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Power & Memory Usage Of GNOME, KDE, LXDE & Xfce

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  • #51
    Originally posted by hax0r View Post
    Now let's say you wanted to use an app that needs most of your memory, like GTA IV if it was ported, you will run out, which is ridiculous and wrong for DE to waste that much memory. No my memory is not cheap, I'm still using old Windond BH-5 modules that run at 2-2-2-0 @ 3.45v, you can't upgrade that or put more sticks since chipset will not handle it and become unstable. In my book DE the max for i386 should be at most 100MB, and for x86_64 150MB. Maybe that's the reason why I still use XP. Win32 FTW!
    I run win xp 32 bit + simple anti virus and it consumes a little less memory then my Arch Linux 64bit and KDE 4.4.1.

    I would see the compromise for using that much memory if those shitty DE gave the responsiveness of what Windows gives. Not even Nvidia drivers help or tweaked SSD disk with unregressed file systems. What sucks even more is that KDE is dead slow and sucks ass. Starting a text editor or calculator takes a 1.5s delay? To do what? WTF?
    There's something shitty with your logic. If test is flawed do you base on what making your assumptions? KDE apps start instatly here, so you've got something really messed up, as usual. And it's more responsive then my Windows xp.

    Not even Nvidia drivers help
    Nice one, you made my day!

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    • #52
      Of course I'm not saying KDE 4 consumes less memory amount then Gnome, because I don't know this.

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      • #53
        I think BlackStar had a bad experience once that will forever taint his opinion of openSUSE. The general consensus that I've encountered is that openSUSE provides a high quality KDE world. Kubuntu opinions are all over the place but generally are a bit lower others.
        Consistently bad experience would be more like it. I have 4 different VMs(*) with openSUSE installations for testing software (versions 10.x and 11.x with Gnome and KDE) and I dread each and every time I have to boot any of those (unlike Fedora, Arch or *buntu). Granted, this means I have slightly different requirements than typical users (the more hassle-free the distro, the better), but I'd never install openSUSE as my primary OS based on that experience (I've tried, didn't work out).

        (*)Yes, I'm strange like that, I keep around 30-something VMs for testing software all the way back to Ubuntu 7.04. The Linux graphics stack is so f*ed-up that's the only way to reproduce some problems (e.g. right now I'm trying to track down a bug with XMoveWindow that manifests only on Fedora 11, not Arch or Ubuntu. "Pain" doesn't even begin to describe the feeling.)

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        • #54
          Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
          ...(the more hassle-free the distro, the better)...
          +1 to this. There's been a significant removal of tedium since Canonical has come on the scene that engenders huge good-will from me.

          Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
          (*)Yes, I'm strange like that, I keep around 30-something VMs for testing software all the way back to Ubuntu 7.04. The Linux graphics stack is so f*ed-up that's the only way to reproduce some problems (e.g. right now I'm trying to track down a bug with XMoveWindow that manifests only on Fedora 11, not Arch or Ubuntu. "Pain" doesn't even begin to describe the feeling.)
          Again, +1. This is about the only way to keep a good handle on how things are progressing due to the sometimes very prominent two steps forward, one step back nature of the Linux desktop. It looks however that there may be brighter things on the horizon for the Linux desktop though as usability becomes an expected trait and not a dirty word for Linux geeks.

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          • #55
            Originally posted by kraftman View Post
            I run win xp 32 bit + simple anti virus and it consumes a little less memory then my Arch Linux 64bit and KDE 4.4.1.
            Actually, that's *strongly* in favor of Arch/KDE4, considering (a) the 64bit vs 32bit overhead and (b) the fact that XP is a ~9 year old OS. My 32bit Arch/Gnome VM consumes 90MB which is even more damning for XP.

            Some other semi-interesting stats:
            - My (almost) vanilla 32bit XP VM (no antivirus) reads/writes 256MB/16MB for a complete boot.
            - My (almost) vanilla 32bit Arch/Gnome VM reads/writes 146MB/2MB for a complete boot.

            Which means a current, state-of-the-art Linux-based OS is almost twice as efficient as a 9-year-old Windows version while offering more out-of-the-box functionality. Try this experiment with Vista or Win7 and, well, results fall off the charts.

            (Just thought some people might find these stats interesting, they are trivial to reproduce with VirtualBox).

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            • #56
              Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
              Actually, that's *strongly* in favor of Arch/KDE4, considering (a) the 64bit vs 32bit overhead and (b) the fact that XP is a ~9 year old OS. My 32bit Arch/Gnome VM consumes 90MB which is even more damning for XP.
              Exactly

              Some other semi-interesting stats:
              - My (almost) vanilla 32bit XP VM (no antivirus) reads/writes 256MB/16MB for a complete boot.
              - My (almost) vanilla 32bit Arch/Gnome VM reads/writes 146MB/2MB for a complete boot.

              Which means a current, state-of-the-art Linux-based OS is almost twice as efficient as a 9-year-old Windows version while offering more out-of-the-box functionality. Try this experiment with Vista or Win7 and, well, results fall off the charts.

