Switch Desktop Slow process

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#1

Hello everyone.
I have turned the advanced kde graphics on (11.3 suse) and everything works fine… except that when I want to switch desktops there is always some lag… (2-3 secs). I am quite sure that this might be some setting like (vsync, triple buferring, advanced super hyper x ultrawide superman). Could you please try to suggest me what are the parameter I should enable/disable from kde’s control center to make the switching between desktop work with well again?

Best Regards
Alex

#2

Hello everyone.
I have turned the advanced kde graphics on (11.3 suse) and everything works fine… except that when I want to switch desktops there is always some lag… (2-3 secs). I am quite sure that this might be some setting like (vsync, triple buferring, advanced super hyper x ultrawide superman). Could you please try to suggest me what are the parameter I should enable/disable from kde’s control center to make the switching between desktop work with well again?

Best Regards
Alex
Your graphic performance starts your your graphics chipset and graphics driver loaded. As a KDE user, open up the My Computer icon and tell us what it says under Display Info. What can you tell us about your graphics hardware? Do you know if Compositing is enabled (menu / Personnel Settings / General Tab / Look & Feel / Desktop / Desktop Effects)?

Thank You,

#3

The desktop switching can be done via several different KWin effects:

  • Cube
  • Fade
  • Slide
    Which one are you using? There might be a performance difference between those, but I guess you would have to test that for yourself. And besides it would even be possible to use none of the KWin effects at all.

What about the “Compositing Type”. Is it set to xRender or OpenGL? When I select XRender desktop effects work very slowly in comparison with OpenGL.

And, are you using the 260.xxx proprietary Nvidia driver? There are quite a few people who reported issues with this one. 256.xx might work better. At least it does for me.

#4

Effect for desktop switching: No effect
Animation speed: Fast
Compositing is Active
Compositing Type: OpenGL
Enable direct rendering: Enabled
Use Vsync: Disabled
Smooth Scaling(slower) disabled

According to Nvidia’s tool:
Nvidia Driver Version :256.35
Graphic Processior: GeForce 8400GS

What else do you think you might believe I should Try?
Regards
Alex

#5

How much memory do you have?

#6 
       total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          8001       7441        559          0        379       2347
-/+ buffers/cache:       4715       3286
Swap:         2063        445       1617
#7

Wait, if you have set no effect for desktop switching at all then I am not sure that the desktop effects are to be blamed for the slow switching. Or is there any kind of difference with Compositing off?

Anyway, my settings:
Effect for desktop switching: Fade
Animation speed: Slow
Compositing is Active

Compositing Type: OpenGL
Enable direct rendering: Disabled
Use Vsync: Enabled

Nvidia Driver Version :256.53 (I am certain 256.35 was a typo)
Graphic Processor: GeForce 6100 (Likely much slower than yours)
Works fairly smooth. And not just with Fade, but also with the Cube or Slide.

Maybe you could try to turn off effects that you don’t really need on the “All Effects” tab.

And then of course there is always the option of checking if you have the same problems with a new user account.

#8 
Your Memory
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          8001       7441        559          0        379       2347
-/+ buffers/cache:       4715       3286
Swap:         2063        445       1617

alaios, it looks to me like you are running out of memory due to the swap usage. I also wonder how your numbers came out so short. Here is the same listing on my 8 GB system:

My Memory 
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       8195596    1999568    6196028          0     157520    1147120
-/+ buffers/cache:     694928    7500668
Swap:      2104476          0    2104476

If you are running something like Tracker, that might be eating up memory or perhaps something you have loaded is corrupted some how. For instance one user had loaded Digikam using the I-Click load feature that seemed to do him in, though not sure why.

Thank You,

#9

There is an option for that: “-b,-k,-m,-g show output in bytes, KB, MB, or GB”

free -m
#10

For comparison, I am using 4 desktops quite a bit on my HP laptop/dv9500/8600M GS, with very snappy response. The only time I’ve seen a problem is a situation where top revealed that all my 32-bit memory addresses were exhausted because of an application memory leak, but so far have been unable to reproduce (despite deliberately causing the memory leak again).

Looks like comparing your and my vcard, they are very similar
8400GS
GeForce 8600M - Notebook and Laptop

Installed the latest nVidia OEM driver (nVidia website), v.256.53
Running only one xserver (naturally)

Effect for Window switching: Box Switch
Effect for desktop switching: Slide
Animation speed: Normal
Compositing: Active
Improved window management: checked
Shadows: checked
Various animations: check
Compositing Type: OpenGL
OpenGL mode: Texture From Pixmap
Texture filter: Bilinear
Enable direct rendering: checked
Use VSync: checked

4 multiple desktops
Different activity for each desktop- unchecked
Desktop navigation wraps around - checked
Desktop Switch On Screen display - unchecked

The Desktop background is one of the standard images (At Night) and not some fancy custom graphic.

I switch between desktop with the keystroke combination, clicking on the multiple desktop icon next to the start button or the vertical scrolling function on my Synaptics touchpad.

As for troubleshooting, I only recently have started compiling troubleshooting apps and haven’t yet got around to learning how to use them, I would recommend using

xrestop for xserver analysis

HTH,
Tony