KDE and XFCE4 use the same amount of memory

[frag79]

I have a pII 450 with 128mb ram, and although I've used KDE for years, I decided to try XFCE4 because of all the great things I've read about it. It's a really nice desktop enviroment, but when I run free, the results are about the same as KDE! I've heard that XFCE is supposed to use much less memory than KDE, but for some reason that is not the case. When I type free in a terminal right after KDE or XFCE start, I usually have around 15mb of free memory left, and when I start a browser or other programs, it usually goes down to 1.5mb, and stays that way untill I close out all my programs, then it slowly moves back up to 15mb. I really don't have a problem with this, since my computer is fast enough for what I use it for, but I just thought it was strange. If anyone else could compare the two DE's It would be interesting to see the results.

[welmers]

Originally posted by frag79
I have a pII 450 with 128mb ram, and although I've used KDE for years, I decided to try XFCE4 because of all the great things I've read about it. It's a really nice desktop enviroment, but when I run free, the results are about the same as KDE! I've heard that XFCE is supposed to use much less memory than KDE, but for some reason that is not the case. When I type free in a terminal right after KDE or XFCE start, I usually have around 15mb of free memory left, and when I start a browser or other programs, it usually goes down to 1.5mb, and stays that way untill I close out all my programs, then it slowly moves back up to 15mb. I really don't have a problem with this, since my computer is fast enough for what I use it for, but I just thought it was strange. If anyone else could compare the two DE's It would be interesting to see the results.

Free memory in 'top' doesn't mean a lot in this matter.
Free memory is filled up soon with file cache. (why should you waste free memory by leaving it free?)

Usage of swap space says more.
You have to look at the processes itself to determine how much memory it uses.

[frag79]

Originally posted by welmers
Free memory in 'top' doesn't mean a lot in this matter.
Free memory is filled up soon with file cache. (why should you waste free memory by leaving it free?)

Usage of swap space says more.
You have to look at the processes itself to determine how much memory it uses.

Actually I have 128mb of swap and it is rarely used, I only notice about 10mb of it being used at any given time. I'll see how much memory the kde processes use vs the xfce processes. Either way, I can't tell much of a speed difference between the two, actually the xffm file manager is slower than konqueror.

[Pierre Lambion]

I'm not surprised actually. See my post here: http://justlinux.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=132918 , a minimal KDE system is very resource effective.

P.

[mrBen]

Originally posted by frag79
Actually I have 128mb of swap and it is rarely used,

Swap and cache are very different things.

[frag79]

I realize this, however welmers suggested checking swap usage. I have a 128mb swap partition and it is rarley used at all unless I have an excessive amount of apps open.

[jglen490]

Welmer's reply hit the nail on the head. Linux does memory management very well. Physical RAM is MUCH faster than hard drive, so that's where Linux puts file cache first. With 128 MB of RAM, you probably won't notice a whole lot of difference between KDE and Xfce. My laptop is an older IBM TP. It has 72MB of RAM and I can tell the difference between KDE and Xfce. Thus, I use Xfce, because it stays very stable throughout a session, it works better in the video environment of my machine, and it takes longer to slow down than KDE.

I've used KDE, IceWM, and Xfce on this machine, and while i really like each of them, Xfce works best in my limited environment. KDE just sucks up too much to begin with compared to Xfce and leaves less room for storing file cache in RAM.

You mileage will vary.