KDE Plasma 5.20 Beta Released With Better Wayland Support

[aksdb]

How much RAM does a web browser use nowadays? About 1-4GB depending on the browser and how many tabs you have open and extensions you installed. You should also account for VRAM since they're all GPU-accelerated (I've seen 1GB from browser usage alone). A DE using 800MB is a drop in the ocean.

800 MB is 5% of 16GB ... which is not even yet common in most notebooks. No idea how small you think an ocean is or what kind of drops you have in mind, but 5% doesn't seem to be it.

If the DE uses just 200 MB less, I can already have a few more tabs open (if we are just talking about web browsing) or have another database or whatever running.

[smitty3268]

800 MB is 5% of 16GB ... which is not even yet common in most notebooks. No idea how small you think an ocean is or what kind of drops you have in mind, but 5% doesn't seem to be it.

If the DE uses just 200 MB less, I can already have a few more tabs open (if we are just talking about web browsing) or have another database or whatever running.

That's a fantastic argument for dropping the desktop entirely and doing everything from the console.

Except most people aren't willing to do that, and think that using a couple hundred MBs of RAM doesn't matter.

[smitty3268]

Have you reported this bug to developers? Complain about bugs in some random forum will never help to it be fixed, mainly in a post about another software.

I believe tildearrow is also running 2 year old graphics drivers, and I suspect has various other non-default tweaks to his desktop since he was involved in the whole low-latency fork. In other words, it's possible he's hitting issues that aren't commonly hit by most users with more standard systems.

[Awesomeness]

Here's my XFCE task bar. Tell me how can I achieve the same with Plasma.

That is some ugly POS and I hope Plasma devs don't ever waste development resources on that.

[aksdb]

That's a fantastic argument for dropping the desktop entirely and doing everything from the console.

Except most people aren't willing to do that, and think that using a couple hundred MBs of RAM doesn't matter.

Ah you seem to be one of those stubborn "all or nothing" / "black and white" people.

To quote myself:

The desktop environment is a means to an end. I need some interface to interact with the computer, but I only need that to start and manage the programs that perform my actual tasks. So the DE should be as small as possible while offering as much assistance as possible. KDE currently hits that extremely well. It's small (in regards to resource usage) yet has VERY MUCH to offer.

It's the balance, dude! That's exactly what I said. Why should I waste resources on something like Gnome, if Plasma uses less resources and even gives me more features? I could go i3, or awesome or something, they are even more lightweight, but then I am missing features again. So Plasma is nearly perfect, being relatively light for what it offers. Balance!

If they manage to keep doing that, I am more than happy. And it shows good engineering.

[angrypie]

That's exactly what I said. Why should I waste resources on something like Gnome, if Plasma uses less resources and even gives me more features?

Plasma isn't much lighter than GNOME and is prone to memory leaks every now and then (even a buggy plasmoid can trigger that).

Any 64-bit computer released in the last 5 years with at least 4 GB of RAM is more than enough for any modern DE. You're being overdramatic.

[smitty3268]

Ah you seem to be one of those stubborn "all or nothing" / "black and white" people.

Not at all. I think it goes without saying that the more efficient the software is, the better. You'd have to have a pretty odd mindset to think anything differently.

I'm just pointing out that for the vast majority of users a couple hundred MBs here and there won't even be noticed, and that people who think it's a giant huge dealbreaker don't often consider the flip side - that they already use a couple hundred MBs more than they actually need, and don't ever think about that because they view the results as worthwhile.

I think CPU use or anything that causes jitter/delays/etc. is a lot more noticeable and therefore would be a much higher priority for me than simple memory use.

[angrypie]

I don't think we'd be having this discussion if Linux could better manage memory pressure. That's one of the few good things we could steal from the proprietary counterpart.

[aksdb]

Not at all. I think it goes without saying that the more efficient the software is, the better. You'd have to have a pretty odd mindset to think anything differently.

I'm just pointing out that for the vast majority of users a couple hundred MBs here and there won't even be noticed, and that people who think it's a giant huge dealbreaker don't often consider the flip side - that they already use a couple hundred MBs more than they actually need, and don't ever think about that because they view the results as worthwhile.

I think CPU use or anything that causes jitter/delays/etc. is a lot more noticeable and therefore would be a much higher priority for me than simple memory use.

True. CPU load is a much bigger problem. Regarding memory: I was just startled by the suggestion to rewrite parts in a "managed language" (I assume meaning .NET and/or Python; probably not Java). But since Plasma is pretty tied to Qt, and Qt is pretty tied to C++, I think the chances are slim that they would actually consider basing a large part of KDE/Plasma on a "managed language".

I don't think we'd be having this discussion if Linux could better manage memory pressure. That's one of the few good things we could steal from the proprietary counterpart.

I would probably still argue, since I am an optimization fanatic But yeah, I would probably not care as much then. Linux is really horrible in regards to dealing with load on a desktop system. It can be somewhat improved by using inofficial schedulers, but it still doesn't come close to Windows. Windows usually manages to ask me if it should kill a specific process that is going crazy, while the system still is more or less usable - just slower. On Linux if a program runs crazy I cannot even move the mouse cursor anymore. Switching to a TTY takes ages and logging in there usually fails because it takes longer to verify the password than the timeout allows so the session is immediately killed again.

The "best" approach for me so far is to disable SWAP, to at least prevent running into that horrible IO load by the system constantly putting stuff into SWAP and back into memory. If a process runs out of memory it then at least gets killed rather quickly. But that's ugly and really shouldn't be the case.

[Sonadow]

If the Plasma developers are reading this forum, I only have one wish that has been outstanding for two years but still not addressed even today, and that is to make Plasma Wayland work properly on Nouveau. As it is, Plasma Wayland is a wreck right now when using Nouveau:

- Instant hard lockup on Nouveau when launched as-is from a TTY
- With QSG_RENDER_LOOP=basic added, desktop launches but system randomly locks up hard
- With LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1 added, desktop launches and is stable for a longer period of time but system eventually locks up hard after a number of hours