There is simply no such thing as a lightweight desktop environment. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that all of them are lightweight 'enough'. LXDE is the lightest of all of them, Cinnamon is close to the heaviest. And yet the difference in resource usage is barely anything. That 160mb won't even get you a single browser tab, it is completely irrelevant even on very old and shitty hardware. If you do not have 160mb spare then you simply do not have a working computer in current year.The legitimate difference is in install size, but even then it's only a couple of GB. Once again, you really don't have a usable computer if you can't spare it. Lightweight DEs are a complete waste of time, they are generally missing a bunch of important features or are ugly as sin, in fact its usually both. The ONLY legitimate choices for a DE are Cinnamon, KDE, or Gnome if you want to be a complete faggot. Anything else you only got because you fell for incorrect memes. I mean its fine if you like the novelty of having something really outdated, for a retro kind of vibe or whatever. But for a real functional useful computer you are compromising your user experience for no tangible benefit on any of these so-called 'lightweight' DEs.
Cool, thanks for your input
>>108812198I have known this since 10 years ago.You are not wrong, but LXDE does have less features and feel less bloated.It's not ugly either.
People keep trying to make their own small and light DE and it usually sucks because they all use the same heavyweight toolkits. Qt is decent but complicates simple apps, GTK is a pile of garbage that people still use out of habit.
>>108812198It's not the DE's fault btw it's the fault of GTK. With modern GTK they bundle in a load of features that the lighter DE's dont use, but get anyway. Libadwaita's adoption has effectively killed the alternative GTK desktops because it's either use GNOME's full fat GTK styling and packaging or jump to Qt. Alternative GTK desktops have been on and will continue to be on life support until they hard for GTK (not likely) or jump to Qt or another toolkit like EFL (more likely).Dont give me that "just use GTK4" bullshit either because modern GTK app development pushes you almost exclusively towards libadwaita so your app fits in with the GNOME app environment. No one is going to pick GTK4 over libadwaita. Everyone say thank you to GNOME for singlehandedly murdering multiple GTK desktops
>>108812198JWM, IceWM, pure Openbox.The first two are Window Managers with Desktop Environment elements. Openbox needs few additional tools to be installed along with it but nothing special.They all need configuration because out of box come with pretty barebone defaults, but it's manageable. If you can't configure your shit you should not be using Linux in the first place.
>>108812198It's not 160 MB though. It's like half a gig. And some of us have old laptops with 4 gigs of ram or less that we want to use as a not-daily driver so this could be a real benefit
>>108812295For what purpose?
>>108812347OP want lightweight desktop environment. Lightweight Window Managers with DE functionality is the best they may get.I guess TDE is also pretty lightweight?
>>108812342Did you look at the picture? Those are on the same laptop on a fresh session of each.
Is less about Ram and more about lack of bugs and lower CPU usage.
>>108812347Using legacy hardware is the only reason, probably because you're poor and have to use a laptop you found in the garbage or something
you might be right but fastfetch doesn't show the whole story, LXDE could just be doing heavy caching. I'm able to get as low as 400mb minus caching on a fresh session minus caching using wayfire and all my autostart software
>>108812373idk why I said minus caching twice I'm trying to quit nicotine and adderall at the same time
>>108812356Did you consider that the picture could be wrong?
>>108812373When I check with htop it tells me 400 for LXDE and 550 for Cinnamon. So roughly the same difference between them but both a bit lower. Not sure why the discrepancy there, but the point still stands. If you are only really seriously compromised hardware then you need to do something like >>108812295.I mean if you want to use one of the lightweight ones for personal preference then it's fine. It's just not a noteworthy difference.
>>108812384Wrong in what sense? I made the picture it's from my own computer, it isn't wrong unless you are trying to tell me there is no possible way to check memory usage on Linux, because I checked a few different ones.
>>108812198measuring how 'lightweright' they are by idle ram use is retarded, a far more lightweight DE can precache everything while a heavy clunky one can load stuff then you click it so the lightweight would take far more ram while being far better its not a good coparison..
>>108812422In the sense that when you google it, you will get a variety of numbers more in the 500 MB ballpark. In the sense that your n = 1 example is not representative of what's seen across a much large sample size
i should try a fresh install of alpinelinux+enlighnment to see how much it consume on idle.>>108812283efl is great ,super performant.Enlightnment have been my main de ,super performant.Lacking a lot but i just now vibecode my own apps so it doesn't matter.
