KDE1 was very fast and lightweight, i used it back when it was new via Caldera OpenLinux on a PMMX with 32MB RAM and i was very impressed not only with how fast

KDE1 was very fast and lightweight, i used it back when it was new via Caldera OpenLinux on a PMMX with 32MB RAM and i was very impressed not only with how fast it was but with how much stuff the CD came with (although that was largely due to the excellent - and unreplicated - work of the people behind COL)- and proceeded to do what every self respecting teenage nerd that learned about Linux does: install it on every friend and relative's computer, permission optional of course :-P No really, KDE1 was very fast - try COL 2.3 CD from archive.org[1] and put it in PCem or 86box with an emulated Pentium MMX at 166MHz and 32MB of RAM and see it for yourself. Later versions bulged and bloated and i do not think it ever felt as lightweight, but at least version 3 was rock solid. Of course this meant that KDE4 had to be rewritten from scratch and become a bloated buggy mess, as is tradition on the Linux desktop (also see GNOME 3 and i'm going to be very disappointed if XFCE doesn't become slower and bloated after it fully switches to GTK 3). [1] https://archive.org/details/OpenLinux2.3CD https://archive.org/details/OpenLinux2.3CD