Question about system performance

[natan]

Hi guys! I apologize in advance if I’m in the wrong category to clarify a doubt.

Regarding the Manjaro distribution, I would like someone here to clarify for me if in the case of Manjaro Gnome (may consider other environments as well, but especially this one), for older computers (at least manufactured in 2015), I can say that the current version has performance smaller than older versions, as newer versions tend to put more demands on the computer?

[Shirshendu]

For older hardware, XFCE edition is surely a better bet. But if you have >= 8 GB RAM and a moderate CPU, Gnome should be fine (Gnome is not that heavy). Manjaro Gnome runs satisfactorily on my entry level laptop with 6th gen i3 and 8 GB RAM

[ruziel]

I second the Xfce suggestion - definitely have a look at that for older machines. Having said that, I’ve been running Manjaro Xfce since early 2013 & even though I have a powerful machine, stick with it. It’s light, doesn’t get in the way & quite tweakable. Go well meantime…

[Keruskerfuerst]

And then you should test several LTS kernels on your machine.
E.g.: 4.19, 5.4, 5.10 and latest 5.15.

[natan]

Friend, I was surprised when I found in my tests that the newer versions of Linux (tested with Manjaro and Fedora) are requiring at least something like 1GB of Ram (no application open condition, just the task manager itself and native background system services), even with one of the lightest environments (XFCE). Even LXQT (Fedora) consumes at least that.

I even posted about this performance issue on their forum as well, and one of the moderators, I believe that like you, he didn’t recommend me to downgrade a version to improve performance.

[cscs]

Manjaro Misconceptions XFCE Lightweight?

But is any of this really an issue? XFCE was/is a ‘lightweight’ desktop mainly by virtue of the past. These days its gotten heavier, while the ‘big ones’ have gotten ‘lighter’. Sure … but that has to do with DE development itself … as well as configuration. (as you note above … you add conky and its heavier … though your difference seems to indicate some sort of misconfiguration … conky shouldnt take much more than a few megs maybe … which is again, indicative though of the impact that your …

[BR-1]

I think you should just try it. I think @Shirshendu’s comment on hardware is mostly correct depending on what you’ll do with your system.

For a bit of reference, I use Budgie (build on top of Gnome) and I usually see about 1.5 - 1.7 GB of RAM used after just booting, so in principle it’d be fine with a bit less than 8GB (altho 8GB might be enough to stop worrying about RAM entirely). But really, Manjaro/Gnome already does better in the RAM department than Windows (I mention it because that’s probably what came installed with it), so I’d just give it a go.

[natan]

I understood friend. The detail that I would like to question is… In case I don’t want to buy more ram (since it is the main concern regarding choosing an older version or not, and a version of a lighter environment, like XFCE or LXQT or not), which should be the best choice for me?! I noticed that opinions on this forum vary considerably, lol. To give you an idea…I noticed that the ram consumption of this system with XFCE is practically the same as MATE, comparing the latest versions (21.1.2 the latter, and 21.1.6 the other), the latter being more interesting for being more customizable. So today I installed the system with the last one in place of the other.