On Sun, 10 Jun 2001, Margarete Hans wrote:
> Mmh. My laptop has 20 MB of RAM. I don't think that I'll be using it
> very extensively - it is rather a test to decide if I'm going to
> install debian on my "main" computer, which by now is also starting to
> get old (166 with 32 MB of RAM and 3 GB HD - still running windows
With 20M (or even 24) you would want to keep an eye on how much and
what is being swapped, just so you can tell the difference between
poor system performance and an overtaxed system. I usually run top on
a 132x60 text console, or do something like
alias snap="top -n3 -d1 >> ~/top.txt"
to keep an eye on this stuff.
> ( ). Does gnome use as much memory as KDE?
<shrug>...
> Besides, what does KDE give you more than these smaller WMs?
Most noticeable would be the Control Center style configuration
handling of the KDE and kapps, the apparent "embedding" of one app
in another (e.g., previewers in konqueror), and a framework for doing
the desktop shortcuts and mimetype magic things you want.
Aside from the embedding stuff, you can probably do everything KDE
does via xsession, etc., with a non-DE window manager.
...I ran a little experiment.
Procedure: for wm in none,twm,blackbox,kde2
<reboot>
<text login>
top -n3 -d1 > ...
<start wm>
<wait>
top -n3 -d1 > ...
then
for wm in none,twm,blackbox,kde2
<reboot>
<start wm>
<wait>
<text login>
top -n3 -d1 ...
Results (representative):
--first "top" after a reboot
23:15:20 up 2 min, 1 user, load average: 0.35, 0.36, 0.15
30 processes: 29 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 35.9% user, 12.9% system, 0.0% nice, 51.2% idle
Mem: 62864K total, 35172K used, 27692K free, 1344K buffers
Swap: 55664K total, 0K used, 55664K free, 22112K cached
--twm
23:19:26 up 3 min, 2 users, load average: 0.01, 0.18, 0.12
32 processes: 31 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 19.3% user, 7.5% system, 0.0% nice, 73.2% idle
Mem: 62864K total, 38984K used, 23880K free, 1440K buffers
Swap: 55664K total, 0K used, 55664K free, 23804K cached
--blackbox
23:30:40 up 3 min, 2 users, load average: 0.13, 0.21, 0.13
32 processes: 31 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 20.1% user, 8.0% system, 0.0% nice, 71.9% idle
Mem: 62864K total, 37464K used, 25400K free, 1396K buffers
Swap: 55664K total, 0K used, 55664K free, 23232K cached
--kde2
00:04:50 up 8 min, 2 users, load average: 0.53, 1.19, 0.67
50 processes: 49 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states: 58.1% user, 9.8% system, 0.0% nice, 32.1% idle
Mem: 62864K total, 61432K used, 1432K free, 2048K buffers
Swap: 55664K total, 8K used, 55656K free, 32416K cached
Notes: The uptimes show the time taken to startup the X environment
via kdm, switch to a tty, login, then do a "top" command (with a
486DX2-25); I ended up doing kde2 4 times 'cause I got hit with
`maximal mount count reached...' twice, both times no swap was used.
Conclusions: Compared to twm or blackbox, KDE2 takes about 6 times
longer to startup and needs about 64M of RAM to avoid swapping, plus
whatever your apps need if you want to actual use KDE without swapping
(although, from experience, switching between apps usually only takes
a few seconds and switching desktops or giving focus to large apps
that got swapped out, takes quite a few seconds, even at 25MHz). Not
for the impatient, but what do you expect from something that was
probably rescued from the scrap heap or landfill.
HTH,
Bruce
