[opensuse] Toning Down KDE 4's Graphics for LTSP Desktop

Anthony Simonelli

7 Oct 2009 7 Oct '09

18:12

I happen to be a big fan of the KDE 4 series and KDE 4.3 is the best yet. I'm running an LTSP setup using an old Ubuntu 7.10 LTSP setup at a small company with about 6 constant users. They do simple things like browse the Internet, check email, and created/edit documents off the LAN using OpenOffice.org. However, since this version of Linux is unsupported and a bit behind, I want to move away from Ubuntu/GNOME and use openSUSE/KDE. The problem is that I have very low-end thin clients (400Mhz VIA processor, 32MB RAM, VIA graphics with shared memory, etc.) and it makes it a challenge to do so. Believe it or not, KDE 4 seems to out perform GNOME as far as responsiveness (started out trying GNOME and switched to KDE) and is certainly usable. My thin client has frozen up a couple of times when using Firefox, OpenOffice.org, etc. together, but changing the color depth to 16 seems to have helped. My question is, are there additional things I can do to KDE to help save some RAM on the thin clients? Is there a way to tweak KDE to use simpler graphics such as turning off the glow when hovering over folders, or using wire-frame outlines when dragging windows; sort of like "reduced resources" in GNOME's GConf? Anthony -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

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phanisvara das

7 Oct 7 Oct

18:23

On Wednesday 07 October 2009 11:42:12 pm Anthony Simonelli wrote:

...

My question is, are there additional things I can do to KDE to help save some RAM on the thin clients?

i've read about somebody from the KDE side working on a "KDE light" version aimed at netbooks, etc. this isn't even in any pre-release stage yet AFAIK, but you could probably find out more, what they're doing and how far along they have come, by looking into KDE mailing lists, blogs, etc. apart from that the only thing i can think of is going into personal settings, disabling all effects, etc.-- or using openSUSE 11.1 with KDE 3. -- phani. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

David C. Rankin

22:32

On Wednesday 07 October 2009 01:23:15 pm phanisvara das wrote:

...

On Wednesday 07 October 2009 11:42:12 pm Anthony Simonelli wrote:

...
My question is, are there additional things I can do to KDE to help save some RAM on the thin clients?

i've read about somebody from the KDE side working on a "KDE light" version aimed at netbooks, etc. this isn't even in any pre-release stage yet AFAIK, but you could probably find out more, what they're doing and how far along they have come, by looking into KDE mailing lists, blogs, etc.

apart from that the only thing i can think of is going into personal settings, disabling all effects, etc.-- or using openSUSE 11.1 with KDE 3.

phani, all, This is a real problem, that I hadn't really given much thought about, but what are people running on PIII-800 512M of RAM boxes going to do when kde3 goes away? I'd be willing to wager that everything P4 2.0GHz or Athlon XP2400 and earlier will struggle with KDE4. What will the alternative be? iceWM, FluxBox, openBox, LXDE (openbox clone), TWM, etc. are all lightweight but 'toy' desktops compared to kde3. I'm not sure Gnome is much lighter. What will the viable option for older hardware be from KDE? -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Patrick Shanahan

22:51

* David C. Rankin [10-07-09 18:34]:

...

This is a real problem, that I hadn't really given much thought about, but what are people running on PIII-800 512M of RAM boxes going to do when kde3 goes away? I'd be willing to wager that everything P4 2.0GHz or Athlon XP2400 and earlier will struggle with KDE4. What will the alternative be?

Hummm, the OP, not phani, remarked that kde4 was more manageable than gnome and kde3 ....

...

iceWM, FluxBox, openBox, LXDE (openbox clone), TWM, etc. are all lightweight but 'toy' desktops compared to kde3. I'm not sure Gnome is much lighter. What will the viable option for older hardware be from KDE?

toy? All are able to do what is necessary, just not in the same manner. I would probably stay on xfce4 if single-clicking where selectable. It has many very good features and no problem about running kde4 apps or gnome or .... A desktop allows easy access to applications and provides glitter :^). -- Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA HOG # US1244711 http://wahoo.no-ip.org Photo Album: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/gallery2 Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://counter.li.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

phanisvara das

23:10

On Thursday 08 October 2009 04:02:41 am David C. Rankin wrote:

...

