yeah, i have a couple older machines and tried xfce and it wasn't really worth i...

vanderZwan · 2026-01-13T23:10:28 1768345828

Ok, but did you also run it for a while and compare how snappy or laggy the different DEs are? Because with xfc my old T440s Thinkpad from 2013 is still perfectly fine for browsing the web, or watching movies on the HD projector, without sacrificing too many modern interface conveniences.

I can't say the same for Gnome or KDE, and that's no slight against either (I happily use the latter on my more recent work laptop).

Having said that VSCode runs perfectly fine on the T440s too, so Electron and JavaScript aren't the fundamental reason those DEs are too demanding to use.

twelvedogs · 2026-01-17T10:57:30 1768647450

i ran gnome on this thing: https://www.techbuy.com.au/p/505010/NOTEBOOKS_11.3SCREEN/Len... for about 6 months, other than dropping to maybe 10fps while switching to overview it was perfect

tbh i kinda miss the 6hr battery life

xfce and gnome are by far my most used desktops and i probably would put effort into using xfce more if it supported wayland etc but i guess i like to tinker with newer stuff

to me the only reason to use xfce would be if i wanted to use a lightweight desktop app on a borderline useless computer, cause once you start trying to load websites you're going to blow through so much memory that desktop environments are irrelevant

miniupuchaty · 2026-01-15T14:16:08 1768486568

I'm writing this on my old 2014 acer aspire.

Currently gnome-shell is taking 135MB of ram, with other gdm/gnome related background services ranging in 700KB-3.2MB each to like 20MB together.

And it's as snappy as my sway config I log into depending on the needs.

I just spammed virtual desktop changes, opening Files, browsing, and it's as snappy as it is in sway.

I think gnome is getting a lot of unfair performance criticism online as it looks like something that would be slow. Maybe it was slow back in the starting gnome3 days. Maybe there are some heavy differences in how distros package it? (arch btw)

... though I will say that from my experience it's the KDE that's the slow one. I don't have it installed currently on this machine but had in the past and have it on my steam deck(which is stronger then this laptop). It feels sluggish and I have this bouncing cursor wait animation in my head right now just thinking about it.