Resizing GTK windows on KDE

[marc]

Willy Hamra said:

> On 25/05/2009, Donn <donn.ingle at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hi,
>> I have many GTK (Gnome) apps that I rely on. Gvim and Firefox for
>> example. Under KDE 4.x.x I see that resizing these windows happens in
>> jumps or steps.

gvim does resize in steps - lines and chars.

Firefox in Ubuntu is just a mess, particularly the javascript engine. Run 
up a cpu usage viewer and watch FF take off when you do something. Heck 
it even takes a few seconds to close @ 80% cpu!

>> Resizing a KDE window (say this email window now) happens smoothly, say
>> in 1 pixel jumps. Resizing Firefox happens in 10 or 20 pixel jumps.
>> This is weird because they are all under the control of KDE, it's not
>> like the gnome window manager is being used.
>>
>> Any clues to how I can change that?

kde4.3? Seems like our next hope.

I've not started following the dev chat on this, but I hava feeling that 
there are some big issues with kde4's graphics architecture.

> yes, it's called poor graphics :)

> try to over load your system, run something cpu-intensive, and try
> resizing a KDE window, it will also happen in jumps, sometimes, if a
> backup is running, and i try to resize konsole, the mouse moves, but
> after 3~5 seconds does the window really gets resized and in one jump.
> but when system is relaxed, gtk applications for some reason almost
> always resize in jumps, it seems KDE has to do some extra work on
> resizing these. maybe because of the qt themes applied to them
> non-natively?

I've been running KDE/Openbox today and it has cured a huge number of 
issues. I've never used it before, and I'm pleasantly surprised. 
Amazingly, even kmail hasn't crashed today. It usually crashes about ten 
times a day. Best of all, I've got my GL screensaver back :-)

Seriously, though, it runs far less bg tasks, and consumes far les cpu, 
thus the machine runs a lot cooler. And it's way faster for the heavy 
duty task I have to do.

I think I'm going to persevere with this set-up and see how it goes. I 
highly recommend giving it a go.

-- 
Best,
Marc

"Change requires small steps."