Alexandre composed on 2016-01-03 00:06 (UTC):
I find that Plasma 5 is capable of booting, from login to desktop, faster than TDE on the same machine. This computer is an humble Core 2 duo with 2gb of ram, probably from 2008 or so.
I have multiple machines with that chip, and more that are older. K5 is an absolute slug on some older ones that K5 actually can run on. K5 requires compositing be enabled at Xorg level even though within its systemsettings it can be turned off. Compositing is a performance killer on older CPUs that needn't and doesn't inhibit TDE. It's not unusual here that I think K5 is hung doing nothing while I wait to see a desktop show up, and often it is. https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1210467
TDE, like KDE3, automatically restores the desktop state, including open apps, something K5 is incapable of, so in cases where it had been closed with apps open it needs more time because it does more. IOW, TDE, like KDE3, allows me to pick up where I left off automatically. That's impossible in K5, so any startup speed benefit to K5 is a total non-issue.