Skip to main content

How To Speed Up Your KDE Plasma Desktop (KDE4)

KDE is one of the oldest desktop environment in Linux. While GNOME (the other desktop that as old as KDE) is trying to built its own style of user interface, KDE from the beginning seems to mimics the Microsoft Windows' "classic" user interface. Thus, KDE has its own user base, especially for them who still in love with the Windows' philosophy : a simple desktop, with a single taskbar in the bottom, and a start menu in the left.

Personally, I love KDE. It's gorgeous and eyecandy. But sometimes, I feel KDE is little bit slow in my older hardwares. So, after some experiences, I've found some tweak how to make KDE Plasma Desktop Runs Faster.

1. Change The Compositing Engine 
Go to System Settings>Desktop Effect>Advanced, and change the Compositing type from OpenGL 2.0 to XRender.

2. Remove All Bloatware Apps
There are some uneeded apps installed in Kubuntu (my favorite KDE distro) and you could safely remove them. Here are my list :

sudo apt-get remove kwalletmanager akregator telepathy-gabble telepathy-haze telepathy-logger telepathy-mission-control-5 telepathy-salut kde-telepathy kde-telepathy-approver kde-telepathy-auth-handler kde-telepathy-contact-list kde-telepathy-data kde-telepathy-declarative kde-telepathy-desktop-applets kde-telepathy-filetransfer-handler kde-telepathy-integration-module kde-telepathy-minimal kde-telepathy-send-file kde-telepathy-text-ui

3. Remove All Bloatware Services
Remove all uneeded services in directory /usr/share/kde4/services. Here are my list :
- baloo_calendarsearchstore.desktop
- baloo_emailsearchstore.desktop
- baloo_notesearchstore.desktop
- baloo_contactsearchstore.desktop
- baloo_filesearchstore.desktop
- baloosearch.protocol
- kwalletd.desktop
- /usr/bin/kwalletd

4. Disable All Animations
Go to System Settings>Desktop Effect>All Efect, uncheck all.

5. Disable The Compositor (If You Want)
Desktop compositing is needed by KDE Desktop to make the panel looks transparent and better. But if you need an extremely fast desktop, you could disable this. Go to System Settings>Desktop Effect>General, uncheck "Enable desktop effects at startup".

6. Considering The 32bit System 
If you use older or slower processor (like: Intel Atom, Older Pentium, Older Celeron), you should use 32bit system instead. Even though, your processor supports 64bit system. Based on my own experience, 32bit system runs faster in older processors. Don't worry, modern 32bit Linux kernel have had PAE extension, that supports 4 GB RAM or more.

7. Instant Messenger App
If you need an instant messenger app, you could use Kopete. An older, mature KDE instant messaging app that runs much faster and supports most popular protocols.

Comments

Vivek Sundaray said…
thanks a lot sir. Helped me to improve my system performance.

Popular posts from this blog

Q4OS 4.6 "Gemini" Review: A Real Hidden Gem

Distro hopping is a fun adventure. It's a pure joy you can only find in GNU/Linux world. It's a nature you want to escape from what I call 'comfort ecosystem'. You need to play, trying something new even for a few little differences. For a long time I've been using Ubuntu family as my daily driver. The main reason is probably just same as any other Ubuntu user: it's reliable. You can't go wrong with Ubuntu. It works almost in any device, even for the newest one. It is the ultimate Linux distro you can rely on. However, sometimes, you will feel bored. The temptation to flirt with other new distro is unbearable. There are a lot of hot new Linux distros waiting to try.  A Real Hidden Gem I've known this distro for a quite long time. At first, it offered Trinity Desktop as the main desktop, which brings me the sweet memories about KDE3. It is simply fast, stable, almost without any issue, and it is based on Debian. I install it on my old machine and I love t

How To Install Mac OS X Lion Theme On Lubuntu / LXDE

Lubuntu 12.04 with Mac OS X Lion Theme, xcompmgr & cairo-dock [click to enlarge] Mac OS X is the special one in the Desktop market. So many people admire it because of its beauty, safety (yes, it is an UNIX) and its profesional image as “an OS for profesional modern art designer”. Yeah, Mac OS X has beautiful look and I do like its look-n-feel. And so, there are so many theme patcher to make our Microsoft Windows or Linux OS become Mac OS X in the appearance. In Linux Desktop, there are some project specialized in designing theme transformation pack to make our Linux desktop to be looked like Mac OS X. The most popular project probably is Mac4Lin. But, all of those projects was designed only for GNOME or sometimes support XFCE and how about LXDE? Our Star in the current lightweight Linux desktop? (Yes, LXDE is the most light-but-complete Linux desktop for now). Until now, there is no project that officially support LXDE. Basically, LXDE uses gtk (now still stay w

Howto Connect To Windows Share Network (Connect To Server) Easily in PCManFM

In Nautilus 3.4, Nemo, or Caja, there is a very useful menu called "Connect to Server". This menu allow us to connect to a Windows Share network via Samba. If you are using another desktop environment such as LXDE, there aren't such menu, and we need to install third party tool called Gigolo . But apparently, PCManFM (the default file manager of LXDE) already has such function. We could connect to a Windows Share network in PCManFM easily. Here are the simple steps : 1. Open PCManFM and go to adress bar, and type this command : smb://username@server/folder example : smb://staff@192.168.1.69/document then press Enter 2. Once you will be asked to input the Windows Share Network password (if exists), select Remember Forever option. 3. You are connected to Windows Share Network ;)