X memory leak with desktop effects enabled.

[Jose Ildefonso Camargo Tolosa]

On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 6:38 AM, Myriam Schweingruber <myriam at kubuntu.org>
wrote:

>
>
> On Fri, Jan 2, 2015 at 5:53 AM, O. Sinclair <o.sinclair at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On 01/01/2015 18:28, Jose Ildefonso Camargo Tolosa wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > On Tue, Dec 30, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Jose Ildefonso Camargo Tolosa
>> > <ildefonso.camargo at gmail.com <mailto:ildefonso.camargo at gmail.com>>
>> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> >
>> >     I am confirming this only occurs with kwin, I used compiz and it
>> >     didn't leak memory for 12 hours.  I tried replacing kwin with compiz
>> >     on a kde session (it worked, mostly), had some compatibility issues,
>> >     but I was able to use it for several hours.  I later tried "unity"
>> >     session with compiz and many effects enabled: it worked just fine
>> too.
>> >
>> >     Today I tried to wipe-clean my .kde directory, and refrain from
>> >     changing any settings.  I am still observing and will update.
>> >
>> >
>> > It leaks memory, at a slower rate, but still X memory usage gets to over
>> > 2GB in less than 12 hours.
>> >
>> I am not seeing this at all on my laptop with intel i5 cpu and intel
>> graphics,
>
>
> Same here, no leaks whatsoever with Kubuntu 14.10, KDE 4.14.2 with Intel
> on board graphics on this Intel Core i7 laptop. Uptime is now around 90
> hours, Kwin uses 14 Mb of shared memory, XOrg uses 65 Mb.
>
> I strongly suggest you check on your installation, something must be wrong
> somewhere.
>


I think I already did it, I tried to wipe *all* KDE configurations, tried
to purge and reinstall, finally tried another windows manager (compiz),
since I switched from kwin to compiz: no issues.  There is *something*
peculiar about KDE code in general that has a tendency on "exposing" driver
issues, there was a time when "konsole" would crash nvidia drivers, and
would cause other issues with AMD drivers (random freezing), KDE's solution
was something like "hey, it is a driver issue, not our fault, the driver
maker should fix it", and the problem remained there for *years*, I cared
*so* much about KDE, that I stopped using konsole and still used the rest
of the desktop, however, my coworkers just switched to other windows
managers, and even other OS.

It is already hard to get people out of the "Unity" momentum caused by
Ubuntu, it is even harder if KDE can't run reliably, but Unity or Gnome
does... people won't think about drivers and stuff, they will point to KDE,
even if it is not KDE's fault, because Gnome and  Unity work just fine (I
really don't know if they implemented workarounds or whatever, but the
facts are: Gnome AND Unity work just fine with nVidia, AMD, and Intel,
whereas KDE only seems to work reliably on Intel, and mostly nVidia, at
least recently).

It is painful for me, but this time I was not able to stop using just the
part of KDE that was failing (like I did with konsole a few years ago),
because compiz won't work reliably with KDE, so, I  had to switch desktop
environment (because I won't stop using my GPU just for a desktop
environment, and because I have no other GPU I can use with OpenCL).

I will keep an eye on KDE, because I really like it, but for the time
being, I have to work, and I just can't do that with KDE for now.

Ildefonso
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