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fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,771  

Desktop memory use in Excalibur

Comparison of memory use according to ps_mem.py.
Default desktop installations of Excalibur (Devuan 6.0.0) in qemu.
Screenshots: https://git.devuan.org/fsmithred/screenshots

Desktop		-----		Memory use (ps_mem.py)

 lxde	(xorg)			332 MiB
 lxqt	(xorg)			428 MiB
 xfce	(xorg)			440 MiB
 Gnome	(wayland)		767 MiB
 Gnome	(xorg)			819 MiB
 Cinnamon (xorg)		834 MiB
 Cinnamon (wayland)		??? "experimental" (no desktop, login screen loops)
 KDE	(xorg)			1.1 GiB
 KDE	(wayland)		1.2 GiB

aitor

Member

From: basque country

Registered: 2016-12-03

Posts: 280  

Website

Re: Desktop memory use in Excalibur

Btw, lxde is gtk3 in excalibur. There were still some bugs before summer, but they have been fixed. I'm subscribed to their mailing list.

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If you work systematically, things will come by itself (Lev D. Landau)

greenjeans

Member

Registered: 2017-04-07

Posts: 1,317  

Website

Re: Desktop memory use in Excalibur

I'm not familiar with that script, is it just calculating mem use minus buffers & cache?

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fsmithred

Administrator

Registered: 2016-11-25

Posts: 2,771  

Re: Desktop memory use in Excalibur

I got it from here: https://github.com/pixelb/ps_mem
You don't need to "install" anything. Just grab the script itself and make it executable. I changed "python" to "python3" in the shebang and run it with 'python3 ps_mem.py".

Those memory figures aren't written in stone. I checked an excalibur lxqt on a laptop here, and it only uses 305 MiB, That's the result of a more selective install without the task-* packages.

The top of the output is cut off in all the screenshots. Here are the column headings:

Private  +   Shared  =  RAM used	Program

kapqa

Member

Registered: 2019-01-02

Posts: 565  

Re: Desktop memory use in Excalibur

12 tabs open, mostly text.

1.3 GiB + 189.6 MiB =   1.5 GiB       firefox-nightly (21)

EDUTL: not even that much text, two are blank tabs, seems quite exxagerated.

Last edited by kapqa (2025-11-20 11:25:48)

greenjeans

Member

Registered: 2017-04-07

Posts: 1,317  

Website

Re: Desktop memory use in Excalibur

Ahh I see, so yeah it's pretty close to the old school way of measuring ram, what's actually being used, nice.

If you run conky it's easy to check without ever opening anything at boot-up, you can use the "mem" command to get ram usage, and that's the newer way with all buffers and cache and such added in. But you can get the old behavior still at least in Daedalus by using "legacymem" in place of the mem command.

I use the new method generally to get a fuller picture of usage, but I tried legacymem last night for giggles on Vuu-do, and the mini runs 230-240 mb at idle, and the max runs about 260-270.

Openbox FTW.

---

https://sourceforge.net/projects/vuu-do/ New Vuu-do isos uploaded October 2025!
Vuu-do GNU/Linux, minimal Devuan-based Openbox and Mate systems to build on. Also a max version for OB.
Devuan 5 mate-mini iso, pure Devuan, 100% no-vuu-do. Devuan 6 version also available for testing.
Please donate to support Devuan and init freedom! https://devuan.org/os/donate

dzz

Member

From: Exmouth, South West England

Registered: 2016-12-01

Posts: 78  

Re: Desktop memory use in Excalibur

With 'python-is-python3' installed (16kb), ps_mem.py runs here without changing anything.