PC-BSD - LOVING This Desktop OS, but KDE is kinda slow, (FreeBSD)

PC-BSD for those who don't know is based on FreeBSD but it's made to be geared to the desktop user as opposed to FreeBSD which is more server oriented.

I'm a Windows/Linux guy but I'm falling in love with PC-BSD's Hubble 8.2 version and am testing it's upcoming beta of Isotope 9.0, which looks Really Sweet !

These have caused me to uninstall my Linux versions and use them exclusively for a time, because they even play all my Linux apps.

Anyway enough background. KDE is slow on these systems but Gnome is as fast as it normally should be. Other than turning off desktop effects, (or using another DE) are there other ways improve the speed and performance of KDE on my FreeBSD based system?

These are my system specs with 4 gigs of Ram:

HP Compaq Presario CQ61 WM 411 64 Bit

Product Number WA980UA#ABA
Microprocessor 2.1GHz AMD Sempron Processor for Notebook PCs M120
Microprocessor Cache 512KB L2 Cache
Memory 2GB
Memory Max 4096MB
Video Graphics ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 Graphics
Video Memory 128MB Display Cache Memory (up to 1022MB total graphics memory )
Hard Drive 250GB (7200RPM)
Multimedia Drive LightScribe SuperMulti 8X DVD±R/RW with Double Layer Support
Display 15.6" Diagonal High-Definition HP BrightView Widescreen Display (1366x768)
Fax/Modem High speed 56k modem
Network Card Integrated 10/100 Ethernet LAN
Wireless Connectivity 802.11b/g/n WLAN
Sound Altec Lansing

I recently installed PCBSD on an external hard-drive. I wanted to try FreeBSD, but could not get it running, so I went the child's route and installed PCBSD, hoping to familiarise myself with BSD and try FreeBSD later. I agree about KDE being slow. It is about as slow as Ubuntu's Unity. The rest of the system seems to work fine, but I cannot say for sure. I cannot get the internet connection working. My location does not have DHCP, so I must configure the connection manually after installation. PCBSD says my connection is active, but it actually is not. So I cannot test the package adding application. Which is a problem, because the first thing I want to do is replace KDE with Gnome 2 or XFCE.

Did you install a 64-bit PC-BSD? Like the guy above said, i would try a different desktop, KDE is known to chew through alot of RAM. You'd probably find that 1GB of RAM is being used by KDE, which is alot for 4GB RAM.

But considering that you want to stick with KDE, i would look into hardware, if its lagging or causing a delayed effect on the internet and desktop, it could very well be your graphics card. In which case check you have the ATI video card driver installed.

Other than that the only thing i can suggest is to uninstall programs that appear to be using your RAM and Processing power As your CPU is only a single core from the looks of it. Obviously making sure they aren't important to the BSD kernel etc lol.

Actually, I do not want to use KDE. My plan was to replace KDE with XFCE or Gnome2, but I could not get the internet connection working. So my BSD experiment is on hold.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Randicus

Actually, I do not want to use KDE. My plan was to replace KDE with XFCE or Gnome2, but I could not get the internet connection working. So my BSD experiment is on hold.

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Well Gnome2 is effectively dead and XFCE 4.8 is lacking certain features with BSD implementations. LXDE might be the best bet at the moment if KDE isn't what you want (I don't like KDE either). You could always try a window manager like Openbox (which is the window manager for LXDE) or go hardcore and go for a tiling window manager like Scrotwm.

Yea I have 6G ram and AMD Phenom II x6. When I tried the "grab the window and move your mouse around" test it was choppy as hell. Not a big fan of KDE myself. Too many menu's in menu's and widgets I don't use.