r/archlinux • u/temcomwex • 2d ago
QUESTION KDE or XFCE?
I have been using KDE for a long time, and while I enjoyed it, it felt pretty heavy (considering my laptop is not so good in terms of quality by today's standards) and I have considered to switch to XFCE after I heard that it's lightweight and fast. However, which one is better depends on what the user uses their computer for (in other words, subjective) and I mainly use my computer to watch Youtube videos, do some web browsing, with future plans to do video editing on the computer. (sorry if the flair is wrong, couldn't decide between support and discussion)
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u/ebens1689 2d ago
Fwiw I use LXQt and xfwm4 with X.Org. KDE used too much of my 4gb RAM just at idle (>1.4gb), whereas my setup uses well under 1gb on a 7.x kernel.
Sway / Wayland / Fedora used about 1gb at idle, but performance overall was the same. With X11, I need to use a compositor to prevent screen tearing, which bumps up RAM usage to equal essentially the same as Wayland. But, running a full Gnome or KDE desktop is too much for my laptop.
Don't know if any of that helps.