memory usage comparison of DE-s

lman · 2010-01-27 19:36:47

I'm going to reinstall my arch and I wanted to try some things out. So I tested the memory usage of DE-s. I haven't seen a comparison on the same machine in a while. So here are the results:

No apps running, just the environment. (The xfce4 is the one I use every day, There was an extra weather applet and notes plugin for the panel, but otherwise clean. I tried to add those applets in other DE- too, where it was possible)

lxde(slim):    ~150 MB
e17(entrance): ~160 MB
xfce4(slim):   ~250 MB
gnome(gdm):    ~250 MB
kde(kdm):      ~280 MB

I was quite surprised how much my xfce4 used up, so it's no longer a lightweight environment is my eyes. It was pretty even with gnome and kde on the memory usage front (for the eyes kde is a clear winner).
I did another test with the same pdf open + picture viewer + file browser + terminal:

lxde [ epdfview, ristretto, pcmanfm, lxterminal]: ~220 MB
xfce4 [ epdfview, ristretto, thunar, Terminal]:   ~320 MB
kde [ okular, gwienview, dolphin, konsole]:       ~380 MB
gnome [ evince, eog, nautilus, gnome-terminal]:   ~390 MB

surprise, surprise - kde apps use less memory (then alternative gnome app), better integrated and in my opinion they look way better (the default at least).
I think the kde guys are doing a great job there. It feels a little bit faster than gnome... and the compositor is way better.
The lightweight apps with lxde still win... but often at the expense of usability.

My comp/system specs: 4GB RAM, ati card, 2.6.32 kernel 64 bit, kde 4.3, gnome 2.28, xfce 4.6.1, e17-svn

Full intallation size:

lxde: ~20 MB
e17: ~90 MB
xfce4: ~100 MB
gnome: ~600MB
kde: ~700 MB

That's it, here come i reinstall...

Last edited by lman (2010-01-27 19:37:01)

JohannesSM64 · 2010-01-27 19:49:50

You should try a standalone WM too (biased recommendations: Openbox or dwm). You're not limited to the 5 choices you listed.

Pierre · 2010-01-27 19:55:27

You should know that these numbers or mostly useless and not comparable. E.g KDE 4.4 with PSI and Yakuake running results of a memory consumption about 180MB in total. At best you'll get some relative hints always depending on you system setup.

lman · 2010-01-27 20:07:32

JohannesSM64 wrote:

You should try a standalone WM too (biased recommendations: Openbox or dwm). You're not limited to the 5 choices you listed.

As the title says it was a test for DE-s, not WMs, but lxde should be quite close to openbox in my opinion.

Pierre wrote:

You should know that these numbers or mostly useless and not comparable. E.g KDE 4.4 with PSI and Yakuake running results of a memory consumption about 180MB in total.

I didn't try kde 4.4, but maybe you are right. I think with a little bit of optimizing a few MBs could be spared, but these numbers are of the nearly default configurations (except for xfce4).
As for the comparability - I don't believe these numbers are very precise, they are supposed to give you a hint on how DE-s stand relatively to each other considering memory usage. On different machines the results are going to be different of course ( 32bit vs 64bit, graphics card, etc.), and I just wanted to kill some time after exams

Last edited by lman (2010-01-27 20:08:39)

jason.blier · 2010-01-27 20:27:10

On my system I run:

- 64 bit kernel and apps
- MPD
- Hddtemp Daemon
- Smartd
- Preload
- Lm_sensors
- Hal and Dbus
- Full Xfce desktop
- conky

135 MB of memory actively used with a clean desktop - preload caches about 350MB more for quick appliction startup.
When I boot into LXDE - it uses 128 MB

Not sure how you are getting over 250MB used with a clean startup. What do you have running in the background (Daemons, etc)?

Pierre · 2010-01-27 20:33:26

Didn't I just tell that those values are not comparable? E.g. the more RAM you have the more will be used etc..

rebugger · 2010-01-27 20:41:03

Hm, you have 4gb of ram - are you really using them. all that "what setup uses less ram" sounds like you never use more than 1gb of it. or do you have any big applications that use that much memory, that you have to save ram with the DE? i mean: use the hardware that you have

na12 · 2010-01-27 20:53:32

Or if you are on x86_64 system,more RAM will be used than on i686.

broch · 2010-01-27 20:59:21

interesting:
kde 4.3 after boot takes 187MB (with composite enabled + nvidia)
kde 3.5.x after boot takes 79MB (without composite and + nvidia)
kde 3.5.x after boot takes ~130MB (with composite enabled + nvidia)

Last edited by broch (2010-01-27 21:17:57)

jason.blier · 2010-01-27 21:19:04

rebugger wrote:

Hm, you have 4gb of ram - are you really using them. all that "what setup uses less ram" sounds like you never use more than 1gb of it. or do you have any big applications that use that much memory, that you have to save ram with the DE? i mean: use the hardware that you have

Good point. If I leave my machine on for a few days and do my normal day to day. I level off at about 240MB actively used with about 1.2 GB cached. When I am working in GIMP my active memory use goes up over 600MB and if I have other things going on (MPD playing, few browser windows open, torrents running, and a movie queued up) I can easily use up 80% of the total memory in the system and starting to tickle the swap partition.

