The KDE Project just released KDE 3.0.5. According to the SuSE README file for KDE 3.0.5, this is not exactly a full release of its own, as only the kdebase and kdelibs packages were affected from the (mostly security) updates (the rest of the packages have very minor changes). Users who already have 3.0.4 installed, will only need to re-install these two packages, while users using older versions, will have to do a complete installation.
KDE 3.0.5 Released
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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I tried to use KDE for a while, but I could never get used to it… the whole desktop just feels “slow”. I was going to switch to Linux cause I thought it would make my hardware seem faster, but boy I was wrong. Perhaps this object prelinking will help speed things up, I hope so… I did like the KDE look (minus the tiny ass toolbars :-)).
I could run a scaled down version of a WM, but I don’t think trading functionality for speed is a viable option when there are other solutions that sacrifice neither.
It will always feel *slow* until X-Windows is removed from the equation. As long as the windowing system is away from the kernel, it will always be behind windows and beos, and macos.
The biggest problem I have with linux (X-Windows): You cannot tell visually when an application is loading…causing most newbies to click on an icon 30 times…because they never see think the app has started.
“The biggest problem I have with linux (X-Windows): You cannot tell visually when an application is loading…causing most newbies to click on an icon 30 times…because they never see think the app has started.”
In KDE you have the choice of a taskbar notification and/or a busy cursor notification to tell you if something (and even beter: what) is loading.
The slower loading time (however, on this machine it isn’t slower that macosx and really light slower loading times than on win2K while applications are faster on kde), is not becuase of X, but because of the compiler used to compile kde (gcc).
The gcc guys have worked hard and are working right now to improve the loading speed of c++ applications (like most KDE): damn, I love free software!
C.
easy enough 🙂
you can always run a simple wm for speed and run the kde apps on top
starting konqueror in another wm (window manager) doesn’t affect anything.
I run E 16.5 here and I frequently use kde apps or gnome apps, it doesn’t impact anything
“It will always feel *slow* until X-Windows is removed from the equation. As long as the windowing system is away from the kernel, it will always be behind windows and beos, and macos.”
Using window system in kernel is the worst thing that can happen. Graphic code is big and buggy. It will cause instability and many security holes like Winblows.
X-window is not bad. There are many high-end graphical workstations that use it and your performance is much better than a good PC.
KDE runs smoothly in any PC running a decent graphic adapter and with CPU greater than 1GHz. There is no significant diference of performance compared with Windows XP in these PCs.
Using window system in kernel is the worst thing that can happen. Graphic code is big and buggy. It will cause instability and many security holes like Winblows.
X-window is not bad. There are many high-end graphical workstations that use it and your performance is much better than a good PC.
KDE runs smoothly in any PC running a decent graphic adapter and with CPU greater than 1GHz. There is no significant diference of performance compared with Windows XP in these PCs
I totally agree
I totally agree
Why would anyone have their GUI in the kernel ?
hmm, for all those whiners, why not install e17 ?
it’s fast, really fast
it’s shitloads of fast
it’s not finished though
but it’s fast
“It will always feel *slow* until X-Windows is removed from the equation. As long as the windowing system is away from the kernel, it will always be behind windows and beos, and macos.”
WRONG. X-Windows is in fact very fast. I’m writing this comment on old 200MHz Pentium with 48MB RAM and it is not slow (using IceWM as window manager). Its faster than win95 clean install was on the same machine. KDE and GNOME are slow, not X itself.
Using window system in kernel is the worst thing that can happen. Graphic code is big and buggy. It will cause instability and many security holes like Winblows.
Having the GUI in the kernel is too me not an option (ie. should not exist in the kernel). The speed of computers today can more than compensate for lag in speed.
I’m not a programmer myself, but I work together with them from time to time. I noticed programmers always want to start from scratch – probably because reading existing code is much harder than writing your own. The problem with throwing away old code is that you throw away years of evolution (bug fixing, experience) with it. I don’t know … maybe X should be reformed and cleaned, not dropped. I don’t think that starting from scratch is a viable choice at this point.
