.04 (Ringtail beta); I had the same problems in 12.10 and across two graphics cards (was onboard ATI, now nVidia G210, both FOSS on proprietary drivers).

This may or may not be related to this thread, I throw it out there in case it helps. (In my case I didn't see spikes in plasma-desktop, just X)

mrogers wrote:This may or may not be related to this thread, I throw it out there in case it helps. (In my case I didn't see spikes in plasma-desktop, just X)

More investigation suggests this is related, in as much as it's probably the same system tray issue causing both.

In my case, it turns out that X CPU usage goes to 100% whenever Dropbox is performing a sync, and specifically whenever it is showing the animated "I am doing a sync" tray icon. When the sync completes, the static "green tick" icon is shown and CPU usage returns to normal. However, if (as I had) you have a file in your Dropbox folder that Dropbox can't read, the sync fails ("access denied") and the animated sync icon remains, so CPU usage remains high. Removing the file allowed the sync to complete, the "green tick" icon to return, and CPU usage to return to normal.

The fact that the OP has Dropbox installed may or may not contibute to the problems in his case.

Steps to reproduce (in my case): https://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=98835

Thanks for the link to the Dropbox forum posting.
The increasing X memory usage by Plasma Desktop definitely indicate a memory leak sourced somewhere within Plasma, Qt or X.
Can you please file a bug report against Plasma Desktop at bugs.kde.org regarding this, and attach the precise reproduction instructions needed to trigger this?

Now that the cause has been reduced to the animated "sync" appearance Dropbox uses, it is easier to determine the fault and produce a fix.

bcooksley wrote:Can you please file a bug report against Plasma Desktop at bugs.kde.org regarding this, and attach the precise reproduction instructions needed to trigger this?

I have found and updated the following bug which looks relevant:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=314919

Possibly gone over the top with details but maybe some of it will help.

In particular I note that Dropbox seems to use Python and wx to handle the tray icons; I wonder whether VMWare also does and could the problem be in wx?

I upgraded to KDE 4.10.1 & i managed to successfully use the fglrx driver. I removed all plasmoids/widgets at least I thought I did. One constant on this system and my old intel graphics PC that had the same issue was the lock/logout plasmoid that was in my system-tray.



I removed it and closed Dropbox.. My cpu usage didn't change but I haven't rebooted yet. I'll see if there's anything else I can do.. I might stop using xchat since it uses gtk. I removed the xchat tray icon and it's been almost a month with the same high cpu usage in X11/X .I did enable blinking on the taskbar icon though, that may have not mitigated anything.

Please note that hidden icons could also cause the CPU usage issue.

I have no idea on how to locate a hidden icon or whats causing it. I've rebooted and after 12 hours of uptime and not running Dropbox, X cpu usage is relatively low at times(10%). i haven't seen anything upwards of 30% usage.
I'm not certain lowering my icon scale to 65% with smooth tasks setting on my panel had any positive effect. i also unchecked draw text shadow .I found this bug https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=165472 and since my panel regularly created two rows due to the amount of apps i was opening/closing, I figured I'd make a change to see what happens. I opened the usual amount of apps but have yet to see two rows in my panel.

Hidden icons are the System Tray entries which are accessible through the "Up" arrow, and not included with the rest of the System Tray icons.
Good to see the CPU usage is now improved compared to previous levels.

Other things worth checking would be other applications which are constantly animating themselves - even if they are minimized. Certain Firefox/Chromium plugins/extensions can do this quite easily for instance.