Unused ram is wasted ram. Change my mind
This applies when RAM is used as temporary cache or something that can be instantly freed the moment it is needed otherwise. This doesn’t really work for justifying higher RAM use by KDE, unless you would never need that RAM for anything else anyway.
I use KDE because it is good, though. 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.
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.
It’s astonishing how little RAM KDE needs for its features.
RAM was the last thing on my mind when I switched to a tiling WM.
With actual hardware, yes. But I use tiling WMs since where 2–4GB Ram was all my thinkpad has.
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.
KDE can be considered heavy only if your idea of a desktop use is to launch it and stop right there.
But normally after that you launch apps and that’s where the magic happens: it is so integrated, apps barely add any more RAM usage on top.
So instead of comparing DE x and y, compare what a desktop actively used looks like: browser? office suite? file manager? drawing app?
Only then will you be able to compare you RAM usage from one DE to another. Everything else is comparing cars fuel economy when they’re all idle.
XFCE for life.
I, too, hate aesthetics
I just prefer tiling windows managers idk
KDE Plasma can do that, too, via a KWinscript: https://codeberg.org/anametologin/Krohnkite 🙃
On a more serious note, this is a genuine recommendation. I’ve been using Krohnkite and similar scripts for a few years now, and they’re absolutely fine, especially since Plasma 6 introduced a native, manual tiling mechanism, which they just have to configure.
Especially for newbies wanting to try out tiling window management, without having to figure out a minimalist environment like a bare window manager, this is a great entrypoint IMHO.
I run Plasma 6. Not because I like it but because I dislike it less than Gnome infuriates me.
If lack of features and customizability is my biggest gripe with Gnome, crazy instability is my gripe with KDE. Plasma is fine on defaults, but once you customize (the way it’s supposed to work), KDE becomes plain unstable. The Wacom pen input settings panel is way better in KDE than Gnome. That’s the biggest reason I stay.
What do you do to it so it becomes unstable?
KDE is stable in my experience, but I don’t enjoy the window management and the shitloads of embedded packages. Now I’m on river for the time being.
If you don’t use Gnome or KDE or one of the other big DEs, do you basically have no (user facing GUI) programs installed by default? If so, don’t you end up installing a bunch of programs from one of those anyway?
Keyboard shortcuts. And also, launchers.
I think most window managers typically come with just a fee GUI apps preinstalled, but most users install more.
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.
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
Distros might package some stuff for you, yes.
https://codeberg.org/anametologin/Krohnkite
heres the link for anyone interested in tiling for KDE
On my crappy N100 netbook (8 GB RAM), I use Plasma by default, but shut it down and use either raw TTY or Sway, for heavier tasks. Sometimes you need every percent CPU, but sometimes you just want to boot and have your network working by default.
