I have read many times that a Gnome user said if KDE4 is faster than Gnome I'm gonna change. Also on my local Ubuntu forum there's a guy asking which KDE distro is the best
if you have only 256MB RAM. I said Arch, which I successfully installed on a very old
computer (488 mHz, 4GB disk, 256MB RAM).
But I really wonder how lightweight KDE4 tries to be. I was until recently one DE user, but have installed LXDE to see how much of a difference there is.
And I must say that there is a difference, but that big as I thought. Probably because I use old disks (older than my computer, which is also quite old now) for Linux. I have original Windows on my original disk.
Any way what's the lowest hardware configuration that a KDE4 should still work reasonably well? I know that it was quite slow on 488mHz, 256MB RAM and 4GB disk...

Also is there any way to measure the difference in speed between the DEs I would like to measure the difference between KDE and LXDE as objectively as I can.

If you compile it by hand, to have only the things you need, and skipping most kdesupport stuff (and therefore, a lot of things later) it should run very well on the system you've mentioned. I have tested it on AMD Geode 500MHz.

ivan wrote:If you compile it by hand, to have only the things you need, and skipping most kdesupport stuff (and therefore, a lot of things later) it should run very well on the system you've mentioned. I have tested it on AMD Geode 500MHz.

That's nice to hear, but a normal user can't compile from code. Or at least it sounds
like a very daunting task.

BTW: If you do compile from source how do you update, do you have to compile it again or can it be done differently (easier)?
Something like an auto-compiler or update manager so that it only checks the trunk (or whatever) repo and downloads it and installs it for you...
If there is something like that (probably it's in form of a bash script) that would make me try and compile it my self from SVN / code... (but there are probably other hurdles, like dependencies etc...)

Well, it is a problem, but I can not think of any distro that would want to compile and ship a /lite/ version of KDE - they always go for the /full featured/ version.

As for the bash script, there exists something like svn build or something, try to find it on techbase.

Personally, I just do a:

Code: Select all

cd $KDE4ROOT
for dir in *; do svn up $dir; done

And to build, you need to specify the order (support first, libs, pimlibs...)

Code: Select all

cd $KDE4ROOT
       for dir in
              support
              libs
              pimlibs
              base
              plasmoids
              pim
       ; do cd $KDE4ROOT/src/KDE/$dir; cmakekde 2> /dev/stdout| tee $KDE4ROOT/build/KDE/$dir.build; done


You should change the paths to match yours ($KDE4ROOT is not a known variable - it is just something I like to have)

There is a very good article on compiling KDE at techbase, so these commands are only a complement of the procedure explained there.

I saw the how-to on KDE-techbase... Maybe I'll do it some day (compile KDE from source, that is). I'm seriously thinking of doing that, as I'm currently as bleeding edge as my distro (Kubuntu) allows and I feel I could get even more bleeding edge than that (I do have KDE-nightly on)...

So I guess there is a whole "market" for lightweight KDE distro waiting to be conquered?? I personally think it should be done, just to prove those that think that KDE is big and slow wrong.
But I don't now how many features one should give away to get a light KDE.

I personally enjoy all the "bling" that KDE brings to Linux (and other desktops, off course).

Well, if you run Arch you could try KDEmod, "a modular and tweaked package set of the K Desktop Environment that has been optimized for Arch Linux."

If you find Plasma to be sluggish you can try this tip.

I'm not complaining about speed of KDE or having trouble with my computer.
I'm just wondering how lightweight KDE is.
I want know is KDE a powerful but still light DE or more of a "hog"?
And I'm speaking about vanilla KDE.
I know that KDE is the best DE feature-wise, but how about system-wise.
I want to know do KDE devs developing it with older computer also in mind, or more
KDE user probably has a good computer so it can be a bit more heavy...

And is there a way to empirically measure how much system resources a DE is using and the speed of app launching.
Is time that app needs from being "clicked-upon" to being shown even connected to the DE or is it more up to the app how this is handled?

And Hans, yes when I'll buy a new computer I'll probably change distro to Arc and install KDEmod on it.

on my experience

4.2 is lighter than previous 4 versions but significantly havier than 3.5

on pentium 4 with 512 M kde 4.2 is usable with minor lags and 3.5 flies

on pentium 3 1GHZ with 256 M kde 4.2 is not usable and 3.5 flies

use 3.5 if your computer is below pentium 4

ash wrote:on my experience

4.2 is lighter than previous 4 versions but significantly havier than 3.5

on pentium 4 with 512 M kde 4.2 is usable with minor lags and 3.5 flies

on pentium 3 1GHZ with 256 M kde 4.2 is not usable and 3.5 flies

use 3.5 if your computer is below pentium 4

My advice would be to invest few bucks and buy more RAM . RAM is dirt-cheap these days.

Primoz wrote:So I guess there is a whole "market" for lightweight KDE distro waiting to be conquered??

I think there is a market. This isn't the Windows world where everything less than 95% market share is ignored. We're a community where even a 1% segment of the community can have their own Linux distro or BSD variant. The popularity of bloated distros doesn't matter.

The best way to get it though, is to provide the packages as an alternative.

Janne wrote:
My advice would be to invest few bucks and buy more RAM . RAM is dirt-cheap these days.

No, no, no, and no!!!! There are no excuses for more bloat and poor performance! Suggesting that one has to buy more RAM is the lamest excuse masked as a workaround.

I have a Pentium3-450 MHz from 2000 that still works very well. It has 256 MB RAM. Even though it still serves me well, and I can get good enough performance with a full-featured Linux (Slackware 12.2). However, buying more RAM is not an option; the motherboard is simply too old for that, suitable RAM modules are simply no longer available. But the computer works very well. So why should I have to buy more RAM just to have basic functionality in a desktop?

No, that's not a good answer. Remember, netbooks are coming. And if I have more RAM, I would like to use it on more data and applications, not on obese desktop environments.

Thankfully, KDE has done wonders on that matter. KDE 3.5.10 flies on that machine; I'm now preparing to upgrade it to KDE 4.2... we'll see.

sombragris wrote:No, no, no, and no!!!! There are no excuses for more bloat and poor performance! Suggesting that one has to buy more RAM is the lamest excuse masked as a workaround.

Thank you! Thank you! If it were anything else in the world, we would be decrying the planned obsolescence and waste, but since it's only computing power, some think it's okay to throw away computers because they're not new. I sometimes see sixty year old cars driving on the streets, but a computer that is a mere six years old is a laughing stock. Sad.

I would just like to say that after a while I was on Windows 7 and even though I previously had an impression that it's fast and lightweight this time I got the impression that's slow and heavy. It was constantly using 30-50% CPU in 38%RAM. And KDE uses 0-10% CPU and 25% RAM (501MB ).
OK it's not ideal with RAM, but when you can have 8GB RAM in one socket 501 isn't that much.

So I conclude that KDE is lightweight, but it could be even lighter.
But the question is: can it use less than 64MB while "idle" like while surfing the net (I measured the RAM while surfing with Firefox).

I would also like to see KDE made lighter in general. Not so minimalist, but just cut down on some of the bulk. Sorry, I'm not a developer, I wouldn't know that much. However as a user I can say that I would appreciate it.

What Ivan mentioned:
http://kdesvn-build.kde.org/

Works like a charm and is basically the bash script you wanted. Setup once, build as often as you like.