KDE Plasma 5.12 LTS Released With Much Better Wayland Support, Other Improvements

[cj.wijtmans]

Ok? So what's your point? My point is we're talking about a few hundred MBs at most. Basically -all- modern computers can run Plasma, but only those with a few extra GBs can run Windows 10. Despite your attempt to take RAM usage out of context.

my point is a superior desktop is using less ram than plasma. freeing it up to use for other things.

[duby229]

my point is a superior desktop is using less ram than plasma. freeing it up to use for other things.

And yet Your so called superior desktop actually requires more RAM than plasma and works on far- far fewer machines because of that fact. The bottom line fact is you need to boot windows to use a windows desktop and in that case there is far- far more RAM used than a plasma desktop booted on linux. Fact!

[TheBlackCat]

my point is a superior desktop is using less ram than plasma. freeing it up to use for other things.

It is an apples to gerbils comparison. Windows includes more of the desktop functionality inside the "operating system". That doesn't mean the desktop is using less RAM for the same features, it is using less RAM for far fewer features (since the RAM for those features is being used by something other than the desktop). That is why you need to look at the overall RAM when the desktop alone is running, not just the RAM of the desktop itself.

[Danny3]

In Arch Linux you just type "pacman -S qt5-virtualkeyboard" to install the virtual keyboard (it should be similar in other distributions, but maybe the name is slightly different). The KDE lock screen is using it then automatically. The same applies for SDDM, which is the login manager. But the lock screen and the login manager are two separate things, they just look similar as of the theme.

Thank you very much for your explanations!

[gilboa]

my point is a superior desktop is using less ram than plasma. freeing it up to use for other things.

Superior desktop...?
My Xeon workstation is a Fedora 27 machine, w/32GB RAM and used to run a number of VMs, PGSQL database and large number of development tools in multiple concurrent Plasma activities. Current memory usage ~13GB RAM, ~8.2GB used by VMs, 2.5 GB used by Firefox and Chrome, ~0.6GB used by PGSQL. ~1.7GB used by Fedora + Plasma 5.11.
One of the VMs is a bare-bone Windows 10 VM with only A/V, MSys2 (gcc, not running), Firefox (not running), Putty/WinSCP (same) and Wireshark (same). Current memory usage 1.7GB (according to Task Manager)
My work laptop has nearly identical configuration, Windows VM usage more or less the same ~1.8GB. Again nearly completely bare-bone.

So in short, an OS that include 5 billion development tools + DB(s) + VM host + NFS server + SSH server + multiple desktops + multiple VM viewers + two browsers + kitchen sink uses *less* memory than an OS that currently has *zero* open applications (beyond A/V) and delivers ~10% of the functionality of my Linux host? Are you kidding me?

Oh, just in case you were wondering, my backup laptop (Converted Chromebook w/ 2GB RAM and dual core Celeron CPU) I intentionally don't use Plasma activities and the laptop memory usage rarely go above 1GB. (Currently 1.2GB w/ Chrome active).

- Gilboa