The officially official Devuan Forum!

Camtaf

Member

Registered: 2019-11-19

Posts: 573  

Re: What DE do you prefer to use on Devuan?

@pcalvert

I run Devuan XFCE on my 2GB/16GB eMMC chromebook quite happily.

But if you want something lighter, maybe take a look at JWM, (I now use that as a secondary desktop system).

zapper

Member

Registered: 2017-05-29

Posts: 1,295  

Re: What DE do you prefer to use on Devuan?

@Camtag there's a reason its puppylinux's default desktop interface.

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Mercury

Member

Registered: 2024-11-14

Posts: 69  

Re: What DE do you prefer to use on Devuan?

My old netbook with 2GB RAM runs Devuan with XFCE.

Devarch

Member

Registered: 2022-10-03

Posts: 194  

Re: What DE do you prefer to use on Devuan?

KDE. 

I have a HiDPI display and an external monitor; the settings for the internal and external displays must be distinct. 
Cinnamon handles HiDPI reasonably well but its multi‑display configuration is less effective than Wayland. 
All other X11 desktop environments (except Cinnamon) look terrible. 

Also KDE uses fewer resources than Cinnamon when Baloo is disabled and unnecessary components are not installed. 
In terms of lighter usage, I am concerned about CPU usage rather than the 100–200MB difference in RAM.

tux_99

Member

Registered: 2025-06-17

Posts: 189  

Re: What DE do you prefer to use on Devuan?

X11 can handle Hidpi just fine, you just have to make sure the DPI is set correctly for your screen. I used a HiDPI screen with X11 and KDE 3.5 already 18 years ago.

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“Either the users control the program – or the program controls the users” Richard Stallman

Devarch

Member

Registered: 2022-10-03

Posts: 194  

Re: What DE do you prefer to use on Devuan?

More of that I understand that commercial LLMs are trained mostly, always exclusively on open source code. So, to my mind it must be (as it will be fair) free to all open source projects, but the world is not perfect.

Yes. I have mentioned that Cinnamon X11 handles HIDPI well. KDE X11 does so as well. I then explained why I chose KDE over Cinnamon:
1. Lower CPU usage.
2. Support for both X11 and Wayland, where Wayland provides better automatic configuration (resolution, brightness, and refresh rate) on multi-display setups.