Power & Memory Usage Of GNOME, KDE, LXDE & Xfce

[BlackStar]

I understand the point behind "out of the box" experience but does it always have to be a *buntu box? It's well known that Kubuntu provides the worst KDE experience.

I strongly disagree. In my experience, Arch >> Fedora > Kubuntu >> openSUSE (with openSUSE providing by far the worst KDE experience). I find vanilla KDE as found on Arch or Gentoo is better put together on the whole. Fedora is somewhat of a mixed bug (maybe due to the unstable nature of the distro) and Kubuntu works but is somewhat lackluster compared to its Gnome sibling (some strange default choices, but progressively getting better). OpenSUSE could be used as a good example of how a distro should *not* look and work like.

[RealNC]

I'll probably get flamed away for this, but if GNOME (Ubuntu) would have had higher memory usage compared to KDE (Kubuntu), then most people would have come and said how this proves once again why GNOME fails for some many reasons. Now that KDE, which generally gets quite a bit of positive support in these forums, comes out as the "loser", it's all but but but and this is flawed.

Ok so KDE uses more memory. So? Doesn't make it a bad DE or GNOME the greatest DE ever. But instead it's "But on my special-uber-plasma-pwn machine KDE actually only uses -15 MB of RAMz. You fail!!!!11111"

No, the point is that the RAM usage of Ubuntu does not reflect any of those desktops correctly. People see 500MB usage for KDE or 300MB for Gnome and think that's how much RAM those DEs need.

That's just wrong. KDE would need about 150MB on its own and Gnome about 80MB. We know that Gnome uses less memory. But the numbers Phoronix reports are just... wrong.

[deanjo]

I strongly disagree. In my experience, Arch >> Fedora > Kubuntu >> openSUSE (with openSUSE providing by far the worst KDE experience). I find vanilla KDE as found on Arch or Gentoo is better put together on the whole. Fedora is somewhat of a mixed bug (maybe due to the unstable nature of the distro) and Kubuntu works but is somewhat lackluster compared to its Gnome sibling (some strange default choices, but progressively getting better). OpenSUSE could be used as a good example of how a distro should *not* look and work like.

I strongly disagree. In my experience, openSUSE >> Arch > > Mandriva >> Fedora >>Kubuntu (with openSUSE providing by far the most refined and bug free KDE experience).

[karl]

KDE 4 takes 190MB after start-up. Vanilla KDE, Gentoo.

Phoronix, please, for heaven's sake, labe yours tests correctly. This was an "Ubuntu memory and power usage," not "KDE, Gnome, LXDE & Xfce".

You should also test LXDE and Gnome than post your results.
I say this because a poster above you, BlackStar, got 90 MB for Gnome (even with mono and gnome-do and compiz, which are 3rd party apps, it takes 151 MB, still lower than your results).

So from a memory point of view, KDE > Gnome > LXDE (the exact size doesn't matter because it varies from distro to distro, what matters is the difference on the same distro; so phoronix results still stand).

[mugginz]

I don't think there's any doubt that Ubuntu with KDE on top is quite a different animal to Kubuntu in terms of memory usage not to mention various integration bits and pieces.

While it's certainly valid to post stats for Ubuntu plus KDE on top, it would've been quite helpful to include a stock Kubuntu install in the mix as well. Some *buntu users of KDE will have an Ubuntu install with KDE on top, but most would likely go for a Kubuntu install usually.

One thing I will say regarding KDE memory usage though is that KDE plus Compiz has a better memory footprint than does KDE plus composited Kwin.

[Melcar]

I strongly disagree. In my experience, openSUSE >> Arch > > Mandriva >> Fedora >>Kubuntu (with openSUSE providing by far the most refined and bug free KDE experience).

Yeah, my own experience is something like that. Kubuntu is one of the worst KDE based distro I have used, though it's not so bad as to render it useless (the usability of the core Ubuntu outweighs most faults in my opinion). Never bothered with Arch, but I agree that OpenSuse has one of the better KDE desktops out there. I would follow that with Debian/Sidux. Fedora is alright and still better than Kubuntu, but it's definitely not among the best.

[V!NCENT]

Kwin has also more plugins and effects than Compiz and what effects are enables and installed also makes a difference...

In the kde 3.5 days there was also a minimalistic version of kde of which the feaures were on par with Gnome and consumed far less RAM and resources and was significantly faster than Gnome.

Is this minimal version of kde still around with kde sc 4.x? I realy want to see these reaults... badly...

[Jimmy]

I strongly disagree. In my experience, openSUSE >> Arch > > Mandriva >> Fedora >>Kubuntu (with openSUSE providing by far the most refined and bug free KDE experience).

I'm tell'n ya man. Those green wallpapers have to go. It completely flavors peoples opinion of the distro. Green highlights are good but taken too far...

I think BlackStar had a bad experience once that will forever taint his opinion of openSUSE. The general consensus that I've encountered is that openSUSE provides a high quality KDE world. Kubuntu opinions are all over the place but generally are a bit lower others.

It would be interesting to see a large opinion poll about the best KDE distros.

[BlackStar]

I strongly disagree. In my experience, openSUSE >> Arch > > Mandriva >> Fedora >>Kubuntu (with openSUSE providing by far the most refined and bug free KDE experience).

I never could understand that. I keep installing version after version of openSUSE (since 10) only to delete it after being completely fed up each and every time. The biggest issue is that they bastardize the KDE UI to fit some kind of ugly, perverse design (they do the same to their Gnome version). The second biggest is that they consistently manage to make the distro underperform. The last stroke: >40'' boot time on an Intel SSD (when Ubuntu 9.10 boots in ~10'' on the same hardware).

While KDE by itself is both usable and pretty (although I disagree with a few specific design choices), openSUSE somehow makes it feel ugly and inconsistent. Kubuntu is closer to the original KDE feel and Arch is, of course, vanilla KDE.

[mugginz]

It would be interesting to see a large opinion poll about the best KDE distros.

I'd be very interested to have the complaints against Kubuntu enumerated instead of general sledges against its quality relative to other distros.

I've had to run various distros in order to test KDE niceness around the place and haven't found any grievous errors on Kubuntu's behalf that weren't matched in either the same way, or in others by the other distros.

With the various states of KDE's robustness over time, stability issues due to upstream bugs may map into the general time line differently amongst the various distros depending on when packages get updated, etc.

There's also been mention of Canonicals and Kubuntu contributer patches that may have introduced specific bugs into the KDE desktop but I must admit I haven't really seen it myself. I'm happy to buy complaints against Kubuntu if people can be specific where Kubuntu fails where say OpenSUSE doesn't. General statements without specific examples are a little hard to verify for myself, and after 20 years in the computing industry where many are prepared to throw unfounded criticisms around willy-nilly, I'm hesitant to entertain unverifiable complaints. I do find Samba integration to be lacking relative to Gnome, but haven't found a particular distro that provides an outstanding quality KDE-Samba integration.