LinuxSA Mailing list archives

  From: Alan Kennington <ak.linuxsa@topology.org>
  To  : LinuxSA <linuxsa@linuxsa.org.au>
  Date: Wed, 2 Apr 2003 18:37:24 +0930

Re: I Love Klipper! (was Re: KDE text select + click => annoying menu)

On Wed, Apr 02, 2003 at 05:52:51PM +0930, Damien Uern wrote:
> 
> btw, klipper is using 16MB of RAM on my machine at the moment, I must admit 
> that seems excessive. But all the KDE processes seem to use excessive amounts 
> of memory. Though the total amount of active memory reported by the kernel is 
> only 76MB at the moment.
> 


Damien,

Thanks for that.
I didn't realise how much memory that klipper thing was using even though
I'd turned off the Web-menu "feature". I've killed it now.
To find out what it was using, I had to do this:

shark new/pppd# ps fax |grep -i lip
27808 pts/12   S      0:00  |                   \_ grep -i lip
25691 pts/20   S      0:02  \_ appletproxy --configfile klipper_panelappletrc --callbackid ExternalAppletContainer_136002416 klipper.desktop

This shows one of the other really annoying things about the "new improved" KDE.
Most things are launched by some generic program. 
So when you run "top", you just see a zillion "kdeinit" entries or "appletproxy" things.
As a result, you can't easily diagnose which application/applet is gobbling up the RAM.
That's why now I launch "xterm" directly from a command line - at least I can see it in "top".

Here's a gratuitous example:

10821 akenning  15   0 26844  21M  3216 S     0.0 17.2  11:42 mozilla-bin
10838 akenning  15   0 26844  21M  3216 S     0.0 17.2   0:00 mozilla-bin
10839 akenning  15   0 26844  21M  3216 S     0.0 17.2   0:03 mozilla-bin
10840 akenning  15   0 26844  21M  3216 S     0.0 17.2   0:00 mozilla-bin
10842 akenning  15   0 26844  21M  3216 S     0.0 17.2   0:01 mozilla-bin
26746 akenning  15   0 26844  21M  3216 S     0.0 17.2   0:00 mozilla-bin
  896 root      15   0 91376  15M   720 S     0.0 13.0 121:43 X
27812 akenning  15   0 27748  11M  9324 S     0.0  9.6   0:00 kicker
 1012 akenning  15   0 24212 5220  2588 S     0.0  4.1   8:17 kdeinit
 1060 akenning  15   0 22012 3272  1760 S     0.0  2.6   7:10 kdeinit
 6347 akenning  15   0  4700 2276     0 S     0.0  1.8   6:39 xterm
 1708 akenning  15   0 19948 2012  1256 S     0.0  1.6   1:09 kdeinit
27738 postfix   15   0  1372 1372  1076 S     0.0  1.0   0:00 pickup
 1829 akenning  15   0  2764 1244   488 S     0.0  0.9   0:31 xterm
  993 akenning  15   0 18740 1216   800 S     0.0  0.9  12:15 kdeinit
16595 akenning  15   0  1856 1216   720 S     0.0  0.9   0:01 xterm
 1011 akenning  15   0 18676 1192   892 S     0.0  0.9   0:08 kdeinit
15407 akenning  15   0  1516 1176   496 S     0.0  0.9   0:07 xterm
 8851 akenning  15   0  1520 1168   464 S     0.0  0.9   0:09 xterm
17389 akenning  15   0  1696 1068   640 S     0.0  0.8   0:17 xterm
 1008 akenning  15   0 19088 1040   724 S     0.0  0.8   0:30 kdeinit
 1710 akenning  15   0 18920  964   592 S     0.0  0.7   0:38 kdeinit
23046 akenning  15   0  2516  944   320 S     0.0  0.7   1:20 xterm
 8611 akenning  15   0  1392  936   480 S     0.0  0.7   0:05 xterm
  988 akenning  15   0  1824  852   648 S     0.0  0.6   0:27 kdeinit
[...]

Those kdeinit entries hide all kinds of stuff.
Yes, I know that I can run "ps" and get the details.
But it makes a previously simple job into a more complicated job.
That's not what I call progress.
KDE makes "top" almost useless.

The other gripe I have with KDE is its help facility.
I would say it's exactly (plus or minus 10%) as helpful as the help menus
in wind95 software which I used (under duress) in the olden days.
In other words, it tells you as much as a 10-year-old kid can work out in 3 minutes.

Maybe some day someone will come up with a developers' version of KDE which
make absolutely no attempt to be "user friendly".

Anyway....

Cheers,
Alan Kennington.

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