KDE4 trunk is blazing fast

I first started using kdesvn-build to get a trunk build of kde4 back in mid-November. Just to give you an idea of how far we’ve come, back then we still had no artwork for the panel (It was that ugly gradient), konqueror didn’t work with cookies, things crashed hourly and I had to regularly remove my ~/.kde4 because of kwin and other configuration issues. However, I never removed the installed /opt/qt4 and /opt/kde4 directories, instead having kdesvn-build overwrite newly updated files upon each build. While this worked, I noticed that my system had been getting progressively slower and slower. After it broke completely, I reinstalled with Kubuntu Hardy (I think it was about alpha 2 then, more on that in another post) and tried the newly released kde 4.0.0 packages.

That was a mistake.

Many things were broken, such as my icons, and I was already missing the improvements to trunk since the tagging of kde 4.0.0 over a week before. So, back to kdesvn-build. However, I STILL kept my /opt/ directory and hence, I was re-introduced to the slowness. Today I decided to do something about it. I completely removed my build directories and my /opt/, and for a few hours I recompiled everything from scratch. All I can say is that the speed difference is unbelievable! Starting with a fresh everything, kde4 loaded (after a reboot, so nothing was cached) in roughly 2 seconds. Windows open instantly instead of with a noticeable delay, and konqueror is lightning fast. I highly suggest that anyone else who has let cruft build up in their /opt/kde4 directory do the same. If you plan to, make sure you’re either logged out of kde4 and in a text console or logged into the “failsafe” option with kdm/gdm. Then, remove your /opt/kde4 and build away!

- Hmm, it looks like my spellchecking isn’t working. Sorry for any blatant misspellings.

Edit: Ok, I wonder why aspell got uninstalled. Crazy hardy breakage? Possibly. Spelling should be better now! And, ouch, I’m a terrible speller.