KDE SC 4.7 Release Candidate Hits The Web

[energyman]

I hope you're right. KDE is in so much need of bug fixing. I don't care what the ratio of bugs to LOC is supposed to be, it still feels and looks like it has more bugs compared to gnome. Maybe it has less bugs, but at least on gnome they know how to cover them up really well and they don't stick out all the time affecting productivity and workflow as much :P

PS: I doubt they have run out of "new great features". Just take a look at the file transfer notification introduced in version 4.6. Why do we need a graph in the thing?? Sure it's kind of cool for the geek, but if I want to look at graphs I'd rather use the system monitor. Why duplicate features, especially when there are so many bugs in the bloody notification system to begin with?

because a graph is a good thing? What would you do? Just three numbers? Nothing but a text 'file transfer in progress'? I like the graphs. Really, I do.

[RealNC]

I think I found the root problem. /usr/bin/startkde (this script is used also for KDM logins) sets MALLOC_CHECK_=3. Argh!? No wonder I had crashes with programs that were previously working. And the system seemed so much slower.

I deleted the offending lines from startkde and restarted KDE. The machine seems to be back to about the same performance as with KDE 4.6 now.

lol @ all the people claiming "4.7 is so much faster here". With MALLOC_CHECK_ set *globally* for *every* application that starts after KDM? Yeaaah, suuuuure. Nice trolling people.

[RealNC]

Also, does anyone knows if kwin 4.7 finall fixes the garbage that displays momentarily when opening a new window? (Again, compiz doesn't suffer from this...)

It's still there. It seems to be an X.Org bug though. It was reported upstream, but it hasn't been fixed yet. The bug report has a patch attached to it:

http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=34427

I applied the patch and it helped.

[BlackStar]

I just hope kwin works faster with fglrx. Compiz runs ridiculously better on my e-350 (but makes the rest of KDE significantly buggier than it already is).

Also, does anyone knows if kwin 4.7 finall fixes the garbage that displays momentarily when opening a new window? (Again, compiz doesn't suffer from this...)

[bwat47]

kwin performance is still terrible for me with intel drivers. I noticed no improvement.

[sumski]

Just tried with R600g (from git) , and performance is muuuch better than both 4.6 (both R600g and fglrx) and 4.7 (fglrx)

[RealNC]

For me it's faster/snappier than 4.6 , altough it regressed a little from 4.7Beta1. Using fglrx with inidirect rendering

I guess that's the direction it's heading; getting faster with the binary-only drivers, but worse and worse with the X.Org ones.

I was able to make it bearable by using this ~/.drirc:

<driconf>
    <device screen="0" driver="dri2">
        <application name="Default">
            <option name="vblank_mode" value="0" />
        </application>
    </device>
</driconf>

It's somewhat better now. But still a joke compared to Compiz or KDE 4.4.

[sumski]

I just installed 4.7 RC1. Kwin is even slower than before. It now officially holds the title of "worse performance in a window manager ever". It seems all this talk about "improved kwin in 4.7" is total BS :-/

For me it's faster/snappier than 4.6 , altough it regressed a little from 4.7Beta1. Using fglrx with inidirect rendering

[energyman]

KDE4 basic desktop with no applications/no plasmoids running consumes on average up to 500MB of RAM.

If you don't believe me, run the following experiment:

1) log off from your KDE session
2) switch to a text console, login as root, run `echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches`, then `free`. Remember how much RAM is actually free.
3) switch back to you graphical login manager, log in as a user, wait for KDE session to complete loading.
4) switch back to the text console and run `free` again.

Now you can compute how much RAM your KDE session really eats. And that number will astonish you, I promise

your forgot to drop caches again.

[yotambien]

Actually, no. free is pretty dumb compared to system monitor. Quite often, free can't be trusted as much as sysmon.

I don't know what you people are discussing, but I suggest smem anyway
: P

http://lwn.net/Articles/329458/