
Xubuntu 19.10 vs. Lubuntu 19.10 RAM Comparison - maverick74
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7PZdoWFnic&app=desktop
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surfsvammel
How is it relevant if the DE consumes 300mb or 400mb of RAM when idle? (honest
question)

I’d like to see a CPU/power consumption comparison. I’d love to see how
Pantheon, KDE and the new version of Gnome holds up. Maybe I’ll do such a test
myself!

My workstation has 32Gb of ram, my laptop 16Gb. RAM is normally not an issue.
When I run data intense stuff, that needs all RAM, I run without a DE.

~~~
fierarul
_For you_ RAM is normally not an issue. Plenty of machines that would need
Xubuntu / Lubuntu are having RAM issues. 100MB is a whole lot!

Honestly, if you have 32GB of RAM, I don't even see what would you save by
running without a desktop environment: get an extra 1.5% extra RAM?

I've restored my old machine last year and I've been surprised how much 'value
for RAM' you could get years ago. I could run Windows 95 on the little machine
with Office 97 and _do something_ with it. While a modern Linux doesn't even
have a kernel for 16MB of RAM, not to mention an office suite.

~~~
surfsvammel
I run outside the DE because I have had more problems with CUDA stuff hanging
the computer during long running jobs when running inside of a DE. Nothing
worse than waking up to check results of some long job in the morning only to
realised it crashed 15 minutes in.

You are right, of course, about it not being a problem for those two machines.
I didn’t realise Xububtu and Lububtu profiled themselves as low requirements
OS’.

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DKnoll
It would be a better comparison if both systems were on equal footing. In this
demonstration the Xubuntu system has swap enabled and the Lubuntu system
doesn't. The load averages should also not be taken into consideration as the
Lubuntu system has only been up for ~1 minute and the Xubuntu system has been
up for ~20.

~~~
maverick74
So... Do you mean xubuntu could have a better score or lxqt?

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DKnoll
I don't mean either, I just mean the methodology isn't great.

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panpanna
I have been told the kde has similar (or maybe even lower) footprint despite
doing more.

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maverick74
Yes, despite all the bad advertising and all the persistent ghost (that just
won't go away) KDE's Plasma as evolved a lot over the years and is now very
lite while doing a lot of things (and if you have a sluggish Plasma DE, then
your computer or distro DOES HAVE A PROBLEM that is not KDE's fault)

~~~
lousken
for me KDE plasma isn't sluggish but cold starting apps like dolphin is
significantly slower than xfce's thunar, thunar it's pretty much instant while
dolphin is about 1.5s

~~~
maverick74
If you care about 1.5s and other measures in the same sizes, then this post is
for sure of interest to you, because you can save 100MB+ of RAM and have a
perfectly functional and beauty DE with LXQt!

By the way, I use Plasma on my everyday job and I can't complain of it.

It's fast, feature full and works very well. (I never seem to understand how
people complain of it being slow, bloated, whatever... Mine isn't!!) The thing
I love the most in it is being able to set it in whatever way I want. I never
get tired of it and so far it hasn't let me down. I'm always amazed that,
whatever crazy idea I think of that can speed up my work, or make me more
comfortable about my DE, they have an option for it!!!

It's a kind of freedom I can't find anywhere else.

For older computers where every MB counts (plasma uses around 350-500mb), or
for people who don't care about extreme customizations (that are happy with an
XP/7 like DE), then LXQt is used

~~~
lousken
No, I'm coming from the other way - if I have 6700k OC'ed to 4.6Ghz, 32GBs of
RAM and an SSD, i want all these basic apps to show up instantaneously. I
think I've payed enough money for this kind of experience not to suck.

Also time matters for me because I am mostly using my keyboard, chaining
commands, so I start imputing stuff right after I open it and if those
commands are missed because the application is still loading it sucks.

~~~
maverick74
LOL!!!

Fair enough!!!

Have you tried PCmanFM and LXQt? I think you'll be pleased

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lousken
I've tried XFCE and thunar(both of which are incredibly fast and I loved
them), but I've switched to KDE this year because there was always one
annoying bug (last one was with large screenshots
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20674473](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20674473)
). I've also tried LXDE but the window manager seemed very basic compared to
XFCE, but I haven't tried LXQT.

I'll do another set of tests once Ubuntu (or rather PopOS) 20.04 LTS releases.

~~~
maverick74
Let me suggest you to, when you do try Lubuntu with LXQt, use kwin as the WM.

It's very lite (you won't notice the difference when compared to openbox) and
it's feature full/very powerful.

LXQt devs have mentioned they will probably migrate to kwin when Wayland
arrives for good.

(and forget lxde. LXQt is the future ;)

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morekozhambu
Why run a full DE, when all you need is openbox, tint2 and conky?

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maverick74
Well not everyone is a techie.

Most people don't mind having a lite DE as long as it's not too ugly (or
feeling like win98), has a familiar GUI and is not hard to configure.

OpenBox (beside being feature complete - no new features allowed and locked
with x11) does not have that "familiar" GUI.

But for more techie people, openbox is a solution, or the new sway or even the
terminal!

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cowmix
No Mate in the mix?

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maverick74
Apparently Mate uses more RAM that Xfce or LXQt so, usually, the competition
is between this two.

But i agree that a Mate comparison would be nice as well!

