MX Linux Forum

Posted: **Sun May 17, 2020 10:00 am**

I'm a bit apprehensive, given the 'underwhelming' lack of interest in my previous posts

, but I'll give this a whirl anyway.

As part of my on-going COVID19 entertainment efforts, I am moving from tweaking window managers to testing, tweaking and using Gnome & Budgie on MX Linux. My setup is a bit odd in that it requires MX-ahs in order to operate correctly. (I'll post my hardware software details elsewhere, see below)

Anyway as I begin my efforts, I will summarize a few of my initial surprises...

-- these DEs are NOT memory hogs. As a matter of fact, gnome & budgie use 10% LESS (yes, Less) RAM on my machine than xfce4 uses.

-- gnome & Budgie are only about 5-10% heavier than dwm, hlwm, bspwm, openbox :lipsrsealed:
-- the basic MXPI installer works very well for both DEs; the setups require a minimum of tailoring/ tweaking in order to be functional.

The basic setup/installs of gnome Basic and budgie idle at 780-790MB of RAM on my platfform; xfce4 idles at 880-890MB of RAM.

fwiw I plan on documenting the details of my learnings and will publish those materials on http://eirenicon.org (for any who might be interested).

If you have experience using Budgie or gnome on MX to share, feel free to share you thoughts. btw. & fwiw I will NOT build these into respins.

Posted: **Sun May 17, 2020 6:55 pm**

Here's a shot of gnome 3.30 on MX19....

Posted: **Sun May 17, 2020 7:27 pm**

very interesting!

Posted: **Sun May 17, 2020 8:18 pm**

gnome is actually quite nice as there are numerous tiling options, all easy to use. The image quality is also much better than most DEs offer. There are quite a few things I don't find as pleasant, but it's a great explore. Budgie, on the other hand, runs like a fast, nice xfce consuming fewer resources than the typical xfce does.

Posted: **Sun May 17, 2020 8:37 pm**

Is that Mutter running on Wayland, or the older X11 version?

Posted: **Sun May 17, 2020 9:23 pm**

If you use Ubuntu 20.04 you can run it with Wayland or X as you choose.

Posted: **Mon May 18, 2020 12:10 am**

I get the feeling that your XFCE RAM use is about twice as high as on a fresh MX install because of services that those other desktops are starting up at boot or login time, whether you're running that DE or not.

Posted: **Mon May 18, 2020 8:36 am**

Hi Stevo... that is a fresh install set of numbers. All 3 are running on the same 'exact' install base. I have actually achieved similar results on other base distros as well.

Code: Select all

$ inxi -Fxxxz
System:
  Host: mx Kernel: 5.4.7-antix.1-amd64-smp x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc 
  v: 8.3.0 Desktop: Gnome 3.30.2 wm: gnome-shell dm: LightDM 1.26.0 
  Distro: MX-19.1_ahs_x64 patito feo February 15  2019 
  base: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster) 
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Inspiron 5493 v: N/A serial: <filter> 
  Chassis: type: 10 serial: <filter> 
  Mobo: Dell model: 0M4FW1 v: A00 serial: <filter> UEFI: Dell v: 1.8.0 
  date: 03/24/2020 
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 39.9 Wh condition: 39.9/42.0 Wh (95%) volts: 13.1/11.4 
  model: BYD DELL 1VX1H9A type: Li-ion serial: <filter> status: Full 
  Device-1: hidpp_battery_0 model: Logitech Wireless Mouse M510 
  serial: <filter> charge: 55% (should be ignored) rechargeable: yes 
  status: Discharging 
CPU:
  Topology: Quad Core model: Intel Core i5-1035G1 bits: 64 type: MT MCP 
  arch: Ice Lake rev: 5 L2 cache: 6144 KiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx 
  bogomips: 19046 
  Speed: 939 MHz min/max: 400/3600 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 825 2: 867 
  3: 998 4: 936 5: 666 6: 673 7: 952 8: 932 
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel bus ID: 00:02.0 
  chip ID: 8086:8a56 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa 
  compositor: gnome-shell resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: Mesa DRI Intel UHD Graphics (Ice Lake 4x8 GT1) 
  v: 4.6 Mesa 19.3.3 compat-v: 3.0 direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel 
  bus ID: 00:1f.3 chip ID: 8086:34c8 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.4.7-antix.1-amd64-smp 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express Fast/Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: Dell RTL810xE driver: r8169 v: kernel port: 3000 bus ID: 01:00.0 
  chip ID: 10ec:8136 
  IF: eth0 state: down mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter 
  vendor: Dell driver: ath10k_pci v: kernel port: 3000 bus ID: 02:00.0 
  chip ID: 168c:0042 
  IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter> 
  Device-3: Qualcomm Atheros type: USB driver: btusb bus ID: 1-10:5 
  chip ID: 0cf3:e009 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 953.87 GiB used: 609.53 GiB (63.9%) 
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Silicon Power model: SPCC M.2 PCIe SSD 
  size: 953.87 GiB speed: 31.6 Gb/s lanes: 4 serial: <filter> rev: ECFM22.5 
  scheme: GPT 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 59.74 GiB used: 11.55 GiB (19.3%) fs: ext4 
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p3 
  ID-2: swap-1 size: 2.00 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap 
  dev: /dev/nvme0n1p4 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 63.0 C mobo: N/A 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): cpu: 0 
Info:
  Processes: 273 Uptime: 13h 01m Memory: 23.26 GiB used: 1.44 GiB (6.2%) 
  Init: SysVinit v: 2.96 runlevel: 5 default: 5 Compilers: gcc: 8.3.0 alt: 8 
  Shell: bash v: 5.0.3 running in: sakura inxi: 3.0.36 
mark@mx:~

