The others I don't have an opinion on. Nonetheless, you will notice some stark similarities and dissimilarities between the two desktops, as well. ) Many possible permutations of window colors, borders, fonts, etc. After reboot and login to just a bash shell with no graphical environment, running free -m reported 202 Mb used. Over many years, many people spent a long time with Linux desktop using either KDE or GNOME. I suggest that you just look at some pictures and see what you like more. Yes, it is a xorg, not wayland. Personally I think KDE is the best. Kde is the most polished out of all the three of them. The installer is simple and smart. KDE compared to all other distros, even i3, is pretty unintrusive. EndeavourOS seemed faster to me. 467 MiB PCLinuxOS KDE. If your version of XFCE has "compositing" enabled (see settings -> window manager tweaks) than that is the source of your performance issues. 1. 256 GB SSD . MATE, with some nice themes, looks just as good IMO as Cinnamon and it performs better. I've already abandoned most of Ubuntu by running i3 and various other non-distro specific app replacements for most tasks, and the only xfce apps I'm depending on are xfce4-power-manager, xfce4-clipman, and xfce4-terminal. My favorite is DWM with fakefullscreen and center patches. 489 MiB Mageia KDE. But if I did want all the bells and whistles that Plasma 5 offers I would be okay using it on my laptop. 412 MiB KDE Neon. AussieAn0n. (Bonus: distro choice will be openSuse or Kubuntu) If you use gtk apps: Gnome 3 > Cinnamon > mate > xfce. KDE offers a LOT of customization and options (some say it's a bit too much), XFCE a little less IMHO. The main difference is KDE is backed by Qt Company so it uses Qt development and Gnome is supported by Fedora (which itself is supported by Red Hat) and it uses GTK-style development. Which for some cases is great. I ran Plasma for a little bit but couldn't get my Nvidia 780m Gnome is eyecandy in transitions but not in customization, also too big icons and not good at categorizing if you are gonna be a power user on a desktop, KDE will be good if you put time in personalize everything, that's also a problem for starters, has to many options, even the file manager is a challenge, I will start with gnome and if you see yourself at one point going constantly to Pro for Cinnamon is that it is the flagship DE for Mint and gets the most attention from both the developers and Mint users, if you have modern hardware its what you should run. This is why GNOME and GTK exists, so that non free code wasn't needed. After using Gnome shell for a long time and after being tired of slow and unresponsive experience across the DE, i tried mate and xfce desktop and finally settled on xubuntu couple of months back. •. I'll use the Linux distribution for Programming and web browsing. Bloated and ALPHA. Of DE, the lightest and easiest is i3wm, for advanced dwm, awesome, bspwm. The pros and cons are the same as the pros and cons of KDE vs GNOME in general, as both are shipped in a pretty vanilla state. long story short which uses less resources ram and CPU Xfce or KDE and which lighter qt apps or gtk apps thx Plasma desktop uses 700MB RAM when Xfce uses 400MB. Mesa: 20. We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. Oct 3, 2023 · Spread the loveFor those who are new to the world of Linux, understanding the differences between different desktop environments can be confusing. But it can also be overwhelming. Desktop computer: KDE Plasma ️ Kde feels more like windows while Gnome looks like mac os. XFCE has does not really do things radical. Xfce even after closing apps, it sticks to resources. For the other software MX has some older packages, but with Flatpaks you can install the more recent versions. We also tried launching Firefox Web Browser with a single tab, browsing our LinuxForDevices home. Reply. Personally, my favorite is to install both. I am a bit late but the fact that it is easier to use differnent workspaces in gnome. 4 with argon repos. true. Jul 7, 2021 · KDE Plasma offers a beautiful yet highly customizable interface, whereas XFCE provides a clean, minimalistic, and lightweight desktop for your OS. Kde is jam packed with features. 