But on the other hand, I’m not a programmer.
WRONG. X-Windows is in fact very fast. I’m writing this comment on old 200MHz Pentium with 48MB RAM and it is not slow (using IceWM as window manager). Its faster than win95 clean install was on the same machine. KDE and GNOME are slow, not X itself.
Perhaps this is true, but it’s quite sad that an Athlon XP2200+ with 1024M of RAM and a GeForce 4 Ti card just, in general, feel slower using KDE or GNOME than Windows 98 felt on a 166 system with 4M of video.
*smirk* Nice try, but move on already. XF et al aren’t the way to win the desktop.
KDE 3.0.4 on Gentoo 1.4 feels just as fast as my WinXP installation (using the Windows Classic theme) on an Athlon XP 2100+ with 1024 MB Ram and a GeForce 4 Ti4600. Using the nvidia-kernel/glx driver.
hmm, what is his problem
troll troll troll
but if you aren’t trolling why not join an irc channel and fix you’re problem.
you must be doing something wrong
maybe you didn’t tune you’re hd’s (hdparm)
maybe you didn’t change you’re video driver’s (nvdriver instead of nv)
maybe you didn’t optimize the kernel ?
maybe you’re using a crappy distro
maybe you’re just a troll and I gut suckered in again
🙂
anyway there must be something wrong with you’re setup because it’s just wrong wrong wrong stating that kde/gnome feels slow, especially on the setup you’re describing.
trust me
I ran X on a 486 with only 4mb of ram and it was silky smooth (as long as you don’t run anything local)
Why is it when someone says that KDE/Gnome or something else feels slow on their machines they are instantly branded a troll.
The X, Gnome, KDE, XUL, OpenOffice, QT and GTK folks need to all be locked in a frickin’ room and forced to talk through some serious solution to the speed issue.
Part of the problem is old crufty X code (a small part ok).
Part of the problem is the widget classes not behaving correctly.
Part of the issue is the window managers and desktop environments getting so damn huge they take 20 seconds by themselves to load.
As others have stated having the GUI in the kernel is a bad solution but having better fully realized frame buffer support in the kernel modules for X to use could also be part of the solution.
Until a coalition of developers look seriously into the issue there will not be a solution.
Normal people do not change their video drivers, optimize their kernels, or optimize their hd with hdparm and they should not be expected to. It could definitely be their setup but so what?
KDE 3+ from SuSE rpms feel a lot slower that my custom compiled Gnome setup (and I used no optimization flags on the configure just configure –prefix=<my path>, make, make install). I understand there is a difference but the attitude that a user should understand this is silly.
Still the whole thing could be quicker.
I love linux but even I realize this.
where is you’re sense of humor
I mean a guy with the name “the english troll” make’s a trollish remark (comparing a +2Ghz/1GBram and a 166Mhz/4MBram machine) and you complain that I call him a troll
ah, c’est la vie 🙂
anyway
let me clarify a few points
I’m not a coder
I used to like windows
I used to be GOD compared to other windows users (i.e. a power user
then I found this FreeSoftware/OpenSource thingy and I laughed.
I mean how could they make something better that MS
I used to laugh at macos9.x (cooperative multitasking, what where they thinking, etc)
but finally I installed it and found to my utter amazement that it was beautifull
that it was usable
that it was stable
that it kept improving, not with crap but with enhancements
anyway i’ve lost track on what I was replying for, ah yes,
event though I’m a linux newbie
yes I am 
I try not to make incorrect statements
anyway the framebuffer stuff isn’t that Xrenderer ? (try the e17 test btw)
the widget problem isn’t going to go away, even windows has the same problem (open up visual C++ and go through the options and notice that even there there are like 3 different widget set’s in use)
Normal people don’t but even you have to admit that not changin video drivers and then complaining of the display is a nono
(examply try running a dvd in windows with the standard nvidia driver, you’re not going to get a good framerate)
but I admit, normal people shouldn’t touch system level utilities and drivers, but why don’t they ask anyone in the know to tune the system instead of complain complain complain
anyway I’m starting to become a zealot
heh, my last few post made less and less sense
“Normal people do not change their video drivers, optimize their kernels, or optimize their hd with hdparm and they should not be expected to. It could definitely be their setup but so what?”
