How lighweight is XFCE in relation of Gnome ?

Electrolr0x · 2008-07-25 11:51:30

Hi Fellas,
Im about to install the Archlinux on my computer's office but i got a few doubts before doing this, like, I' m a java programmer and i´d like to have a nice n fast environment, to do my work. The all applications i've used to run normally are, Eclipse IDE, Jboss AS, Oracle, Thunderbird email client, and Gaim IM or any else. Running'em on win xp, gezzesss, it's painfull, thats the reason i wanna make a change.
I was thinking about install the Base packages only plus a Xfce or Gnome. I'll install the xfce only if the perfomance difference is considerable. What do you guys rekon?
Thanks in advance.
Ps.: Machine -> Pentium 4/1.66gHz/1Gb RAM/160Gb HD/ Rage 128 pro graphic card

bgc1954 · 2008-07-25 17:00:47

AFAIK, you won't find a whole lot of speed difference between the two other than xfce might boot a tad faster and I believe that thunar in xfce is a bit quicker than nautilus in gnome. Xfce is more lightweight in terms of packages and dependencies--less bloat. If you're looking for something really lightweight you might want to look at openbox with pypanel or the like. Very light and quick and quite popular with arch users.

Edit: Where are my manners. Welcome to Arch.

Last edited by bgc1954 (2008-07-25 17:02:19)

Gullible Jones · 2008-07-25 17:11:11

Eh, I've generally found XFCE to be much lighter on my system, and consequently faster, than Gnome... YMMV I guess.

COMMUNISTCHINA · 2008-07-25 18:05:22

If you need a DE, you could look into LXDE.
XFCE is pretty good, though.

floke · 2008-07-25 18:10:39

I think it really depends on your system specs.
I switched from gnome to xfce a few days ago, and have just switched back into gnome today to see if I can spot any speed difference - the answer? I can't.

That said, thunar is quicker than nautilus - but then pcmanfm is quicker than Thunar - you can use these in gnome so its no big deal.

skottish · 2008-07-25 18:46:13

floke wrote:

That said, thunar is quicker than nautilus - but then pcmanfm is quicker than Thunar - you can use these in gnome so its no big deal.

It's also more feature rich and doesn't suffer from the fam/gamin problem that Thunar has.

Electrolr0x · 2008-07-25 20:27:25

got it guys.
thanks for all replies. Well after that ill probably go for gnome and have a look on openbox.
Just to get rid of windows xp, my computer is going to have a (much?)better performance right ?

floke · 2008-07-25 21:33:20

Right!

And welcome to Arch.

KimTjik · 2008-07-25 22:07:03

... and you'll actually be able to make it do nearly whatever you want it to.

My best wishes!

iggyst00ge · 2008-07-26 01:56:25

The speed difference between XFCE and Gnome is more obvious the LESS capable your system happens to be. Granted, a stripped down Gnome can be pretty quick, but I've had much better luck getting XFCE to run on my older boxes.

Judging by the specs of your current machine, you should be able to get a comfortably speedy Gnome installation. Regardless, if you find it's not fast enough, it's relatively easy to switch from Gnome to XFCE, or even Openbox if you find need something REALLY fast and don't mind the minimalist route.

PCMan · 2008-07-26 12:23:27

Don't forget to try LXDE.
http://lxde.org/

It's in Arch, and there are detailed installation guides.
http://lxde.org/wiki/ArchLinux

It gives you a minimal desktop with all things you need,
at the same speed as Win xp and less RAM usage.

If properly configured, a stripped down custom gnome installation can be
just a little slower than win xp (except their slow file manager).
However, its file manager is much more powerful than that of win xp.
(IMHO, the konqueror file manager of KDE is the most feature-rich one, and
it's much faster than gnome's, under KDE of course.)

So, it depends on what you need, but I'm sure LXDE is a good choice for you.

PCMan · 2008-07-26 12:25:57

BTW, if you installed Norton Antivirus or something similar on your win xp, than I'm sure that gnome cannot be much slower since win xp is greatly slowed down by antiviral software.

kclive18 · 2008-07-26 13:22:03

XFCE is definitely lighter than GNOME; it takes much less memory than GNOME and has a more minimalistic, easy-to-use interface.

Electrolr0x · 2008-07-28 11:48:50

Thank you guys for the replies !
Have a nice one.

bredin · 2008-07-28 17:03:22

I like XFCE better than Gnome becuse it's more minimalistic, more stable, better menu system and filemanager.
And I can't feel any difference in speed.

KDEmod ftw.

daf666 · 2008-07-28 17:15:29

XFCE is MUCH faster than gnome.
I can tell you this after a whole week of tests, comparing the two DE's on my old desktop (Intel P4-3Gh).

