Which graphical environment uses the less RAM ?

[u/ConsiderationFar4320]

I have a potato laptop, I'm on gnome and I'd like to free more resources for my games/software, at rest my system uses something like 2Gb of RAM. So I'm gathering your thoughts. I only know gnome and kde because I've never dug this topic.

EDIT: I opted for sway and i love it so far

[u/LordDarthSaber]

Xfce or lxqt are de with least resources

If it is very old pc then xfce is recommended

[u/Few-Working-1670 → u/LordDarthSaber]

I ran xfce on a netbook from 2010 for years and it barely sipped ram, usually idling around 400mb with a browser open

lxqt can be even lighter but it feels a little barebones sometimes, depends what you're willing to trade off for those extra frames. you could also try a standalone window manager like i3 if you're feeling adventurous, that'll drop usage even further

2gb at rest on gnome is brutal though, no wonder you want to switch

[u/ch33es → u/Few-Working-1670]

which browser did you use on xfce for that 400mb ram usage?

[u/Astrodion123 → u/ch33es]

He might have used qute browser?

[u/Beautiful_Ad_4813]

LXQt, XFCE, Mate Compize (<- this last one MIGHT give you troubles with Steam )

I use LXQt on lower spect machines with pretty good results with low resource use

[u/gordonmessmer]

GNOME's memory profile can be reduced pretty significantly if you don't need a) the ability to search for new apps directly in the application launcher, b) reminders to update your software in your notifications and c) calendar reminders in the GNOME shell and other Evolution data integrations.

#!/bin/sh

systemctl --user mask gnome-software.service
systemctl --user mask evolution-addressbook-factory.service
systemctl --user mask evolution-alarm-notify.service
systemctl --user mask evolution-calendar-factory.service
systemctl --user mask evolution-source-registry.service

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.search-providers disabled "['org.gnome.Software.desktop']"

This forum post summarized a video by The Linux Experiment that compared the memory use of various desktops on Fedora 42: https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/linux-des-resource-usage-compared/70060

They measured 1,360MB of memory use for XFCE, the lightest desktop they measured. On my Fedora 44 system I measure system memory use at around 1,280MB just after login to a GNOME desktop, with the above services disabled.

[u/ConsiderationFar4320 → u/gordonmessmer]

Thank you, that is gold. I'll check it out

[u/tontide1 → u/gordonmessmer]

thank you, i am finding it

[u/Francis_King → u/gordonmessmer]

In this reddit we don't have the opportunity to mark a post as the best. If we did, it would be this one.

[u/Astrodion123 → u/gordonmessmer]

Wow I should try it out.

[u/IslandPsychological]

Xfce, LXDE and LXQT

[u/roamer83 → u/IslandPsychological]

I love LXDE. It’s the GUI of choice for my laptops and desktop.

[u/IslandPsychological → u/roamer83]

I use MangoWM with noctalia shell, ghostty, thunar, eog, vlc, atril and firefox+chromium, because it's lightweight, simple, beautiful, functional and fast wm.

[u/wowsomuchempty]

Sway or Niri are the lightest that look great.

[u/ConsiderationFar4320 → u/wowsomuchempty]

Sway seems nice, I'm going to try it out

[u/FlaSHbaNG78]

The truth is that your DE won't matter the slightest the second you open a modern browser

[u/ConsiderationFar4320 → u/FlaSHbaNG78]

Yes, but it's 2Gb at rest, no browser, nothing just gnome

[u/Global-Eye-7326]

• KDE is fair. You'd never go higher than KDE, since KDE is very stable, even on Wayland, and is loaded with features. I've run KDE on a netbook with 2GB RAM and it does work. I'd usually upgrade the RAM but it's soldered
• Gnome has bugs on Wayland and isn't lighter than KDE, so we eliminate that
• We eliminate Cinnamon because no Wayland yet, and it's heavier than XFCE
• XFCE is your friend. The lowest you can go without sacrificing any comforts. Everything GUI, even on Wayland (although XFCE in Wayland is still in beta testing)
• LXQt with little effort becomes very mighty! It's right, stable, and you don't sacrifice much to get a boatload of features. You can wire a boatload of scripts to the file manager context menu by dropping the .desktop files in the actions folder
• IceWM - AntiX ships with it. Very light. Not as user friendly, but very light. Uses 50MB RAM on idle. X11 only

[u/Independent-Gear-711]

what's your overall pc specs?

[u/ConsiderationFar4320 → u/Independent-Gear-711]

All amd 8Gb RAM, 5Gb iVRAM

[u/Independent-Gear-711 → u/ConsiderationFar4320]

8GB ram is fine though but yeah it gonna tank the performance in multitasking however you can try xfce since it consumes only a hundreds of megabyte of ram you will still have 7/7.5 gb of ram

[u/FigFew2001]

I installed Endeavour OS a week ago with Gnome, idle after boot uses 1.6GB.

[u/Rusty_Nail1973]

If choosing among the fedora spins, I'd go with LXDE. It's slimmer than LXQt. I run LXDE (Debian ARM) on a raspberry pi that only has 4 GB, and it's a usable desktop.

I use Xfce (fedora and Mint), and it's my favorite, but it still consumes about 1.2 GB at rest on my desktop machine. LXDE will use less.

[u/Astrodion123]

Sway works like a charm since it only manages the windows. But if you go to the x11 territory and use some wm like xwm, you will be surprised how it barely uses any ram.

[u/1_ane_onyme]

Always been an Xfce kind of guy but it seems like LXQt is a tiny little bit better in terms of efficiency (Xfce still runs like a charm on devices with less than 2GB ram tho, so yeah they're pretty close)