True. But that’s *not* kde’s job but the job of the distribution you’re using. KDe doesn’t even provides binaries (the one on their site are contribs), just sources.
It’s up to the distributor to finetune your system (or you’re own if you’re using a guru distro like Debian, Slackware, LFS, etc.). That hdparm thingy has a *huge* speed impact on kde, btw.
C.
I run KDE 3.0.4 on my system and it runs fine, faster than windows, it always had to pause for a second. Not got that with KDE. My machine is an AMD 1600XP with a Gforce2MX400.
The people whining are they the buggers who expect the system to load within nanoseconds instead of seconds?
KDE is really slow and it’s one of the reasons I have not to use Red Hat 7.3 which is available on my computer.
My machine is a normal machine: 1Ghz P3 with 384 MB RAM, KDE is 4-10x slower than windows XP. I don’t mean that like Windows but in term of speed there is no difference…
I work on WinXP systems all day. They are running on everything from AMD 350’s to P$-2.0’s. WinXP is SLOOOOOOOW. Its such a pleasure to go back to my workstation running Xandros and not feel like I am running through and muddy swamp for speed. I will grant you that WInXP starts fast and gets to the logon prompt faster than older versions of Windows but once you are there its dog slow doing anything else.
who count’s start time anyway ?
btw linux on mac ibook/tibook is sweet, return from hibernation takes 1 second
restarting the os shouldn’t be necessary
I’ve been working on a HB-Vectra PIII 800 with 370 MB RAM since allmost 2 Years now.
One month ago I upgraded from (if you want “dummy”) SuSE 7.2 to SuSE 8.0 and kde3.0.4.
I never felt like KDE 2 or 3 was/is slow on that box.
That thing is fast.
The only thing about kde is that it consumes allmost 90 MB RAM – but who cares.
Even on my old k6 400 320MB at home – no broblem at all.
Either I’m a snail or you trolls drink too much coffee!
Please don’t call them troll’s
call them factual impaired
🙂
also here’s a nice test
try doing a high load on your windows machine and watch it crawl
now do the same on *nix and watch it fly
The speed of KDE can not just be blamed on X or the compiler, but the applications themselves – and this is not a bad thing. People expect a whole lot from applications like file managers nowdays, things which take time to load. This is the same on the GNOME side. I have programmed for both environments, and while the way KDE handles C++ adds a bit of overhead, the libraries are well written and applications tend to load pretty quickly.
I would love to see an option on both desktops to load applications in the background – just hide windows and when I click on he application have the window unhide itself. With all that Nautilus and Konqueror have to do, they will never be ultra-speedy – these are large, complex applications. Maybe right click on the application and have this option – much the way my Zaurus works.
By the way, I have heard all of the arguments against this many times on mailing lists and in message boards, but I don’t agree. I know that Microsoft preloads applications, but they don’t give the user an option.
>> now do the same on *nix and watch it fly
sometimes (unfortunately) some programs crash and start running in endless loop with full throttle in the background (e.g. wine or Netscape7.4).
It often happened to me that I didn’t realise there was something wrong, till – half an hour after the named program had crashed – I opended xosview or top accidentally.
Wy? Because you almost do not feel it.
killall <evilprogram>
That’s multitasking 😉
.
What are you going to do in those extra seconds? knit a sweater? weave a rug? boil an egg? bring about world peace?
Really, get a bloody life. Both Windows and Linux perform well on hardware with similar specs. I certainly don’t use an OS because of a religious element, helping the American Economy or to satisfy those who think proprietary software is evil or Linux is communist. I use a particular OS because it has a feature that is not available on another OS.
