Info about desktop env

Support
1

Hi all,

I am searching for a info about Xfce/Gnome/KDE resource , how much ram they needs/using ?

I have this specs :

[marko@marko-hpenvyx360 ~]$ inxi -F
System:
  Host: marko-hpenvyx360 Kernel: 5.8.1-3-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 
  Desktop: Xfce 4.14.2 Distro: Manjaro Linux 
Machine:
  Type: Convertible System: HP product: HP ENVY x360 Convertible 13-ar0xxx 
  v: N/A serial: <superuser/root required> 
  Mobo: HP model: 85DE v: 41.36 serial: <superuser/root required> UEFI: AMI 
  v: F.19 date: 12/26/2019 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 52.8 Wh condition: 52.8/52.8 Wh (100%) 
CPU:
  Topology: Quad Core model: AMD Ryzen 5 3500U with Radeon Vega Mobile Gfx 
  bits: 64 type: MT MCP L2 cache: 2048 KiB 
  Speed: 1231 MHz min/max: 1400/2100 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1231 2: 1231 
  3: 1230 4: 1229 5: 1230 6: 1230 7: 2767 8: 2761 
Graphics:
  Device-1: AMD Picasso driver: amdgpu v: kernel 
  Device-2: Lite-On HP Wide Vision HD Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.8 driver: amdgpu,ati unloaded: modesetting 
  resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: AMD RAVEN (DRM 3.38.0 5.8.1-3-MANJARO LLVM 10.0.1) 
  v: 4.6 Mesa 20.1.5 
Audio:
  Device-1: AMD Raven/Raven2/Fenghuang HDMI/DP Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
  Device-2: AMD Raven/Raven2/FireFlight/Renoir Audio Processor 
  driver: snd_rn_pci_acp3x 
  Device-3: AMD Family 17h HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.8.1-3-MANJARO 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8822BE 802.11a/b/g/n/ac WiFi adapter 
  driver: rtw_8822be 
  IF: wlo1 state: up mac: 40:23:43:82:63:bf 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 476.94 GiB used: 134.40 GiB (28.2%) 
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Intel model: SSDPEKNW512G8H size: 476.94 GiB 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 459.50 GiB used: 134.40 GiB (29.2%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2 
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 8.80 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) 
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 57.0 C mobo: 47.0 C gpu: amdgpu temp: 57 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A 
Info:
  Processes: 256 Uptime: 5h 44m Memory: 5.74 GiB used: 1.75 GiB (30.5%) 
  Shell: Bash inxi: 3.1.05

Also do I need swap partition in those case ?

Thanks

2

KDE Plasma and XFCE are about on par with regard to their memory footprint. GNOME is a heavyweight.

Of those three ─ but this is my personal opinion, for what it’s worth ─ KDE Plasma will give you the most bang for your buck. It’s almost infinitely customizable and it comes with cool graphical effects without requiring a different window manager.

If you want the lightest desktop environment available on Manjaro, then you should definitely check out LXDE or LXQt. Another option ─ but then we’re not talking of a desktop environment anymore ─ could be i3, or another tiling window manager like bspwm.

With about 5.74 GiB of RAM ─ I suspect you’ve got 6 GiB, but a small amount of that is shared with the on-board graphics ─ I would definitely recommend that you keep your swap partition.

Once you start browsing the web and opening multiple browser tabs, the kernel is going to want to start swapping ─ Chrome/Chromium is a heavyweight browser, but Firefox isn’t all that much better. You could suppress this by not using a swap partition, but then your system’s not going to be very responsive anymore due to the shortage on RAM for caching.

:wink:

1 Like
3

Thank you for a fast reply.

I always thought that KDE is heavyweight :smiley: weird.
LXDE is too basic, I have a feel like I am using windows 95 xD For i3, I am noob …I dont know if I will be able to use that, hehe

Yes, I have 6 GB, but shared with graphics card. I dont play games, only FM20 sometimes.
Mostly browsing, netflix etc…

4

There have been some popular posts on archived.forum.manjaro.org about RAM use by differen Manjaro edition at login. They will get ported here by @Chrysostomus some day.
Edit: No, that post is gone Lightest Manjaro spin? - General Discussion - Manjaro Linux Forum
Or any other forum member can try to boot all the editions and copy paste the output of free -h.

2 Likes
5

The data is outdated anyway, I’m going to need to make new measurements some day.

