Other "Lightweight Desktop" vs "feature-rich and resource intensive"

l008com

l008com

What does that ACTUALLY mean.

I'm sampling all of (or most of) the GUIs in desktop-installer
I got to xfce4 and it seems really nice?

So, in what way is it light weight? What features does it lack, that say KDE has? It looks pretty feature-full?

I understand a theoretical difference between something light weight and something not light weight. But I don't really understand the actual, technical difference here?
 
l008com said:
What does that ACTUALLY mean.

I'm sampling all of (or most of) the GUIs in desktop-installer
I got to xfce4 and it seems really nice?

So, in what way is it light weight? What features does it lack, that say KDE has? It looks pretty feature-full?

I understand a theoretical difference between something light weight and something not light weight. But I don't really understand the actual, technical difference here?
Click to expand...
I started off with xfce4 when I first started with FreeBSD because it seemed to be the easiest to install, but after a few years I found that it provided many things I didn't want or need and eventually decided on lxde which is much simpler and more lightweight.

It suits me ideally since all I need for Internet Browsing, where I spend quite a bit of time, is to install drm-kmod, xorg, lxde-meta and chromium.
 
I think for a lot of folk, "lightweight" in reference to a DE or WM means "how much of the system resources does it use?"
Does CPU jump to 75% from 5% when you open a window, move a window? Or does it jump to 6%?
How much memory does it take? Does your system use go from 50% to 75%?

Don't measure with a browser running; they all suck up resources, kind of correlated to how many tabs and what the tabs are doing.

One of the "most minimal of the minimalist" envrionments is good old twm. It's just a window manager, but was written when programmers were resource-aware.
 
What does it actually mean? It's hard to say. People generally describe "lightweight" DEs as ones that give you the essentials and little else. Look at the list of packages installed with say KDE Plasma, and you'll see a lot of extra software that you may or may not ever use. Look at the kf6- packages.
e.g.
baloo - desktop search indexer
kbookmarks
kparts
kunitconversion
kwallet
...
KDE has a lot of stuff even KDE users don't know about.
 
I would put Gnome and KDE on the full featured and heavy region. XFCE, MATE and Cinamon somewhere on between. LXDE and LXQT on the lower end. (Plus others like CDE and so on)

If you don't need a Desktop Environment (and you may not need one) you can make do with just a Window Manager like openbox, fluxbox, twm, etc. You will gain on the lightweight part but may lose on the feature side (again depends on your usage).

I any case if you then go and use a full featured browser like chromium or firefox (and respective derivatives) i would say the point of resource usage is moot. Just pick something that doesn't get in your way.

My personal long time choice is XFCE. For me it strikes a good compromise between features, customization and sensible defaults.

But this is for me that am a X user, if I was on wayland I would probably go with another choice.
 
Try a different approach: install and start X.org, then go to another console and start the programs you would like to have on screen all tthe time backgrounded. I have only X.org and openbox with a keyboard-oriented configuration file. No icons and right-click menu. The start screen is black with only the mouse pointer visible. Quite sure you can also rebuild a Gnome or KDE like this. A thing to improve for my mimimalist "desktop" is the poor clipboard functionality.
 
I have used XFCE for so long now. I use others now and then and they are usually excellent, though I seem to always gravitate back to XFCE as my daily driver.
 
I have openbox with auto starting xfe file manager, lxterminal and a browser. Some applications you like from Gnome , KDE and other may be installed and try to run from menu. That will be without other baggage.
 
I really think this thread can help if the OP tells us what is "needed". That's kind of the starting point.
They talk about this on a server: my experience with servers is "I want to have a couple terminal windows open so I can compare, maybe edit, maybe cut and paste between them. And occasionally run a browser to search stuff and maybe hit an internal web page for testing".

If that's the needed, then pretty much default installation of most DEs is overkill.
 
Server and gateway workstations need some monitoring, maintenance, firewall and other required applications. Normal users may install and use application as per their use case.
 
I have been using GhostBSD for some 5-6 years now. It is still possible to install it on 10 year old laptops if they have 4Gb of ram (install ghost 24.10.1 and upgrade to latest).

As for OP question - what does it mean "lightweight or resource intensive" - I suppose the question was/is relevant for really old hardware or specific applications that are resource intensive(?)

For desktop usage like coding Python, websurfing and running old emulators like Mame and fs-uae GhostBSD has been more than enough for me.
 
Ligtweight means mainly LOW RAM usage.
Feature Rich means mainly how many GUI tools and gadgets integrate well or out of the box and how nice it looks....these are usually detrimental to being Lightweight.

