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Hello KDE developers,

I would like to recommend a few improvements.

The desktop performance in general is getting worse with every release. Plasma 4 was horrible at the beginning, sightly better in the last versions, and now plasma 5 is laggy and glitchy again. Let me point out some problems that should be fixed before any other improvement.

1. Opening some plasmoids in panel is slow - at first I can only see the plasmoid border and then the content
2. With the latest upgrade, to plasma 5.5, fonts are sometime unreadable. Avery character is rendered as a dark/gray box. Moving mouse wheel sometime fixes the problem.
3. Window resizing is slow and ugly. Sometimes if I hold the resize for a longer period, the whole application starts flickering, or lag behind the mouse (1-2 seconds). Disabling XRender or OpenGL compositor does not help or intoduces another problems. For example if I disable compositor, moving any window above Chromium produce ugly black shadow of the uppermost moving window.
4. QtQuick does not look fast to me. For example go to the KDE setting->Desktop Behavior->Desktop Effects. Resizing window there is horribly slow, because Qt needs to layout the list view. How hard can it be?
5. I am used to open a lot of Dolphin and Kate instances when I work (I am not using tabs). Starting Kate or Dolphin is a lot slower now (border shows first and then content), compared to KDE4. Now it need +2 seconds.
6. Compositor with OpenGL is a lot slower then XRender. I don't get it... In KDE4 it was the other way around. Resizing windows with the OpenGL compositor is even more laggy and ugly.
7. Crashing every now and then (Plasma, Dolphin, Kate, Terminal, SystemSettings...) and almost always with the Segmentation fault exception.
8. Logout from session is taking to much time (7s)
9. Building bottom panel, when logging into plasma, is slow and ugly. I newer know if the icons and the system tray will be displayed right or i will get some transparent/invisible icons.

Above problems are not present when using other desktops (Gnome). Manipulating windows there is like a balsam for the eyes compared to the KDE.
Without those problems KDE could really shine, so please improve performance. Maybe I am writing to the wrong forum and the QT and the unoptimized QML 'easy to use ****' is the root of all problems... I really like the idea of being able to change and enhance code/app without recompile, but not like this.

My configuration:
Arch linux, Plasma 5.5, Intel i7 CPU, 8GB ram, SSD disk, GeForce GTS 350M with the NVIDIA drivers, 1366*768 resolution laptop display.

Hi,

I am no developer, alas, but I may have an idea why you experience the things you do. Arch is cutting edge and as such you may get software on your computer which is still beta. I loved Arch when I had it (for 4 long years) but am really glad now to have switched to Debian Testing - a rolling release which does have the odd glitch but nothing like you stated. I cannot remember the last crash even though I have uptimes of 14 to 20 days at least (every time a new kernel comes).

My computer is not as fast as yours but Dolphin opens in an instant as does Kate. The only thing that takes a second or two is the Agora browser but I can live with that.

Have you mentioned this on the Arch forum? Perhaps you are not alone and there is an older Plasma version in the AUR which functions perfectly well.

toad wrote:Hi,

I am no developer, alas, but I may have an idea why you experience the things you do. Arch is cutting edge and as such you may get software on your computer which is still beta. I loved Arch when I had it (for 4 long years) but am really glad now to have switched to Debian Testing - a rolling release which does have the odd glitch but nothing like you stated. I cannot remember the last crash even though I have uptimes of 14 to 20 days at least (every time a new kernel comes).

My computer is not as fast as yours but Dolphin opens in an instant as does Kate. The only thing that takes a second or two is the Agora browser but I can live with that.

Have you mentioned this on the Arch forum? Perhaps you are not alone and there is an older Plasma version in the AUR which functions perfectly well.

Thank you for the response.

I have resolved some problems with KDE crashes. Initial Arch KDE packages were corrupted. They have fixed them a few hours after the initial Plasma 5.5.1 release, but the performance problems mentioned above still exist. For those I do not think that Arch is to blame.
I am suspecting that KDE or Qt is not optimized for the NVIDIA legacy 340xx driver. My GPU is not so bad, but it is not supported by the 'mainstreem' NVIDIA driver anymore .
I have another older and slower desktop PC with the ATI GPU, using the open source drivers. Plasma and Qt UI work faster there, but the intense 3D applications don't.

Anyway on both computers Blender, which has a lot of functionality, GUI components, logic and 3D rendering, starts faster than any KDE/Plasma application.
I am asking myself, how can that be?

Hm, if you reckon it is the nvidia driver give nouveau a try.

mallocf wrote:1. Opening some plasmoids in panel is slow - at first I can only see the plasmoid border and then the content

I opened a topic about this problem and you can find some useful infos. I hope that will be improved.

viewtopic.php?f=289&t=130131