After establishing these foundations, users can tweak KDE to perform well on older hardware. Several options are listed at the KDE wiki.
- Update to a recent version of KDE. The updating game gets old real fast, but generally, with KDE a recent version means improved performance.
- Disable wallpaper. Select a pleasing and comfortable desktop screen color. (Configure Desktop.)
- Disable background gradients. (Configure Desktop.)
- Disable shadowed fonts. (Configure Desktop, Advanced Options.)
- Disable desktop icon tool tips. (Configure Desktop, Behavior.)
- Minimize the number of device icons on the desktop. (Configure Desktop, Behavior.)
- Virtual desktops. Limit this to two desktops, possibly only one. Consider that most people are not multi-taskers. Typically most people concurrently run only two to three desktop programs. Having a bunch of programs running in standby, which is how virtual desktops basically work, means a lot of extra overhead that most typical users do not need. Although useful, many people get by comfortably with only one desktop. (Configure Desktop, Multiple Desktops.)
- Use a plain blank screen saver. (Configure Desktop, Screen Saver.)
- Disable the mouse cursor launch feedback. (Appearance and Themes, Launch Behavior.)
- Disable themes. Yes, themes add a degree of personalization, but with older hardware, at the sacrifice of speed and response.
- Consider using the KDE Classic widget set and KDE 2 window decorations. Yes, this ends up looking like MS Windows 95, but this desktop is easy on system resources. (Appearance and Themes, Style; Appearance and Themes, Window Decorations.)
- Disable displaying window content when moving or resizing windows. (Desktop, Windows Behavior.)
- Disable shading animation and hovering. (Desktop, Window Behavior.)
- Disable transparent and translucent menus and panels. These bells and whistles are CPU and memory intensive. (Desktop, Window Behavior.)
- Disable GUI effects, such as cascading menus and drop shadows.
- Mouse cursor. A simple non-themed mouse pointer is sufficient for most people.
- System sounds. Reduce the number of system sounds being used and use sound files that are small in size and load quickly.
- Enable Konqueror preloading. Konqueror will load faster and Konqueror is too useful as a file manager not to have this option enabled. (Control Center→KDE Components→KDE Performance)
- Disable as many KDE specific services as practical. (Control Center→KDE Components→Service Manager)
Hopefully these suggestions will noticeably improve your KDE performance with your older box.