I'd be willing to wager that everything P4 2.0GHz or Athlon XP2400 and earlier will struggle with KDE4. What will the alternative be?

iceWM, FluxBox, openBox, LXDE (openbox clone), TWM, etc. are all lightweight but 'toy' desktops compared to kde3. I'm not sure Gnome is much lighter. What will the viable option for older hardware be from KDE?

before i upgraded my hardware, my computer was below the spec's you mentioned above. it's true that KDE 4 didn't run satisfactory, so i was using fluxbox with KDE applications. (KDE 4 mainly; i used only konqueror from KDE 3, since fish:// wasn't working at the time.) i found the fluxbox DE quite flexible, and the KDE 4 app's and their overhead didn't slow me down much. altogether not a bad experience. (i've read somewhere about "KDE light" being developed by someone, not connected to the KDE team; can't find anything about this now...) -- phani. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

John Andersen

8 Oct 8 Oct

19:56

David C. Rankin wrote:

...

On Wednesday 07 October 2009 01:23:15 pm phanisvara das wrote:

...
On Wednesday 07 October 2009 11:42:12 pm Anthony Simonelli wrote:

...
My question is, are there additional things I can do to KDE to help save some RAM on the thin clients? i've read about somebody from the KDE side working on a "KDE light" version aimed at netbooks, etc. this isn't even in any pre-release stage yet AFAIK, but you could probably find out more, what they're doing and how far along they have come, by looking into KDE mailing lists, blogs, etc.

apart from that the only thing i can think of is going into personal settings, disabling all effects, etc.-- or using openSUSE 11.1 with KDE 3.

phani, all,

This is a real problem, that I hadn't really given much thought about, but what are people running on PIII-800 512M of RAM boxes going to do when kde3 goes away? I'd be willing to wager that everything P4 2.0GHz or Athlon XP2400 and earlier will struggle with KDE4. What will the alternative be?

iceWM, FluxBox, openBox, LXDE (openbox clone), TWM, etc. are all lightweight but 'toy' desktops compared to kde3. I'm not sure Gnome is much lighter. What will the viable option for older hardware be from KDE?

Xfce4. In fact there is even an Xubuntu Distro you can install on such machines. And you are correct that Gnome is not lightweight. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

phanisvara das

7 Oct 7 Oct

23:15

On Wednesday 07 October 2009 11:53:15 pm phanisvara das wrote:

...

i've read about somebody from the KDE side working on a "KDE light" version aimed at netbooks, etc.

what i was writing here, the netbook version of KDE, is different, not necessarily light on resources, good for outdated hardware, but meant for netbooks with limited screen resolution. somebody is working somewhere on a light version of KDE, but i can't find the reference anymore that i was reading quite a while ago... -- phani. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

David C. Rankin

9 Oct 9 Oct

01:23

On Wednesday 07 October 2009 06:15:12 pm phanisvara das wrote:

...

On Wednesday 07 October 2009 11:53:15 pm phanisvara das wrote:

...
i've read about somebody from the KDE side working on a "KDE light" version aimed at netbooks, etc.

what i was writing here, the netbook version of KDE, is different, not necessarily light on resources, good for outdated hardware, but meant for netbooks with limited screen resolution.

somebody is working somewhere on a light version of KDE, but i can't find the reference anymore that i was reading quite a while ago...

That's good to hear. With the availability of cheap RAM, the requirement of highly optimized fast executing desktop code seems to have fallen by the wayside in this multiply inherited poly morphized world of desktop software. KDE4 does a pretty good job though. I have it running on 11.0 without issues on one of my daughters computer that is an old Athon XP 2400 w/2G and Radeon 800 XT w/256M of DDR3. Not blazingly fast, but working very well even with compiz running. Of course performance will tank with 11.2 due to the loss of the fglrx driver. Time for a new nvidia card in that one anyway. -- David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E. Rankin Law Firm, PLLC 510 Ochiltree Street Nacogdoches, Texas 75961 Telephone: (936) 715-9333 Facsimile: (936) 715-9339 www.rankinlawfirm.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Greg Freemyer

7 Oct 7 Oct

20:57

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 2:12 PM, Anthony Simonelli wrote:

...

The problem is that I have very low-end thin clients (400Mhz VIA processor, 32MB RAM, VIA graphics with shared memory, etc.) and it makes it a challenge to do so.

Anthony, This may be off-topic for you, but Moblin is designed for low-end hardware. I don't know if it is flexible enough to address your hardware or not. For general info: http://moblin.org/ The latest announcements are at: http://moblin.org/community/blogs/imad/2009/moblin-v20-moblin-garage-and-mob... And it appears that Moblin is actually built on the OBS. There is a write-up at: http://en.opensuse.org/Moblin/Build_Service Even if the full Moblin environment won't work for you, maybe you can get just the gui, etc. for your thin-client. Good Luck Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Will Stephenson

8 Oct 8 Oct

10:16

On Wednesday 07 October 2009 22:57:59 Greg Freemyer wrote:

...

