bloated vs. lightweight WM's

[purslow at sympatico.ca]

040524 Olivier wrote:
> How do you actually measure the memory used?
> Your numbers look fairly suspicious to me.

ouch (slightly pink face)!  i merely forwarded this as being of interest:
i didn't do the tests myself & shd have inserted '--snip--' or similar.
for full details, goto the Gentoo-user mail-list archive:

  http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=gentoo-user&m=108550367518181&w=2
  http://news.gmane.org/search.php?match=gentoo

the important figures below are in the R-hand columns,
ie the net usage when that used with X alone has been subtracted.
in all cases, the figures are with the same set of applications running.

from this, it seems usage with XFCE is very similar to with Gnome & KDE
& somewhat greater than with Open/Flux/Blackboxes & Icewm.
there was a lot more discussion in the Gentoo-user thread.

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.

-- 
========================,,============================================
SUPPORT     ___________//___,  Philip Webb : purslow at chass.utoronto.ca
ELECTRIC   /] [] [] [] [] []|  Centre for Urban & Community Studies
TRANSIT    `-O----------O---'  University of Toronto