14 desktop used 448 MB. KDE is very fluid and customization friendly, thus the dream come true for tinkerers. Compositing can make it look downright sexy. Afaik there not much more to it at this level. 304K subscribers in the linuxmasterrace community. I have been using xfce with the numix theme and icons. 0. LXDE (gtk2 version) was snappier than XFCE but XFCE is more polished and requires no workarounds that LXDE required (stuff like screen locking and compositing). READ. old. ). Cinnamon, because of its monolithic structure, is by far less customizable. com Xfce Wayland Development Roadmap. Just from my limited experience. 5. Kde - is more customizable and easier to tweak the look and feel. 4, at this moment, 8 jan 2022. LXDE was created for the same reason for XFCE. I would argue it has an identity, and making GUI guides for it is easy. Glad to see its slowly moving forwards however. 18 released. Search the web for Xfce customization: it's plenty of tutorials. It's at least a kind of informal benchmark I can actually understand, differently from Phoronix stuff which goes way over my head. Gnome and KDE. Xfce LXQt and LXDE are lighter than Xfce, but that's only one part of the story. I'm glad they plan on using wlroots, I hope it becomes the standard. • 3 mo. It's hard to beat this type of setup for a combo of stability and fairly up to date software. XFCE is faster than all three but I don't like the look and feel. IRC web client: https://kiwiirc. IMO it's the best beginner DE (desktop environment) and i think it has better performance than kde. XFCE and KDE are both very lightweight, but with KDE it is a lot more Customizable and aims to be lightweight and fast while XFCE doesn't have as much customizable options but still is fast. In fullscreen games the compositor is bypassed so it shouldn't affect performance. I found XFCE to be the best for gaming. 436 MiB Arch KDE (by Revenge) 446 MiB Sabayon KDE. • 3 yr. I keep fighting myself over this choice. Whatever the RAM usage, XFCE for me is unusable. Laptop specifications: Intel CORE I5 10th gen . best use for xfce is to combine with i3 also xfce = gtk2 , mate is mostly gtk3. KDE or GNOME. Here's a detailed comparison to help you decide whether to use KDE or XFCE We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. KDE Plasma Desktop vs Xfce Desktop - Resource Usage Comparison. One example is the relatively advanced shortcut key facilities compared to Xfce. I hope things are going well for them as I quite like mate. Bot as configurable as XFCE4 but if you give it some time qnf check r/unixporn you will see that most XFCE4 things can also be done on GNOME. I use it on my desktop where I'm happy with its performance. Honestly though it sounds like you actually want gnome, even though KDE works better in general. GNOME is very rigid, and has a standard and accessible interface. 4. There are more performance enhancing features in KDE. 12. No hitting the start button to search for programs, just barely configurable, built on a suite of mostly primitive applications (Dolphin and Kate blow them all out of the water), etc. I am sorry but xfce and mate are both by design old User experience while other Major player add a Lot to the Plate. XFCE is lighterweight so I'd say it's more responsive. OpenSUSE offers a 1000 packages than Arch with 200 packpages. Gnome is good until Gnome 2 but Gnome 3 is disgusting as of my experience and too laggy. I think Gnome will be way better for touch devices, but Laptops dont need buttons that huge, its a waste of space. It is not as customizable as KDE Plasma but it is not that bad. Pick the one you like the most. Kernel: 5. This lets me run XFCE, but use KDE effects like wobbly windows. ago. MX is based on Debian Stable and includes backports and extras to get you more updated versions of the most commonly requested stuff (ie. KDE: mix between both but performance wasnt as good and no touchscreen (just click and drag like on XFCE4 but no pinch-to-zoom, rotate, etc). (Also, if this post is necromancy then I The grub bootloader would not install manually. x series the KDE devs really started focusing on optimizing their code. Mate is better in that regard, but I find KDE uses less ram on boot than either and feels faster to me. 8. Aug 22, 2022 · Xfce runs on minimum system resources, so its animations and visuals are limited. 7. 