XFCE memory usage: a simpler test

[purslow at sympatico.ca]

thanx to OF BT ET AL for their intelligent comments on the Gentoo thread:
i forwarded it for interest & -- as BT concludes -- it is practically useful.

i just did a short set of tests on my own machine,
which has an Athlon XP2500+ processor with  512 MB  memory.
each test follows a reboot; i used 'free' & 'top' to get the figures;
no other applications were running except Xscreensaver for XFCE/KDE
& a Kterm or Xterm to get at the figures;
the memory figure is from Free's 2nd line, ie w/o buffers/cache.
i boot into a raw terminal, then start/stop X by hand (no Xdm etc).
i can't test Gnome, as i don't have the whole thing installed.

immediately after boot    : memory  21 MB ; tasks  28 .
after starting XFCE 4.0.5 : memory  39 MB ; tasks  40 ; start-up   9 s .
after starting KDE  3.2.2 : memory  51 MB ; tasks  49 ; start-up  20 s .
with XFCE after starting  2  terminals, Gkrellm1, Kdeinit & Mutt :  51 MB ;
  ditto + Galeon : 64 MB .

it does look as if the actual net saving in memory with XFCE is  12 MB ;
also, there is not much difference in number of tasks or start-up times.

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