[SOLVED] Odd latency with KDE

lostintime · 01-30-2023, 05:02 PM

Hi All,

I have been trying to update 14.2 systems to 15.0, including moving to KDE 5.

There is a noticeable latency with launching anything in KDE. For example, launching Konsole or Dolphin takes two to four seconds. Launching the krunner applet delays almost as long.

The impression or illusion is all KDE software are looking for something that does not exist, times out, and finally launches.

I have only one "modern" system, a 4-core Skylake with 16 GB of RAM. Other systems are dual core. I can somewhat expect somebody snickering I should not expect much with KDE on dual core systems, but not so with the 4-core system. Besides, all other installed desktop environments run well on the dual core systems with no such latency issues.

I read of so many people claiming KDE 5 is favorable with resources and snappy. Seems something is misconfigured at my end.

The conundrum is in a VM on the 4-core system everything in KDE launches immediately as might be expected. Responsive. Yet outside the VM everything on that same system launches slow. I compared system and user files between the two environments and found nothing obvious.

This can even be seen in the task bar animation spinning circle. In the VM the animation spinner is rapid while on the host system the spinner is sluggish.

While all of the other systems are dual core, different hardware with different video drivers does not seem to make any difference.

I have tinkered and fiddled with all kinds of settings. Nothing seems to help.

Compositor and all desktop effects are disabled in both the VM and physical systems. All but a few background services are disabled in all. Almost all of the KDE settings are identical between the VM and physical systems. Kernel mitigations are disabled in all test environments. I have tested with and without network connections. There are no known related network issues such as DNS. I have tested with scrubbed and cleaned user homes, with and without the many KDE cache files.

I have tried using strace but the output volume is just too much.

I have not tested a fresh install of 15.0. All of the testing has been in place updates of 14.2 to 15.0. I lean toward that not being significant because the other desktop environments run as expected.

I am at a loss after several weeks of effort. Searching online has not helped.

Thanks much for any help or insight!

Regnad Kcin · 01-30-2023, 08:08 PM

I find that a fresh install is usually snappier for me and it is what I would try. If your drive space is enough you could create another partition to hold the new clean partition to mount the new version on, or you could install another hard drive and leave the old one in place. It's always useful to have extra hard drives around for backup.

Tonus · 01-30-2023, 09:11 PM

Hi
I first would have a look at logs. Messages and X.

Then I would try with a fresh user.

That might help to narrow the culprit.

artytux · 01-30-2023, 09:21 PM

I recently bought a old laptop just for tinkering with distros and then found that the laptop is just so slow Then replacing Win$ with a Linux distro it made a slight difference but not that much.
The Aspire A315-22 is a slow laptop on any Distro, it is good for one thing though teaching me to be patient I just wish it would hurry up and finish teaching me before it becomes a frisbee

Hopefully your machine is not on that list of slow as laptops.

Check if there are any reviews for the slow laptop.

enorbet · 01-30-2023, 11:52 PM

Has this version of KDE been running for minutes or hours? If you have the full Plasma install, initially while Akonadai and buddies indexes everything for fast searches, etc. everything is very slow. Once it completes, it's snappy and that can be adjusted as Animation Speed in System Settings. How long indexing takes depends on drive throughput and how much data is stored on drive(s).

RadicalDreamer · 01-31-2023, 01:19 AM

Turn off Baloo. Go to System Settings->Search->File Search in Plasma 5 and uncheck "Enable File Search."

A lot has changed between 14.2 and 15. Consolekit2 was removed, PAM was added, etc. Maybe these links will help you:
https://slackware.nl/alien-kde/current/latest/README
https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...-a-4175677371/

rkelsen · 01-31-2023, 01:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Regnad Kcin

I find that a fresh install is usually snappier for me and it is what I would try.

Or at least move/delete your old config files.

Perhaps you could try temporarily setting up a new user account just to test it? If things are smoother with a new account, then you know that there's an old config file causing problems.

scuzzy_dog · 01-31-2023, 12:33 PM

I'd first try Alien Bob's slack live just to see if there is a difference.

https://download.liveslak.org/

And if that runs good I'd do a fresh install. And do the full install. Too many things can go wrong by doing a custom install. And it's a lot of extra time to pick and choose packages.

I've never tried doing an update from 14.2 to 15. I also just do a fresh install. I figure that there is too much crap built up on an old install and too many things that can go wrong.

drumz · 01-31-2023, 12:49 PM

Did you remove all the obsolete packages from 14.2? I don't know if this would make a difference.