5. TLDR : Customize and make things yours before judging them. Enjoy your tearing. I like running XFCE, and then running kwin as my window manager. 429 Mib Arch KDE. you need scaling, don’t use KDE. With enough effort, Xfce can feel like a more modern desktop environment. Instead of just adding features, they actively tried to trim useless code, redo inefficient code better, and just make KDE more responsive and less resource intensive in all cases. 1. But personally prefer KDE. Kwin is one of them. I used both distributions. GNOME is second, and Xfce is third. XFCE and whatever ships with LXDE really are crap. obviously if you end up using gtk apps in a qt desktop then you add some ram usage by just Basically, If you use QT apps: KDE>lxqt. I think both are stable. The "mintmenu" makes MATE on LM shine a lot brighter than it on other distros. And it wasn't just the amount. Your WM usually provides an alt/ctrl click or similar. Graphic Processor: Intel Integrated UHD This week in DistroWars, we have a civil war between MX Linux! Which should you choose between the classic XFCE and the new KDE version? Here we will look at the two distros side by side. In our review, we called it the “Swiss army knife” of DEs. My friend first helped me install Arch, I installed gnome and there was an issue with it, so we decided to switch me over to KDE. obviously the app itaelf matters more then the gtk/qt framework but that my conclusion based on the facts above. Xfce was the most popular DE in the r/unixporn survey this year and has continuously been so (okay that's more of a stat than a reason I agree) However KDE was originally using a closed sourced tool kit (the now dual liscenced QT). Mate is always my choice due to light memory reqs and hi speed. The amount of included software, for a lack of better words to come to mind, seemed bloated. I haven't noticed any disadvantages by gaming on xfce. 6 feels more complete, but it's subjective. They are both nice DEs. KDE and XFCE are two of the most popular open source desktop environments for Linux, and both have their own unique features. Kwin's more sophisticated and better at desktop compositing. XFCE it's great, but there wasn't any significant improvement since '10. With KDE i have freezes and bugs especially with sound manager and modern apps (node. openSUSE is a Linux-based, open, free and secure operating system for PC, laptops, servers and ARM devices. So if you've already decided on Fedora as your distro, pick which DE you like best. Egee's tests have gotten way better this last year, I'm guessing from experience with Distro Delves. Jun 8, 2022 · Battle of the Desktop Environments! And not the minimum requirements that way there would be no slowdowns or temp freezes while things are running. though that might have changed since 15- early 16. Flexibility, modern and unlike the direction they are going in. GNOME Circle apps are very beautiful, some apps work really well too. KDE uses the Qt toolset, so applications using GTK can look a bit iffy. Compton will give you better performance pretty much everywhere, especially in windowed/borderless maximized games. On my secondary (a desktop) I prefer a more traditional desktop layout (like KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, or Gnome + a few extensions. Switching over to XFCE. I saw Microsoft software, aka the skype and office suite, and immediately shut down the VM. 20. If u have use kde before go for dragonized if u not. I've been wanting to play with Solus but have no reason to switch at the moment. Also, Debian has more packages than Arch + the AUR combined. KDE might be a better option for the users moving to Linux from Windows, and XFCE might be a better option for systems low on resources. Tiling WM are fast, Openbox is lightweight. They've been that way for like a dozen years now, ever since GNOME 3. Using deepin DE myself it's been so solid that I haven't distro-hopped for awhile. Mate being a fork of Gnome 2 and Cinnamon being a heavily customized fork of Gnome 3. In terms of usability, XFCE is better. i think qt apps are a little lighter since lxde, the super lightweight desktop chose to move to qt instead of advancing to gtk3. Unfortunately, XFCE lacks a lot of modularity. xfce is. Further on MX is based on Debian, where Kubuntu is based on Debian>>Ubuntu. KDE Plasma is