Posted: **Mon May 18, 2020 9:04 am**

For the record, Budgie on MX sounds like a dream come true to me.

Posted: **Mon May 18, 2020 9:11 am**

I ran budgie for a while, but in the end i missed the whisker menu too much. brisk crashed to much back when I tried it.

Posted: **Mon May 18, 2020 9:28 am**

Dolphin, brisk is the Solus-developed menu for MATE.

Budgie desktop menu is different from Brisk.

Posted: **Mon May 18, 2020 10:06 am**

asqwerth wrote: Mon May 18, 2020 9:28 am Dolphin, brisk is the Solus-developed menu for MATE.

Budgie desktop menu is different from Brisk.

Well, brisk is the one I tried. I may have compiled it don't remember. as I recall it worked on both mate and budgie at the time. its been awhile, Ikey doherty was still at solus at the time.

Posted: **Mon May 18, 2020 1:43 pm**

I can say I have had no crashes with budgie on MX19 ahs. The install from MXPI was dead simple. The setup arrived as a working desktop. It seems to co-exist well with xfce. I'd recommend giving it a spin @Adams-3.

Posted: **Sun Jun 07, 2020 11:48 am**

Hi, I like Budgie as Ubuntu budgie a lot. I have Ubuntu Budgie on my daily use Asus.

I have MXLinux running on my old HPTouch PC. Very happy with it. And now I installed the Budgie desktop.

Want to see what it looks like before I install MXLinux on my daily use laptop and add the Budgie environment. But how can I start it up? There is nu session choice when entering my password at login.

Posted: **Sun Jun 07, 2020 12:01 pm**

Just install Budgie from MX Package Installer. (You'll see in Popular Apps tab)

Then if it's not existing on login menu (upper-right on the bar) :

From Menu, open "LightDM GTK+ Greeter: settings" => "Panel" tab and add the item "Sessions Menu".

Next time you boot, click that on login screen.

Posted: **Sun Jun 07, 2020 12:02 pm**

I found it in the upper panel. But now I cannot find how to go back.

Posted: **Sun Jun 07, 2020 12:03 pm**

Choose the "Default Session" for Xfce.

Posted: **Sun Jun 07, 2020 12:05 pm**

Okay. Found it. First logg-off. then make the choise in the panel again.
Had some issues with the background. Just plain collor, no pictures. Maybe a hardware problem.

Posted: **Sun Jun 07, 2020 12:06 pm**

At login screen or on desktop after login ?

(If after installing the new DE and logging in, that's normal as you selected nothing yet for that DE.)

Posted: **Sun Jun 07, 2020 2:05 pm**

manyroads wrote: Sun May 17, 2020 10:00 am -- these DEs are NOT memory hogs. As a matter of fact, gnome & budgie use 10% LESS (yes, Less) RAM on my machine than xfce4 uses.
-- gnome & Budgie are only about 5-10% heavier than dwm, hlwm, bspwm, openbox
The basic setup/installs of gnome Basic and budgie idle at 780-790MB of RAM on my platfform; xfce4 idles at 880-890MB of RAM.

