There is constant talk about which Desktop Environment is more bloated. While bloat does affect productivity, does it affect performance? After extensive benchmarking, I have determined that the answer is no, unless you are running enlightenment. Enlightenment lagged behind XFce, Gnome, and Blackbox by a few FPS, consistently, in UT2004 and Quake III. Glxgears is not a comprehensive benchmark so I disregarded the results (they were roughly comparable anyway).

Anyway, here are the results. I am running Gentoo Linux with a 2.6.5 kernel. I am using a Pentium 4 2.6 GHz w/ HT and a 800 MHz FSB. I have 1 GB PC-3200 DDR Ram @ 400 MHz. The graphics card is a PNY Geforce 4 TI 4200 64 MB.

1 = XFce
2 = Gnome
3 = Blackbox
4 = Enlightenment



I didn't have the time to install KDE. It's a shame, because KDE is the most unique of all these DE's, as it uses QT instead of GTK+ and is extremely bloated, making it relevant to this experiment.

The question is, what is slowing Enlightenment down?

------------------
I check my e-mail.

[This message has been edited by Mystic0 (edited May 02, 2004).]

For additional discussion, what DE are you currently pleased with?

As of right now, I am enjoying XFce. It seems to have the perfect balance of performance and eye candy. I'm also glad to see that it uses gtk+, which makes it easy and free to develop for and theme.

I formerly used Gnome, but switched when I realized that Nautilus and Metacity were both terrible.

------------------
I check my e-mail.

[This message has been edited by Mystic0 (edited May 02, 2004).]

Dont you already know? Do I really have to say it?

------------------
I used to believe that we must fight the future, lest change come without our consent. I was wrong. The truth is that we must embrace the future, for only with change can we remain the same.

Hehe.

XFce is great... It lets you dock windows with windows, you can scroll workstations with the mouse wheel, you can add and deleate workstations on the fly with the middle mouse button, my memory usage is almost always low, (Gnome had it at 100% most of the time), you can set your own workspace margins, and desktop icons are eliminated in favor of a simple but powerful panel.

The result is a clean, fast, customizable, and pretty gtk+ DE.

------------------
I check my e-mail.

Gnome is pretty bloated too; don't single out KDE like that.

I prefer Fluxbox, but use KDE from time to time.

------------------
[This message has been edited. Deal with it.]

Agreed. Gnome is bloated, but it does a better job of making it clean. That doesn't stop it from sucking though. Bloatage:

KDE > Gnome > Enlightenment > XFce > Blackblox / Fluxbox.

------------------
I check my e-mail.

[This message has been edited by Mystic0 (edited May 02, 2004).]

You guys always talk about bloat, but have you ever even USED KDE?!?! Most of KDE is very lightweight, even though it has loads of features. If the version you have is slow, UPGRADE.

------------------
I used to believe that we must fight the future, lest change come without our consent. I was wrong. The truth is that we must embrace the future, for only with change can we remain the same.

Wanna see how bloated KDE is? Just open the menu, it's self explanitory.

Real men use the command line.

------------------
I check my e-mail.

Maybe we are misusing the term bloat...



But really, when I say bloat, I meant clutter, not performance. I could install KDE and bench it if it's that important to you, but not today.

Edit: Yes, I have used KDE. Gnome and KDE are BOTH bloated. For example, they BOTH take hours to compile. XFce is NOT bloated, and it does NOT take hours to compile.

I realize that compile times are not everything, but they do give you a good picture of what's going into the package. I have used all 3 DE's, so I am basing my conclusions on my user experience.
------------------
I check my e-mail.

[This message has been edited by Mystic0 (edited May 02, 2004).]

The newest KDE is pretty snappy actually. I have it installed, though I rarely use it. Never bothered to install Gnome though. Don't really care much for the included apps because I do almost everything from the command line. I just use the GUI to launch Gaim, Firefox, and a couple of xterms.

------------------
[This message has been edited. Deal with it.]

I use KDE. I've used Gnome, but it sort of rubbed me the wrong way and I went back to KDE.

As for all the "bloat" and all the programs oyu get in KDE, I'd rather have that than have a stripped down DE on my comp. That's what you get when you have only windows and nothing else installed on your disk. If I wanted to do everything from the command line, I may as well use DOS.

I'm all about productivity. The more stuff I have to work with at any given time, the better.

