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Here I'm republishing an old blog post of mine originally from September 2012. I've updated it slightly.
My first Linux desktop comparison is over. I took a look at quite some projects during the last weeks. 20 of those (including modes that are behaving differently) proved to be full DEs which should be covered by a broadscale test.
Some others, like UDE for example, had to be skipped. While it does have a very interesting concept, it's not currently a DE but only offers a window manager (despite the name "Unix Desktop Environment"). In the end 18 DEs were actually tested (I failed to get the other two to run on Arch).
Comparing DEs over the time of several weeks on a _rolling release_ system might not really yield the best results. I also wanted to add something new to this post so that it's not just a boring summary for those who have read the past entries. Therefore I decided to add the size of the packages that are downloaded to install the DE, too. After all network traffic can still be an issue for some people. Well, and for some DEs new versions have been released in the meantime and I'd feel stupid to write a new entry by just warming up old stuff.
For these reasons I repeated most of the tests last Monday and Tuesday and use the new values here (which sometimes make a _huge_ difference!). Only CDE uses the old package; I was able to build a current package but did not succeed in making the DE start. Unity2d is now obsolete just like the old GNOME 2 (which I only added so that MATE can be compared to it, anyway).
I'll begin with the overall rating here since that's the most important thing. I've compared all DEs in terms of
1) memory consumption (most important for me and thus weighted *3)
2) disk space used (weighted *2)
3) size of packages to download.
So, here are the results:
Rank DE Version 01 OpenCDE 620 02 Equinox DE 2 2.0 03 CDE 2.2.0a/b 04 LXDE 0.5.x 05 ROX DE 0.41.0 06 Enlightenment 17 svn-75246 07 Razor-Qt 0.4.1 08 Xfce 4.10.0 09 Sugar 0.94.1 10 MATE DE 1.4 11 Cinnamon UI 1.5.7 12 GNOME 3 Classic 3.4.2 13 GNOME 3 Shell 3.4.2 14 Trinity DE 3.5.13 15 Unity 3D 6.4.0 16 KDE Plasma 4.9.0
Here's the table that compares memory usage of the tested DEs (Those in Parentheses are obsolete, the "xx" ranked were not tested):
Rank DE Version Memory usage 00 Arch Linux 08/2012 37 MB 00 X11, VBoxadds, xterm 08/2012 54 MB 01 OpenCDE 620 57 MB 02 Equinox DE 2.0 71 MB 03 CDE 2.2.0a 72 MB 04 ROX DE 0.41.0 72 MB 05 LXDE 0.5.x 83 MB 06 Enlightenment 17 svn-75246 97 MB 07 Xfce 4.10.0 104 MB 08 Razor-Qt 0.4.1 117 MB 09 Sugar 0.94.1 122 MB (10) (GNOME 2) (2.32) (137 MB) 11 MATE DE 1.4 139 MB 12 Trinity DE 3.5.13 202 MB 13 GNOME 3 Classic 3.4.2 211 MB 14 Cinnamon UI 1.5.7 224 MB 15 GNOME Shell 3.4.2 253 MB 16 Unity 3D 6.4.0 312 MB 17 KDE Plasma 4.9.0 354 MB (18) (Unity 2D) (6.0.0) (404 MB) xx Ètoilè 0.4.2 ?? xx Mezzo ?? ??
Here's the next table:
Rank DE Version Disk space used 00 Arch Linux 08/2012 561 MB 00 X11, VBoxadds, xterm 08/2012 +68 MB 01 OpenCDE 620 +83 MB 02 Equinox DE 2.0 +174 MB 03 CDE 2.2.0b +192 MB 04 Razor-Qt 0.4.1 +226 MB 05 LXDE 0.5.x +325 MB 06 Enlightenment 17 svn-75246 +340 MB 07 ROX DE 0.41.0 +497 MB 08 Xfce 4.10.0 +559 MB 09 Sugar 0.94.1 +604 MB (10) (GNOME 2) (2.32) (+630 MB) 11 MATE DE 1.4 +675 MB 12 Cinnamon UI 1.5.7 +947 MB 13 GNOME Shell 3.4.2 +1023 MB 14 GNOME 3 Classic 3.4.2 +1023 MB 15 Unity 3D 6.4.0 +1121 MB 16 KDE Plasma 4.9.0 +1232 MB 17 Trinity DE 3.5.13 +2098 MB (18) (Unity 2D) (6.0.0) (??) xx Ètoilè 0.4.2 ?? xx Mezzo ?? ??
And here's the last one:
Rank DE Version size default / max 00 Arch Linux 08/2012 123 MB 00 X11, VBoxadds, xterm 08/2012 +15 MB 01 OpenCDE 620 +19 MB 02 Equinox DE 2.0 +38 MB 03 CDE 2.2.0b +49 MB 04 Razor-Qt 0.4.1 +53 MB 04 LXDE 0.5.x +53 MB 05 ROX DE 0.41.0 +75 MB 05 Enlightenment 17 svn-75246 +75 MB 06 Xfce 4.10.0 +82 / 99 MB 07 Sugar 0.94.1 +89 MB 08 MATE DE 1.4 +119 /169 MB 09 Cinnamon UI 1.5.7 +147 / 347 MB 10 Unity 3D 6.4.0 +163 /302 MB 11 GNOME 3 Shell 3.4.2 +167 / 366 MB 11 GNOME 3 Classic 3.4.2 +167 / 366 MB 12 KDE Plasma 4.9.0 +306 / 774 MB 13 Trinity DE 3.5.13 +485 MB
_The_ most light-weight DE tested is __OpenCDE__, based upon __Motif__. The second best is __Equinox DE__ using __FLTK__ as its toolkit. The lightest __GTK+__-based DE is __LXDE__, ranked No. 5 and the lightest __Qt__ one __Razor-Qt__ which scored rank 7. So these will be the candidates to examine closer in a future testing series.