Firebird -> Firefox

[Michael Hipp]

Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

> 1. (And this is probably generally X and not KDE itself) When moving the
> mouse on the display so that it moves from window to window (i. e., to
> process to process), you can add a couple of thousand process switches per
> second to the system load. Depends on the number of windows around and how
> fast you move the mouse. A lack of memory requires that at least part of
> the app is swapped in to handle the possible mouse activity. Leading to
> generally slow response time all around. (Play with ksysguard to see this
> yourself.) Mice are not cheap.

Is this using 'windows activate on mouseover' or even when mouse moves 
over a window in the background?

> 2. artsd very often eats CPU time when no apparent sound or other audio
> activity is happening. This seems to still be a bad part of KDE. I have
> played with letting it or not letting it have real time priority, but that
> seems to have no effect. I have seen discussions about this all over the
> place. None end in a resolution of the problem.

I've done lots of audio work in KDE with artsd turned completely off. 
(Audacity doesn't like artsd). So if it's a problem, I'd say just kill 
it and try running without it. Chances are you won't miss it.

> So, given memory, KDE is not so very bad. 256M is ok, but on the limit.

I happen to *like* KDE - it is a really full-featured desktop. Even a 
hopeless GUIhead like me can be very happy with it. And the later 
releases are actually stable. ('Stable' and 'KDE' are two words I would 
never have thought would appear in the same sentence.) But it definitely 
wants an up-to-date machine. KDE 3.2 has improved in responsiveness.

Michael