Optimizing KDE 3.1.x

David Lechnyr writes "This article goes into detail on optimizing KDE for speed. Typically, most distributions include pre-compiled binaries of KDE which are optimized for an Intel i386 computer. Chances are that you're running something faster than this; if so, this should help you tweak the compile process to speed things up a bit."

Comments

Gentoo...

[dh003i]

"Does" this all for you. By "does", I mean that the install guide forcefully tells you to alter your /etc/make.conf file to include support for the features you want and the optimizations you want.

Btw, you don't just sit around for 8 hours waiting for something to compile. If you're in CLI-only, you do the following:

emerge screen
screen emerge kde
C^A C^C

Then you do whatever else you want to do. I recommend getting IRSSI and Lynx for internet-amusement.

If you already have Xfree86 setup, then you do the following:

emerge ratpoison
C^A C^C

Then run whatever graphical X-programs you want in your new ratpoison windows.

This is the beauty of a *modern day* multi-tasking OS like GNU/Linux. This isn't the same crap as Micro$oft. You can compile something AND do other things at the same time, since memory management is great as is multi-tasking (depending on your kernel and compile options for the kernel). Try compiling something using MS's compilers and doing something else at the same time. I compiled WindowMaker, for example, while doing other tasks in ratpoison.

As for compile-time optimizations, I recommend the following:

CFLAGS = -march=cpu_type -Os -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer

That will optimize for small-size binaries and minimal RAM usage. I recommend the -Os optimization for the vast majority of applications, most of which are not CPU-intensive. That includes WMs, DEs, word-processors, spreadsheets, internet browsers, e-mail programs, GIMP, etc. I recommend -O2 for things which are CPU-intensive, like video/sound players, video/sound encoders, DNA/AA sequence alignment, and bayesian phylogenies.

Make sure to

man gcc

So you know what your doing. Hint: once you hit a certain point with optimization, you can't have it both ways. Higher levels of optimization involve trading a memory/speed tradeoff, and you can go one way or the other. As I suggested before, I suggest memory optimizations for non-CPU intensive programs (the one's you'll probably be using all of the time, thus which'll be clogging up your memory); and speed optimizations for CPU-intensive programs, which you probably won't use as much.