Here is my current gut feeling on them:

Super heavy weights:

  • deepin, budgie, webdad, cinnamon

    • these are the ones that are even heavier than gnome
      Heavy heights:

  • gnome, around 400-700Mb depending on hardware and configuration

Middleweights:

  • kde, xfce. Around 350-450Mb

Lightweights:

  • i3, awesome, lxqt, lxde. Around 200Mb

Featherweights:

  • bspwm, openbox. Under 150Mb
4 Likes
6

The original post, Chrysostomus used ps_mem, not free -h. Idk how much of a difference it is.

7

ps_mem shows what processes are the “culprits”, while free shows not too much info.
ps_mem would be indeed a more informative comparison.

Summary 
~ >>> sudo ps_mem                                                                                                  
[sudo] Passwort fĂĽr eugen: 
 Private  +   Shared  =  RAM used       Program

 96.0 KiB + 116.0 KiB = 212.0 KiB       start_kdeinit
308.0 KiB + 474.0 KiB = 782.0 KiB       lvmetad
368.0 KiB + 494.0 KiB = 862.0 KiB       rtkit-daemon
400.0 KiB + 510.0 KiB = 910.0 KiB       crond
620.0 KiB + 944.0 KiB =   1.5 MiB       dconf-service
652.0 KiB +   1.0 MiB =   1.7 MiB       agent
584.0 KiB +   1.5 MiB =   2.1 MiB       avahi-daemon (2)
  1.0 MiB +   1.5 MiB =   2.5 MiB       at-spi-bus-launcher
932.0 KiB +   1.6 MiB =   2.5 MiB       systemd-tty-ask-password-agent
  1.1 MiB +   1.5 MiB =   2.6 MiB       at-spi2-registryd
  1.1 MiB +   1.6 MiB =   2.7 MiB       gsettings-helper
  1.1 MiB +   1.9 MiB =   3.0 MiB       startplasma-x11
  1.2 MiB +   1.8 MiB =   3.0 MiB       gvfsd-fuse
  1.5 MiB +   1.7 MiB =   3.2 MiB       bluetoothd
  1.2 MiB +   2.6 MiB =   3.7 MiB       systemd-timesyncd
  1.6 MiB +   2.2 MiB =   3.8 MiB       gvfsd
  1.6 MiB +   2.8 MiB =   4.4 MiB       systemd-logind
  2.1 MiB +   2.7 MiB =   4.8 MiB       sudo
  2.2 MiB +   3.1 MiB =   5.3 MiB       upowerd
  2.2 MiB +   3.4 MiB =   5.6 MiB       sddm
  2.4 MiB +   3.2 MiB =   5.7 MiB       cupsd
  2.3 MiB +   4.1 MiB =   6.4 MiB       sddm-helper
  2.8 MiB +   3.9 MiB =   6.7 MiB       systemd-journald
  2.7 MiB +   4.6 MiB =   7.3 MiB       xembedsniproxy
  3.6 MiB +   3.8 MiB =   7.4 MiB       zsh
  2.8 MiB +   4.8 MiB =   7.6 MiB       gmenudbusmenuproxy
  3.3 MiB +   4.5 MiB =   7.8 MiB       dbus-daemon (3)
  3.6 MiB +   4.5 MiB =   8.1 MiB       wpa_supplicant
  3.1 MiB +   5.1 MiB =   8.2 MiB       kscreen_backend_launcher
  3.4 MiB +   6.3 MiB =   9.7 MiB       klauncher
  4.4 MiB +   5.3 MiB =   9.7 MiB       systemd-udevd
  4.4 MiB +   5.3 MiB =   9.8 MiB       ModemManager
  4.3 MiB +   6.5 MiB =  10.7 MiB       kglobalaccel5
  5.3 MiB +   6.8 MiB =  12.2 MiB       udisksd
  5.6 MiB +   6.7 MiB =  12.3 MiB       colord
  4.5 MiB +   8.2 MiB =  12.7 MiB       polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1
  4.8 MiB +   8.5 MiB =  13.4 MiB       kwalletd5
  4.9 MiB +   8.6 MiB =  13.5 MiB       kaccess
  5.4 MiB +  10.4 MiB =  15.8 MiB       ksmserver
  5.6 MiB +  11.3 MiB =  16.8 MiB       org_kde_powerdevil
  8.4 MiB +   9.3 MiB =  17.7 MiB       pulseaudio
  4.7 MiB +  13.2 MiB =  17.9 MiB       systemd (3)
  8.0 MiB +  10.2 MiB =  18.2 MiB       NetworkManager
  7.6 MiB +  12.0 MiB =  19.6 MiB       kactivitymanagerd
 15.2 MiB +  15.3 MiB =  30.5 MiB       preload
 16.0 MiB +  16.5 MiB =  32.5 MiB       polkitd
 13.7 MiB +  24.7 MiB =  38.4 MiB       kded5
 14.5 MiB +  24.7 MiB =  39.2 MiB       kdeconnectd
 18.9 MiB +  50.8 MiB =  69.7 MiB       kdeinit5 (4)
 49.7 MiB +  51.6 MiB = 101.4 MiB       baloo_file
 42.0 MiB +  64.7 MiB = 106.7 MiB       kwin_x11
 52.4 MiB +  87.4 MiB = 139.8 MiB       Xorg
131.1 MiB + 164.7 MiB = 295.8 MiB       plasmashell
145.9 MiB + 183.8 MiB = 329.7 MiB       telegram-desktop
221.8 MiB + 258.3 MiB = 480.1 MiB       kate
883.6 MiB +   1.3 GiB =   2.1 GiB       chromium (17)
---------------------------------
                          4.1 GiB
=================================
3 Likes
8

