On Mon, 13 Aug 2001, Phil Driscoll wrote:
On the small (32Mb/200Mhz) machines I am setting up, I would like to be in a position to run KOffice programs. Certainly KWord is becoming a well featured application, and it runs fine in the small memory environment. As you may remember, I am using IceWM in order to reduce the memory overhead of the window manager. Just starting KDE puts me into 12Mb of swap, wheras IceWM leaves me several Mb free/cache. Now to the problem. Although KWord runs ok it takes ages to get going (40 seconds) under IceWM, although if I run it under KDE on the same machine, in spite of the crazy amount of disk sqapping going on, it actually starts up in under 10 seconds. Non-KDE applications, such as AbiWord and Gimp, start up in a couple of seconds regardless of WM. Does anyone know what magic tricks I can perform to effect the speedup under IceWM?
KDE applications now start up via kdeinit. KDE utilises a support environment which includes the DCOP inter-application communications program and the ksycoca configuration cache. These are normally started up when KDE itself starts, so KDE applications will launch quickly when started from KDE. When you start a KDE application from outside KDE, it has to start up the support environment first, which is what is causing the added delay under IceWM. As far as magic tricks go, my best recommendation is to use the old, small-memory machines as thin-client terminals. This will enable you to run virtually whatever applications you want, without worrying about the memory footprint. Of course, you will need a thin-client server, but for the amount of time you seem to be investing in trimming the memory footprint you could buy a thin-client server and pay to have it supported. Just for reference, on the system that IRL/Fen Systems just put in to Woodlands Junior School in Kent, StarOffice starts in around three seconds flat. Bearing in mind the bloat of StarOffice, that should give you some idea of the sort of speed you can get from a thin-client system using old hardware for the client terminals. Michael