I haven't been able to duplicate that.
The best with KDE 4.12.2, at idle, is 11-12% with spikes up to 30%, 364 processes and 2 users. BTW, why 2 users?

Xfce 4.10.2, OTOH, is 0% at idle with 260 processes and 1 user.

OK If a picture is worth 1000 words, here is the sloppy, lived-in version, which should be biased toward greater cpu/ram usage.

Mine is not a fresh, clean install. This system started as Slack v11 32bit and was upgraded as per Patrick's instructions each step of the way to what it is now v14 32bit. It even has some old Dropline Gnome junk laying around since at one time I needed a bunch more Gnome libraries to make compiling from source easier. There's enough spaghetti in here that it's a wonder my default language didn't auto-change to Italian :P

KDE version is 4.8.5 which is not as refined as Current, let alone KTown. Nothing is removed or disabled. To be specific, nepomuk et al, akonadai, strigi all the stuff that people complain about is still in there as you will see. I tested KDE after 3 days or so of uptime.

Xfce is 4.10 and as you will see from the timestamp and uptime, I rebooted after the KDE test to do it fresh on Xfce.

I used KSysguard to get both numbers and a graph and the screen resolution is 1280 x 720 so anybody who wishes to zoom in, can.

As expected, Xfce uses slightly less resources, but I suppose "slight difference" is a matter of opinion and personal preference, so each reader can decide for himself. Obviously, if you have a newer, cleaner install, your numbers should be even better.

Here ya go .....

KDE-4.8.5 Test

Xfce-4.10 Test

If you're "seeing" numbers much higher than this for KDE and less for Xfce, well, Lowell "saw" canals on Mars, too, since I doubt your system is as messy as mine..

Post your load average. It's more accurate than your curated numbers.

Also, what model CPU are you testing with?

Here's my load average: 0.04, 0.06, 0.05
(AMD FX-6300)

Averaged over 15 minutes, my system is using approximately 5% of one CPU. That's at idle, with all-feature-enabled KDE4, amarok, gkrellm, and several non-standard daemons running.

Why two users? Kde launches a pts for kdeinit. Why are you so concerned with process and user numbers? These numbers alone do not correlate with system load or application performance.

My load with i3 (using) is less than 1%

Is this with Xfce or KDE? If it's KDE do you now see "why kde"?

From time to time, some app, suite, or library release goes south or gets grabbed up way too soon by some distros. I recall years ago when Patrick refused to "upgrade" gcc, and all the majors just fell over themselves first providing, and then madly fixing the mess. Slackware was spared because of such expertise and caution. I think he also "threaded the needle" expertly on KDE as well, given the choices.

Hopefully more now see that from the responses in this thread.

Unfortunately, in this world all is fake.

Did you see those that join to those rallies against middle-east wars to jump out of their cars and walk or use a bike?

Incipit systemd.

I personally think that KDE from a visual and aesthetics perspective, is the best WM for a Linux DE and is also better than Mac OS's GUI and Aero/Metro in Windows.

It has a built in theme manager with real time previews for themes and icons that allows you to down load them right off the net and installs them automatically, plus its built in compositor is pretty good, you can have multiple desktop backgrounds on each workspace (coming soon to xfce4!) and workspace switching is smooth and clean like in unity or Mac. The only reasons I don't use it are because I'm a stickler for resources and it takes up anywhere from 300-600 more megabytes of ram then xfce4 and I don't mind doing things a little more manually (i.e. theme's), also I use Slackware on all of my computers and some of the older machines cant handle modern desktop effects, so in an effort to keep a consistent desktop experience across all boxes I use xfce4 exclusively, maintaining uniformity for the sake of speed and stability.

I feel like it wouldn't be right if KDE didn't take up more ram, if you like a flashy dare I say, gaudy desktop, I think KDE is the best choice. Those who don't want to spend a lot of time configuring such things yet want to have all the modern options for a configuration OOB without any hassle and have many extra features that are built in is awesome. KDE is the total package and it does it extremely well IMO. I might even switch to it one day if these older machines I have get tossed.

It is i3 wm

Window manager != desktop environment.

So?

2 members found this post helpful.

So,

KWIN != KDE
xfwm4 != XFCE4
Metacity != GNOME
...
For other examples, gently I suggest you to RTFM or to google, first to talk!

BTW, where I work, we use KWIN (yep! the KDE-4.11's KWIN, just him, and only) to drive a custom graphical recovery console, for the company customers. And it have an amazing low memory and processor footprint.

And I find funny that my glorious friends compare a very complete and... complex desktop environment with one that is something like GNOME2 simplified.

Finally, how about to XFCE fanboys to compare it to something from its league, like... razor-qt?

Because technically, you compare a massive 100Kg Rottweiler, trained from his puppy-hood to heartless fight or die-hard together with his master soldier in the Afghan War, with a ... Chihuahua. Of course that your Chihuahua eat less! But he can't kill a suicidal bomber in two seconds!

1 members found this post helpful.

Oh come on, why so loud? It was obviously a joke, quite apt one if you ask me.

AFAIK razor-qt is feature-wise more on par with LXDE and is actually merging with LXDE, as PCman decided that he will rewrite it to QT.

So, please!Amaze me!

How is this XFCE(4) higher compared with Razor-qt or LXDE? Because, it have his own WM?

Of course we do. Because there was a claim that KDE is a CPU hog compared with other DEs/WMs and as it was shown that is simply not true, even with enabled file indexing, which in the past had some problems. And of course KDE takes up more RAM, it has much more components running by default as other DEs, but that was to be expected and actually I am surprised by its, for that functionality rather small, footprint. I don't quite get what you are complaining about?

1 members found this post helpful.

To answer the question posted in the title of the thread, because it's the main and most complete desktop provided by Slackware. I realize there are many other options provided by default but most seem bare bones, in the sense that they would need way to much work to be up to an easily usable state.

Personally I've run Slackware for many years starting around version 12. I've always found it the most stable and reliable disto around, truthfully I've only had one issue in all those years and that was due to a decision on the part of the kernel devs (which caused me to lose hardware compatibility) and not the Slackware devs, and it was fixed by the next release.

Having said that after the change to KDE4 I no longer used Slackware as my primary system (although I always kept it installed) as after trying pretty much all other desktops I went to Elive because I found I liked E17 and they had the most polished version available at the time.

I realize, aside from the rough start of Kde4 it was probably an acceptable DE, but as I was a diehard Kde3 user it was a hard pill to swallow, and some of the statements and actions by the devs didn't make it any easier. When the uproar against the change to Kde4 started the main developer said, and this isn't an exact quote, We don't care if no one uses Kde4, we didn't make it for users. that showed someone whos ego was bruised and a really dismissive attitude toward the concerns of those who would be most affected by what I still feel were unnecessary changes to provide new features 99% of users don't want, need, and many times even know exist.

I came back to using Slackware as my primary system with 14 when I found the Slacke17 project, since the release of 14.1 I've been running Slackware with Kde4 and do find it acceptable. I would still prefer the good old rock solid and much more reliable Kde3 but it's gone, I tried trinity and found it way to broken to be in any way an acceptable replacement for Kde3.

As much as I hate to admit it I probably won't bother installing E17 for the life of this release and will continue to use the provided Kde4, as others have said compared to most other DE's it is probably the superior choice.

2 members found this post helpful.