Arch Linux

arew264

Member

From: Friendswood, Texas, US

Registered: 2006-07-01

Posts: 394

Website

OMG, When Did This Happen?

Okay, lemme just say right now that what has me so fired up is that my lappy (2 GHz AMD Sempron single core, 512 MB RAM) is running KDE 4. Responsively. I never thought that would be possible.
That said, was memory usage in KDE 4 really trimmed that much? htop shows... 266 MB RAM in use (by userspace applications) and 103 MB swap in use. I'm typing this post in Firefox, while Filezilla is transferring my 14 GB music library (I just did a new installation, so I have to get my music library from my arch desktop), pacman is downloading several hundred megabytes of Sauerbraten, and Amarok is playing some of the songs that Filezilla already transferred. The only thing remotely slow is my wireless connection (which is a BCM4312 that I was able to set up with only one trip to a working Arch box to get the firmware).
Will this slowly slow down, or will I always be able to get away with running KDE 4? I know it'll bog down when running Eclipse, but then again, the aforementioned working Arch box (with a 2.4 GHz dual core processor and 4GB RAM) bogs down while running Eclipse. OpenOffice is alwaysa bit slow too.

Last edited by arew264 (2008-11-09 03:23:14)

chris_ak

Member

Registered: 2008-03-25

Posts: 64

Re: OMG, When Did This Happen?

just curious, are you running kdemod?  or

Rasi

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2007-08-14

Posts: 1,914

Website

Re: OMG, When Did This Happen?

Okay, lemme just say right now that what has me so fired up is that my lappy (2 GHz AMD Sempron single core, 512 MB RAM) is running KDE 4. Responsively. I never thought that would be possible.
That said, was memory usage in KDE 4 really trimmed that much? htop shows... 266 MB RAM in use (by userspace applications) and 103 MB swap in use. I'm typing this post in Firefox, while Filezilla is transferring my 14 GB music library (I just did a new installation, so I have to get my music library from my arch desktop), pacman is downloading several hundred megabytes of Sauerbraten, and Amarok is playing some of the songs that Filezilla already transferred. The only thing remotely slow is my wireless connection (which is a BCM4312 that I was able to set up with only one trip to a working Arch box to get the firmware).
Will this slowly slow down, or will I always be able to get away with running KDE 4? I know it'll bog down when running Eclipse, but then again, the aforementioned working Arch box (with a 2.4 GHz dual core processor and 4GB RAM) bogs down while running Eclipse. OpenOffice is alwaysa bit slow too.

512 is easily enough to run kde4 fluently. And yes, kde4 *should* be lighter than kde3 was, even if the installation itself is larger.

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Ranguvar

Member

Registered: 2008-08-12

Posts: 2,549

Re: OMG, When Did This Happen?

From what I understand, KDE3 uses less RAM, CPU, and videocard (understandable, since there's no Plasma or anything), but on a machine that's fast enough to run KDE4, it runs faster, due to improvements in Qt4.

doorknob60

Member

Registered: 2008-09-29

Posts: 403

Re: OMG, When Did This Happen?

To me KDE4 is about as fast and light as Gnome, but better. KDE4's my favorite full DE, although right now I prefer using Openbox (doesn't count as a DE so KDE4 can still be my favorite DE :-D)

feminaexlux

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From: /home/lani

Registered: 2008-08-28

Posts: 29

Website

Re: OMG, When Did This Happen?

Let me say I wish *I* could do that! I have 2 gigs of memory but only 1.7 GHz of AthlonX2 computing power o_O But I really really really like KDE4, so I'll keep at it, even if it's slow. Maybe I'm doing something wrong

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pointone

Wiki Admin

From: Waterloo, ON

Registered: 2008-02-21

Posts: 379

Re: OMG, When Did This Happen?

http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3138

KDE 4 'consumes 39% less memory than its predecessor'

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moljac024

Member

From: Serbia

Registered: 2008-01-29

Posts: 2,676

Re: OMG, When Did This Happen?

Let me say I wish *I* could do that! I have 2 gigs of memory but only 1.7 GHz of AthlonX2 computing power o_O But I really really really like KDE4, so I'll keep at it, even if it's slow. Maybe I'm doing something wrong

That processor is supposed to be much faster than the Sempron from the first post. You also have quadruple memory. You're most likely doing something wrong.

Then again, speed of software is subjective, so.....

Last edited by moljac024 (2008-11-09 18:39:07)

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SomeGuyDude

Member

Registered: 2008-10-09

Posts: 271

Re: OMG, When Did This Happen?

266 of physical memory plus 103 in swap? Damn boy, that's making me reconsider KDE4mod, even as an Openbox user...

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Chrysalis

Member

Registered: 2008-07-07

Posts: 155

Re: OMG, When Did This Happen?

Can you imagine 4.2-4.3+ when they actually have time to work on optimizing the code?