4 ms·

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 ho

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.

aidenn0 7y ago
Virtual machines? My laptop has 32GB of ram and my workstation has 64GB. If I need 1GB instead of 2GB per VM, then I have a lot more breathing room.
- tutfbhuf 7y ago
  For me it's input lag. DEs and applications with high memory requirements feel sluggish. Maybe that have to do with L1/2/3 cache misses, which are more likely for bigger applications, whereas some WMs might fit entirely into the CPU cache.
  - aidenn0 7y ago
    I would hazard a guess that this is more a sense of memory-heavy DEs prioritizing features over efficiency in general, rather than being a causal relationship.
AlexeyBrin 7y ago
AFAIK, Xubuntu and Lubuntu are targeted to low spec (think at virtual machines) or old machines where the RAM usage is significant.
- zumu 7y ago
  They still sell computers with 4gb of ram, so it doesn't even have to be an old computer.
fierarul 7y ago
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 7y ago
  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’.
zumu 7y ago
Some people don't have that much ram? Ram is still expensive, especially when bundled with laptops.

aidenn0 7y ago

Virtual machines? My laptop has 32GB of ram and my workstation has 64GB. If I need 1GB instead of 2GB per VM, then I have a lot more breathing room.

tutfbhuf 7y ago
For me it's input lag. DEs and applications with high memory requirements feel sluggish. Maybe that have to do with L1/2/3 cache misses, which are more likely for bigger applications, whereas some WMs might fit entirely into the CPU cache.
- aidenn0 7y ago
  I would hazard a guess that this is more a sense of memory-heavy DEs prioritizing features over efficiency in general, rather than being a causal relationship.

AlexeyBrin 7y ago

AFAIK, Xubuntu and Lubuntu are targeted to low spec (think at virtual machines) or old machines where the RAM usage is significant.

zumu 7y ago
They still sell computers with 4gb of ram, so it doesn't even have to be an old computer.

fierarul 7y ago

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 7y ago
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’.

zumu 7y ago

Some people don't have that much ram? Ram is still expensive, especially when bundled with laptops.