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Comment by dev_snd | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, it's pretty much the same story for me; after having found out how to get all the same features in KDE that I had in xfce, there was no way back. I always like to use the lightweight and less resource intensive software, but arguably not using hardware acceleration is actually very resource hungry.

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> I always like to use the lightweight and less resource intensive software, but arguably not using hardware acceleration is actually very resource hungry.

What hardware are you using where KDE is considered "resource intensive", yet it also has a GPU that supports Vulkan and hardware video decoding?

I've used KDE for a long time, and can't remember a time when I noticed its resource usage (and I used to daily drive a ThinkPad X200 as late as 2016)

I once noticed a memory leak in KDE when setting the background to a (very many image) slideshow instead of a single image. That was probably sometime around 2015.

Normally it's a bit tricky to calculate memory blame between X11, the WM, and the shell, since often their allocations are actually on behalf of an application, and killing the application will reclaim it.

I notice KDE's resource utilization more or less constantly. With KDE's bling turned all the way down, Kwin constantly uses 5-10% CPU when I am literally doing nothing (with my hands off the mouse/keyboard). This causes my laptop fans to noticeably spin up and makes them a lot more prone to spinning up more forcefully while doing a small task. With XFCE, my fan never audibly spins up unless I'm actively doing something. Even if I just do something small/quick, my fans don't spin up most of the time.

edit: typos

Laptops with loud fans makes it really easy to find inefficient software.

Most people nowadays would just get a fanless computer and give up on fighting the bloat. But I appreciate your sacrifice, thank you.

KDE 6 isn't really that much heavier than a "full install" of xfce to be honest. I just prefer the simplicity (probably 1/10th the adjustability of KDE) of xfce for ease of maintenance, but KDE is fine too.

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