this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
48 points (98.0% liked)
Linux
48364 readers
1629 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Like others have said, that's not normal
Just because a slight delay doesn't bother you it doesn't mean it isn't there. The first times I used GNOME I actually was convinced it was some issue with my computer / setup. After countless installations on different distros and also dealing with it at work and friend's computers I came to the conclusion that is it slower than Xfce and most likely KDE. There's no way around it.
To be fair, as you said in another comment I don't believe this is CPU bound at all, nor GPU. Multiple machines some Intel with iGPUs others with discrete GPUs, others with AMD, all the same behavior. I'm way more inclined to believe this is an I/O issue above all, GNOME needs to read and load a lot more stuff than Xfce to render any window thus it will be slower.
Anyways, I never experienced this much, but if you google around people that are using older machines say that GNOME is always the slowest thing on those machines. Others such as Xfce they report it as performing better, so if on an old machine the slowdown once using GNOME is noticeable by almost everyone it means it does indeed use more resources. You can throw an i9 to at the issue but the fact is that it will always use more resources no matter of the hardware you have.
In my case I tend to be particular sensible to small delays than you or others but it's there and old machines prove it. It's not that I can't use Gnome ever or it provides the worst desktop experience ever, no, it works fine and can be productive but I notice the delays.
Gnome "performs" just as well as anything else. In fact, it is better than Xfce4 in some ways as it is Wayland based.
I'm not sure why you think gnome is somehow this bloated desktop that lags and is slow. I've been using gnome for quite some time and it has never been what you describe. Gnome isn't any heavier than anything else when it comes to IO. You seem to have just arbitrarily decided that gnome is slow without much in the way of evidence.
Xfce4 is probably going to be lighter weight overall than gnome or KDE. However, it isn't this magical desktop and if your computer is bound up by a drawing text and icons on the display then Xfce4 is not going to help you. KDE and Gnome are both a little ram heavy but that's because they are much bigger desktops.
Exactly, they are bigger thus require more resources and will run slow on older hardware as many people complain. I personally don't feel that GNOME is very noticeable slower but, I do believe there's an extra very short delay when windows are to be drawn, on my main desktop because of it's larger size but due to the fact that everything is forcefully animated. The DE kinda gets in my way with those animations instead of just click > apear like Xfce does.
Xfce4 is a good desktop just like Gnome is a good desktop. They are just different.