Two years ago when I changed from Xfce to Gnome, I came to the same conclusion. And the setup is easy.
viewtopic.php?f=100&t=56971

Posted: **Sun Jun 07, 2020 4:09 pm**

rasat wrote: Sun Jun 07, 2020 2:05 pm
manyroads wrote: Sun May 17, 2020 10:00 am -- these DEs are NOT memory hogs. As a matter of fact, gnome & budgie use 10% LESS (yes, Less) RAM on my machine than xfce4 uses.
-- gnome & Budgie are only about 5-10% heavier than dwm, hlwm, bspwm, openbox
The basic setup/installs of gnome Basic and budgie idle at 780-790MB of RAM on my platfform; xfce4 idles at 880-890MB of RAM.
Two years ago when I changed from Xfce to Gnome, I came to the same conclusion. And the setup is easy.
viewtopic.php?f=100&t=56971

That's not my conclusion though.

I autostart MX19 with 2 conkies, variety, radiotray, and bl-hotcorners daemon. RAM at startup for XFCE idles at 705MB (according to MySysInfoConky) if I don't open a browser or other program.

If I open htop in addition to the above, which I did to check how accurate the conky's RAM reading was, RAM usage went up to 735MB. And yes, the conky's RAM reading was the same as htop's.

On my 2nd MX19 install, with 1 conky, variety, radiotray and compiz + fusion-icon autostarted, the RAM did idle at 900+MB, so it appears that compiz does take up about 200+MB in resources.

Posted: **Sun Jun 07, 2020 4:34 pm**

The RAM usage will vary on different machines. asqwerth, if you have not yet installed the Gnome, then install and check what it takes.

Posted: **Sun Jun 07, 2020 8:22 pm**

I guess I'd offer the following thoughts, and these are personal opinions:
-- gnome and budgie are about the same memory size as xfce4 on my platforms, with similar infrastructure.
-- mx installs seem to be about 10-15% lighter than arch-based (fwiw).
-- I still like hlwm, dwm, and bspwm best. They are about 5% lighter than xfce4...but that's not why I like them better. (I enjoy them more... and love to tweak them.)

I'd recommend use whatever 'floats their boats'. This is linux and ought to be fun.

Posted: **Mon Jun 08, 2020 8:35 am**

rasat wrote: Sun Jun 07, 2020 4:34 pm The RAM usage will vary on different machines. asqwerth, if you have not yet installed the Gnome, then install and check what it takes.

I have Gnome installed on my Anarchy (Arch-based) and Fedora partitions on the same machine. No doubt this is not Debian, which may or may not be lighter. These 2 Gnome distros always show slightly higher RAM than XFCE on MX, for my usage.

This is the conky showing my RAM usage of 864MB on my Anarchy gnome install (I have variety installed there as well):

gnome-ram2.jpg

Perhaps if I disabled the following gnome-shell extensions :
1. dash to dock (i don't like not having a dock/panel which can indicate what opened windows I have)
2. arc menu (akin to a searchable Whisker menu)
3. appindicator support (for "systray" notifications)
4. mpris indicator button (which is similar to my XFCE pulseaudio plugin which I always add to my XFCE panel)
5. openweather (to show weather, which I have in my MX conkies or which I could seek out the xfce plugin for),

I might get a "basic" gnome installation (I'm assuming that is what rasat manyroads is referring to) that uses less RAM than my XFCE install.

But to me, that would remove all the usability I require of Gnome, and would remove things that I expect to come standard in a DE, ie, extensions nos. 1 to 3 at the very least.

So I'm not saying Gnome is that huge a resource hog nowadays, but I'm saying that if you look at what I include as autostarting in my XFCE setup, I get 705MB for RAM usage, while a similar-usage setup on Gnome would consume more RAM.

I definitely do not have my MX install consuming 890 MB for a basic/default setup.

Posted: **Mon Jun 08, 2020 9:20 am**

btw. I have found that I am able to use sxhkd with gnome, xfce, openbox, bspwm, hlwm and dwm thereby standardizing my keybinds and normalizing (reducing?) mem use (on average). I have not tried any othe DEs or WMs with sxhkd.... generally because I don't 'feel like it'.

MX Linux Forum

Gnome-Budgie-xfce on MX19.1 ahs

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