Window manager (KWin and xfwm4) issues - painfully slow

[Wintershade]

I have recently installed Sabayon 3.3 mini. Everything works fine, and Beryl works at blazing speed even with my Mobility Raden 9700 graphics card.
But, if I try switching to KWin or xfwm4 window manager, everything gets slow as hell. It takes a few minutes just to load the windows, and even when they do everything is completely slowed down.

Since I'm rather new to the Linux world, can someone please give me some guidance on what outputs should I post here and how to solve this problem? I mean, Beryl is fine, but I'd like to have a possibility to switch to another window manager (if nothing else, to preserve battery life on my laptop).

Many thanks.

[WarraWarra]

It sounds like the video driver is unstable.

" emerge -u ati-drivers "

" update-modules --force "

then reboot.

@@@@@@
Battery life :

What I usually do:
Install using kuroo " gkrellm " and all it's plugings you think is related to power management , as well as " cpufreq " or stuff with this name in it , " monitor " like hd temp monitor or similar , can not remember if there is fan or fan speed as well have to check.

This gkrellm will adjust cpu speed for best battery life or performance or ondemand as well as start fans on the laptop and all the other niceness that should be.

Best bet is to google for your laptop type / model and linux , " dell e1705 linux " or similar and it will have plenty other persons having similar ideas / bugs as you might have and fixes for it.

Toshiba / acer / asus / dell / ibm thinkpad is all in the kernel already so it should be easy to get it working propperly.

Hope this helps.

[Wintershade]

It sounds like the video driver is unstable.

" emerge -u ati-drivers "

" update-modules --force "

then reboot.

Sorry for such a late reply. I tried this and some other things (including reinstalling a few times and recompiling the entire KDE, various versions, trying numerous kernel configurations and so on).

Updating the ATI drivers has for some reason resulted in a twisted display. Can someone tell me what could cause this?

Also, I've noticed that this slowdown comes up only with KDE applications, and when Beryl isn't loaded.
I can start, for example, xfce, and everything works fine until I start, say, AmaroK or Konsole. Then the system almost freezes and I can barely move the mouse cursor, until I kill the KDE application I started.
Again, this occurrs only when Beryl is not loaded. When I load Beryl, everything works fine... or at least I think it works fine, perhaps it could be even faster if my problem was identified and solved.

Any ideas/leads?
Thanks!

[WarraWarra]

I will see if I can find a fix for this not sure.

In the mean time activate veryl and tehn the config part of it disable all the parts to almost nothing if you do not need it or like it.
So it runs at a bare minimum and then still switch around to other windows managers.
You could try gentoo.org or beryl website as well as Sabayon is based on gentoo + eye candy and several tweaks but thier forums might have a fix.

If you browse the archive part of the forum here it has a beryl bug post, could be something there to try.

[Wintershade]

Thanks for your help. I'll try those forums.
If I happen to figure out the solution, I'll make sure to post it here.

[Woodgypsy]

I think I am having the exact same problem, except I am using Sabayon3.4, therefore Compiz Fusion doesn`t work correctly for me. My GPU is 9500PRO. I also posted informations on the stickey threah here. Thanks.