Desktop memory usage

[Martijn Klingens]

On Sunday 10 September 2006 15:43, Lubos Lunak wrote:
>  I finally found some time to put together something that I had measured
> already quite a while ago. And I think the results are interesting. But
> before I post this somewhere publically I'd appreciate if somebody could at
> least quickly check it. I'd hate to see this trashed by people just because
> of some silly stupid mistake that I've managed to overlook. It still needs
> some final polishing but otherwise I right now consider it complete, so in
> case you see something wrong, missing or not clear with it, please tell me.

Very interesting read!

Some notes:

* The two sentences "All basic tests that follow are measured against this
   number unless explicitly stated otherwise" are easily overlooked,
   especially the second one where you switch reference platform. Perhaps use
   CAPS and/or put them between *** asterisks *** ?

* For the WindowMaker editor, like Alex said, xemacs, or gvim compiled against
   xlib (the 'g' in gvim is not 'gtk', but 'gui', and it doesn't require Gtk).
   For the file manager, indeed Midnight Commander like Alex mentioned.

* The alignment of the numbers in several tables seems broken, even with a
   fixed font. You may want to look at this.

* Isn't a more realistic setup to use the KMix application rather than the
   applet? The applet might need less memory, but eats way too much screen
   space and is way too complex for people who only need a simple volume
   control, so I guess it's out for most people. AFAIK the default is the
   systray app, so replacing it with the applet is a bit of tweaking for the
   happy few who know about it. (Read: this sounds like cheating.)

* Be careful with the sentence "Interestingly enough using Epiphany in KDE
   needs more memory than Firefox" -- so does using Konqueror in GNOME.
   In general it's expensive to use apps from the 'other' desktop, regardless
   of which desktop is the host and which is the guest

* While KOffice is certainly a lot less resource hungry it is also not capable
   enough yet for most people. Judging by KOffice's pace of development it's a
   good look at the future, but not something you should stress right now in
   your conclusion. KDE + OOo is still 30 Mb lighter than GNOME and only 20 Mb
   heavier than Xfce and much more realistic.

Apart from this, thanks for the hard work!

-- 
Martijn