&J.Hall; Misconfigured networking can often be the cause of &kde; applications launching slowly, or in the worst case not launching at all. Your &X-Server; has a very powerful client/server interface and is very network aware. X uses the hostname to create both a unique key for authorization, and to figure out where (via $DISPLAY) to send the actual windows it's drawing on screen. If your computer doesn't know it's own name, it will spend inordinate amounts of time trying to look itself up, a fate you can avoid by simply teaching your computer what it's own name is. Check your /etc/hosts file and ensure there is an entry for localhost that looks something like this at the top of the file (after any comments). 127.0.0.1 localhost You also should add your computers fully qualified domain name, short name, and it's usual ip address if it has a static ip. If your ip address is assigned dynamically using DHCP you can simply use the address for the loopback device. 127.0.0.1 hal.btl hal (for dhcp) 192.168.0.1 hal.btl hal (static) Make sure that your firewall is not so restrictive that it stops packets to the loopback device. For example in iptables if the default rule on the INPUT chain for this device is set to anything other than >ACCEPT this will cause performance problems in X. To check this, you can type in: %iptables-save | grep lo -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT The rule -A INPUT -i lo -j ACCEPT should always work, unless there are other misconfigured rules (Such as a DROP on the OUTPUT chain)