“Why would anyone have their GUI in the kernel ?”
Maybe some masochistic GUI developers would love to have stacks which cannot be larger than 8kb and all the other restictions most kernel code must fullfill… Who knows …
Generally code does not run faster just because it is part of the kernel or slower when it is not. People saying “Yes, it’s slow because X-Windoes is not in the kernel” are actually saying “Well, I know nothing about software design in general or about X-Windows/Linux kernel specifically.” Things are more complicated.
And let me 1st say that I like KDE, and more or less it’s my primary WM in Linux right now (although that could be easily replaced by XFCE4 once it’s finalized).
I love the fact that KDE’s constantly being improved, but I HATE the fact that there’s never an easy upgrade path for each little .0x release.
It’s either “reinstall packages xxx and xxx”, or it’s a complete reinstall. It’d be much nicer if there was an “update” function which would just DL, compile and install the updated components. I’d even settle for just downloading precompiled binaries and installing them!
It’s this kind of hassle which keeps Linux off the desktop IMHO. Not to start a Windows comparison, but the Windows Update function/program is a great example of what most users want: Simple point and click upgrades.
Now granted, a distributor could handle it (much like my beloved and former linux install of Sorcerer Linux would have done), but again, it’s the hassle that there’s no one, unified method of doing this, regardless of which Linux distribution you use.
And yes, there’s those people who will reply “Why upgrade if you’re happy with your current install”, but to those types of people, I always reply that there’s always room for improvement. I don’t however like spending a large amount of an evening downloading, compiling and configuring and installing.
“KDE runs smoothly in any PC running a decent graphic adapter and with CPU greater than 1GHz. There is no significant diference of performance compared with Windows XP in these PCs.”
Yet my cranky little K6-2+ 450 runs Windows 2000 and XP faster than it runs Linux. Guess I’ll have to get a new mobo and CPU to be able to use Linux effectively.
Gotta love free software, now if we had free hardware to go along with it
>try doing a high load on your windows machine and watch it crawl
I can attest to this.
This is a repeat of a test I have done and posted here before:
Real world example:
Start winamp put on the headphones and listed to some tunes.
Open Word and start writing documentation.
Open Excel and start copying and pasting stat into doc.
Open IE go to a site for a HOW TO and start copy and pasting info into doc.
Keep Outlook going in the background because you want to see that important email your boss is going to send you today.
Now open Photoshop adjust some images to paste into doc.
Now notice the performance and how it varies on XP.
Repeat the procedure on Linux:
Start xmms and play some tunes.
Start OpenOffice Writer and begin writing your doc.
Start OpenOffice Calc and begin the copying and pasting.
Start Galeon and begin more copying and pasting.
Adjust an image in the Gimp and insert the images into OpenOffice document.
Keep Evolution going in background to keep getting email.
Starting the apps themselves XP is faster than Linux ever thought of being. However, with all those apps open XP crawls next to my Linux box running off the same hardware.
It will always feel *slow* until X-Windows is removed from the equation. As long as the windowing system is away from the kernel, it will always be behind windows and beos, and macos.
(emphasis mine)
The windowing system for BeOS, for one, doesn’t live in the kernel. That stuff is, I believe, handled by the app_server, a userland process. You can even kill it, although I’d suggest not.
I turn my PC on, Gentoo boots, starts X, starts fluxbox in about 34 seconds. VMware, sshd, nfsd, apache, cupsd, autofs, etc all load in this time as well. This isn’t much worse than BeOS, is better than Win32, and you get a heck of a lot more features with Linux!