>>108812457Well there's two things there, first of all I'm running it on Arch and it is leaner than the default on Mint or other distros which run a custom version. Secondly it uses a lot more if you have a lot more available, that's why the best you can do is like-for-like comparisons on the same hardware. I don't know for certain but I might assume that Cinnamon would be more optimized to take advantage of higher amounts of ram. I'll check free for exact cache figures just give me a minute because I want to log out for a fresh session.
>>108812424cope
>>108812619nah
>>108812624it is. I won't explain why to a retard
>>108812424>a far more lightweight DE can precache everythingIf it's actually lightweight it shouldn't even need to.
>>108812198Just use GNOME.
>That 160mb won't even get you a single browser taband you think the DE is the problem here
>>108812198You have 0 understanding of how ram works.The more you have the more the system uses.
i use xfce because its customisable, correct and disciplined, not because its "lightweight".
>>108812198does it matter on a semi-modern PC? no.does it matter on a laptop from 2011 you're sentimental about? absolutely.the linux desktop ecosystem is wide, there's "space" for all
>>108812283it would be funny if someone re-implemented gtk in qt, let's say, qtk?
>>108812793libadwaita looks like vomit and goes out of its way to be as unthemeable as possible
>>108812198It isn't about memory optimization but CPU optimization. My DE runs perfect on machines that don't even have HW acceleration.
>>108812283Qt doesnt seem good either, i hope iced based desktops become a thing
>>108812198You're complaining about under 800MB of RAM usage in 2026, you are the problem.
>>108812198Use ope>>108812295Nevermind, he said it already.
labwc (wayland openbox) with firefox uses less memory and cpu than gnome idling
>>108812198>it is completely irrelevant even on very old and shitty hardwaredefine "old" you dumb fuck"very old" could mean anything from 2gb ram down to 64 mb>The ONLY legitimate choices for a DE are Cinnamon, KDE, or Gnome if you want to be a complete faggot. Anything else you only got because you fell for incorrect memes.XFCE is literally among the best distros, your opinion is trash and you should feel bad>"But for a real functional useful computer you are compromising your user experience for no tangible benefit on any of these so-called 'lightweight' DEs.">translatiom: a lighter distro won't help you, because it just won't ok!!!!11kill yourself
>>108812198>There is simply no such thing as a lightweight desktop environment.aymbOS 8 bit look it uphttps://www.symbos.org/
>>108813804>aymbOS 8 bit look it up
>>108813804>>108813830SYmbiosis Multitasking Based Operating SystemReal Preemptive Multitasking - 1024 KB Dynamic Memory - 2 TB Filesystem - 100% Flexible Windows GUI - Network Capable
>>108813756If it is too old or resource limited to work with Cinnamon or KDE, then it is too old or resource limited to work with Xfce, LXDE, etc. A lighter DE will not help you because it is not meaningfully lighter. That's the entire point I am trying to make. I spent a long time going through them all and giving them all a chance, I was quite surprised how little difference there is regarding resource use given the community sentiment. I'm on a 13 year old laptop by the way.If you prefer it then its fine, I used Xfce for about a year. It is limited in some ways compared to a more modern alternative. I wanted to persist with it because in theory it was what I wanted, but in practice it was lacking. Fine if you like it more but the point I am trying to make is that its more an emotionally based choice than a practical one.
>>108814168>throw out systemd>throw out wayland>throw out pipewire>use lxqt with openboxthere, ancient laptop revived.
>>108812198We used to store entire operating systems in 64MB of RAM and they did everything modern OS's do and more.
>>108813830imagine trying to join a Teams meeting in this
>>108812198>>108812249>Xorg display server>dwm window manager>picom compositor>xterm or st terminal emulator>fireforx-esr browser>lxqt file pickerYou LITERALLY do not need anything more than this, any "lightweight" desktop environment is already bloat, because ALL desktop environments are bloat.>>108814498>Teams Why would you have Microslop spyware installed on your computer?Disgusting.
Cosmic uses the same amount of memory but is way... way more complete.
>>108814612>GNOME but written in RustI want to puke.
>>108814622No one wants to use your ugly ass DE.
