Ever since KDE made their software more modular with Plasma 5 / Frameworks 5, a Plasma session can be cut down by a lot. Personally, I don’t think it matters much because as soon as you browse the web, the RAM demands of the web browser dwarf that of even a fully decked out desktop anyway, but the options are there – perhaps for certain use cases that don’t involve web browsing.
I brought my KDE idle RAM usage down to 500MB just by using the GUI options that come with it. That’s about the same amount a default Xfce or LXQt needs.
I disabled all animations, the baloo file indexing and all services that start automatically at login.
I also installed not the full KDE Suite but just Plasma Desktop and then uninstalled all parts I don’t need.
So technically, I’m not running KDE but Plasma. From the KDE application Suite I use Dolphin, Konsole, the archiver, the image viewer, the PDF viewer and the system settings tool.
I think latly, especially in plasma 6, KDE got as viable on old machines as XFCE and surly mint and cinnamon.
Ever since KDE made their software more modular with Plasma 5 / Frameworks 5, a Plasma session can be cut down by a lot. Personally, I don’t think it matters much because as soon as you browse the web, the RAM demands of the web browser dwarf that of even a fully decked out desktop anyway, but the options are there – perhaps for certain use cases that don’t involve web browsing.
I brought my KDE idle RAM usage down to 500MB just by using the GUI options that come with it. That’s about the same amount a default Xfce or LXQt needs.
Damn can you list some of the options you remember changing?
I disabled all animations, the baloo file indexing and all services that start automatically at login.
I also installed not the full KDE Suite but just Plasma Desktop and then uninstalled all parts I don’t need.
So technically, I’m not running KDE but Plasma. From the KDE application Suite I use Dolphin, Konsole, the archiver, the image viewer, the PDF viewer and the system settings tool.
Yes baloo is a hog. Note that the background services systemsettings page will be hidden in the future but accessible from the global search.
Cinnamon isn’t that lightweight. You will probably find KDE uses less resources.
Do you think installing extensions is really that difficult on Gnome?