Middle ground for me, used to be Enlightenment (E16, E17 or Moksha - Bodhi Linux). But E17 is mostly broken (systray and networkmanager panel integrations are broken for some time now) and the new version seems sluggish. E16/E17 was super fast and lean and looked very good - old times.

Now it is XFCE4 but I have to say previous versions were more responsive.

If you want to spend several hours adding and configuring the crucial components like PANEL yourself, mostly manually editing config files, then OPENBOX is the way. But I found if I make it to resemble experience of XFCE4, I get to similar levels of RAM usage...so why bother.

Lazy me goes for XFCE4 - only clicking in the GUI the options I want (network manager, keyboard switcher, touchpad config) on as low as 4GB RAM laptop it is still usable.
MATE and LXQT have subpar configuration options, in my opinion.
GNOME and KDE are too RAM hungry for my liking.
 
l008com said:
So, in what way is it light weight? What features does it lack, that say KDE has? It looks pretty feature-full?
Click to expand...
The answer is simple: if you have no "Desktop", you have something even much more lightweight that lacks of nothing that you may miss.

All these "Desktops" is for people that do not want to learn some commands and even to deal with a real computer.

A more serious user do not need them, it is a unnecessary weight, even the most lightweight are too heavy.
 
grandpa said:
I have been using GhostBSD for some 5-6 years now. It is still possible to install it on 10 year old laptops if they have 4Gb of ram (install ghost 24.10.1 and upgrade to latest).
Click to expand...
"still possible". That is not an achievement, that is a joke that shows how ridiculous is to have a "Desktop".
 
l008com said:
What does that ACTUALLY mean.
Click to expand...
This setup of mine with Openbox/Tint2/Dzen2 is ultra lightweight yet powerful and nice looking.

Details here:
- https://vermaden.wordpress.com/2026/01/18/200-mb-ram-freebsd-desktop/

minimal-ram-desktop-wide.png
 
hruodr said:
All these "Desktops" is for people
Click to expand...
I would leave it at that.
Not everyone can be F1 driver, soccer mum and mechanic in one body.

Even sysadmins, usually juggling several different operating systems, can appreciate nice GUI desktop i.e. visual clue instead of cli syntax overloading neurons.

Having said that, integrating Desktop in to the core of the OS is a blasphemy.
So are drivers btw...GO microkernels!!!
 
DanielBowman said:
cli syntax overloading neurons.
Click to expand...
It is colorized GUIs that overload neurons as they fire more and different sensors than plain text. That's why alerts flash and are red or yellow because they fire more sensors than nothing at all.
If you keep adding more and more colors to paint, eventually it turns all white (or is it black?). A bunch of syntax highlighting colors becomes just a blur which is why I prefer nothing at all.
 
DanielBowman said:
can appreciate nice GUI desktop i.e. visual clue instead of cli syntax overloading neurons.
Click to expand...
It is a question of balance, I am not opposed to GUIs, but to this exaggeration called "Desktop environment whose goal is that almost everything must be done with the pointer / mouse.

I use twm, of course configured with the keyboard and editor, to have a nice menu. That is enough.

X11 as GUI is enough, it is though as a GUI displaying many clients in the same or other computer, may be graphical or non graphical clients like xterm. That is enough.

Lightweight 'Desktop Environments' that need 'only' 4GB Ram are also enough, and even more than enough, garbage.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
overload neurons
Click to expand...
I meant it in the context of memory. GUI shows you the options you have - no need to study man pages and figuring out proper syntax.
For me KDE for example is too much options for too high a price.
CLI is for sysadmins and highly specialized ones. Not many of those these days unless you administrator one huge mainframe in some Swiss bank vault, I guess.
Most sysadmins have to manage everything from setting up time on office Microwave oven, over plethora of Linux virtual appliances, to some Group Policy blob.
And the actual users, even developers have no room in their brain for the gears and their nuances of an Operating System at all.
 
hruodr said:
The answer is simple: if you have no "Desktop", you have something even much more lightweight that lacks of nothing that you may miss.

All these "Desktops" is for people that do not want to learn some commands and even to deal with a real computer.

A more serious user do not need them, it is a unnecessary weight, even the most lightweight are too heavy.
Click to expand...

The answer is simple, you're thoroughly, from bottom to top, wrong.
More serious users have more serious PCs that have more serious amounts of cpu power and memory for that unnecessary weight, to run as option and not impede on the real workload while running.

I'm writing this from Firefox on Plasma. It takes me a second to shut down Plasma and get back to CLI, and get back to that vanilla memory/process footprint.

If you claim serious application work can be performed from CLI you had your head in the sand for 45 years.

Your answer seems something a typical answer a late 00s Microsoft zealot would claim, just in opposite direction - if you type commands at CLI you're ill-productive tinkering hobbyist as no serious people would waste their time with typing commands.
 
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