I want it all, not just the bare minimum.

------------------
Old aunts used to come up to me at weddings, poking me in the ribs and cackling, telling me, "You're next." They stopped after I started doing the same thing to them at funerals.

[This message has been edited by Pagewizard_YKS (edited May 02, 2004).]

me i just use fluxbox and be done with it, it does everything that i want it to do so that is good enough for me i just don't want the extra bloat included w/ gnome or kde i just want an gui that does what i want it to do

------------------
Echoman: If I can create energy from stupidity, the world's power supply will never end...

I use KDE, and have no intention of changing. I've used Gnome and a few *box's, but I don't like any of them as much as KDE. You can cut down on programs installed (at least in Gentoo) by being injecting the packages you don't want, and using something like the DONOTCOMPILE= environment variable (it might be called something different) that lets you select individual applications that you want to be left out.

KDE for me and Gnome for root.

------------------
To artificial life, all reality is virtual.
HTP
babble, babble, b!tch, b!tch, rebel, rebel, party, party.

[This message has been edited by Darth Evad (edited May 02, 2004).]

Wow, are those graphs automatically generated by the benchmark program? Because they're pretty crap... In both you can barely notice the difference between XFce, Gnome and Blackbox. Isn't there a way you can enlarge the scale?

I made the graphs.



------------------
I check my e-mail.

XFce > *

------------------
I check my e-mail.

I use IceWM, but I've tried/enjoyed XFCE4.

------------------
EvilMagic.net: Brian's Web Log

Also, I don't think your benchmarks are sane. You are measuring the performance of the computer AFTER it has allocated enough memory to run the program into swap, so I'm not surprised that they are so close. Why not measure the startup time? Shutdown time? Disk space each one requires (that would more accurately show you the "bloat" factor ?

------------------
EvilMagic.net: Brian's Web Log

Well, I do know that when I use Gnome my memory usage is at full which in XFce it is very low.

Edit: I also know that these benchmarks are pretty consistant... I went back and redid some of them and got the same results. Boot times are very similar as most of the time is used by the kernel.

------------------
I check my e-mail.

[This message has been edited by Mystic0 (edited May 03, 2004).]

Oh, I know what you're talking about Brian. I'll make sure to reboot for the next benchmarks when I get KDE installed and measure startup times.

------------------
I check my e-mail.

What a pain

------------------
EvilMagic.net: Brian's Web Log

Just installed KDE 3.2.2 and all I have to say is...

yuck! Things havn't gotten any better since I last tried it. They still try to drown you in piles and piles of usless and repetitive menues. It's a shame that there isn't a good lightweight qt based wm out there...

------------------
I check my e-mail.

Why would you want a "lightweight qt wm" when you can just have a "lightweight wm?" Who cares whether it uses qt?

------------------
EvilMagic.net: Brian's Web Log

From a developers standpoint. Qt is a good platform for GUI programming (easy and well documented) and is themable.

It also has bindings for python, which is great for rapid GUI programming. But then again, so does GTK+.

------------------
I check my e-mail.

[This message has been edited by Mystic0 (edited May 04, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by Mystic0 (edited May 04, 2004).]

Well, Fluxbox does have KDE support. You could easily have the power of every KDE application with the simplicity of a light-weight wm.

------------------
[This message has been edited. Deal with it.]

Meh, I was just being picky. XFce > *, but it uses GTK2. Theres nothing wrong with that, infact it's great, but for development, qt3 > gtk2.

I'll shut up now.

------------------
I check my e-mail.

[This message has been edited by Mystic0 (edited May 04, 2004).]

Except you need to be in a DE that's written in QT to use QT apps. You do realize that, right? I use IceWM and I can start any QT app I want. You can through GNOME as well. It's like... no big thing.

------------------
EvilMagic.net: Brian's Web Log

I realize that. However, I want the programs that I write to look consistant with the DE I use. QT looks out of place in Gnome and GTK looks out of place in KDE.

As you said, it doesn't really matter... I was just being picky.

------------------
I check my e-mail.

Err, dont you mean to say, 'you *dont* need to be in'...?

------------------
I used to believe that we must fight the future, lest change come without our consent. I was wrong. The truth is that we must embrace the future, for only with change can we remain the same.

Yeah, I assumed that's what he meant.

------------------
I check my e-mail.