>>108812198niggerfaggot
>>108812198DEs have been completely deprecated ever since wayland shells have become a thing (noctalia, DMS), they plug into the most popular compositors and just werk
>>108814612>>108814699>cosmic>complete>not uglybait used to be believable
>>108814993Crazy how it just werks. No longer have to fuzz around with tint2
>>108814699I hate both GNOME and Cosmic, as I said Xorg + dwm + picom is the way.The point is that rustards are incapable of creating anything good, they are only capable of copying (rewriting in rust) software that already sucks because they have shit taste in everything.
>>108812198I get that cinnamon is on the heavy side but I don't understand why mint uses 1.1 gb on my laptop while plasma uses 1.7 gb with CachyOS? Is this a distro thing and the DE has nothing to do with it?
>>108814993agreed, moved from GNOME to labwc + Noctalia and it's been real nice. I do miss the overview sometimes though.
>>108812198wtf is dthis?
>>108812198lxqt is lighter than lxde>>108814993are these much lighter weight than a DE?
>>108816248Are there any specific advantages on using dwm for someone who has used Sway and previously i3 for the last 20 years or so?
>>108816755Do you like programming in C? If yes dwm is for you, otherwise it is not.
>>108814527>lxqt file pickerxterm is already a filepicker
>>108816935I need thumbnails in my file picker for posting cute anime girls on /g/
>>108812198How the fuck are you getting LXDE to eat that much you fucking retard?
>>108812373>I'm able to get as low as 400mb minus caching on a fresh sessionThat's fucking horrible. That's nearly Xfeces level shit. Holy shit nigger. LXDE used to take <100MB.Just install Trinity at this point, what the fuck.
>>108812355>I guess TDE is also pretty lightweight?Yeah TDE is stuck in 2008. Thank God.
>>108812377>I'm trying to quit nicotine and adderall at the same timefucking good luck with that roflmao why not one at a time
>>108816997
>>108817211You got my interest.
Something worth stating, is that GNOME used to have performance issues (memory leaks, low fps animations, etc) before Canonical ironed out these issues when Ubuntu switched to GNOME. And before XFCE switched to GTK3 there was a larger difference in memory usage, comparatively.Unless it's changed recently, the aforementioned improvements by Canonical, are one of the reasons why Cinnamon and it's outdated GNOME components are a mess, by the way.
>>108817211cute larp
>>108817639I don't care enough to look it up but that sounds believable>Unless it's changed recentlyhonestly from my tests GNOME 50 and Plasma 6.6 are pretty much equal in performance now, when GNOME would've always lagged behind previously. dunno if that speaks to the quality of 50 (lol) or if we're finally reaching the ceiling on performance, at least strictly DE performance.
>>108818332>dunno if that speaks to the quality of 50 It's likely both Wayland and just the culmination of years of minor improvements. Circa GNOME 40, the rounded top bar corners got removed for a slight performance improvement, for instance.
>>108816697>lxqt is lighter than lxdeI forget the exact numbers but there was little difference between them, I believe LXDE is a little lighter.
>>108817174That's a fresh install fresh boot default settings of LXDE, I have done absolutely nothing to it. Cinnamon actually had a few applets I added so it should be a bit less.
>>108817639>Cinnamon and it's outdated GNOME components are a messThen why is Cinnamon better than gnome in every way? What are you even talking about? I don't know the exact details but the Mint team did a lot of work on Cinnamon to fix all the gnome fuckery.
>>108818518Muffin, Cinnamon's fork of Mutter, doesn't have all the improvements that Mutter has accrued over the years. This is also true for their other forked GNOME stuff. Whether Cinnamon is better than GNOME, is a different question entirely.
>>108812283It not even gtks fault. Modern gpu drivers are simply bloat, on any operating system. If you create a simple opengl/vulkan program that displays a triangle it will use 100mb ram. Thats the minimum for the simplest program.
>>108814527>>picom compositorbloat, you dont need that
>>108812198I've been saying this for years.It's why I switched to Cinnamon from XFCE in 2017 or so and never looked back.
>>108818866why would you ever downgrade to cinnamon? theres literally nothing there that xfce doesnt do better
>>108812198Do lightweight desktops tend to mean more stable experiences?Plan to do heavy duty 3d rendering on my pc.
>>108818618>doesn't have all the improvements that Mutter has accrued over the yearsWhat specifically though? I only used gnome briefly and didn't like it so I can't really compare on finer details like that, but I don't really see any issue with Muffin from my personal use.
