Erik R

Wed, 18 Apr 2018 22:40:53 +0200

I recently moved from KDE to Cinnamon, both using Funtoo and the same configuration. Cinnamon seems to take a lot more memory altogether and I now have to upgrade from 16 to 32 GB RAM to be able to run 2 users (my private and company users). Memory used with the same programs as in KDE consumes around 13GB and once in a while some program dies due to out of memory. With two loged in users the Cinnamon process consumes 1.2 GB RAM by itself.

The main differens between KDE and Cinnamon is how LibreOffice works. It is clumsy and slow in KDE built for KDE and noticeably faster built for GTK in an GTK environment. I am in general quite found of KDE themes but Adwita is the theme for LibreOffice and Inkscape - makes much more sense.

linux cinnamon

show all 12 comments

Erik R

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 10:16:04 +0200

What the heck are Cinnamon doing with all the memory? I switched to XFCE and are now consuming 7.5 GB with about the same setup (a lot of different firefox instances and lots and lots of tabs+ libreoffice etc).

Marshall Sutherland

Thu, 19 Apr 2018 13:25:45 +0200

Hmm, maybe that is why I never seem to have enough memory. My mobo is so old that it is maxed out at 8GB. Every time I swap over to it, after not using it for a day, the disk has to thrash for 30 seconds before the screen saver prompts me for a password.

Erik R

Fri, 20 Apr 2018 19:32:29 +0200

I used to run KDE on my Eee-PC with maxed 2GB RAM. It worked well. Firefox takes a lot, Chrome takes three times as much.

I am back in KDE. With two Sessions, quite a few Firefox instances (not only tabs or windows) and libreoffice I am consuming about 10GB. This is normal.

If I run the book keeping software in Wine instead of VirtualBox with windows I am home safe :) I only need Virtual Windows for the yearly license key - it won't work in Wine. But once read it will be included in the backup file and can be restored into the wine installation. The software is built using VB6 so it seems well proven and supported ;)

Marshall Sutherland

Fri, 20 Apr 2018 20:33:33 +0200

Yesterday, I got an opportunity to buy a friend's replaced mobo/cpu/memory for $50. It will double my cpu power and memory. Looks like I have a project this weekend!

Beni Grind

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 07:54:39 +0200

I mostly use WMs without a full desktop environment. Right now I'm on fvwm2 because cwm isn't as stable as I like it on Linux.

A couple of weeks ago I tried KDE 5 for the first time and I must say I quite like it. Still I won't switch, it would take ages to reproduce my fvwm config on KDE.

(And of course that's all on #Slackware

)

Erik R

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 08:12:04 +0200

That's how it is. I have been using KDE since end of version 3 and have passed 2 major total rewrites. Takes an effort to change to something else.

Beside, there there are a few crucial applications in the DE that I need. Okular is one of them - the best what-ever-you-want-viewer there is. You can annotate PDFs and save the result as an Ocular-file (PDF+annotation) and move to another computer. Perfect for analysing documents.

Erik R

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 08:41:26 +0200

I have tried to use packaged distros a few times. It is not for me. I did abandon Gentoo for #funtoo though as I like the cascading profiles (main difference in practice). When I decided to move back Daniel introduced KITs and I decided to stay again :)

I have accepted that I want full control over my Linux and I want it my way. Nothing installed that I won't like and, with no intention to start another religious debate, I just don't want to have systemd plainly because I don't like it and am the boss (at least of my own computer). That limits the number of distros quite a bit. OpenRC from Gentoo on the other hand is perfect in my eyes.

Besides, to be able to compile a lot one can invest i a powerful computer :)

Beni Grind

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 11:38:08 +0200

I used #Funtol for a couple of years and really liked the control it gives you over the install. Nevertheless it takes time to configure everything and if I break stuff, I'm the one who has to fix it.

That's why I switched to #Slackware which provides a stable base install which isn't perfectly personalized but saves me a lot of time. And of course it includes Okular in its full install and doesn't come with systemd - which is most likely a great init system but doesn't come with the simplicity I like in plain BSD style init scripts.

Erik R

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 14:13:02 +0200

There is always the risk of messing up the system when upgrading in Gentoo/Funtoo. If something vital fails to build you are in trouble. That is why I have a btrfs root. I always make a snapshot of root when upgrading and when everything is OK I just rename root to root-fallback and root-upgrade to root. Next boot the new upgraded root is used. If things go wrong I scrap the upgrade and wait a week for things to stabilize. This has been vital to secure an always working configuration. I learned this lesson when expath was upgraded in Gentoo several years ago and caused problems to portage itself - the one thing that must be used to get things right :)

Right now it is time for a major upgrade including GCC. Most likely I will make a bootstrap; rebuild compiler and binutils, then rebuild system (including compiler and binutils), finally rebuild everything. Whenever the system seems a bit unbalanced this is a good cure. Everything is in sync. Takes a day or two but it is worth the effort :)

Beni Grind

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 17:32:20 +0200

I might even try Funtoo again if I ever have more time to fiddle with my machine - and machines that compile world in less than a week ;) Right now I'm perfectly fine with Slackware's 2-3 year release cycle.

Erik R

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 18:58:52 +0200

I think it is a beauty that we both can have it our own way even though it differs. That is the spirit of #linux :)

Erik R

Sat, 05 May 2018 10:07:38 +0200

So I got aditional memory (and two M.2 SSDs to run in BTRFS RAID) and now I have 32 GB RAM.
And yet the freaking Cinnamon consumed all the memmory and put the computer down.

I had two loged in users with libreoffice and firefox started. I also had a third instance of Firefox started via sudo (I keep the social stuff in a separate user without access to my real stuff). TO be honest, there was a great amount of tabs started in the social browser and it does not have Java Script Blocker.
I also had a virtualbox with 4GB dedicated RAM started.

In general this is peanuts, yet the bugger consumed all 32 GB and died for me. And no, there is no swap - with that amout of memmory in a desktop it shall not be needed.

I am now back in KDE and this time @Beni Grind I am using Artix Linux that in fact is a packaged linux :)

Right now I have everything excpet for the virtualbox and the huge amount of tabs inm the social browser, consumes 8 GB in KDE.