Generally, while Gnome can be a very beautiful and usable desktop, from my experience it feels slower and slower when using it over time, moving from Gnome to XFCE feels like pressing the turbo switch.

Now days I use XFCE, but with Openbox instead of XFWM.

cardinals_fan · 2008-07-28 18:30:35

It's not THAT much faster if you use everything. However, Xfce is nice and modular so that you can pick what components you want and dump the others. It's more configurable than GNOME.

erastus · 2008-07-29 00:52:20

On my system GNOME is consistantly faster than XFCE. I've experienced this across distributions (most recently the Slackware-based Zenwalk with XFCE. Another across-distro experience with me and XFCE is that it's buggy and crashy. I'm running on an AMD Sempron 1.6 gHz 2800+ (32bit), with 1 GB ram. My very basic video card is nVidia GeForce 4 MX4000 with 64 MB ram.

I don't mean to criticize XFCE. I've always wondered why I don't have the wonderful XFCE experiences that others do....

robmaloy · 2008-07-29 04:37:45

XFCE works nice on a P3 w/ 750 MHz and 192MB RAM

dunno if gnome would run there too (i dont think so)

MetalheadGautham · 2008-07-29 11:33:24

If you need something really light, and I mean lighter than even Fluxbox, OpenBox, LXDE, Xfce or gnome, get yourself IceWM. It rocks. Its much faster than OpenBox, uses lesser memory, but has a pannel with a menu, tray, taskbar, time and a network monitor and a cpu monitor. Its just a window manager, but its quite feature rich compared to the bloated things you commonly find.

I personally recommend pairing it up with simple CLi apps like nano, irssi, yaourt, etc and simple GUI apps like xine-ui, EmelFM, DFM, etc, and an internet suite like Sea Monkey.

Zeist · 2008-07-29 11:42:03

robmaloy wrote:

XFCE works nice on a P3 w/ 750 MHz and 192MB RAM
dunno if gnome would run there too (i dont think so)

At my parent's place they had Ubuntu (6.something I think) running perfectly fine on a Celeron 633MHz with 128mb ram a year or so back until that machine got retired... and that's on bloated Ubuntu and not on lean Arch. So it can most definitely be done.

Since everyone keeps throwing in different WMs as suggestions I'll also throw one in that is one of my favourite WMs PekWM. It is the most useful *box-like WM I've used.

sujoy · 2008-07-29 11:50:42

since you will be programming, get going with a tiling WM like awesome or xmonad. these are meant to be used by programmers ofcourse its good for others too.

as for gnome and xfce, xfce works wonders with a low spec system, whereas with 1GB RAM, i doubt you'll feel any difference in speed other than that its bloat free (almost) and is pretty slick.

ekerazha · 2008-07-29 12:37:54

Not so much. On a not prehistoric PC (about Pentium III or newer) with a decent amout of RAM (I could say 128 MB), Xfce 4.4.x isn't so lighter than GNOME... while GNOME has much more features (example: using Xfce/thunar/thunar-volman you can't change the params that HAL will use to mount drives do you want to mount drives with "sync" using HAL? You can't using Xfce). I'm switching all my Xfce systems to GNOME.

Last edited by ekerazha (2008-07-29 12:39:06)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-07-25 11:51:30

How lighweight is XFCE in relation of Gnome ?

#2 2008-07-25 17:00:47

Re: How lighweight is XFCE in relation of Gnome ?

#3 2008-07-25 17:11:11

Re: How lighweight is XFCE in relation of Gnome ?

#4 2008-07-25 18:05:22

Re: How lighweight is XFCE in relation of Gnome ?

#5 2008-07-25 18:10:39

Re: How lighweight is XFCE in relation of Gnome ?

#6 2008-07-25 18:46:13

Re: How lighweight is XFCE in relation of Gnome ?

#7 2008-07-25 20:27:25

Re: How lighweight is XFCE in relation of Gnome ?

#8 2008-07-25 21:33:20

Re: How lighweight is XFCE in relation of Gnome ?

#9 2008-07-25 22:07:03

Re: How lighweight is XFCE in relation of Gnome ?

#10 2008-07-26 01:56:25

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#11 2008-07-26 12:23:27

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#12 2008-07-26 12:25:57

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#13 2008-07-26 13:22:03

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#14 2008-07-28 11:48:50

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#15 2008-07-28 17:03:22

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#16 2008-07-28 17:15:29

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#17 2008-07-28 18:30:35

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#18 2008-07-29 00:52:20

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#19 2008-07-29 04:37:45

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#20 2008-07-29 11:33:24

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#21 2008-07-29 11:42:03

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#22 2008-07-29 11:50:42

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#23 2008-07-29 12:37:54

Re: How lighweight is XFCE in relation of Gnome ?

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