The future of Xfce

[az2020]

im not even a huge qt fan. its pretty much the only alternative (no disrespect to any fltk fans, i suppose this is really their time to shine.)

About a year ago I installed a dozen distros to compare mem usage (both in a virtual box and installed on real hardware). I was surprised how KDE was almost in the lightweight (MX, Peppermint, Lubuntu) range. Especially when you go into the "appearance" settings and disable the eye-candy animations, get rid of the image background, etc.

I just did that exercise again a month ago with 20 distros. Again, KDE was down in that lighter-weight range. Manjaro Xfce was among the heaviest. I thought that was odd because Xfce is known for being lightweight.

I can post the tables if anyone wants to see the comparisons. (I posted the latest one once somewhere on this forum. I don't recall where.).

I just bought a new laptop and it doesn't play well with MX. I switched to Kubuntu 19.10 and liking it. I don't like the start menu as much. KDE has a lot of settings that seem tedious. But, I'm averse to change. I'm sure I won't care about these things after awhile.

[Stuart_M]

I can post the tables if anyone wants to see the comparisons. (I posted the latest one once somewhere on this forum. I don't recall where.).

I remember the comparison table well - post #5 from the "memory usage" thread (7 Feb 20) viewtopic.php?p=558314#p558314.

Nice job.

[az2020]

I can post the tables if anyone wants to see the comparisons. (I posted the latest one once somewhere on this forum. I don't recall where.).

I remember the comparison table well - post #5 from the "memory usage" thread (7 Feb 20) viewtopic.php?p=558314#p558314.

Nice job.

I'm glad you liked it enough to remember where it was! Here's the one I mentioned from last April/May 2019:

Click for larger
[For notes & more info, see the original PDF or spreadsheet.]

This one is a little different than the recent comparison (which you linked to in another thread).

1. I didn't install to real hardware last time (only VirtualBox).
2. I sorted the columns different, which makes it hard to visually compare. (The original spreadsheets can be downloaded and sorted differently.).
3. The first time, I tried to turn off some eye-candy features to see how skinny a distro can be. (I didn't do that this time because it's probably not a fair comparison. I didn't spend much time looking for space-saving opportunities in any distro. But, that first comparison illustrates how a distro can be minimized. There's probably more things, like turning off samba. Most people don't use that. Someone on the Peppermint forum said brtfs(?) file system support takes a lot of memory. This thread isn't really about memory use though. I'm just saying that the first compare shows that they can be made smaller, and KDE comes in pretty close the stock lighterweight distros.).

The VirtualBox sessions are probably more comparable to each other. But, they aren't comparable to real usage (on real hardware). The real hardware sessions are interesting in terms of seeing how much more real drivers add to the memory use. But... I don't think they're comparable to each other because different distros may have better/worse support for nwe hardware (like the Ryzen 3 3200u/Vega 3 I used). So, you have to weigh those different tests for what they represent.

Anyway, I always thought KDE was large. I was surprised that it's so close to the midrange & lightweight distros (especially if you turn off the animations and fancy stuff.). Freemedia2018 mentioned qt. I thought I'd mention KDE since it uses qt. (I'm wondering why the lxqt guys didn't create a slimmed down version of KDE instead of recreating LXDE with qt. I used LXDE for 3-4 years. Originally, I thought they intended to make a direct look-alike with the qt framework. But, to me it's becoming something else. At which point, I wonder why it wouldn't have been easier to use KDE. Minimize it into a lightweight version of itself. It looks like it could have come out the same way. I see people on the Peppermint forum style Peppermint into a WIndows XP lookalike. :) Why couldn't KDE be styled into a LXDE lookalike? I think the memory use would have come out the same.).

[SDS]

Can we do anything about the menu entry for Clementine saying "Plays music and Last.fm streams" even though last.fm support has been removed?

[JkMary413]

Can we do anything about the menu entry for Clementine saying "Plays music and Last.fm streams" even though last.fm support has been removed?

There's some other probably better places you can post this.

[Katie Boundary]

The primary appeal of XFCE is that it is very lightweight. This is also one of the big selling points of MX Linux: it uses a very lightweight desktop environment. However, people with a strong preference for lightweight DEs tend to favor LXDE / LXQt, because it's even lighter. So, just switch to LXDE / LXQt and be done with it. People who want something heaver can download and install something heavier if they want.

[JayM]

Xfce's other selling points are ease of use and configuration.

[asqwerth]

and modularity

[richb]

Really mid-weight.

MX Linux is a cooperative venture between the antiX and former MEPIS communities, using the best tools and talents from each distro. It is a midweight OS designed to combine an elegant and efficient desktop with simple configuration, high stability, solid performance and medium-sized footprint.

[Katie Boundary]

Really mid-weight.

MX Linux is a cooperative venture between the antiX and former MEPIS communities, using the best tools and talents from each distro. It is a midweight OS designed to combine an elegant and efficient desktop with simple configuration, high stability, solid performance and medium-sized footprint.

That may be the goal, but among all the distros I looked at that could be considered even remotely user-friendly, MX-19 was the third lightest, behind only Bodhi and LXLE.