Slow KDE app start time in Salix?

[GJones]

On plain Slackware: once KDE is loaded, KDE applications launch quickly. Konsole is ready to use pretty much as soon as it is launched.

On Salix KDE: almost all KDE applications are unresponsive for several seconds after launch, and their windows show as gray and featureless during that time. Applications that aren't part of KDE behave normally.

Not a huge glitch, but it's a little annoying. What might cause it though? Was KDE compiled with different options than on Slack?

[GJones]

Update: turning on KWin composite effects seems to fix this somehow. Not ideal, but less annoying.

(And apparently composite effects do work decently on machines with Intel GPUs provided the nopat option is passed to the kernel. I wonder if Linux's handling of modern CPUs' PAT capabilities is buggy.)

[djemos]

On plain Slackware: once KDE is loaded, KDE applications launch quickly. Konsole is ready to use pretty much as soon as it is launched.

On Salix KDE: almost all KDE applications are unresponsive for several seconds after launch, and their windows show as gray and featureless during that time. Applications that aren't part of KDE behave normally.

Not a huge glitch, but it's a little annoying. What might cause it though? Was KDE compiled with different options than on Slack?

I did not see such a behaviour on Salix KDE here. All KDE apps are slackware apps (did not compiled) except bangarang, clementine, kmix, kdebase-lite.

[djemos]

Update: turning on KWin composite effects seems to fix this somehow. Not ideal, but less annoying.

(And apparently composite effects do work decently on machines with Intel GPUs provided the nopat option is passed to the kernel. I wonder if Linux's handling of modern CPUs' PAT capabilities is buggy.)

Composite effects are disabled b/c of intel chipsets having problems. It depends what type of intel chipset someone has. In some intel chipsets system was crashed after enabled composite effects after a while. The problem has to do with KDE 4.5.5 version as well.
If anyone like to enable them has to remove the file /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/disable-composite.conf and restart X.
If i remember well nopat option did not worked for me. Maybe b/c i have a different intel chip set. Since it worked for you it is good to use it.
In salix-13.37 with KDE-4.7.0 composite effects are working fine without any option is passed to the kernel.

[GJones]

Yeah, I had to enable Composite in xorg.conf to get it working.

BTW the computers this worked on both have the Intel 945GM graphics chipset.

[djemos]

One computer of mine (32 bit) has Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller
And the other one HP G62 (64 bit) uses i915 kernel driver VGA integrated Graphic controller.

[GJones]

Okay, have found two more workarounds for this issue so far.

1. Use a window manager other than KWin. Not ideal, because KDE's compatibility with alternative WMs is pretty bad; Openbox is the best of these but all of them have issues.

2. Run KDE applications with the --nofork option. This always works, but there appears to be no way to invoke it globally, i.e. without specifying it separately for every KDE application you launch. (The KDE_FORK_SLAVES environment variable appears to have nothing to do with this.)

If someone could suggest a better replacement WM for KWin, or a way of making --nofork the default, I'd love to hear...

[GJones]

Aaand solved - by creating a KDE setup from scratch. I think the problem is in Salix KDE's default configurations, maybe something is corrupted in there? Anyway, KDE applications don't have the delay any more, and the whole desktop starts a bit faster.