KDE Plasma 4.8 Boosts Speed, Power Management

[Shining Arcanine]

How about finally fixing the default plasma-desktop so that it doesn't segfault all the time? It seemed to be quite good in 4.7.[0-2] but with 4.7.3 it is already as bad as before.

I use the open source radeon driver on a HD 6550 and I really welcome the performance fixes. At the moment I don't use the compositing at all because I don't want kwin to idle at 10-15% cpu and I don't want it to need > 25% cpu just to display a non-moving firefox. OpenGL 2 Shaders are not feasible to activate: While moving windows they really, really lag behind the mouse pointer.
On the "mid" power profile the desktop effects are quite horrible on OpenGL and OpenGL ES 2.0 and usable on XRender. When switching to the raster graphics system OpenGL finally looks quite well, but the cpu usage is really not nice, even when idling.

It's a bit sad to see such an advanced window manager still fighting with this sort of performance problems but hopefully 4.8 will fix this.

Gentoo's developers patched kwin 4.7.3 by backporting fixes from kwin 4.8 to fix these issues. It is quite solid.

[sbergman27]

many bugs are hardware related

If one desktop segfaults due to "hardware related" problems, and the other desktops have incorporated work-around patches, then it's still a bug in the desktop. Pointing fingers at the hardware doesn't help. The segfaulting desktop in question doesn't work. Period. No matter whose fault it is.

[sbergman27]

...plasma crashes most often when...

What I find myself wondering is *why*? This is not some new tranistory condition. KDE has been segfaulty at least back to KDE3. Maybe KDE2. I can't remember. Is it an underlying QT problem, I wonder?

[ChrisXY]

Segfaults?!

Since KDE 4.2, it has never segfaulted on me. Never. Submit a bug report to the relevant maintainer.

I use grouping of the entries in the taskbar. plasma crashes most often when closing multiple windows at once. But I think it also happened when closing single windows.

Another problem with closing something: Akregator likes to segfault when closing a tabbed browser window. Also, it still occassionally duplicates entries from one feed into another feed. Maybe it has something to do with fefe's feed but then akregator needs to work around that problem.

[sbergman27]

It works for a lot of people. Yes, some people have problems, but it seems to be a vocal minority, not "the rest of us". The only time I ever get segfaults is on shutting down or rebooting.

What a wonderful illustration of my point. Thank you. Some projects aim to have their software work for everyone. Others take a more pragmatic view and aim for 99.9%. But if I'm reading you right, a mere majority is fine for KDE.

Obviously that should be fixed, but it doesn't interfere with my work or anyone elses'.

So KDE doesn't realy work right, even for you. But you're OK with that.

[TheBlackCat]

That's always been my main complaint about KDE. WORKSFORME seems to be their primary bug tracking strategy. I'm glad it works for you. It just doesn't work for the rest of us.

It works for a lot of people. Yes, some people have problems, but it seems to be a vocal minority, not "the rest of us".

Yeah. KDE segfaults a lot. I use a mix of XFCE, LXDE, and GNOME, and they work pretty well.

The only time I ever get segfaults is on shutting down or rebooting. Obviously that should be fixed, but it doesn't interfere with my work or anyone elses'.

[sbergman27]

Segfaults?!

Since KDE 4.2, it has never segfaulted on me.

That's always been my main complaint about KDE. WORKSFORME seems to be their primary bug tracking strategy. I'm glad it works for you. It just doesn't work for the rest of us.

Yeah. KDE segfaults a lot. I use a mix of XFCE, LXDE, and GNOME, and they work pretty well.

[korpenkraxar]

Simply, many bugs are hardware related.

That doesn't make them easier to put up with as a user

[kraftman]

Goto bugs.kde.org and search for "plasma crash" or "plasma segfault" or something.
Since quite some time there is the problem with plasma crashing on logout. You notice it when after clicking "logout", your screen turns blask, then plasma-desktop pops up again (or just drkonqi).
Various problems with corrupt cache get reported.
Sometimes notifications crash the desktop.
And so on.

Simply, many bugs are hardware related.

[schmalzler]

Segfaults?!

Since KDE 4.2, it has never segfaulted on me. Never. Submit a bug report to the relevant maintainer.

Goto bugs.kde.org and search for "plasma crash" or "plasma segfault" or something.
Since quite some time there is the problem with plasma crashing on logout. You notice it when after clicking "logout", your screen turns blask, then plasma-desktop pops up again (or just drkonqi).
Various problems with corrupt cache get reported.
Sometimes notifications crash the desktop.
And so on.