Clarity wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2024 11:12 pm
geo_c wrote: Wed Aug 21, 2024 5:30 pm
KDE is pretty cool, but it's a memory hog. ...
Why is this a concern if it does not impact performance?
I've, for 5 decades, know that how a system manages workload demands is much much more important than idle storage use.
But you may know something that is helpful in this regard.
Curious
Well it's pretty simple. If I'm working on one my machines with 8GB of ram, and the operating system is using 1 or 2 GB of it, then when I try and run an Ardour project with 16 tracks of audio each with 4 plugins, the extra gig or two of ram expended on sliding windows and thumbnail popups is simply crowding out the application from available memory. This is crucial when trying to mix a large audio project, not to mention video. Especially when the load gets critical and you try to shut some things off as so not to crash the system. You start clicking around and the animations take even more memory, and bam, the program bombs out.
I definitely say KLV-KDE runs fast, it opens applications fast and generally is snappy, but it's not fast like Spectr, or even F96, and now KLV-boxer with JWM. They are like instantaneously fast. Spectr being the best. In that particular desktop there is simply no compositing, no animation, no window dressing even, no title bars, no buttons on the windows. You have to type meta+q to close a program window.
But it's apples and potatoes really.
I'm impressed that a graphical DE like KDE runs as well as it does, at least Sofiya's KLV version runs impressively well, and being Void underneath might have something to do with it's great performance.. It's certainly better than Windows and Mac, and it looks as good or better, certainly more customizable in the linux tradition. Wayland is nice, and KDE has so much development and user-friendly configurability that I wouldn't hesitate for a moment to recommend it to people.
So just for reasons stated above, when I'm really working and doing audio, I prioritize stability, predictability, simplicity, speed, and memory usage over eye candy and theme tools. User friendly is nice, it's great to pop open the system settings and get downloads of KDE themes. That's sweet for most people, myself included.
I will say that at least 4 or 5 applications bombed out on me for no apparent reason on Plasma. And from time time, windows kind of stick, or don't function quite 100%. They might refuse to resize. Usually this settles out, but it is present and totally in line with a heavy duty graphical interface, that being certain malfunctions and glitches. are likely to occur, maybe no fault of the desktop, but more with the application implementation trying to keep up with the latest developments.
EDIT: Just to follow up, I have no idea how memory allocation and cpu threading works. I can say that at present I only have Xfe, a gtkdialog window, and LibreWolf opened to the forum (a low resource web page) and my ram usage according to htop is 2.89 GB. It doesn't start there when I first open the browser, but it kind of builds up over time, and I'm inclined to think it has to do with some kind of caching that either the browser or wayland is doing. It's beyond my paygrade, but that was kind of thing behind my "memory hog" comment.
I'm spoiled with the fine tuned low ram usage of puppies I suppose. This kind of ram usage is probably considered quite low by most standards.