KDE Laggy in Fresh F15

[Mark Eggers]

On Sat, 28 May 2011 05:30:10 -0400, Kevin H. Hobbs wrote:

> I just did a fresh install of Fedora 15 x86_64 with KDE.
> 
> KDE is mostly unusable in Fedora 15 while it was fine in Fedora 14 (with
> nvidia driver).
> 
> The display seems to freeze for a few seconds every few seconds.
> 
> Menus take seconds to open.
> 
> Windows leave garbage on the display when they are moved or re-sized.
> 
> New windows are often filled with garbage before they are drawn all the
> way.
> 
> KDE automatically disables the desktop effects.
> 
> I installed and switched to fluxbox and everything is snappy.
> 
> Without all of the KDE decoration firefox went from unusable to normal
> under fluxbox.
> 
> I have not installed any software not in Fedora's repository (no nvidia
> drivers).
> 
> System details that might be usefull:
> 
> lenovo S10
> Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU    Q6600  @ 2.40GHz 4 GB of DDR3 1067 MHz
> RAM
> nVidia Corporation G86 [Quadro NVS 290] nouveau driver is loaded and in
> /etc/X11/xorg.conf Screen spans two 1600x1200 CRTs

KDE runs fine on my system. This was upgraded from Fedora 14 to Fedora 15.

CPU:         2.60 GHz P4
Memory:      1.50 GB RDR ram
Disk:        120 GB IDE drive
Screen:      1640x1080 Samsung SyncMaster LCD / DMI
Video:       512 MB 7600 GS AGPx2 (overclocked)
Driver:      275.09 (beta from NVidia)

Back when Cairo went from 1.09 to 1.10, there was a huge problem with 
themes that used gradients. Fedora by default uses gradients in their 
themes. There were three solutions:

a) Downgrade Cairo
b) Patch Cairo
c) Don't run themes with gradients

Cairo was released with a "buggy gradients" patch, with the caveat that 
it would NOT be carried over to Fedora 15. This fixed the performance 
problems in Fedora 14, but now we're running Fedora 15.

You can really see the difference if you have run GtKPerf on Fedora 14, 
then run it on Fedora 15. The text input is three times slower on Fedora 
15.

After trolling the NVidia forums, I found a solution that works for me.

a) Run a 270 or greater driver (required for xserver 1.10)
b) create a file called nvidia in /etc/modprobe.d
c) add the following:

options nvidia AccelerateTrapezoids=0

d) ln -s /etc/modprobe.d/nvidia.conf nvidia (so boot doesn't complain)
e) reboot

After doing this, GTKPerf performed slightly better than it did on Fedora 
14.

See if this helps you out.

. .  . just my two cents.

/mde/