Nice, that is a great info… Now I curious about i3 or awesome…Are they easy to use or they require some special knowledge ?

9

this is mine on xfce :

Summary 
[marko@marko-hpenvyx360] sudo ps_mem
 Private  +   Shared  =  RAM used	Program

360.0 KiB + 438.0 KiB = 798.0 KiB	syndaemon
356.0 KiB + 468.0 KiB = 824.0 KiB	lvmetad
392.0 KiB + 446.0 KiB = 838.0 KiB	xcape
364.0 KiB + 496.0 KiB = 860.0 KiB	rtkit-daemon
396.0 KiB + 492.0 KiB = 888.0 KiB	crond
656.0 KiB + 672.0 KiB =   1.3 MiB	ssh-agent
620.0 KiB + 834.0 KiB =   1.4 MiB	agent
712.0 KiB + 868.0 KiB =   1.5 MiB	dconf-service
700.0 KiB + 964.0 KiB =   1.6 MiB	gvfsd-metadata
932.0 KiB +   1.1 MiB =   2.0 MiB	at-spi-bus-launcher
960.0 KiB +   1.2 MiB =   2.1 MiB	gvfs-mtp-volume-monitor
  1.0 MiB +   1.2 MiB =   2.2 MiB	gvfsd-fuse
  1.0 MiB +   1.2 MiB =   2.2 MiB	at-spi2-registryd
  1.1 MiB +   1.2 MiB =   2.2 MiB	gpg-agent
664.0 KiB +   1.6 MiB =   2.3 MiB	avahi-daemon (2)
  1.1 MiB +   1.2 MiB =   2.3 MiB	xfconfd
  1.0 MiB +   1.3 MiB =   2.3 MiB	gvfsd
  1.1 MiB +   1.4 MiB =   2.5 MiB	gsettings-helper
  1.1 MiB +   1.4 MiB =   2.5 MiB	accounts-daemon
  1.2 MiB +   1.5 MiB =   2.7 MiB	gvfsd-dnssd
  1.2 MiB +   1.6 MiB =   2.8 MiB	gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor
  1.3 MiB +   1.6 MiB =   2.8 MiB	gvfsd-network
  1.2 MiB +   2.0 MiB =   3.2 MiB	gvfs-afc-volume-monitor
  1.6 MiB +   1.9 MiB =   3.5 MiB	bluetoothd
  1.7 MiB +   2.0 MiB =   3.7 MiB	xiccd
  1.5 MiB +   2.7 MiB =   4.2 MiB	obexd
  1.9 MiB +   2.7 MiB =   4.5 MiB	lightdm (2)
  1.6 MiB +   3.1 MiB =   4.7 MiB	systemd-logind
  2.1 MiB +   2.8 MiB =   4.9 MiB	sudo
  1.9 MiB +   3.0 MiB =   4.9 MiB	upowerd
  2.1 MiB +   3.2 MiB =   5.4 MiB	gvfs-udisks2-volume-monitor
  2.6 MiB +   3.5 MiB =   6.1 MiB	cupsd
  3.2 MiB +   3.2 MiB =   6.4 MiB	haveged
  3.6 MiB +   4.7 MiB =   8.3 MiB	dbus-daemon (3)
  3.6 MiB +   5.0 MiB =   8.6 MiB	udisksd
  4.3 MiB +   4.9 MiB =   9.2 MiB	ModemManager
  3.9 MiB +   5.3 MiB =   9.3 MiB	wpa_supplicant
  4.1 MiB +   5.4 MiB =   9.5 MiB	systemd-udevd
  5.6 MiB +   6.3 MiB =  11.9 MiB	panel-18-xfce4-
  4.9 MiB +   7.8 MiB =  12.7 MiB	bash (3)
  6.5 MiB +   7.0 MiB =  13.5 MiB	colord
  5.9 MiB +   7.6 MiB =  13.5 MiB	pulseaudio
  2.8 MiB +  11.4 MiB =  14.2 MiB	systemd (3)
  6.9 MiB +  10.0 MiB =  16.9 MiB	NetworkManager
  8.9 MiB +   9.9 MiB =  18.7 MiB	xfsettingsd
  9.1 MiB +  10.0 MiB =  19.1 MiB	light-locker
  9.1 MiB +  10.1 MiB =  19.2 MiB	panel-20-systra
  9.4 MiB +  10.5 MiB =  19.8 MiB	xfce4-session
  9.5 MiB +  10.8 MiB =  20.2 MiB	panel-22-batter
 10.0 MiB +  12.5 MiB =  22.4 MiB	xfce4-notifyd
 11.4 MiB +  11.8 MiB =  23.2 MiB	gvfsd-trash
 10.9 MiB +  13.0 MiB =  23.9 MiB	panel-14-wavela
 11.4 MiB +  13.8 MiB =  25.2 MiB	panel-19-notifi
 10.9 MiB +  14.6 MiB =  25.5 MiB	polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1
 11.7 MiB +  14.1 MiB =  25.8 MiB	xfce4-clipman
 12.0 MiB +  14.5 MiB =  26.6 MiB	xfce4-power-manager
 12.1 MiB +  15.3 MiB =  27.4 MiB	panel-2-pulseau
 13.3 MiB +  16.5 MiB =  29.9 MiB	nm-applet
 13.2 MiB +  16.7 MiB =  29.9 MiB	pamac-tray
 13.6 MiB +  16.5 MiB =  30.1 MiB	xfce4-panel
 15.4 MiB +  15.8 MiB =  31.3 MiB	polkitd
 14.3 MiB +  17.3 MiB =  31.6 MiB	panel-12-whiske
 14.5 MiB +  21.0 MiB =  35.5 MiB	xfce4-terminal
 19.9 MiB +  23.3 MiB =  43.2 MiB	panel-13-weathe
 20.6 MiB +  22.7 MiB =  43.4 MiB	systemd-journald
 22.1 MiB +  26.4 MiB =  48.5 MiB	blueman-tray
 23.3 MiB +  25.6 MiB =  49.0 MiB	msm_notifier
 23.1 MiB +  26.6 MiB =  49.7 MiB	blueman-applet
 39.9 MiB +  46.2 MiB =  86.1 MiB	Thunar
 31.0 MiB +  56.8 MiB =  87.8 MiB	xfwm4
 52.9 MiB +  72.6 MiB = 125.5 MiB	xfdesktop
 40.4 MiB + 104.5 MiB = 144.9 MiB	Xorg
275.4 MiB + 389.9 MiB = 665.2 MiB	MainThread
680.8 MiB + 959.0 MiB =   1.6 GiB	firefox (6)
---------------------------------
                          3.6 GiB
=================================
10

