Wow KDE 4.2 is Slow

April 7, 2009 | Reading time: 2 minutes

I thought it was just the Aspire, but after installing Windows 7 beta on a separate partition, there needs to be a LEAPS and BOUNDS speed improvement in KDE & Fedora 11 to keep up with Microsoft’s upcoming gem.

Now understand I’m a Linux fan due to the fact that it’s free: Not (just) the fact that it’s price is free, but the fact that I have FREEdom to do what I like to the OS when I like. As much as I love QT development, I still think that KDE is so far behind the times for the average layman in day to day use.

I prefer the feel and speed of Gnome. I love the control panel everything. I’m just not a fan of straight C for GUI apps (yes, yes I’m aware of gtkmm, but it always seemed more of a hack than a solution).

KDE wouldn’t bother me so much if it wasn’t so sluggish. I even let the OS sit a few hours so that it could finish its indexing and it still ‘felt’ very laggy when navigating the Kickstart menu. I didn’t get this when using the Win7 Start menu (and I don’t get this when using the Gnome main menu).

Perhaps I’m missing something, but when they rewrote KDE didn’t they strive for resolution independence? I would think that would allow me to install on a small screen netbook without having to change all the font sizes manually just to see the standard system configuration menus.

4.3 should strive to be snappier and drop the crazy “Desktop Folder” and return to a classic desktop like the rest of the world is using.

Addendum/Clarifications I did note in my earlier rant that I prefer the look and feel of Gnome… this is only half true. I really prefer a single pane for any taskbar, (an OS should stay out of the way of applications as much as possible, gnome should have one taskbar not two — somehow. I’m not clever enough as a user to create a nice solution) and I really like the look of KDE a credit to their art volunteers it’s just the speed really, REALLY needs work.