XFCE ends up using 20MB more RAM than GNOME

10-04-2009	#1 (permalink)
arinlares Just Joined! Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: California, USA Posts: 95	XFCE ends up using 20MB more RAM than GNOME I've been playing with getting XFCE installed on my netbook, under Ubuntu 9.04, and every time I've done it, I noticed that XFCE ends up using 20MB more RAM than GNOME does. I'm not sure why, but I'm a little curious, as XFCE is supposed to be a "lightweight" WM. Might the fact I installed it via the xubuntu-desktop package have anything to do with this fact? So far as I know, it's only XFCE that does this. I've tried LXDE, and it came out using 40MB less RAM than my GNOME session.

10-04-2009	#2 (permalink)
coopstah13 Linux Guru Join Date: Nov 2007 Location: NH, USA Posts: 1,756	Contrary to popular belief, xfce desktop isn't THAT lightweight. What I'm guessing is that some of the gnome stuff is being loaded into memory still even though you are using XFCE desktop, because it has the option to load gnome stuff. I would look at the output of top and sort by memory to see the highest usage items.

10-04-2009

#3 (permalink)

ozar

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Join Date: May 2004

Posts: 12,056

Quote:

Originally Posted by coopstah13

Contrary to popular belief, xfce desktop isn't THAT lightweight.

Yup, I've found that to be true in my own eperience. Each time I install XFCE, it's almost as big as a Gnome install, and yet it doesn't seem to have near the features and polish that Gnome gives. For whatever reason, it does always feel a little faster than Gnome, though.

That said, I've never installed XFCE and found it to be bigger than a Gnome install. Not sure why that would be happening.

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10-04-2009	#4 (permalink)
reed9 Linux Guru Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 2,200	Xubuntu in particular is a very memory intensive implementation of XFCE. Distrowatch did a comparison awhile ago between Debian Lenny with XFCE and Xubuntu, and Lenny weighed in at less than half the memory usage of Xubuntu. Mostly because Xubuntu starts a good deal of services and does load a bunch of GNOME libraries. __________________ The Arch Way How to Ask Questions the Smart Way Registered Linux User #482863

10-04-2009	#5 (permalink)
arinlares Just Joined! Join Date: Jul 2008 Location: California, USA Posts: 95	Ah, ok. That'll explain it, reed9. I'll just try the xfce-4 package, and the xfapplet package (so I can use the GNOME volume applet), and see how that does, and post back. Nope, the xfce4 package still takes more than GNOME, but only 10MB.

10-04-2009	#6 (permalink)
reed9 Linux Guru Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 2,200	Perhaps the follow up article will be helpful. DistroWatch.com: Put the fun back into computing. Use Linux, BSD. __________________ The Arch Way How to Ask Questions the Smart Way Registered Linux User #482863

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