Lightweight, as we know, is a relative term – though I prefer another relative term: Efficient, being somehow more conducive to quantifying with some numbers for comparison to other claims in other environments such as sister LXQt or WMs window managers with or without a panel, tint or a FM file manager. Not to mention the extravagant claims made about Xfce
From the outset LXDE impresses, being an efficient One-Stop Shop or source for all your needs to get the fastest most efficient Linux DE desktop environment
So let us establish a couple of baseline numbers for comparison using old laptops of 2009 – 2013 vintage; one with 3GiB RAM and the other with 8GiB – you figure which
I could head back a few years to Trisquel ver:8 and quote 112MiB RAM used at idle after a fresh boot, but let’s keep to the here and now.For efficiency take a look at this on the 2009 HP G60 3GiB RAM laptop.
https://imgur.com/iSntsSD This is the full monty antiX-22 with LXDE using just 149MB RAM. Now head on over to antiX home web page, or STÆMPUNK TV who thinks 274MiB is truly phenomenal efficiency?
Okay, now let’s take a look at speed
on the other 2013 Dell Latitude E6420 with 8GiB RAM: https://imgur.com/5OcjGbj video of screen taken externally with Samsung NX-mini camera. (Slackers refers to incomprehensibly slow and inefficient Slackware distro and to Porteus which, the last time I looked, falsely claims to be the World’s fastest distro.) porteus dot orgThough I do not have the skill-set to frig the videos; perhaps some will suggest that I have manipulated the figures. There is no point as any of you can validate my setup.
So what of “Double Your Memory – Free?”
I noticed this recently in the much respected ‘The Register’
https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/11/ ... op_update/
Where you will find -
The Pi OS, with its customized LXDE desktop, uses around 200MB of RAM at idle, and it will run in just 1GB. Slightly more than antiX Linux, for example, but it's much more complete and well integrated. Even Alpine uses more than that, and it definitely requires some tech chops to install and configure, whereas the Pi OS needs next to none. We tried adding Xfce to our install of the Pi OS, only to find that its RAM usage nearly doubled.
( Slightly more than antiX Linux – You what…? AntiX-LXDE uses LESS )
So there you have it from an independent respected source confirming my findings that even the supposed ‘lightweight’ Xfce uses double the RAM. What most won’t tell you is that AFAIK, on top of that Xfce uses more resource than LXDE for every app or program you use
However the mystery for me is why supposedly lightweight minimalist distros such as BunsenLabs and Crunchbang++ using only Openbox consume 580GiB RAM ….! Or why most searches for LXQt reveal 340MB RAM used
- more than double that used by my AntiX LXDE setup! https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/31/ ... nsen_labs/ I played with BunsenLabs recently but could not deduce why so heavy – perhaps you guys can explain?
As for itsFOSS extolling KDE Plasma as being “extremely lightweight” – lol - I stand to be corrected