GNOME vs KDE Plasma vs Xfce vs LXDE vs LXQt vs MATE vs Cinnamon - RAM Usage

wow i can't beliver... GNMOE IS the second minimun usaged!

Great stuff, thank you very much. Your numbers are pretty accurate with the way each one of these feel to me.

These results so strange! Looks like some random combination of numbers...On my real machine I use XFCE and have 860mb, but if I use GNOME or KDE I have 1200-1300mb

why everyone always comapring how much RAM consumed after boot but no one comparing about CPU consume per app like Chrome or Ffirefox? high RAM but small CPU usage is better than small RAM but high CPU usage

I LOVE THE FIRST SONG!!!

thanks! short and useful!

what theme lxde?

something's wrong 😂

The numbers in this video are not accurate

Enlightenment?

Pero ahora uso de cpu que es algo en lo cual gnome y otros pierden por goleada

Strange, for me GNOME always used up over a gigabyte at idle no matter the distro. And no other DE do that.

With these these weird results i did my own tests, also on Debian:

Computer : Virtualbox 6.1
Virtualbox Guest Additions: no
Guest OS : Debian testing
Guests Kernel: 5.18
Guests RAM: 8Gb
Guests Video Ram: 128Mb
Guests (default) screen resolution: 1024x768

Ram usage 2 to 4 minutes after boot:

"Net install" without xorg for the common base, then for each DE, intalled htop and each available meta packages for each DE (normally heaviest to lightest):

Gnome 42.4 - task-gnome-desktop : 880Mb (without Recommended packages: 702Mb)
Gnome 42.4 - gnome : 930Mb (without Recommended packages: 795Mb)
Gnome 42.4 - gnome-core : 814Mb (without Recommended packages: 705Mb)

LXDE 0.99.2 - task-lxde-desktop : 322b (without Recommended packages: 204Mb)
LXDE 0.99.2 - lxde : 280Mb (without Recommended packages: 198Mb)
LXDE 0.99.2 - lxde-core : 259Mb (without Recommended packages: 198Mb)

LXQT 0.16 - task-lxqt-desktop : 440Mb (without Recommended packages: 312Mb)
LXQT 0.16 - lxqt : 416Mb (without Recommended packages: 319Mb)
LXQT 0.16 - lxqt-core xorg (openbox) : 382Mb (without Recommended packages: 247Mb)

XFCE 4.16 - task-xfce-desktop : 449Mb (without Recommended packages: 272Mb)
XFCE 4.16 - xfce4 (xorg) : 348Mb (without Recommended packages: 259Mb)

MATE 1.26 - task-mate-desktop : 417Mb (without Recommended packages: 334Mb)
MATE 1.26 - mate-desktop-environment-extras lightdm (xorg) : 401Mb (without Recommended packages: 343Mb)
MATE 1.26 - mate-desktop-environment lighdm (xorg) : 376Mb (without Recommended packages: 336Mb)
MATE 1.26 - mate-desktop-environment-core lightdm (xorg) : 400Mb (without Recommended packages: 347Mb)

KDE 5.25 - task-kde-desktop : 598Mb (without Recommended packages: 393Mb)
KDE 5.25 - kde-full : 568Mb (without Recommended packages: not tested)
KDE 5.25 - kde-standard : 548Mb (without Recommended packages: not tested)
KDE 5.25 - kde-plasma-desktop (sddm) : 550Mb (without Recommended packages: 375Mb)

Cinammon: not tested

What the hell have they did in their tests?

Arch LXQT only uses about 372 MB.

Gnome 41.1 = 681 mb
Kde Plasma 5.23.4 = 772mb
Xfce 4.16 = 716 mb
Lxde 11 = 599 mb
Lxqt 0.16 = 698 mb
Mate 1.24.1 = 720 mb
Cinnamon 5.0.6 = 830 mb

There are NOT vaild at all

I have Manjaro KDE 5.24.5 on my PC and it uses about 600MB, but Fedora GNOME 42 uses 1GB with no autostart stuff

xfce 700mb are you serious the most lightweight DE is big like dat
thats so weird never happened to me ??!!!!!😮

I have seen Gnome hanging with 3, 4 terminal and 2, 3 chrome windows but xfce managed more than that without a sweat. Memory management in xfce is far better than gnome. Never tested 41.

I installed Fedora 35 so I will test Gnome 41 soon.

Use free -h command instead of htop. htop is not accurate. You can use top also.

Interesting. I just Debian GNOME today & it used 1GB ram on my laptop.

l must say xfce is a pain in the ass but it has 100+ fps on low end spec pc

Those numbers do not make any sense!

XFCE doesn't look like vanilla

After watching this I Immediately installed Gnome. I was dreading lxqt in my new low specs install.

Thank you so much for this! I've been curious about the new LxQT, interesting to see it's only a little bit leaner than XFCE.

weird, my xfce only uses less than 400MB and kde plasma about 420MB

What base are you using to test the desktops on ? My current LxQt uses only 390mb.

Did you install all of those DEs in the same debian installation?

I can't believe it. I see for the first time ever, The heaviest and clunkiest Gnome (almost)win the ram usage contest. It is like a Hulk Hogan winning the Miss America.

Can you please also benchmark it with some firefox tabs? Afaik some DE doesn't have good boot RAM Usage but it could maintain stable RAM usage after opening some program

Justo lo que necesitaba ver, gracias!

👍