KDE/Gnome slow things because they provide a huge number of features. Moreso than any other environment I’ve used. They’re top-notch, no doubt. If you want fast, though, strip out the features! Use a stripped down WM like fluxbox or WMaker/Xfce, use KDE apps as needed. I do notice that just starting the first KDE app takes about 30 seconds (for konqi, at least) once these libraries are loaded, other K apps are fast to load. If I want the features of Konqi, 30 seconds is cheap! Once loaded, I get all of the cool KIOs (like fish, audioslave etc. Win32 just _wishes_ it could do this…)
So, if I don’t need a K app that session I save the time. If I need it, I pay for it at the time. Now, is that so bad?
(PS: PC is an Athlon 4 laptop, 384MB RAM with a crappy S3 Savage video card.)
Of the major OSs out today, XP is the only one that runs their kernel in the GUI. Even then, in terms of sheer benchmarks, X is faster. Why does X seem slow to a lot of people? Configuration is the number one reason. Nobody ever claimed that Linux was easy. Linux is very sensitive to configuration issues. Even Gentoo, out of box, isn’t super-snappy until you do some messaging. So in general, you set up a Windows XP box in a straightforward way, and you set up a Linux box in a straightforward way, the XP box will be faster because it’s more optimized out of box. However, that doesn’t mean the Linux box is slower, just more demanding. That said, applications are also at fault. It’s difficult developing responsive GUI code. You don’t just have to be fast, you have to do all sorts of tricks to make things *look* fast. For example, the window frames in OS X don’t resize faster than the contents inside can redraw. This makes window resizing (or would make Window resizing, if OS X resizing weren’t so slow) much smoother than say in KDE, where resizing causes rubber-banding. Windows apps have been in development for years, and they’ve had a lot of time to optimize. Linux apps haven’t, so they haven’t had as much time to optimize. Take Konqueror for example. They’re busy working on standards complience, working on speed is a secondary issue at the moment. Once the browser is complient enough, then they can focus on stuff like speed. (BTW, they also have more work to do standards wise. IE can take shortcuts because it *is* the standard, Konqueror can’t.) Open up a complex GUI app like Qt Designer (Qt 3.1). Abuse the UI. Even though it has tons of colorful alpha-blended widgets (courtesy of Liquid) it’s fast. No redraw visible at all. If X or Qt were slow, that just plain wouldn’t be possible.
I never said X is slow, but…
Replying to the startup speed doesn’t matter comment: yes, it does. A savings of 10 seconds per opening several times a day DOES add it. It also is a usability issue… if I open an app to do something and have to wait long enough so that I get distracted, I can lose my train of thought. Very annoying.
Replying to the comments about “use a lighter WM”: this is not the point. I want both functionality AND speed. And waiting 30 seconds to open up konq using fluxbox is NOT an acceptable tradeoff.
Replying to the point about keeping your windows machine under a load: I do this routinely. Right now, I have Excel, Word, AIM, winamp, 3 IE windows, a java webserver (Resin), postgresql database server, an SNMP agent, Kazaa Light, the GIMP (win32 version) open, and a putty SSH session open. No slowdown noticeable. All with 256 megs of ram.
*Sigh*. It’s things like app startup times and PERCEIVED speed that can really make a system pleasant to use. I want immediate feedback damnit! And something more than a hourglass mouse cursor.
I have an older computer (P3 450). Win2k + IE + Explorer runs quite a bit zippier than KDE 2.2 and 3.0 did. Outlook opens in about half the time Evolution does. Explorer opens in about a half to one second, while konq file manager takes easily 10 times that long to load. I really did like KDE (much more than GNOME), it just was too slow to be usable _for me_ on my machine (even with hdparm configured).
It’s probably interesting to note that I uninstalled XP and put 2k back on because XP felt a lot more sluggish than 2k (even using the windows classic theme). I kind of like 2k the best, slightly more responsive than XP, can still run most of the app collection I’ve obtained over the years. Plus, my university allows me free copies of most MS software. And keeping it up do date is insanely easy.
I guess I am just impatient 🙂 I’m not trying to say I’m an average user, I just know what I don’t like, and slow applications are close to the top of my list.