Also, I have seen some weird stuff: I have a laptop that is pretty basic 1.7 Ghz proc, 2GB RAM, etc - and it runs KDEmod way faster than my (much more powerful) workstation - BUT running Gnome feels slow, where on my workstation, Gnome runs really quick.

On my workstation, I use Xfce because it takes all the good things about Gnome and cuts out all the stuff that you dont need (deps) and Xfce follows the CDE roots that I used to use when I first got into linux/bsd. I use preload to get all my frequently used apps into memory (cached) so that they startup much quicker.

Sorry if I am all over the place with this post - lots of coffee today

keenerd · 2010-01-27 21:32:45

To get better numbers, use this script:
http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/ps_mem.py

It will give you much more consistent measurements, and you can pick and choose the processes to count. Like, my window manager is using 694KB at the moment.

ninian · 2010-01-28 00:25:38

keenerd wrote:

To get better numbers, use this script:
http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/ps_mem.py

Very handy! Thanks for bringing ps_mem to our attention.

lordmetroid · 2010-01-28 02:12:18

I tried to use other desktop environments other than gnome but I love my GUIs. I am happily sacrificing lightweightness to get what I like. Now I am using gnome, a hell to install and configure but I still like it.

EDIT: Okay, I lied, I do not like it, use something like Openbox, it simple and occupies almost no resources.

Last edited by lordmetroid (2010-02-07 15:40:54)

lman · 2010-01-28 08:25:57

rebugger wrote:

Hm, you have 4gb of ram - are you really using them. all that "what setup uses less ram" sounds like you never use more than 1gb of it. or do you have any big applications that use that much memory, that you have to save ram with the DE? i mean: use the hardware that you have

Yeah, but then I start firefox with >10 tabs, a few pdf-s for school, VirtualBox with XP, thunderbird, xmms2, ooffice, gimp, deluge, linuxdc++, sometimes eclipse etc. and suddenly I'm over 3gig
And if nobody cared about the memory usage of DEs, we can easily get to the Vista level or worse and just force people to buy a few extra GB of ram

jason.blier wrote:

What do you have running in the background (Daemons, etc)

daemons: net-profiles crond atd hal iptables preload sshd oss dnsmasq
as for the xfce: panel plugins eat up a lot of memory
xfce4-menu-plugin: 26 MB
Terminal: 23 MB
xfdesktop: 21 MB
xfce4-settings-manager: 18 MB
mixer-plugin: 17 MB
xkb-plugin: 17 MB
panel: 17 MB
weather-plugin: 10 MB
xfce4-notifyd: 9 MB
session: 6 MB
etc. these are the RSS values from task manager, i think together they could use more than 100 MB of ram + the X and daemons.

Last edited by lman (2010-01-28 08:30:44)

Arch Linux

#1 2010-01-27 19:36:47

memory usage comparison of DE-s

#2 2010-01-27 19:49:50

Re: memory usage comparison of DE-s

#3 2010-01-27 19:55:27

Re: memory usage comparison of DE-s

#4 2010-01-27 20:07:32

Re: memory usage comparison of DE-s

#5 2010-01-27 20:27:10

Re: memory usage comparison of DE-s

#6 2010-01-27 20:33:26

Re: memory usage comparison of DE-s

#7 2010-01-27 20:41:03

Re: memory usage comparison of DE-s

#8 2010-01-27 20:53:32

Re: memory usage comparison of DE-s

#9 2010-01-27 20:59:21

Re: memory usage comparison of DE-s

#10 2010-01-27 21:19:04

Re: memory usage comparison of DE-s

#11 2010-01-27 21:32:45

Re: memory usage comparison of DE-s

#12 2010-01-28 00:25:38

Re: memory usage comparison of DE-s

#13 2010-01-28 02:12:18

Re: memory usage comparison of DE-s

#14 2010-01-28 08:25:57

Re: memory usage comparison of DE-s

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