definitely better than XFCE in terms of customization but XFCE is lightweight and stable. I still prefer XFCE because it uses the more common GTK toolset, but that's a matter of personal preference. Yep, it is. Which strikes me as really weird, since almost no one is using GNOME on mobile devices for real-world usage at all. I don't know which one is more consistent. I had trouble with Nvidia and XFCE compositing, but now switched to AMDGPU and it's super fast. XFCE is ugly and needs work to make it prettier. also xfce = gtk2 , mate is mostly gtk3. There are more packages but distro just works! As I described above. Gnome by far. It’s my choice. . Although current KDE version seems to be pretty low on resource usage, XFCE still beats it in terms of performance, speed and simplicity. GNOMEs borders and icons are so huge and wide-spaced, that its really intrusive in my experience. So try opening and closing programs and check resources after that. I keep switching between the two; a week or two with Xfce, then a week or two with KDE. Of course you can install both in arch and switch between them. Maybe ask around in r/gnome to see if there's any easy fixes for the issues you had. The KDE Plasma was using around 920 MB, whereas the XFCE desktop was using around 760 MB. Better, in fact, than my non Manjaro KDE installs which have had problems with breaking and also slowly being outdated (KDE wise) Edit: some people here are saying xfce feels snappier, one thing I recommend if using KDE to make it feel 'snappier' is to turn the animation settings down or off. Yes there is, using Xfce with the copositor off gives you lower latency, allowing you to react quicker, it also uses less RAM too. Xfce 4. If I may, give a spin to Ubuntu Mate to test a very well refined Mate. Then try gnome. Roy s. also xfce became hwavier on ram since it upgraded to gtk3. Join the discussion on r/ManjaroLinux about the pros and cons of Manjaro's three main desktop environments: Plasma, Xfce and gnome. Runs on old & semi-old hardware (like mine) nicely and super fast on new hardware. It was a quite good review of XFCE4, it touches some rough edges in the very first contact with the GUI of the desktop environment. Small windowbar, small taskbar, primary focus on Windows. sourpuz. See full list on itsfoss. Kde is getting better these days. EndeavourOS vs Fedora (Xfce DE) I'm on the Fedora Xfce right now. KDE comes in first in the KDE vs GNOME vs Xfce customization contest. knowing xfce is lacking in development resources, it will probably take a while. XFCE has always been solid. Gnome = Shet bloated DE. The lightest desktops are Enlightenment, LXQt and Trinity. pro for MATE is that is a bit lighter, and some would We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. The biggest reason is that during the 5. I've been a GNOME user for a long time, and really love the Gnome 4x desktop. Performance difference between XFCE and Gnome Shell is Shocking. Great point. KDE was so optimized and modernized that it's beating XFCE in matters of desktop experience, performance and versatiliy. XFCE = Shet compositor. no one mentioned anything about CPU usage though. Xfce is lighter, QT software is heavier than GTK. KDE looks much more pretty and has a billion themes. I prefer Xfce because of my old PC. KDE dev tries XFCE. The black side of thunar is copying files. My XFCE desktop running on X11 with picom compositor runs super fast. It is a good start for learning linux, storage of configuration, tunning of Light environment. So probably best to just keep using Gnome, or else you'll constantly have a "grass is greener on the other side" feeling over you. FLUFF. . I like kde for customization. The performance difference between these two DEs and Gnome Shell is huge. My personnal experience with modern hardware is different. KDE Plasma. 