bloated vs. lightweight WM's

Sami Samhuri sami at no-eff-eks.com
Tue May 25 08:43:06 CEST 2004


* It was Mon, May 24, 2004 at 11:42:19PM +0200 when Olivier said:
> Hi
> 
> How do you actually measure the memory used? Your numbers look fairly
> suspicious to me.

The poster on this list is not the original poster on gentoo-user. (I
was following/participating there as well)

I usually have about 50-100M used after I boot (apache2, mysql, postfix,
blah blah running as well) and then that jumps by 100 or so after
running X -- even with ratpoison. After my system has been up for any
significant amount of time mem usage levels off at 300-something MB or
so whether I have xfce4 or ratpoison running, or both.

> On Mon, 2004-05-24 at 23:28, purslow at sympatico.ca wrote:
> > [ there's been an interesting debate on Gentoo-user today
> > re how much memory etc various WM/DE's actually use.  below is a sample ]
> > 
> > On Mon, 2004-05-24 at 13:16, davidgn at servidor.unam.mx wrote:
> > > Quoting "Lloyd H. Meinholz" <lloyd.meinholz at bmpcoe.org>:
> > >> console (no X) - 179 MB, 127 procs
> > >> gnome 2.6      - 522 MB, 232 procs
> > >> kde 3.2.2      - 513 MB, 215 procs
> > >> xfce4 4.0.5    - 515 MB, 209 procs
> > >> openbox 3.2    - 438 MB, 197 procs
> > >> iceWM 1.2.13   - 441 MB, 202 procs
> > > I would have measured X alone too, maybe with a single "xterm" running
> > 
> > Similar to your suggestion, I tried it with just X running, and with X +
> > evolution, firefox and idea. All tests are with server apps running
> > (apache, tomcat, openldap, mysql, postfix). Here's my new results:
> > 
> > Without evolution, firefox and idea running:
> > 
> > console (no X) - 179 MB, 127 procs
> > X only         - 198 MB, 129 procs
> > 
> > With evolution, firefox and idea running:
> > 
> > DE/WM                TOTAL MEM/PROC USAGE     DE/WM MEM/PROC USAGE
> > ==================   ====================     ====================
> > X                  - 335 MB, 158 procs
> > gnome 2.6          - 522 MB, 232 procs        187 MB, 74 procs
> > kde 3.2.2          - 513 MB, 215 procs        178 MB, 57 procs
> > xfce4 4.0.5        - 515 MB, 209 procs        180 MB, 51 procs
> > openbox 3.2        - 438 MB, 197 procs        103 MB, 39 procs
> > fluxbox 0.9.9      - 454 MB, 202 procs        119 MB, 44 procs
> > blackbox 0.65.0-r3 - 451 MB, 202 procs        116 MB, 44 procs
> > iceWM 1.2.13       - 441 MB, 202 procs        106 MB, 44 procs
> > 
> > Again, the base for my tests:
> > 
> > * My workstation is a P4 2.3 GHz, with 1GB memory.
> > * All tests were performed with the following servers running: apache,
> > tomcat, openldap, mysql, postfix.
> > * 3 big X applications running: evolution, firefox, idea.
> > 
> > The reason I did the test the way I did was to use a real world scenario
> > I was familiar with (my own). I have been hearing for a long time about
> > using a WM performing better than big DE's and that just wasn't my
> > experience (at least in the environment I am working in) and I wanted to
> > find out what the difference actually was.
> -- 
>  - Olivier Fourdan - fourdan at xfce.org - http://www.xfce.org - 
> 
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> 

-- 
Sami Samhuri
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