Dedoimedo to Xfce 4.14: meh

[KBD]

Mine is hot ....

There is simply no comparison - try it, you are a co-conspirator, baby - whether you like it or not

Jack

https://sourceforge.net/projects/mx-kde-iso/files/

They must have improved Plasma a lot since I last used it. Even Adrian's KDE respin is slower than Xfce. I haven't tried Jack Daniel's.

Looking forward to seeing the MX19 based KDE spin :)

[SwampRabbit]

In my MX-19 beta VM I have 423MBs with 93 tasks and 124 threads with 1 running according to htop.

I removed Spice agent, cups, and clipit from application autostart.
Running in VirtualBox with drag & drop, clipboard and other VirtualBox things use up at tiny bit memory that wouldn't necessarily be going on a physical install.
gvfs is kinda a hog across the board. Conky uses some that most people could live without.

The one thing about XFCE is that you can it provides all the functionality you really need OOTB, doing basic things doesn't soak up a ton of memory, and honestly I always see memory resources go back down to around 425MBs after closing everything.
Typically don't see over zealous resource usage day to day from things. Its not hard to get XFCE below 400MBs, although time will tell with 4.14.

I am very intrigued to try Jack Daniels KDE spin now though.

[malspa]

I never pay any attention to the numbers, but booting into Kubuntu 18.04 with KDE Plasma 5.12.8, running top in Konsole with nothing else opened, it showed me about 340 MiB used. I do keep most of the effects turned off, but not everything. Gotta have the cube, lol.

[Stevo]

Well, Phoronix wrote that 4.16 is due in about six months. Maybe it will have more fireworks, but xfce isn't that kind of desktop.

[Auro Kumar Sahoo]

Care to share some screenshots of that Plasma setup which uses 350MB on boot?

My system running MX 18 because of its stability, reliability and usability.
I sometimes test other distribution on VM and don't keep them.
I have tested kde neon and kubuntu 19.04 one/two months earlier, probably on kubuntu 19.04 minimal install I have got this memory footprint of 350-400 mb with 1% cpu usage. But kde neon is very similar too. (In MX because of older KDE plasma it is going to be higher) But you can have latest plasma 5.16 review here:
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/pla ... eview.html

Note:- I have no problems with xfce in particular, but like mate desktop which once shifted to gtk3, it becomes little more heavy, I assume xfce 4.14.1 will be going to little more heavy on Ram usage after gtk3, and when I tested mx19 b1, from my pendrive I was proved, MX running at 450 mb Ram on fresh startup compare to 300-350 mb of mx18.3. it's nothing to do with MX, but I assume gtk3.

[manyroads]

Well, Phoronix wrote that 4.16 is due in about six months. Maybe it will have more fireworks, but xfce isn't that kind of desktop.

Remember xfce has a reasonably new project leader (Sean Davis: https://bluesabre.org/tag/xfce/). Also, he picked up the ball from others who allowed the release cycle to take its time. Now that he has things through a first iteration and this is truly his baby... we'll see how things march forward. btw. He's also the Xubuntu lead.

I plan to continue using Sean's tools (I like the xfce toolset)... but by way of full disclosure; I'm sticking with bspwm as my window manager, for a while. Unlike many here, I love all the scripting, tweaking, building I can do in a tiler like bspwm.

[KBD]

I never pay any attention to the numbers, but booting into Kubuntu 18.04 with KDE Plasma 5.12.8, running top in Konsole with nothing else opened, it showed me about 340 MiB used. I do keep most of the effects turned off, but not everything. Gotta have the cube, lol.

That's impressive. On a fresh boot today of MX 18.3 neofetch shows I'm using 539mb ram.

Code: Select all

$ neofetch
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMNMMMMMMMMM   viking@mx 
MMMMMMMMMMNs..yMMMMMMMMMMMMMm: +NMMMMMMM   --------- 
MMMMMMMMMN+    :mMMMMMMMMMNo` -dMMMMMMMM   OS: MX 18.3 Continuum x86_64 
MMMMMMMMMMMs.   `oNMMMMMMh- `sNMMMMMMMMM   Host: 4291ZDF ThinkPad X220 
MMMMMMMMMMMMN/    -hMMMN+  :dMMMMMMMMMMM   Kernel: 4.19.0-1-amd64 
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMh-    +ms. .sMMMMMMMMMMMMM   Uptime: 45 secs 
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMN+`   `  +NMMMMMMMMMMMMMM   Packages: 2003 (dpkg) 
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMNMMd:    .dMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM   Shell: bash 4.4.12 
MMMMMMMMMMMMm/-hMd-     `sNMMMMMMMMMMMMM   Resolution: 1366x768 
MMMMMMMMMMNo`   -` :h/    -dMMMMMMMMMMMM   DE: Xfce 
MMMMMMMMMd:       /NMMh-   `+NMMMMMMMMMM   WM: Xfwm4 
MMMMMMMNo`         :mMMN+`   `-hMMMMMMMM   WM Theme: Arc-Dark 
MMMMMMh.            `oNMMd:    `/mMMMMMM   Theme: Greybird-mx17 [GTK2] 
MMMMm/                -hMd-      `sNMMMM   Icons: Papirus [GTK2] 
MMNs`                   -          :dMMM   Terminal: xfce4-terminal 
Mm:                                 `oMM   Terminal Font: Liberation Mono 11 
MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM   CPU: Intel i5-2520M (4) @ 3.200GHz 
                                           GPU: Intel 2nd Generation Core Processor Family 
                                           Memory: 539MiB / 7861MiB 

                                                                   

[malspa]

That's impressive.

To me it was very surprising. Only reason I checked was because of what folks were saying in this thread about KDE. I don't care much about the numbers; I'm good as long as the system doesn't feel too sluggish on whatever hardware I'm running it on.

As Dedoimedo wrote about Xfce 4.14 in conclusion, "The performance benefit isn't as huge as it used to [be], because Plasma is super lean, too." That does seem to be true. Also, he ended with these words: "To be continued." I have to assume that he'll be doing a more in-depth piece later.

I haven't seen much difference between Xfce 4.14 in Arch and 4.12 in Debian, other than the newer version having more configuration options. Nothing really to get all excited about, and I think that was Dedoimedo's main point.

[Richard]

MX-19b1 with Xfce-4.14
is basically Xfce4-RC on MX-19-b1.

IMHO, it's just a curiosity piece
on how is MX doing
with the new Xfce4 release?

Will MX19 fix what's fixable in Xfce4/gtk3?
What problems now?
Will they be fixed in MX-19?

And, like all writers, he has to write something. :)
And he is a vocal beta tester with a platform.

[asqwerth]

He's writing about Manjaro, though.