The only thing that sort of stands out in valgrind is a number of calls to windowState(), presumably from line 620 of tqt3/src/styles/qcommonstyle.cpp
Can you try commenting out that line to see if it resolves the slow startup issue? You only need to recompile/reinstall TQt3 itself to test, then log out/log back in to TDE.
Commenting out lines 619-621 makes a difference, but I need to revert to my Oct. 30 package set and run some as-best-I-can stopwatch tests. The reason is the patch helps but my intuition tells me the apps are not opening as fast as the Oct. 30 package set.
I notice the commented lines are from commits 37a8b8a9 and 79dfe5ba of Nov. 4, which at least fits the time frame in question. From my perspective then, looks like some of the style engine work is indeed affecting app launch times. Hopefully they can be resolved. :)
Swapping package sets takes a while. :) Eventually I'll present some crude stopwatch benchmarks. :)
Here are my best-I-can stopwatch benchmarks. All times in seconds. Each time I flushed the ksycoca cache and restarted Trinity.
GIT short version 8443, Oct. 30
kate: 1.54, 1.29, 1.35; avg.: 1.39 konqueror: 1.47, 1.61, 1.57; avg.: 1.55 kmail: 2.09, 1.96, 1.97; avg.: 2.01
GIT short version 8665, Nov. 10, patched
kate: 1.68, 1.89, 1.73; avg.: 1.77 konqueror: 3.20, 2.81, 2.52; avg.: 2.84 kmail: 3.37, 3.47, 3.29; avg.: 3.38
GIT short version 8665, Nov. 10, unpatched
kate: 1.97, 1.94, 1.80; avg.: 1.90 konqueror: 3.60, 2.83, 3.21; avg.: 3.21 kmail: 3.72, 3.39, 3.47; avg.: 3.53
In the 8665 build there is a nominal improvement with the patch but either way, there is noticeable difference between the package sets. Enough that all users will notice. I'm running on a decent machine but I suspect users with less older hardware will notice more. :)
Darrell