KDE5 on Low Spec Hardware with Cinnamon Assist

Technical issues/questions of an intermediate or advanced nature.
Bogomips
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Joined: 25 Jun 2014, 15:21
Distribution: 3.2.2 Cinnamon & KDE5
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KDE5 on Low Spec Hardware with Cinnamon Assist

Post#1 by Bogomips » 17 Apr 2017, 23:13

Since 1st of March been running KDE5 with Cinnamon Assist on v4.0 Base (Kernel 4.9.12). This accidental discovery now allows me to dispense with the nvidia 304 driver, normally required to stabilise the graphics demands of kde. Nouveau suffices for the Nvidia card, and graphics are only imperiled by rogue javascript! Been around ten crashes so far, and almost all being attributable to these pesky scripts, which put the hdd into a spin and have cpu load peaking at constant 100%. A for instance being when after writing a Porteus post, forgetting to turn off javascript (required to get smileys etc. into post), doing search, following a link onto a site, hitting dubious script and wham! :evil:

Caveat is No Javascript, or Javascript to be kept on a tight leash. :wall: Actually no harm in having a sterile computer. Smoother running of kde5 using nvidia driver normally ensured by topping up swap space of 645 MiB on disk with an extra 1 GiB in a disk file. In this instance the highest amount of swap used so far was 1.2 GiB. Now with just Nouveau/Cinnamon the 645 MiB swap suffices for normal use and in extreme case (video playback+screen recording) about 700 MiB (extra required swap space in swap file).

Extract from /var/log/porteus-livedbg showing Cinnamon in RAM and KDE5 on hdd loop:

Code: Select all

# Modules activated during boot time:
/memory/copy2ram/000-kernel.xzm
/memory/copy2ram/001-core.xzm
/memory/copy2ram/002-xorg.xzm
/memory/copy2ram/003-cinnamon.xzm
/mnt/sda10/xzm64c/003-kde5.xzm
/memory/copy2ram/SimpleScrRec.xzm
/mnt/sda10/xzm64c/conky-1.10.6-x86_64-lxde-1bp1.xzm
/mnt/sda10/xzm64c/flashplayer-plugin-23.0.0.207-x86_64-1.xzm
/mnt/sda10/xzm64c/gecko-mediaplayer-1.0.9-x86_64-1alien.xzm
/mnt/sda10/xzm64c/man-files-3.2.2-noarch-1.xzm
Seems to measures up fine against 3.2.2 Cinnamon also in the case of a heavy demand on resources. Providing here as an example, recording of embedded video playback in browser using SimpleScreenRecorder (27 MiB AppImage) running in RAM:
  • Cinnamon

    Code: Select all

    Idle state: just PaleMoon with about 8 or 9 tabs open.
    CPU 1900 Mhz    4%
    
    SimpleScreenRecorder Running & Recording Embedded Video
    CPU     2700 Mhz    100%
    RAM     80% of 872  MiB
    SWAP    42% of 645  MiB
    
  • KDE/Cinnamon

    Code: Select all

    Idle state: just PaleMoon with about 8 or 9 tabs open.
    CPU 1900 Mhz    2-3 %
    
    SimpleScreenRecorder Running & Recording Embedded Video
    CPU     2700 Mhz    <= 83%
    RAM     80% of 872  MiB
    SWAP    62% of 645  MiB
    
Seems like a tradeoff between CPU load and Swap usage.

Just abut the best of both worlds, were it not for nemo not being able to show mime type of most icons. The thumbnails of image and video files come through nicely. However mime type inode/directory and most other types do not show, but mime type xzm shows! Also have these: Image

Nemo is inexpensive in its demand of scarce resources as opposed to Dolphin, and comes up in a fraction of the time it takes Dolphin. As I mainly use File Manager as Filesystem Browser, with odd delete of directory/file in Housekeeping arena, it would be nice to get the rest of mime type icons showing. The big plus of being able to bookmark directories in Nemo, and having Gnome Mplayer and PaleMoon on the same page in this regard, might mean that the right bus has to be offered in order to get the appropriate icon set communicated to Nemo. Tried setting icon theme with dconfEditor, but no joy. :(
Linux porteus 4.4.0-porteus #3 SMP PREEMPT Sat Jan 23 07:01:55 UTC 2016 i686 AMD Sempron(tm) 140 Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
NVIDIA Corporation C61 [GeForce 6150SE nForce 430] (rev a2) MemTotal: 901760 kB MemFree: 66752 kB