107K subscribers in the kde community. For strict desktop comparisons, maybe it makes sense to subtract the base system usage, (448 - 202 = 246 Mb) to get a better idea of Xfce's memory footprint. ADMIN MOD. Hence, XFCE is the more lightweight desktop environment when we take a look at the system resource usage. Plasma 5 = bugs and bugs. Feb 19, 2022 · Both KDE and XFCE come loaded with features that distinguish them from the rest of the desktops within the Linux gamut. r/openSUSE. My first ever experience with KDE (After having used Mint Cinnamon, Ubuntu Gnome, and Debian XFCE for a bit each) was a bit jarring. MembersOnline. Enlightenment is probably the lightest of the three, followed by Trinity (aka KDE 3 on life support). You can make suggestions other than these two. MATE completed its GTK3 migration in 1. Also once you get into KDE, you can make it look BEAUTIFUL, just We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. Apr 27, 2021 · LXQt/LXDE vs. The primary difference between LXQt and Xfce is that LXQt uses Qt rather than GTK+. While they haven't done AS heavily since, they are KDE is Now Lighter than XFCE. Enlightenment E17. I have my own experience with XFCE and I've found other rough egdes which are really absent in KDE. Where as login to Xfce 4. I don't know why but I have a feeling that gtk3 is a lot heavier and slower library than gtk2. To me, Gnome is second to none in any situation where your workflow is primarily keyboard + gestures (either touchpad or I suppose touchscreen). KDE, Gnome, Xfce for the mouse. Which distro will work faster for me? I'm on the Fedora Xfce right now. These two environments have grown through the previous years and each of these desktops continued to expand their current user-base. I have been a happy KDE user since I installed Arch, but then wanted to get the most out of my battery as it was decayed (15% On my primary PC (a laptop), yes, I prefer vanilla Gnome. It runs very well too these days, you can check some of the benchmarks of KDE on OpenSUSE on YouTube, plus I love most of their Qt apps. [7] My take on the two, KDE uses the QT tool kit, and tries to be more modern. If you need to support resolutions above 2k, i. I like gnome for productivity. You can try different compositors to fine tune gaming performance. For example, sleeper desktop environment has been XFCE as XFCE offers more robustness than LXDE that lacks much Without Akonadi, Baloo and other things I don't use, KDE may use less RAM: 385 MiB Void LXQt + KDE. 18, Xfce's is still planned for 4. Will start downloading it immediadly! Thanks for the quick answer! It's a fable that KDE is bulky. I've been using herbstluftwm on ally of my *nix machines for years. (Bonus: distro choice will be Xubuntu, Mint, Fedora or Ubuntu) Directly after booting, my computers use about 550 MB of RAM (plasma, pulse audio etc. Since this DE eats less RAM & resources, it may be even more beneficial for gaming. It suits well the rolling release nature of Tumbleweed because it is more frequently updated than the other two. js apps). If you’re the kind of person who likes to constantly tinker and change your desktop experience, Plasma may just be the best Linux desktop environment for you. In this video, I am comparing Manjaro KDE vs Manjaro XFCE in 7 games, and 5 applications. I understand some of the reasons for people using it like: Lightweight, easy to use and pretty customizable. Future releases of xfce will apparently also get CSD (client side decorations, like Gnome) which I personally hate. XFCE is for me the fastest desktop. KDE 5 is the best desktop environment in my opinion. KDE randomly crashes on every computer I have used it on. When I was running KDE (Kubuntu, KDE Neon) I experienced glitches and errors at least once a week. Since Xfce is far less resource hungry, it'll consume less power. Award. long story short which uses less resources ram and CPU Xfce or KDE and which lighter qt apps or gtk apps thx We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow us. Better release schedule, much more responsive packagers, better packaging in general. On the plus side, KDE runs much better on 4GB RAM than GNOME and breeze is a theme that does not break any app, follows freedesktop dark mode specifications, has accent colors and looks professional and sleek. If you prefer GTK+, you're better off using Xfce. KDE, originally known as the K Desktop Environment, is a powerful and customizable desktop environment that has been in use I switched from Xfce to KDE recently because of excessive memory leaks (an old problem) and GUI lock-up bugs (in the newer Debian testing versions). 1 TB HDD . 