Of my 3 computers running 15.0, 2 were upgraded from 14.2 and 1 was a fresh install of -current in April 2021 (almost a year before the release of 15.0) and continuously upgraded until 15.0. I haven't noticed the problems you describe.

http://slackware.mirrors.tds.net/pub....0/UPGRADE.TXT

Code:

4.  Remove obsolete packages. The CHANGES_AND_HINTS.TXT file should have a
    list of these. You may also wish to go into /var/lib/pkgtools/packages
    and take a look at the package list:

    ls -lt | less

    You may spot some old, obsolete, or discontinued packages. If so,
    you can remove these using 'removepkg'. This command will get rid of
    the packages which became obsolete since Slackware 14.2 or were
    introduced during the 15.0 development cycle and later removed:

    removepkg --terse ConsoleKit2 PyQt Thunar aaa_elflibs amarok amor ash \
      automoc4 bigreqsproto calligra-l10n-bs calligra-l10n-ca \
      calligra-l10n-ca@valencia calligra-l10n-cs calligra-l10n-da \
      calligra-l10n-de calligra-l10n-el calligra-l10n-en_GB calligra-l10n-es \
      calligra-l10n-et calligra-l10n-fi calligra-l10n-fr calligra-l10n-gl \
      calligra-l10n-hu calligra-l10n-it calligra-l10n-ja calligra-l10n-kk \
      calligra-l10n-nb calligra-l10n-nl calligra-l10n-pl calligra-l10n-pt \
      calligra-l10n-pt_BR calligra-l10n-ru calligra-l10n-sk calligra-l10n-sv \
      calligra-l10n-tr calligra-l10n-uk calligra-l10n-zh_CN \
      calligra-l10n-zh_TW cargo cgmanager compositeproto damageproto db42 \
      db44 dirmngr dmxproto dri2proto dri3proto eigen2 eject evieext \
      fixesproto fontcacheproto fontsproto gcc-java getty-ps glade3 \
      glibc-solibs glproto gnome-themes-standard gnu-cobol gst-plugins-base0 \
      gst-plugins-good0 gstreamer0 gtk-xfce-engine herqq idnkit ilmbase \
      imapd inputproto intel-gpu-tools js185 kaccessible kajongg \
      kaudiocreator kbproto kde-base-artwork kde-baseapps kde-l10n-ar \
      kde-l10n-bg kde-l10n-bs kde-l10n-ca kde-l10n-ca@valencia kde-l10n-cs \
      kde-l10n-da kde-l10n-de kde-l10n-el kde-l10n-en_GB kde-l10n-es \
      kde-l10n-et kde-l10n-eu kde-l10n-fa kde-l10n-fi kde-l10n-fr \
      kde-l10n-ga kde-l10n-gl kde-l10n-he kde-l10n-hi kde-l10n-hr \
      kde-l10n-hu kde-l10n-ia kde-l10n-id kde-l10n-is kde-l10n-it \
      kde-l10n-ja kde-l10n-kk kde-l10n-km kde-l10n-ko kde-l10n-lt \
      kde-l10n-lv kde-l10n-mr kde-l10n-nb kde-l10n-nds kde-l10n-nl \
      kde-l10n-nn kde-l10n-pa kde-l10n-pl kde-l10n-pt kde-l10n-pt_BR \
      kde-l10n-ro kde-l10n-ru kde-l10n-sk kde-l10n-sl kde-l10n-sr \
      kde-l10n-sv kde-l10n-tr kde-l10n-ug kde-l10n-uk kde-l10n-wa \
      kde-l10n-zh_CN kde-l10n-zh_TW kde-runtime kde-wallpapers kde-workspace \
      kdeartwork kdegraphics-strigi-analyzer kdelibs \
      kdenetwork-strigi-analyzers kdepim kdepim-apps-libs kdepimlibs \
      kdesdk-strigi-analyzers kdevelop-php kdevelop-php-docs kdevplatform \
      kdewebdev keybinder kgamma kio-mtp klettres korundum kplayer kppp \
      kremotecontrol ksaneplugin ksnapshot ksysguard ktuberling ktux \
      kuser kwebkitpart lha libXfont libart_lgpl libbluedevil libcroco \
      libkdeedu libkgeomap liblastfm libmcs libmm-qt libmowgli libmsn \
      libnm-qt libtermcap libva-intel-driver libwmf-docs mailx man \
      mkfontdir mozjs52 mozjs60 mozjs68 mplayerthumbs nepomuk-core \
      nepomuk-widgets notify-python openldap-client openssl10 \
      openssl10-solibs orage oxygen-icons pairs perlkde perlqt \
      phonon-gstreamer pm-utils presentproto printproto pth pykde4 pyrex \
      python python-enum34 qca-qt5 qimageblitz qjson qt qt-gstreamer qtruby \
      qtscriptgenerator randrproto raptor2 rasqal recordproto redland \
      renderproto resourceproto rfkill rxvt scim scim-anthy scim-hangul \
      scim-input-pad scim-m17n scim-pinyin scim-tables scrnsaverproto \
      seamonkey-solibs sendmail sendmail-cf slocate smokegen smokekde \
      smokeqt soprano strigi superkaramba tetex tetex-doc transfig trn \
      urwid videoproto virtuoso-ose wicd-kde wireless-tools workbone \
      xcmiscproto xextproto xf86-video-xgi xf86-video-xgixp xf86bigfontproto \
      xf86dgaproto xf86driproto xf86miscproto xf86vidmodeproto xfractint \
      xineramaproto xproto xv

lostintime · 02-17-2023, 03:24 PM

Looks like the problem was caused by CPU frequency governing. The 4-core system had intel_pstate=disable in the boot parameters. The dual core laptop had intel_idle.max_cstate=3 in the boot parameters. Both systems had been like that for a long time since shortly after first testing 15.0.

Curious that KDE does not like those boot parameters yet the other desktop environments on those systems never blink. Probably related to kwin.

Side note: baloo never has been enabled and akonadi packages are not installed.

Thanks for the replies.