Also I don’t think KDE even uses more RAM than other DEs that are designed to be lightweight. Last time I compared, it used the same or less memory as LXDE.

Yep. KDE is feature-rich, but it's also highly optimized these days, and the RAM usage is actually competitive with the best of them.

You can get RAM usage lower on a very stripped down, barebones system, but if you want a full 'normal computer' desktop experience that has all the things you'd expect a computer to have, you'd be hard-pressed to find one that uses significantly less RAM than KDE. (Yes, there are some that get lower ... but not a lot lower. And unless you're running on some extremely limited hardware, are those extra 20MB of RAM really going to make a difference in your everyday life?)

Also, higher ram usage by programs makes it less likely that their actively used RAM (ie what it is actually currently using) fits in your CPUs caches, making them run slower.

And KDE can be even more efficient if you go into the settings and tweak things a bit, turning off some unnecessary features that are on by default.

What shortcuts does Windows have that KDE doesn't?

What do you even do with independent virtual desktops per monitor?

I've got 8 virtual desktops and 6 monitors, but I want the content of all 6 monitors to change when I switch virtual desktops. Having to do each monitor independently sounds like a huge pain.

(And, of course, there are a couple things I want on every virtual desktop. But it's easy to set certain windows to be on all desktops.)

Keyboard shortcuts. And also, launchers.

The difference being that in the one of those cases you still need to open a browser instance before you are able to browse the web.

I'm not a fan of TWMs so I use this: https://store.kde.org/p/2334027

XFCE for life.

Love KDE.

IDK what y'all are on about. KDE + Khronkite uses very little RAM. There are a few background things you can disable if you don’t need them to make it even leaner.

It also just works, with so many integrations, all maintained for you.

My brief foray into discrete WMs like Sway was nostop “oh, it doesn’t have a WiFi manager? Oh, no sharing? Oh, no…” and I ended up having to install a bunch of stuff manually, manually configure it all, tie them together with some scripts and services that break with updates, and find out I did a no-so-great job because I haven’t spent literally thousands of man hours in integration and ended up using a lot of extra disk space and RAM anyway!

Breathes.

So yeah. Big DEs are nice. And lean, mostly.

XFCE has always seemed to cover most any "normal" desktop experience I've ever needed, still even beating Windows hands down (as if that's difficult, especially these days).

Granted, I don't use KDE Connect or ... what ever else KDE has over XFCE. The styling options are fun, but I'm too old to care about style these days.

I have NOT compared them to confirm any of the supposed lesser resource usage of XFCE, so if you're going to roast me, tell me why (preferrably with direct data so we can all know).

I used TWMs for a long time but I eventually switched back to stacking WMs. Its sort of hard to go back but when I was using TWMs, I'd spend more time tweaking things than anything else

Cosmic left beta months ago.

I like tiling window managers, because I run out of screen real estate and actually close windows. On a regular window manger, I will open dozens of windows and keep them open for many sessions.

Try Niri with danklinux.com It’s super easy to install and lots of fun to use.

Yes, for window managers, it’s worth finding a good strongly opinionated distro or script to start with, so you don’t have to hunt down and configure a dozen tools.

ML4W, Dank Linux, Zirconium, Omarchy come to mind

XFCE is great, although a little stale and slow to evolve. I used it for many years. Still remember when Thunar finally got thumbnail previews.

baloo intensifies 👀

I used Niri with KDE apps for a month recently and liked it a lot. Niri is easiest to install already configured as a useable desktop using Dank Linux or Noctalia.

If you like PaperWM, you will love Niri.

Most window managers come with no GUI apps. They don’t even have a launcher (start menu), status bar, notification area, wifi menu, task bar, dock, etc.

For most window managers you pick and choose a shell, launcher, etc, to combine it with. Then you configure all those separate tools and the window manager to your liking

There are preconfigured packages, distros, and scripts that make sensible choices for this already. Even they usually don’t bring a lot of applications with them.

Omarchy brings a lot of applications in their default install. Check out this uninstall script to get an idea. KDEnlive is a KDE application, gnome-calculator, nautilus, gnome-diskutil, gnome-keyring are GNOME. Chromium is GTK too, I actually don’t know if LibreOffice is. So not many I would dare say. Others ship less.

