Many, many thanks to all for the sugestions. My thoughts as I sort through
them...
I am using a Duron 850 with 512 megs. The system boots fine. KDE through
Debian loads <<MUCH>> faster on a slower machine with less memory, so to me
that rules out memory/CPU and points to configuration, either software or
hardware. This seems further narrowed to software by nearly instantaneous
loading of IceWM and WindowManager, and for that matter faster loading of KDE
and Gnome a while back.
The fact the problems exist only with the desktops as opposed to plain window
managers and X11 itself seems to me to rule out kernel problems. But a
question -- am I understanding correctly that a desktop does not interact
with the kernel services directly, but only through other managers/libraries
shared by other programs? Sorry, I started too late in life to have an
instinctive grasp of the details.
The Crossover thing, along with another mention of stopping the scan for
nsplugins, seems a good point. I'll try that this weekend.
Deleting my user specific KDE config files and letting it rebuild them is
another do-it. I'll see how another login on this same machine works first,
but the root install of Crossover may obscure differences caused by Crossover
or the plugins.
What works better on KDE and Gnome? Mainly the more integrated menuing
system, taskbar, configuration of personal preferences, etc. It's easier to
get what I want how I want it. I'm sure the plain window managers will do
it, just a bit harder to get there and may involve installing more geegaws.
All in all, I want it simple to use, small, and full-featured. Typical Yank,
I don't want to settle for two of three ;-)
Still open for suggestions, and I'll try to update what happens with the two
most obvious maybes.
Fred
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