Which is lighter on resources...Ubuntu MATE or Xubuntu?

[William_Clark]

Which is lighter on resources(CPU,Ram etc..)...Ubuntu MATE or Xubuntu

[beep3]

A while ago I installed both on a laptop with modest specs. Xubuntu seemed slightly less resource-hungry, though in my experience there isn't much between the two. That said, whenever I install Xubuntu I quickly end up installing things like Docky (just to make it look a little more polished and functional), which does use plenty of system resources.

If you got a computer with very low specs you might want to look at something like Lubuntu or Crunchbang.

[kerry_s]

Which is lighter on resources(CPU,Ram etc..)...Ubuntu MATE or Xubuntu

thats a really tricky question. both can be light if you use lighter apps. i'm running mate on a old atom 230 1.6ghz dual cpu, 2gb ram. heavy apps like chrome really spike my cpu, but it handles it just fine. for bouncing around the web i use a lighter browser "epiphany-browser", other apps really don't matter cause i only use them occasionally.
the goal is not to reduce resource use, but to use all you can or why bother having it. if it's not running it's not using any resources.

[kerry_s]

thats a really tricky question. both can be light if you use lighter apps. i'm running mate on a old atom 230 1.6ghz dual cpu, 2gb ram. heavy apps like chrome really spike my cpu, but it handles it just fine. for bouncing around the web i use a lighter browser "epiphany-browser", other apps really don't matter cause i only use them occasionally.
the goal is not to reduce resource use, but to use all you can or why bother having it. if it's not running it's not using any resources.


woohoo! i got my atom 330 motherboard up an running, 2 more extra cores.
i took a pic of first boot up memory use, the other pic was pretty high cause i did a lot of things that day including several movies.

[flaymond]

Both are light for some reason and depends on what apps you using on it. If you use Lubuntu and put apps like in Ubuntu...it just like Ubuntu as well...just different environment.

[kerry_s]

Which is lighter on resources(CPU,Ram etc..)...Ubuntu MATE or Xubuntu

i'm curious what are you using that your concerned about resources? specs?

i learned a long time ago to not worry about the resources, as long is it can do what you want is all that matters, so go ahead max that puppy out. lol
what would you do with extra memory anyways? say you only use like 25%, 75% would be sitting there doing nothing, just a waste of resources.
cpu is the biggy if it's weak everything just feels slower, extra ram just doesn't help.

my current setup is built from 5 broken pc's i pulled from the closet. motherboard,ram,hard drive,dvd,power supply,wifi,fans...
i'm shopping amazon right now, want to get a ssd drive to replace the hd & new wifi, current wifi is buggy. then i think it would be a perfect setup for my daily driver. :)

[William_Clark]

thanks for all the replays!! you all have been very helpful!

[William_Clark]

i'm curious what are you using that your concerned about resources? specs?

i learned a long time ago to not worry about the resources, as long is it can do what you want is all that matters, so go ahead max that puppy out. lol
what would you do with extra memory anyways? say you only use like 25%, 75% would be sitting there doing nothing, just a waste of resources.
cpu is the biggy if it's weak everything just feels slower, extra ram just doesn't help.

my current setup is built from 5 broken pc's i pulled from the closet. motherboard,ram,hard drive,dvd,power supply,wifi,fans...
i'm shopping amazon right now, want to get a ssd drive to replace the hd & new wifi, current wifi is buggy. then i think it would be a perfect setup for my daily driver. :)

Yes I have an old computer AMD Athlon 64 X2 duel-core,1GB ram,Nvidia 6 256mb,200GB harddrive. I was looking for a lightweight Ubuntu flavor distro. I have use crunchbang,Arch,Debian, and many other but I still find myself coming back to Ubuntu. I was trying to decide which of these 2 distros would be the best and lighest for this computer. thanks again for all replays

[kerry_s]

those are good specs. i'd run the both live, see which 1 feels better.

[Rob Sayer]

I had Xubuntu 14.04 on my netbook but it runs Mint 17 Mate now (based on 14.04 of course). At least in ubuntu 14.04, I can't actually see a whole lot of difference in speed. I'm pretty sure the pre 14.04 Xubuntu releases I used were faster. Oh well, that's the way these things work.

Ubuntu Mate probably won't work/respond 100% the same as Mint Mate. So I'm not sure you can exactly compare the two.

I do think Mate is better sorted than Xubuntu. I find the latter a bit buggy. Mate is kind of plain and dull but it works nicely. I don't plan on switching back to xfce any time soon myself.

[kerry_s]

I had Xubuntu 14.04 on my netbook but it runs Mint 17 Mate now (based on 14.04 of course). At least in ubuntu 14.04, I can't actually see a whole lot of difference in speed. I'm pretty sure the pre 14.04 Xubuntu releases I used were faster. Oh well, that's the way these things work.

Ubuntu Mate probably won't work/respond 100% the same as Mint Mate. So I'm not sure you can exactly compare the two.

I do think Mate is better sorted than Xubuntu. I find the latter a bit buggy. Mate is kind of plain and dull but it works nicely. I don't plan on switching back to xfce any time soon myself.



i'm actually loving this ubuntu mate, but i'm old school. i like things simple, not really into all that fancy composting crap.
for some reason it just treats my old rig right, i been monitoring resource use & its been very light on my atom 1.6ghz X4, 2gb ram machine.
i even decided to keep it pretty close to stock setup. just swapping the menu & the show desktop button, cause the damn thing kept changing size on me.