Dank Linux, a full features shell for Niri, Wayland, mangowc describes it pretty well.

Batteries Included

The age of assembling your desktop from dozens of separate tools and spending hours trying to make it feel cohesive is over. While traditional Wayland setups require you to hunt down, configure, and maintain a sprawling collection of utilities, Dank Linux delivers everything in one cohesive package with minimal dependencies.

The Traditional Way: Package Hunting Simulator

A typical Hyprland, niri, Sway, MangoWC, dwl, labwc, Miracle WM, or generic Wayland setup forces you to learn about and configure a dozen or more separate tools, such as:

• Status Bar: waybar, eww, or custom scripts
• Notifications: mako, swaync, or dunst
• App Launcher: rofi, wofi, fuzzel, or tofi
• Screen Locking: swaylock, hyprlock, or gtklock
• Idle Management: swayidle, hypridle
• System Tools: htop, btop, nm-applet, blueman, pavucontrol
• Audio Control: pavucontrol, pamixer scripts
• Brightness Control: brightnessctl with custom bindings
• Clipboard Manager: clipman, cliphist, or wl-clipboard scripts
• Wallpaper Management: swaybg, swww, hyprpaper, or wpaperd
• Theming: manually configuring gtk, qt, various apps, bars, compositor gaps and colors
• Power Management: custom scripts or additional daemons
• Greeter: gdm, sddm, lightdm, greetd

Each tool has its own configuration format, its own quirks, and its own dependencies. You'll spend hours writing glue scripts, debugging integration issues, and discovering missing functionality at the worst possible moments.

Already using it on my laptp. But a few things still don't really work, properly. Fortunately, nixos makes driving plasma and niri quite easy.

firefox eats ram, but steam web process are worse. computer slow? kill steam. idk what browser engine it is but long term steam being open is bad.

Thanks! I’ll check it out!

Any reason to choose Niri over Hyprland?

Is Epoch1 considered post beta? None-the-less, it's an early release of a pretty aspirational DE. Give it a year or two and check back for something stable

Yes, it is
https://www.howtogeek.com/cosmic-desktop-for-linux-exits-beta-with-pop-os-24-04/

I agree with you it's early, and not mature. Got a lot of growing to do. I recently tried it out and I think it is pretty nice for an early version but I really need a lot more customization to consider switching to it.

That seems odd. I'm on fedora KDE and from memory (excuse the pun) I sit at about 1.7GB usage at startup, and that's with a few autostarted apps like joplin and pcloud. I don't think I've seen Windows 11 that low ever, though I've hardly ever booted into it in the last 2 years.

That was my experience when I briefly tried a TWM, the parts bin approach is very cool but I need my computer to work NOW, I can't take two weeks to play with it. A package sounds good...

Never liked the look of KDE. It is nothing to do with the tech or features. I think qt is a very solid foundation and my current desktop is built on Qt/QML. KDE just feels Windows-ish somehow and that's probably part of what makes it great for a lot of people. That is a huge win for Linux adoption. Just not for me.

I always liked Gnome. It was simple and felt fresh even though I hate gtk/gobject etc. And I still keep Gnome as a backup but it think development is being held back by being built on layers of shit.

After a long time going back and forth I think I am all in on Niri now. Regular tilers never worked for me but somehow scrollers do. It is weird how much of a difference it makes for me. It is possible to build a complete desktop now with Quickshell and a bit of a backend for some services which makes the Gnome desktop and Plasma look crazy over engineered and I don't know why the Cosmic people even bothered. I don't see how Gnome can keep up as its is such a horrible system to program. DankMaterialShell is reasonably usable for starters but I might even start working on something. It looks like fun.

"i paid for the whole RAM imma use the whole RAM"

–me in 2010 using console commands to turn off all the particle effects in Portal so that I could boost my fps to ~20 w/ minimum settings (the laptop did not have a graphics card lmao)

I changed to tiling about a decade ago. The pain of switching now would never be worth it. I don't think I've tweaked a config in several years. Shit just works. As always, to each their own.

All main desktop environment users triggered in 3...2...1...