With a bit of special knowledge they are easy to use. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:
No, you need to look up the keybindings. Awesome is easier to use, because you have an applications menu out of the box. You also can navigate with the mouse quite easily.

11

Are there any wiki about those 2 , how to install and use ? I dont want to lose data until I am confident to use them, hehe

P.S .

What I noticed, those 2 are last updated in April/June…

12

There was this study, 2 years ago on Ubuntu :

Capture-d-cran-2020-08-20-15-48-43.png

(source)

1 Like
13

I use kde with 6GB
It is very rare that I use more than 3Gb (i no use vm or games)
So the choice of the DE to win 200Mo has no interest, we might as well choose the one that suits us and not think about the ram first

1 Like
14

Yes, you are right…in the first place I am looking for good looking De, than performance etc.

15

I’ve used KDE Plasma with only 4 GiB ─ 3.3 GiB, actually, because of the on-board graphics adapter ─ in my previous computer. And it was not a problem. :slight_smile:

16

Safe you data, then install what you want and copy it back.

Use a search engine or Arch Wiki for generic info and Manjaro Wiki for particular info (if available).

If you get problems during the first update after installation then create a new topic with complete information and the terminal output of the error.

1 Like
17

Awesome is easy to start using but requires special knowledge to configure. I3 is easier to configure but has higher learning curve.

1 Like
18

I just tried awesome and i3 as live image… Awesome is better ( i3 crashed while live session so that is first no for i3 xD). Awesome is really fast, not so beautiful as KDE but yeah… need to decide between KDE and Awesome :slight_smile:

19

You should give openbox a try. It’s one of my favorites. Uses little RAM, and highly customizable.

20

You can have both. KDE looks pretty ok with default look. You can just install the group plasma and select Plasma or Awesome session at login.

1 Like