Maybe if I got a newer computer I would think about using KDE or GNOME for a while again. Of course, then I would have to start finding new applications that don’t suck…
Does anyone knows where is the changelog for KDE 3.0.5?
This is mostly a security fix release but http://www.kde.org/announcements/changelogs/changelog3_0_4to3_0_5.h…. Don’t expect it to be complete, perhaps the release announcement will tell something more.
So you would like an universal upgrade tool for each major program?
Please.. The only sane solution is for the distributor to have ONE update tool. If you find a specific distro too hard, then use another one. It has been dead easy to upgrade redhat boxes, mandrake boxes, suse boxes, and debian boxes for a long time
If you want a universal upgrade tool, then convince the distributions to use the same tool to handle upgrades.
And on top of this, you of course have all the technical problems (different architectures, different system setups, different software installed, etcetc) Oh, and not to forget, So not only would it be stupid to supply such a tool, it would also be nearly impossible.
Now if only ATI would support their (original) Radeon-line with decent DRI-drivers so I can play RtCW properly in Linux.
Adam: I could run a scaled down version of a WM, but I don’t think trading functionality for speed is a viable option when there are other solutions that sacrifice neither.
Don’t even think that WM doesn’t sacrifice on features. KDE is pretty fast and responsive, and it gets a lot better every new major release.
Dude: It will always feel *slow* until X-Windows is removed from the equation. As long as the windowing system is away from the kernel, it will always be behind windows and beos, and macos.
Sorry to break it to ya, but neither Windows, BeOS nor Mac OS X have the the windowing system in the kernel. Windows and IIRC, Mac OS X, has a framebuffer inside the kernel, but you could always use the highly unstable DirectFB version of XFree86, sacrificing on drivers and stablity.
Anyway, you are talking about speed. The problem here lies not with X Window System, but rather a whole lot of other parts. The object linker in Linux systems contributed a lot to the overall lack of speed a year ago. Plus, KDE wasn’t all that responsive since 2.0 (1.x was very responsive).
Dude: The biggest problem I have with linux (X-Windows): You cannot tell visually when an application is loading…causing most newbies to click on an icon 30 times…
Again, this isn’t the problem if the design of X Window System. On KDE and GNOME, BTW, for most applications would have a button in the taskbar showing the application is loading. Applications that don’t appear there either loads way to fast, or is designed in fashion where such a feature can’t be used (blame the application developer, not X Window System or KDE).
Marcelo: Using window system in kernel is the worst thing that can happen. Graphic code is big and buggy. It will cause instability and many security holes like Winblows.
LOL, none of the security problems in Windows was cause by window management code. Plus the fact that it isn’t integrated into Windows’ kernel.
Kaneda Langley: hmm, for all those whiners, why not install e17 ?
it’s fast, really fast
it’s shitloads of fast
it’s completely unstable and clearly not made for the desktop in mind.
The English Troll: Perhaps this is true, but it’s quite sad that an Athlon XP2200+ with 1024M of RAM and a GeForce 4 Ti card just, in general, feel slower using KDE or GNOME than Windows 98 felt on a 166 system with 4M of video.
Generally speaking, KDE 3.0 and GNOME 2.0 would be somewhat a little less responsive than Windows 98 on the same machine. But if you compiled it yourself with Athlon XP optimzation, it would beat Windows 98.
But the main problem lies in the fact that Windows 98 can take full 100% advantage of your graphics card, while with KDE and GNOME, no. Getting better drivers, and manufacturers of the cards making their own manufacturer-optimized drivers for Linux would fix the problem.
Besides, I have a similar machine running Windows 98, only with a TNT card. Comparing the speed with a machine almost similar in power with yours – I doubt the claim is true. Maybe you were sacarstic.
Kaneda Langley: that it was stable
Mac OS 9 stable? If it was, I would be having a iMac g3 right now.
CrakedButter: I run KDE 3.0.4 on my system and it runs fine, faster than windows, it always had to pause for a second. Not got that with KDE. My machine is an AMD 1600XP with a Gforce2MX400.
