KDE dialogues slouch

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1

Hello gentlefolks,

I’m hoping one of you could help me resolve a problem:

Many of my (I’M ASSUMING) KDE menus, sometimes for no apparent reason, become VERY unresponsive.

With MS Windoze, these windows would be program specific/independent, however they would also share some commonality in windoze’s window displaying mechanism… (part of “explorer”)

I’ve concluded (perhaps erroneously) based on their simmilarity in looks / layout, and the PROBLEM BEHAVIOUR described below, that they’re intrinsic to each other and KDE.

Now, the menus affected are those menu’s you get when, for example:
-In opera, clicking, Page >> save.
-In open office, clicking File >> save / save as.
-In Amarok, pressing CTRL+O, (or clicking “Amarok + play media”)
-In Firefox, clicking File >> open.

These are just some examples - but you get the general idea from them.
They are menu’s / windows which access the system filesystem / filetree in some way. They also look very much alike and serve simmilar purposes.

Now the behaviour:

They’re SLOOOW. To go up the tree for example, you’ll have = loading icon, and a LOONG, unresponsive wait,
To open a folder is the same thing.
The cursor in the file name feild blinks SLOW.
Clicking on any icon is SLOW.
It feels sort’ve like a really buggy windoze machine, that has older gen hardware, and is infected by malware, and has a fragmented HDD.

Strangely enough - other times, all the said menus work FLAWLESSLY.

SO - thats the scenario. Any Ideas Folks?

Thanks

2

Possibly some process in the background eating CPU.

You could open a terminal and run top. When the problem arises see if something is eating CPU.

Also have you installed the propritary driver for your video card/chip. If so what brand and model.

3

Well, I can almost guarantee nothing is in the background eating up cycles - but I’ll take a ss just to prove it.

I’m using a generic PCI VGA adapter card.
Its a Virge Dx/GX card. (yes, highly retro, I know! :p)

4

Update:
Maximum cpu usage during one such event was 8%…

5

Ok does it happen if you create a new user. Maybe a miss configuration in one of the KDE config files.

6

Ok - I’ll try making a new user, and open up some of those menus to test.

I’ll let you know.
Thanks

7

OK gogalthorp.

What I’ve found is that I CANNOT manage to replicate the behavior under this new account.
I’ll try some more - but at the very least I can say, it happens FAAAR less.

I’ve tried all the listed programs, and none of them gave me that behaviour.
(it was also much quicker than my user account behaves - even when its working @ best).

Any Ideas?

8

The result suggests it’s somewhere in your /home/YOURUSERNAME/.kde4 folder. And since it’s a graphics performance issue, I would say that the origin is in your plasma configuration. The commands below, will move those to a folder called “SAVED_PLASMA_FILES”, and require the recreation of the desktop’s appearance. Log out and do:
Hit Ctrl-Alt-F1, you’ll see the console, login with username and password


mkdir ~/.kde4/share/config/SAVED_PLASMA_FILES
mv ~/.kde4/share/config/plasm* ~/.kde4/share/config/SAVED_PLASMA_FILES
exit

Now hit Ctrl-Alt-F7 to return to the login screen, login and first test the mentioned apps if the phenomenon has disappeared. If so, let us know, and reapply the desktop appearance of your choice.

9

Hello.
Thanks much for the response (I’ve only just today recovered my internet connection).

I’ll try your suggestions, and let you know.