Desktop Environments Benchmarks

**maagimies** · October 3rd, 2006

Originally Posted by aysiu

Well, I did them in this order:
So if you're saying that the applications or desktop environment will load more quickly after the profile folder is created, that would indicate that Ubuntu and Kubuntu are even slower than my results indicated.

Well, I guess they are, I have neither installed atm to test if I remembered correctly. I could be wrong of course.

**aysiu** · October 3rd, 2006

Originally Posted by maagimies

Well, I guess they are, I have neither installed atm to test if I remembered correctly. I could be wrong of course.

Well, that would be an interesting follow-up study if someone wants to do it: does a desktop environment or its applications load faster if the profile folder already exists?

**aysiu** · October 4th, 2006

Follow-up results...

Part 1... The profile
Well, I reran it with the profile and then with the profile deleted.

Original results for Kubuntu:
Login - 83
Firefox - 38
Konqueror - 13

Results when run again (same profile as last time):
Login - 70 (-13)
Firefox - 33 (-5)
Konqueror - 20 (+7)

Results after deleting the profile:
Login - 99 (+16)
Firefox - 41 (+3)
Konqueror - 18 (+5)

Honestly, I don't think it makes that much of a difference, especially since Konqueror seemed to load up slightly more quickly without the profile.

Part 2... IceWM
Login - 9
Firefox - 19
Konqueror - 23

So it seems IceWM has comparable speeds to Xubuntu and XFCE when launching applications, but its login time is significantly speedier.

Part 3... Preload
I checked the Kubuntu default settings for preloading Konqueror. The default is that the maximum number of preloaded instances is 1, but the box for preloading at startup is unchecked.

I'm not sure what the point of specifying the maximum number of preloads is if you also default to not preloading...

**aysiu** · October 4th, 2006

The first post was sort of an artificial experiment for the sake of consistency, but the truth is that you can get even KDE useful on a low-spec machine.

I tried my best to tweak kde-core to be useful:

1. Ran the kpersonalizer wizard and chose fewer effects with only the background wallpaper and image previews checked.

2. Went to Settings > Configure Konqueror > Performance. For Minimize Memory Usage, I selected Never. I also checked the box next to Preload an instance after KDE startup.

3. For Fonts, I unchecked Use anti-aliasing for fonts.

4. For Launch Feedback, I selected No Busy Cursor and unchecked Enable taskbar notification.

5. For Splash Screen, I selected None.

6. Under Style > Toolbar, I unchecked Highlight buttons under mouse.

7. For Window Decorations, I unchecked Use shadowed text, Animate buttons, and Colored window border.

8. I removed the pager from the panel (I never use it anyway) and under Multiple Desktops, I changed the Number of desktops to 1.

9. Panels > Hiding, unchecked Show right panel-hiding button

10. Taskbar, chose Classic for Appearance and unchecked Sort alphabetically by application name.

11. Under Storage Media > Advanced, I unchecked Enable medium application autostart after mount

What's the improvement for kde-core with optimization tweaks? Well, I uninstalled Firefox, so...

Login - 35 (-15)
Konqueror - 7 (-4)

The login is still longer than gnome-core and ubuntu-desktop and xfce4 and xubuntu-desktop, but it's significantly shorter than kde-core without tweaks and kubuntu-desktop.

Also, even though we had to preload an instance of Konqueror, 7 seconds to start any application on my old clunker is pretty damn good.

It is possible to get KDE (and probably Gnome) usable on an old system.

Still, I would highly recommend XFCE or IceWM for older systems (128 MB of RAM or less).

**Polygon** · October 4th, 2006

please label the numbers i am confused on what they mean. what are they, MB of ram? seconds? something else?

**aysiu** · October 4th, 2006

Sorry, they're seconds.

The ones in parentheses are the difference between that and the previous trial.

So Login - 35 (-15) means the login took 35 seconds, and that was 15 seconds less than before (which was 50 seconds).

**Elim** · October 4th, 2006

aysiu, what is the difference between ubuntu-desktop and gnome-core and kubuntu-desktop and kde-core? Thanks.

**Engnome** · October 4th, 2006

Originally Posted by Elim

aysiu, what is the difference between ubuntu-desktop and gnome-core and kubuntu-desktop and kde-core? Thanks.

Ubuntu desktop means all the stuff (read bloat) you get when you install normally. Gnome core means... pick a wild guess

no bloat whatsoever!

Have a look at: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...wMemorySystems for instructions.

**shining** · November 13th, 2006

Originally Posted by Engnome

Ubuntu desktop means all the stuff (read bloat) you get when you install normally. Gnome core means... pick a wild guess

no bloat whatsoever!

Have a look at: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...wMemorySystems for instructions.

Though, I would think the majority of dependencies are applications which are not automatically run, so that shouldn't make a difference, should it?
If only the services make a difference, isn't it possible to disable them in gnome and kde?

**shining** · November 13th, 2006

Originally Posted by aysiu

Part 3... Preload
I checked the Kubuntu default settings for preloading Konqueror. The default is that the maximum number of preloaded instances is 1, but the box for preloading at startup is unchecked.

I'm not sure what the point of specifying the maximum number of preloads is if you also default to not preloading...

It doesn't preload them at startup, but say you launch konqueror a first time (it'll take several second), then when you close it, everything will stay in memory, so that next time you open konqueror, it'll come up faster.

Though, this should also be done on the kernel level, but maybe in a smaller extent, and so it isn't as efficient. I'm not sure. But it should still make a noticeable difference. Did you reboot between every test?