              (Just thought some people might find these stats interesting, they are trivial to reproduce with VirtualBox).
              Yes, those stats are very interesting My 64bit Linux kernel is also smaller then 32 bit XP/Win2000 kernel.

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              • #57
                Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
                Some other semi-interesting stats:
                - My (almost) vanilla 32bit XP VM (no antivirus) reads/writes 256MB/16MB for a complete boot.
                - My (almost) vanilla 32bit Arch/Gnome VM reads/writes 146MB/2MB for a complete boot.

                Which means a current, state-of-the-art Linux-based OS is almost twice as efficient as a 9-year-old Windows version while offering more out-of-the-box functionality. Try this experiment with Vista or Win7 and, well, results fall off the charts.
                This is certainly reflected in my real world experience of Linux and Windows deployments. Especially when it comes to older equipment where the necessity of anti-malware on Windows XP just breaks the camels back. There's still plenty of 512M machines floating around in production environments. Clearly where an end user needs Windows based software there is no practical alternative, but where Linux is viable, on a 512M machine the overall experience is generally a more pleasing one.

                Originally posted by BlackStar View Post
                (Just thought some people might find these stats interesting, they are trivial to reproduce with VirtualBox).
                Good to have the hard numbers to backup the observed behavior.

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                • #58
                  Originally posted by mugginz View Post
                  I'd be very interested to have the complaints against Kubuntu enumerated instead of general sledges against its quality relative to other distros.

                  I've had to run various distros in order to test KDE niceness around the place and haven't found any grievous errors on Kubuntu's behalf that weren't matched in either the same way, or in others by the other distros.

                  With the various states of KDE's robustness over time, stability issues due to upstream bugs may map into the general time line differently amongst the various distros depending on when packages get updated, etc.

                  There's also been mention of Canonicals and Kubuntu contributer patches that may have introduced specific bugs into the KDE desktop but I must admit I haven't really seen it myself. I'm happy to buy complaints against Kubuntu if people can be specific where Kubuntu fails where say OpenSUSE doesn't. General statements without specific examples are a little hard to verify for myself, and after 20 years in the computing industry where many are prepared to throw unfounded criticisms around willy-nilly, I'm hesitant to entertain unverifiable complaints. I do find Samba integration to be lacking relative to Gnome, but haven't found a particular distro that provides an outstanding quality KDE-Samba integration.

                  Most of the complaints with Kubuntu center around the fact that the distro seems to get a lot less attention than it's GNOME counterpart. All Kubuntu releases so far are very lackluster compared to Ubuntu releases. Coupled with a rather anemic program selection compared to other KDE LiveCDs out there, and Kubuntu often gives the impression as a project that isn't that well maintained. However, to be fair, Kubuntu does tend to be a bit more "bleeding edge" is the desktop arena compared to other KDE distros; Kubuntu releases tend to include newer and often experimental packages/programs as part of their KDE desktop.

                  Stability wise, Kubuntu seems a bit more flaky than other KDE distros. Could very well be because of what I mentioned earlier about the more experimental packages and programs, but when it comes down to it Kubuntu just has a less reliable execution. Whenever I use KDE with OpenSuse rarely does it crash even after I abuse it; Kubuntu, I'm lucky if Plasma doesn't crash after changing the desktop color scheme.

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                  • #59
                    Well, memory consumption nowadays is obscene. Firefox+Thunderbird+Acroread together--the first three programs I open on startup and never close afterwards--take something like 400 Mb given enough time (1). Add three KDE applications (basically text editors), which for some reason bring with them 11 extra processes (literally), and we are already talking about 500+ Mb. Fire up Wine, close it, and witness how wineserver stays there sucking memory like there's no tomorrow (2). Give it a couple of weeks and X already demands 300 Mb you never get back. I've got 1 Gb RAM, as soon as I hit ~800 Mb the whole thing starts to swap and becomes unusable. Which is funny, because I've got an old laptop as a backup server with 196 Mb RAM that is capable of running KDE 3.5 normally. So even though I have as much spare RAM as that machine's total memory the system for some reason desperately crawls.

                    As for these tests, I'm not surprised at all. The surprise was reading recently in this forum somebody claiming that KDE 4 was lighter than KDE 3.5. So not only slower, but also more memory hungry. The point, of course, would be to compare the features offered by the different DEs to have a bit of perspective; for instance, I guess LXDE doesn't offer what Gnome or KDE do.

                    (1) I acknowledge that quality and features come at a price, these are best of breed software. Still they could put them on diet.
                    (2) So much so that I now prefer to launch an XP virtual machine with 128 Mb and close it when I'm done. At least VirtualBox is well designed and doesn't require my attention when I shut it down.

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                    • #60
                      Quite interesting benchmark for people who only run a console on their machine. I think it would be more interesting seeing a comparison of the DEs with a few apps running: i.e. IM, music player,file manager, console, PIM/e-mail, browser, etc

                      I think KDE won't be much higher than GNOME then (maybe even lower) considering memory usage, due to better memory sharing.

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