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 2:12 PM, Anthony Simonelli

wrote:

...
The problem is that I have very low-end thin clients (400Mhz VIA processor, 32MB RAM, VIA graphics with shared memory, etc.) and it makes it a challenge to do so.

Anthony,

This may be off-topic for you, but Moblin is designed for low-end hardware. I don't know if it is flexible enough to address your hardware or not.

I'd be interested to see results, but I expect that Moblin's extensive optimisation for Atom and Intel graphics will make it pretty horrible on low end VIA kit. Will -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Sven Burmeister

09:42

Am Mittwoch, 7. Oktober 2009 20:12:12 schrieb Anthony Simonelli:

...

My question is, are there additional things I can do to KDE to help save some RAM on the thin clients? Is there a way to tweak KDE to use simpler graphics such as turning off the glow when hovering over folders, or using wire-frame outlines when dragging windows; sort of like "reduced resources" in GNOME's GConf?

http://zrusin.blogspot.com/2009/08/more-2d-in-kde.html Qt tries to find the best solution for the environment but you can try to force it to use the best method for network. You can tweak things like the windeco, oxygen for example uses some gradient which might slow you down. Also in systemsettings there are a few services which you could disable. Also making sure that you do not start any apps that use e.g. kde's python bindings might help a little bit. Plasma does some caching as well, yet I'm not sure whether one can change its settings and whether that would make sense since not caching might slow down performance more than having freed some RAM. Sven -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Lubos Lunak

11:43

On Wednesday 07 of October 2009, Anthony Simonelli wrote:

...

My question is, are there additional things I can do to KDE to help save some RAM on the thin clients? Is there a way to tweak KDE to use simpler graphics such as turning off the glow when hovering over folders, or using wire-frame outlines when dragging windows; sort of like "reduced resources" in GNOME's GConf?

Run 'xrestop'. That will show you X resources usage for every client (=application), which I assume is what represents the major part of the RAM usage. I don't think turning off glow, outlines or similar things affects the RAM usage in any significant way, as that should only cost some CPU power. What could help would be avoiding some graphics altogether, such as turning off Plasma's desktop wallpaper. The color depth reduction you did should have helped too. One more thing that could have helped would be disabling Qt's automatic widget double-buffering, but AFAIK there's no simple way to turn it off and it's a question if it wouldn't cause some painting problems. -- Lubos Lunak KDE developer -------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX, s.r.o. e-mail: l.lunak@suse.cz , l.lunak@kde.org Lihovarska 1060/12 tel: +420 284 084 672 190 00 Prague 9 fax: +420 284 028 951 Czech Republic http://www.suse.cz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Larry Stotler

22:33

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 2:12 PM, Anthony Simonelli wrote:

...

The problem is that I have very low-end thin clients (400Mhz VIA processor, 32MB RAM, VIA graphics with shared memory, etc.) and it

Since no one else asked the question, is there any way to add more RAM? If not, then I would recommend using something like Slitaz or Damn Small Linux: http://www.slitaz.org/en/ http://www.damnsmalllinux.org/ These distros are geared to lower end hardware. Honestly, I wasn't happy with running KDE with less than 256MB RAM. 256MB Is probably the most realistic minimum for KDE or GNOME anymore. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Lubos Lunak

9 Oct 9 Oct

05:47

On Friday 09 of October 2009, Larry Stotler wrote:

...

On Wed, Oct 7, 2009 at 2:12 PM, Anthony Simonelli

wrote:

...
The problem is that I have very low-end thin clients (400Mhz VIA processor, 32MB RAM, VIA graphics with shared memory, etc.) and it

...

Honestly, I wasn't happy with running KDE with less than 256MB RAM. 256MB Is probably the most realistic minimum for KDE or GNOME anymore.

Note the "thin clients". Probably no usable desktop runs today in 32MB RAM, but that is not what this is about. -- Lubos Lunak KDE developer -------------------------------------------------------------- SUSE LINUX, s.r.o. e-mail: l.lunak@suse.cz , l.lunak@kde.org Lihovarska 1060/12 tel: +420 284 028 972 190 00 Prague 9 fax: +420 284 028 951 Czech Republic http://www.suse.cz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

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participants (10)

Anthony Simonelli
David C. Rankin
Greg Freemyer
John Andersen
Larry Stotler
Lubos Lunak
Patrick Shanahan
phanisvara das
Sven Burmeister
Will Stephenson