With what version of Windows?
Annonymous: ]i]I work on WinXP systems all day. They are running on everything from AMD 350’s to P$-2.0’s. WinXP is SLOOOOOOOW.[/i]
Windows XP uses a lot of RAM. Giving it a lot of processing power wouldn’t help make the UI faster. Give it RAM. It is only dogslow if you don’t have enough RAM or using CPU-intensive apps on that AMD.
Kaneda Langly: btw linux on mac ibook/tibook is sweet, return from hibernation takes 1 second
Speaking of that, I still haven’t figure it out, but with Windows and Linux on my Duron box, hibernation doesn’t work. Somehow.
Matthew Gardiner: What are you going to do in those extra seconds? knit a sweater? weave a rug? boil an egg? bring about world peace?
Speed depends on what you do. If you save a few seconds every minute, at the end of the day, you save a lot of time. If rendering a 3D animation takes one hours on a P4, and one hour fifteen minutes on a G4, the speed difference can be felt when you render a animation much more complex.
Matthew Gardiner: I certainly don’t use an OS because of a religious element, helping the American Economy or to satisfy those who think proprietary software is evil or Linux is communist. I use a particular OS because it has a feature that is not available on another OS.
They should make a bumper sticker out of this.
It’s either “reinstall packages xxx and xxx”, or it’s a complete reinstall. It’d be much nicer if there was an “update” function which would just DL, compile and install the updated components.
It would be hard for KDE itself to do that because each distribution and OS is very different. I think this is the distributor’s problem, not KDE.
Brad Clarke: Yet my cranky little K6-2+ 450 runs Windows 2000 and XP faster than it runs Linux. Guess I’ll have to get a new mobo and CPU to be able to use Linux effectively.
Depends on the version you are using. KDE should be fine on that machine, but you need lots of RAM. If Win2k and XP works fine, I can’t see why KDE can’t too.
Please guys, if you want to make a comparison, please include the version numbers of the software you are comparing with and the amount of RAM. For the desktop especially, CPU doesn’t matter. It doesn’t increase much in speed compared to something 1Ghz faster. What changes is CP intensive stuff becoming faster.
Rayiner Hashem: Of the major OSs out today, XP is the only one that runs their kernel in the GUI.
They do, don’t they? LOL. The GDI, or for you, a framebuffer is in the kernel. Just like Linux and FreeBSD 5.0. explorer.exe is a userland process and you can kill it.
Adam: I have an older computer (P3 450). Win2k + IE + Explorer runs quite a bit zippier than KDE 2.2 and 3.0 did.
Interesting to note that KDE 3.0 on a old distribution is quite slow, compared with one using GCC 3.x.
Just to note something. The version of Windows you are using doesn’t have even half of the features KDE has, for the desktop. Comparing speed with Windows is a bad choice. Because KDE has so much more features. Some see it as a good thing, others as a bad thing.
But in essence, considering you want something that has the same amount of features as the version of Windows you are holding, KDE then is a overkill.
They do, don’t they? LOL. The GDI, or for you, a framebuffer is in the kernel. explorer.exe is a userland process and you can kill it.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
I misspoke, but you’re not right either. X isn’t the GUI, it’s the graphics/input layer, almost precisely parallel to the GDI, and subset of the app_server in BeOS. The GDI is a whole lot more than just a framebuffer, it encompasses everything from device context management to brushes and drawing. Explorer.exe isn’t the GUI, it’s just the shell, analagous to the kicker panel in KDE.
About the Win32 GDI: http://www.windowsitlibrary.com/Content/356/01/3.html
“KDE runs smoothly in any PC running a decent graphic adapter and with CPU greater than 1GHz. There is no significant diference of performance compared with Windows XP in these PCs.”
I’m running with a GeForce3 ti200 and a 1.4ghz processor and X-Windows is slow as a mofo. I actually stopped using Linux on my desktop due to how bloated and slow the GUI is :/