I still on the fence KDE5 vs. Xfce 4.16. As a long time Xfce user I'm kinda use to the quirks, layout etc. I bounce back and forth. KDE4 was absolutely ghastly. KDE5 is much improved. I have found so far, default DE settings, that some phoronic game benchmarks are up to 6% faster in Xfce than KDE. This is on a Ryzen 9 3800X, amdgpu, RX 5700 XT. after the recent KDE updates I need to check if that changed.

The one quirk in Xfce is that some of dark themes (Breeze-dark, etc) confuse krusader, boincmgr, and a few others. KDE seems fine, even with GTK programs. I did have an issue with medit in KDE (invisible icons), but need to recompile and check again. The one think in KDE that still annoys me is the odd places some config settings are stashed - seems to be designed by an inebriated cross eyed gnome.

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I'm confused now. I just ran UniGiNE's Sanctuary benchmark with every setting maxed on both Plasma 5 and Xfce from Jan. 13 update. I fully expected Xfce to be ever so slightly faster, maybe 2-3%. Instead I got this....

I must be doing something REALLY wrong in Xfce! At first I wondered if "xwfm compositor" overrode nvidia-settings and locked in Vsync buit it obviously didn't or Max FPS would've been 60 FPS. Also the scene sweeps were absolutely smooth in Plasma and "herky-jerky" in Xfce.

What am I missing?

UPDATE - (still a bit odd)

I just ran UNiGiNE's newer and more strenuous Superposition benchmark on 1080p Extreme and got this.....

That's a lot closer but still seems backwards since Plasma scored ~20% higher. WTF?

PS - I think I'll go back to Kwin in place of xfwm4 and run these again. I won't bore you with the details.

Running `balooctl disable` should do what you want. Running just `balooctl` will give you other options.

I thought that the "Enable File Search" checkbox under "System Settings" > "Search" > "File Search" was the GUI way to disable/enable baloo (with the further "Also index file content" equivalent to enabling/disabling "basic indexing"). The baloofilerc config file works too tho

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My results are opposite:but pretty close - Plasma scored ~3.8% slower.

chris

Thanks for the data chris.willing, but now more than ever I want to know why. Also, would you mention what settings you used.. both the Unigine settings and compositor(s)? Both Sanctuary and Superposition I ran at absolute MAX settings and fullscreen.

As I said, I normal replace xfwm4 with Kwin but for the test I reverted Xfce to xfwm4. I'm wondering if this could be an OpenGL thing which brings up the added question, what type of GPU, and if nvidia, which driver and do you allow it to replace Mesa OpenGL libraries? FTR mine is nvidia GTX 1070 Ti with proprietary driver installed from runlevel3 with the 460 run file.

I used only Superposition with "1080P Extreme" preset at fullscreen. I use nvidia binary driver with an RTX2060 Super (as per attached Superposition screenshot).

chris

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I was unsure what enorbet meant by "absolute MAX setting" so I ran the Superposition benchmark again using 4K and 8K presets (these appear after the 1080P Extreme preset - so presumably more demanding). Interestingly, the 4K Optimized run scored better than 1080P Extreme (6470 vs 4454). The 8K Optimized run scored only 2766. These were both using XFCE desktop but since the 4K result was so good, I repeated it using Plasma. Results were:
I'm not sure why the 4K results are so good - I'm using a 4K monitor but not convinced that is relevant.

chris

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That's utterly fascinating and also further confusing, chris.willing. However I should have been more specific since by "absolute max settings" I meant for my hardware. My monitor is currently a 1080p so-called Smart-TV. It's pretty great for under 200 bux and 35 inches but part of why I bought it was I didn't think through and research fully and just trusted Vizio's claim that it could scale to 120Hz. A class action suit subsequently proved that was an outright lie. Since I'm more informed about flat panel monitors now, I'm not all that unhappy about the hardware, just not pleased I was lied to but caveat emptor, right?

In any case I notice you didn't mention the compositor in Xfce, so please do if you don't mind. Nevertheless those are some great scores at that resolution. I'm impressed and also further bummed that 3000 series is so hard to get right now. I'm now also considering an Acer 34inch 1440p Predator. I can't afford 4K in the size I'm accustomed to and wonder how valuable that extra pixel density is for my old eyes .

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The compositor is whatever comes with xfwm4, without any changes to the default settings i.e. in "Window Manager Tweaks", all check buttons are ON except for "Show shadows under popup windows". All the slider settings are at 100% ("Opaque").
Yes, that's a real problem. I used to have a 27" 2560x1440 display which was pretty good but since changing to the 4K display (27.5"), I now have to use reading glasses for text based apps (like this forum). My next display will have to be substantially larger to avoid that.

chris

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Hello again chris.willing. At the risk of continuing on what many may find trivial I'd really like to know how you install your driver. I use the "NVIDIA_foo_version.run" installer from runlevel 3 and after it builds the kernel module it asks if we want to install 32 bit compatibility. If we answer "yes" it then searches for conflicting libraries (mostly for OpenGL) and replaces those with nvidia's own tested and approved libraries. I really want to know if you do this or not (I do) as I'm trying to grasp how we have two differing results and I suspect OpenGL is the crux.

Yes, that's almost exactly how I do it. This is a pure 64 bit so I answer no to 32bit compatibility. Also, I answer yes to DKMS support. Along with having added to /etc/rc.d/rc.modules.local, it means I have nothing special to do at each (fairly frequent at the moment) kernel update. During the first reboot after a kernel update, the nvidia driver is automatically rebuilt & installed i.e. nothing to do to boot straight to graphical login screen.

chris

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No offense, BUT there are hundreds users who uses boxes like mines for every user who owns a box like yours, with 24 cores rippers, 64G RAM and a graphics card with 8GB memory. So, your benchmarks eventually are with all respect some corner cases, to not say useless.

Heck, in my league having 2 cores at 2 GHz and 4 GB main memory is more than decent if you have also a SATA2 port on motherboard!

BTW, the XFCE acts deplorable in a Core2Duo with 4GB DDR2 RAM and OpenGL 2.1 capable graphics given by an integrated Intel GMA X4500HD.

While Plasma5 still acts decently on that hardware. Feel free to do the math.

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Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake at six o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of 'ot gravel, work twenty hour day at mill for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would thrash us to sleep with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

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Don't apologize - be as offensive as needed to feel good.


Thanks, that information is more relevant to the thread.

chris