2.6G of RAM usage normal?

[Huckleberry Finn]

Btw, is there a way to turn off "disk writes"?

What are you talking about, please?

viewtopic.php?f=145&t=60599#p599794 But Stevo suggested "Duck Duck Go" :)

[JayM]

Of course you're going to have a bit of disk access as long as the OS is running. There are various system processes running all the time even when you have no user-space apps running. Linux is updating system logs in /var/log. Caching is being done to /var/tmp and /var/cache. SMART is monitoring your disk's health. Various things are being done in the background all the time that require disk reads/writes.

[danielson]

@Huckleberry Finn - tu t'exprimes bien en français mon ami!

@JayM - sometimes i wonder if i'm not more bothered by MX KDE updating file content.
Something akin to what happens when i'm on Windows and its integrated search feature.
The cpu fan goes off regularly and htop doesn't indicate anything special.
Previous tries with Q4OS does not seem to have this issue as much.

My HP EliteBook is noisy by default and i really enjoy "the sound of silence".
LinuxMint XFCE (not MX version) and their MATE iterations have been the most silent thus far.
But they don't do file search as good as KDE.

As they say, you win some, you lose some.

[gbowlds]

DEFINITELY NOT! I've been using the KDE desktop since 2012, beginning with Mint 12 KDE. Since Mint dropped KDE support in 2016, I've tested a couple of dozen distros with the new Plasma 5 desktop and none have used over 500MB of memory on bootup. Usually, it's closer to 400MB. I regularly run a dozen productivity and multimedia apps and games simultaneously, using less than 2GBs of RAM. Many tests are showing that the Plasma desktop now uses less resources than XFCE.The only apps that that causes my system to use more than a total of 2GBs of RAM at any time are web browsers.

[tony37]

@ danielson: I see you have a lot of extensions in vivaldi, that will make some difference
I also see baloo_file in your processes (with 161 MiB), that may explain those disk writes. Did you mark "Enable File Search" in System Settings > Search > File Search ? You could disable that if you want less disk writes. Which program do you use to search for files? In my experience Catfish does a good job also on KDE, and doesn't need Baloo file indexing (but don't install the 1.4.10 version from the stable repo, it has some terrible bugs, use the MX Test version instead).

[danielson]

@tony37 - yes, have "enable file search" set.
Can always disable the content part of it to see if that makes a difference.
If i disable "file search" altogether, what are the options to find a file quickly without sucking up resources?

@gbowlds - i can see that Dropbox takes plenty of resources.
Vivaldi with all its extensions might have an impact too.
Have reduced these to 9 to see if that will do something to improve the experience as well.

Otherwise, only a fresh install could be the real test as to why MX KDE need 2.6G at loaded time.

[tony37]

@tony37 - yes, have "enable file search" set.
Can always disable the content part of it to see if that makes a difference.
If i disable "file search" altogether, what are the options to find a file quickly without sucking up resources?

Do you simply search for file name, or also for file content? Do you use Dolphin or KFind (or other)?

Otherwise, only a fresh install could be the real test as to why MX KDE need 2.6G at loaded time.

You could boot from live USB. Or simply close Vivaldi and Dropbox and see how much difference that makes.

[danielson]

@tony37 - just turning file content search off already seems to make a huge difference.
Can a hotkey be assigned to start/shut off again as needed?

Have always used Dolphin in KDE.
Was unaware of KFind.

[tony37]

As you're using Dolphin I suppose you don't often search on file content anyway. And I wouldn't be very surprised if totally turning off the file search won't make a real difference in search speed (you'd have to test).
One thing you should know about the Dolphin search function is that it doesn't show hidden files, or files in hidden folders, also when you say 'Show hidden files'. And in my experience KFind and Catfish are simply faster than Dolphin. But I understand it's easy to have the search function within the file manager (but you could add KFind and/or Catfish to the 'Open with' list for folders).
To search for file content I simply use grep in terminal.

[danielson]

@gbowlds - loading via usb as suggested by tony37 gives me 655Mb which is pretty decent.
843Mb when loading from laptop with no browser running yet.
1,216G with Vivaldi running with only 9 extensions as opposed to previous 18 or so.
Btw, welcome to MX forum!!

@tony37 - thank you for your other good tips which i will follow up on for sure!