2. KDE Plasma would be my choice if I wanted a single window manager, and could just fall back from the Wayland to the X version when needed. Yeah, Xfce's compositor isn't great. Apr 5, 2024 · For the most pure GNOME experience, you should try something like Fedora. Xfce in my experience takes way, way more effort to get working on arch and it's not as nice or modern. The perceptions are entirely valid, the two DEs are very very different. Meanwhile Mate has not made an announcement in a while. Windows 7 themes are available. With time file manager of Mate become very slow comparing to thunar. The panels of XFCE are really good, really good, they lack some KDE plasma features not in the Xfce vs KDE on old/low-end laptop Hey, so I have this old laptop it has a bad CPU and everything what should I use Xfce or KDE since people say KDE uses as ram as Xfce. Probably KDE though. com Personally I use sway (Wayland) for most things but keep KDE installed for those times that I need something to just work without fiddling with advanced browser settings. I want to know which is suitable for me KDE or GNOME and also help me by suggesting a Linux distribution for my needs. desktop environments). But there are several reasons for it to use xfce in first place. it doesn’t matter really. I have occasionally had issues with cinnamon and how it renders full screen applications. I have been using manjaro KDE for quite a few years now and have been very happy with it. KDE (I only used it for a very short time) Better fractional scaling support. Deepin is decent if you want a beautiful desktop by default and don't want to tinker with anything its very limited in what you can change. They are both Gnome forks. Hi everyone! I'm thinking about finally switching from xubuntu, to Debian + xfce. Things can be tweaked and Fedora comes by default with some tweaks which improve battery life as per available comparison tests. Also if you come from windows: try cinnamon. I've used all three (XFCE was my very first DE), and I think it is the perfect balance between looks (Cinnamon) and performance (XFCE). MX runs KDE Plasma 5. Gnome,KDE, windows11, OSx all got improvements over Windows NT ui. If what you really want is something lightweight, then I'd say KDE and Xfce are both actually in the middle of the pack. Gnome 3 makes my computer run really hot. 23. Has mouse wheel scrolling speed adjustment (Wayland). Plasma 5. Try opensuse leap 15. 14-1. Better UI design language. Devs don't give a fock for users. It really depends if you really want customization or just want a desktop that is clean. 14. LXDE looks more basic compared to Xfce. Looks pretty clean, and its pretty basic. Jan 22, 2024 · Highly customizable Xfce offers plenty of settings, and even things like theming XFWM is a simple task (it's just a handful of images. That's the main difference you will notice. Or install xfce and kde apps, you can fully use kde apps in xfce. Compton in vsync mode will also reduce tearing much better than the Xfce compositor. Mediocre_Field_1661. Mate and Xfce are both highly customizable desktop environments. Of course as stated my other people somtimes different systems may work better on one environment vs another. I See Gnome 42, Gnome 3, Gnome 2, Becoming Gnome and 2 DE's with an X in there name. Xfce was created as a lighter alternative to the other two. KDE is a lot faster now than last time I used it, and it has a lot more features than Xfce. If you are a beginner and have a regular PC/Laptop, you can either go with Xfce or GNOME. 3 games have been tested on 1080p, and 4 games on 1440p. 5 - Kubuntu runs KDE Plasma 5. Xfce is great if you want something really light weight and is way more custimizable then most desktops but its harder to do. Xfce vs KDE on old/low-end laptop learning/research Hey, so I have this old laptop it has a bad CPU and everything what should I use Xfce or KDE since people say KDE uses as ram as Xfce. XFCE and KDE rank well against each other. Extensions trend to break with a new GNOME version, some even crash your session entirety (Pano). depends on your use. Xfce should be better. Xfce does not feature any desktop animations, but Xfwm supports compositing. My personal favorite is Budgie. You all make very valid points. 8 GB Ram, Type: DDR4, Frequency: 2666 MHz . e. Fedora KDE is way better than Kubuntu IMO. Jul 7, 2021 · XFCE RAM Usage when Idling. 389 MiB Void “minimal” + KDE. yj sp oo em ym bj qc ml dm vc