But seriously, as a KDE Plasma user, I have to note it's extremely customizable. It doesn't have to look or behave like Windows at all, it's just a default.

An entirely different look? Sure!
All sorts of completely customizable shortcuts? Yep!
Tiling? If you so wish!

The thing that made Plasma my forever choice is that whatever I want to make it, it delivers. It has settings for everything.

Here are just two examples of the non-standard KDE looks by the way:

Which features? Asking because I switched recently to Linux.

..why not just install KDE in arch?

KDE is a LOT lighter than it used to be. The migration to plasma was ugly but they definitely got their shit together. Resource wise, it’s fine. You can run it in a pi.

GNOME is unapologetic resource wise. It’s like living with an asshole roommate that doesn’t understand why everyone hates him. It’s not getting better. KDE is.

I used KDE early on... around SuSE 7.3. It was a trash fire for a long time. Wildly unstable, would take so long to compile it was basically a meme in the community before memes existed in mainstream, and it was like every single random idea was implemented. Zero cohesiveness. Thumbed their noses at any kind of UI/UX standards. Gnome, of all things was the more solid option if you wanted a "desktop." Weird to think about considering how that ended up. It has come a longgggggggggg way. Still not for me but after messing with it recently I was pleasantly surprised.

The windows approach isn’t for everyone but there’s a pretty solid consensus that nobody does it better than KDE. (I mean the Cinnamon people have an opinion but it’s doesn’t matter because reasons)

The reasons projects like this work at all is the pressures are different form the Apple and windows shit. Microsoft and Apple release one UI for their full computers and it has to work for as many people as possible. That sounds great until you realize you are locked in a room with a bunch of boomers wondering why this HOA only has installed 7 speed bumps on this street.

Which features are unnecessary?

Well, depends how you're using it. In my case, for example, I don't have a printer, so I could turn off the entire print manager system/service and save a bit of unnecessary RAM. And if you're trying to be economical about RAM usage, things like fancy window decorations, window animations, and other purely aesthetic stuff like that can of course go. But, really, what features are necessary versus unnecessary will depend on you and what you're using your computer for.

Or did you just mean what features does KDE have?

In that case, the answer is basically, all the features. Like, KDE is the quintessential 'everything and the kitchen sink' desktop. You name it, they have it ... or it can quickly and easily be added. Any feature you can think of from any other OS or desktop, chances are KDE already has it or at least can do it with just a little tweaking.

For an example, I think my favorite feature would be the ability to set custom window rules for each application or even each sub-window within an application. Setting rules that dictate the size and placement of that app's windows, their transparency, which virtual desktop they open in, whether they show up in the taskbar or not, whether other windows can cover them up or not, etc. I use those rules extensively in my workflow to make sure each app always goes exactly where I want it on my multiple monitors, stays there, and behaves just how I want it to. (For example, I want my system monitor to be 80% translucent in a certain corner of the screen. I want my timer app to always stay on top, and in a particular location on a particular screen, I want my time tracking spreadsheet open on all desktops, but always in the background so it never covers any other window, and not cluttering up the taskbar. I want the terminal to always open maximized on my left monitor, and for it to be 100% visible when active, but 80% translucent when not active. With window rules, I can make all of that happen.)

Using pacman and yay feels playing Russian roulette on my system, since there's no rollbacks

Which features are unnecessary I meant. 😁

my ram usage with no apps open is 12 to 15 gigs. ultranarine kde

You can also have auto tiling in KDE
https://codeberg.org/Serroda/fluid-tile

I, too, hate aesthetics

Interesting, every wm I've tried had a status bar, launcher and a web browser preinstalled, but I haven't tried many and I forget what distro

Is the left panel in the first screenshot just a bunch of System Monitor widgets stuck together? Or is it a different widget that displays all this information in this way?

Cosmic does if memory serves. I haven't run it since late alpha but it might be worth a try again.

The one thing I have to make leaner on every clean Plasma install is KSearch or what it's called. searching for programs is WAY slow with all the search functionality enabled

Give me one big monitor and I'll set up 10 virtual desktops to switch between on it and I'm happy

Then don't use it. Arch supports flatpak appimage as well.