KDE 4: like a dream on 256Mb/1Ghz/Intel!

Submitted by bille on Mon, 12/10/2007 - 15:11. KDE General

So someone just asked in #kde4-devel whether it was worth trying KDE 4 on a 2500Mhz/256Mb computer and I was characteristically careful and guessed "It will work, but won't be good.". Then I decided to put my money where my mouth is and booted my Thinkpad X60 with "mem=256M maxcpus=1", logged into KDE 4 and set the power saving policy to "Powersave", which throttles the CPU to 1Ghz and locks it there. And then I used KDE 4 some, started Konqueror, browsed about a bit, configured a few things with System Settings, started Kopete and chatted a little. And I was pleasantly surprised with how well it all works. With a "debugfull" build from SVN. With kwin_composite 3d eye candy, on Intel. With KDE 3 libraries loaded too (for KPowerSave, since it's not ported yet). As they like to say here in Franconia, it's like "a'Traum".

Kopete startup is slow (we _have_ to optimise that), but definitely usable. I'd love to get some more detailed figures but that will have to wait. This shows the benefits of KDE's integrated approach, and means one thing: KDE 4 is going to be a serious contender for a high-performance, good looking interface on low resource machines like the Eee PC, and I can't wait to try it out on one.

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it's realy!

Submitted by nuts on Sun, 03/30/2008 - 12:38.

Thanks you for good news. I wait for it for a long time. And then I used KDE 4 some, commenced Konqueror, просмотренный about little, сконфигурировавший several things with System Situation, commenced Kopete and talked small. And I was pleasantly surprised as well so much for work. With "debugfull", are built from SVN too.
___
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running on thinkpad t22

Submitted by blizzz on Tue, 12/11/2007 - 07:44.

I installed the late RC from Kubuntu repositories on my old Thinkpad T22 (256 MB of RAM, 900 MHz). Indeed I only played a bit with it, instead of heavily testing it. Anyway, its performance is well so far. Only the Desktop effects are not working, but i guess it is because of the graphics card (savage ix) and its not so good opengl capabilites.

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hmm

Submitted by ethana2 on Tue, 12/11/2007 - 04:19.

The PS3 has 512MB of total memory, and performance right now primarily depends on nouveau and the RSX hackers.
It's been a fully functional desktop for a while now. Just make sure you have fast swap. Don't use a flash drive.

www.psubuntu.com
KDE 3 runs fine. It looks here like KDE 4 will too-- once the vRAM access is made more efficient.
Also, if KDE 4 is multi threaded, it could be ported to the SPU's...

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...which throttles the CPU to 1Ghz and locks it there.

Submitted by carlo on Mon, 12/10/2007 - 23:08.

...which throttles the CPU to 1Ghz and locks it there.

While a nice test, it's a bit skewed, since older - should I say vintage already!? - cpu's may not come with SSE2+, likely have much smaller caches and need more cpu cycles for a number of operations. Also the graphics card used in dated systems may influence the desktop experience. Last but not least, even if the desktop itself runs with 256MB, there is not much room for applications, let alone file caching. More some minimium requirements figure, which turns out painful in most real world cases.

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Good point

Submitted by bille on Tue, 12/11/2007 - 13:37.

Good point, I should have noted this already. I'm building KDE4 on a Pentium M (Banias) 1.5Ghz laptop which throttles to 600Mhz at the moment, will report on that too.

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