XFCE Performance vs. Gnome

[icanfly0307]

Hi everyone,
I'm looking for a lightweight desktop environment for my old laptop. So far, I've heard that XFCE is the best. Soooooooo......... here's my question: How fast is it exactly compared to GNOME? Take a look at my system's configuration:

Sony Vaio PCG FX 370:
--1 Ghz Pentium 3
--256 Megabytes of RAM
--744 Megabytes of Swap
--32 Megabytes of Video RAM (I DONT use Desktop Effects)
--100 Mhz Frontside Bus Speed

Would XFCE run REALLY fast on a computer like this? With GNOME, this is how fast my computer starts up:

--From the Grub screen to the Login Screen: 1 minute 3 seconds
--From the Login screen to the Desktop being fully loaded: 26 seconds

Would I see any improvements on the figures above?

Thanks

[OutOfReach]

Most likely, yes you would see an improvement, it may be drastic or it may not, it depends but try it out. :)

The boot time I don't think will change because of the Desktop Enviroment, though.
P.S. If you want even more speed try something even lighter like Openbox, Fluxbox,etc... or even a tiling window manager (Awesome WM, Xmonad, Wmii, etc...)

[gn2]

I think that the biggest benefit would be once booted Xfce uses less RAM than Gnome, so there will be less swap activity on your PC speeding things up.

I used to have a P3 500mhz 192mb RAM laptop, with Xfce it was useable, with Gnome it slowed down something chronic.

[icanfly0307]

Oh and BTW,
Would I still be able to use Firefox and other apps like I did in GNOME? Will they be faster in XFCE? I'm actually installing it right now. All I have to do now is wait for it finish..... :guitar:

[kerry_s]

Oh and BTW,
Would I still be able to use Firefox and other apps like I did in GNOME? Will they be faster in XFCE? I'm actually installing it right now. All I have to do now is wait for it finish..... :guitar:

yes you can still use firefox, no it won't be faster.

gnome and xfce4 just have different goals, xfce4 in ubuntu is just as slow as gnome. a few tweaks to gnome can get it more usable than xfce4.

i use gnome on 450mhz 256mb ram.

[icanfly0307]

Could you specify those "few" tweaks? :)

And if anyone has any tweaks for XFCE 4, could you please post them over here?

Thanks

[icanfly0307]

Hi again,
After looking at XFCE 4, I realized that it was WORSE and SLOWER than GNOME:mad:. I'm gonna get rid of it. For now, I think I'll stick with GNOME and start tweaking it around. Thanks for all your help.:)

[kerry_s]

Hi again,
After looking at XFCE 4, I realized that it was WORSE and SLOWER than GNOME:mad:. I'm gonna get rid of it. For now, I think I'll stick with GNOME and start tweaking it around. Thanks for all your help.:)

don't let it sour you, xfce4 is actually fast, just not in ubuntu, other distros do a much better job with xfce4.

you already have a thread for the tweaks:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=949046&page=2

[rudihawk]

I've been using Ubuntu for nearly a year now, and although Gnome is nice and all, I prefer xfce - its faster in my experience.

[ne0h]

XFCE is fast.
> don't add too many stuffs to panel.
> Use only 1 workspace.
> don't use desktop effects.

[Cato2]

You might also want to investigate Ubuntulite (LXDE based) or Fluxbuntu - both are lighterweight than XFCE in RAM usage. I run Xubuntu on a 192MB PIII/700 laptop and it's really quite slow due to lack of RAM - launching Thunderbird takes many seconds for example.

It's also best to use Opera as the browser, with privoxy for ad blocking, as it uses less memory than Firefox.

[snowpine]

I spent some time this weekend playing around with Debian Etch (the current stable version) Gnome desktop. It really is quite a bit faster than Ubuntu 8.04 Gnome on my old laptop.