Could KDE work adequately on a PC with 4 GB of RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor @ 2.33 GHz?

[Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z]

Hello.

I would like to install Debian 10 with the KDE Plasma task
on a PC with 4 GB of RAM and Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 @ 2.33 GHz,
it doesn't have a GPU.
Do you think it would run without problems
or would it be slow and laggy?

Thanks in advance for your answers.

[Nicholas Geovanis]

On Tue, Mar 9, 2021, 9:34 PM Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z <santia...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello.

I would like to install Debian 10 with the KDE Plasma task
on a PC with 4 GB of RAM and Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 @ 2.33 GHz,
it doesn't have a GPU.
Do you think it would run without problems
or would it be slow and laggy?

I would not do that. I run xfce under Debian 10.4 in 8GB, it's very light weight for a window manager. MUCH lighter than KDE. But still a little slow sometimes, with more than a few apps open.... SubCommandante Geovanis 

😂

[deloptes]

Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z wrote:

> I would like to install Debian 10 with the KDE Plasma task
> on a PC with 4 GB of RAM and Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 @ 2.33 GHz,
> it doesn't have a GPU.
> Do you think it would run without problems
> or would it be slow and laggy?

Yes, I think it will not work - better try lighter desktops or the older KDE
that is called now Trinity Desktop

[Weaver]

Try Enlightenment.
It's very configurable once get familiar with all the options.
Cheers!

Harry

--
`The World is not dangerous because of those who do harm but
because of those who look on without doing anything'.
-- Albert Einstein

[Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z]

> I would not do that. I run xfce under Debian 10.4 in 8GB, it's very light weight for a window manager. MUCH lighter than KDE. But still a little slow sometimes, with more than a few apps open.... SubCommandante Geovanis 
> 😂

Oh, it looks it would be very slowly then.
It is weird is doesn't looks like I have been reading:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonevangelho/2019/10/23/bold-prediction-kde-will-steal-the-lightweight-linux-desktop-crown-in-2020/?sh=763cb23826d2

I can't say anything about, because I never used any of them.

[Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z]

> Yes, I think it will not work - better try lighter desktops or the older KDE
> that is called now Trinity Desktop

How is that TDE?  Is it like KDE but much lighter?
What are the main differences?

Sorry, I'm new to GNU/Linux OSes.

[James Allsopp]

Yeah it will work, although it'll work a lot better if you can get an extra 4Gb off Ebay, I paid about  £25.

For reference I was running it on a 3Ghz 4GbRam Core2Duo.

[James Allsopp]

Also, you could spend a bit on money on an SSD, I did.

[Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z]

> Try Enlightenment.
> It's very configurable once get familiar with all the options.
> Cheers!

I saw it was there, but it looks a little difficult to get it
working according to what I read about it.

Also, I don't know if loading Gtk+, Qt and EFL at the same
time at RAM would be a good idea.  But, well... maybe I'm wrong, I don't know really, just guessing.

[Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z]

> Yeah it will work, although it'll work a lot better if you can get an extra 4Gb off Ebay, I paid about  £25.

By it will work you mean: your computer will boot; or: it will be usable?
He he, thanks for your help.

[Gene Heskett]

TDE is a fork of KDE at the 3.5 level, with thousands of 3.5's bugs since
fixed. Solid, like a piece of granite. And I've been running it for
years on a milling machine with 2GB of dram and an old pentium cpu. But
I don't do email on that box. And it was replaced with an old dell with
a 4 core i5 and 4GB of dram about 3 weeks back. Future-proofing my cnc
machinery.

Cheers, Gene Heskett
--
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
- Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

[Marco Möller]

I am happily using KDE Plasma on such a system as my daily system with
the following restrictions:
(1) The L2 cache of your CPU should have 3 MiB or more; with only 2 MiB
it is not always responsive as wished, and with only 1 MiB it is due to
low responsiveness in my experience not usable anymore; the number of
CPU cores, threads and frequency in my experience are not the key
factors for a responsive = smoothly usable system;
(2) You might want to limit or deactivate the automatic indexing
provided by "baloo", configurable also in the System Settings GUI under
"Search" in subcategories "File Search" and "KRunner"; right after
installation it wants to index all your system, and the system might in
this state not be responsive for some 2 days; I therefore deactivate
this as soon as possible, get the rest of my system set up and usable,
and only later, when I can leave the system run for a weekend without
the need to interactively work with it, I reactivate baloo features
again, but only the ones for which I indeed know that I want to use
them; once the initially very system consuming indexing is done, this
baloo provided search "accelerator" does not impact responsiveness
anymore; it continues in the background to smoothly update the indexing
of newly added content without interfering with the actions called in
the foreground by the user;
(3) I am sorry having to suggest even as an enthusiastic KDE user, that
you might want to avoid installing the KDE PIM suite related apps like
KMail; although I loved the design of its GUI and work flow a lot, it
was not only slowing down the responsiveness of the desktop often, but
also crashed too often; this experience is from 5 and from 2.5 years
ago; after this bad experiences and Thunderbird meanwhile being very
well maintained again, I am not going to give KMail another try and will
very satisfied stay with Thunderbird for email, calendar and address book;

I finally 2.5 years ago came from long time back in the past GNOME
usage, then Xfce, then Openbox, then LXDE, then LXQt, then LXQt with
kwin usage to KDE Plasma and confirm that KDE Plasma is very competitive
on memory and speed. I do not see any reason for not using it on old
machines, see my system specifications attached below. You will see that
I am on KDE Plasma as currently offered in "Debian/testing - bullseye"
and do not know about the very newest version 5.21.

Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux
KDE Plasma Version: 5.20.5
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.78.0
Qt Version: 5.15.2
Kernel Version: 5.10.0-4-amd64
OS Type: 64-bit
Processors: 2 × Intel® Core™2 Duo CPU P7450 @ 2.13GHz
Memory: 2,9 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: Mesa DRI Mobile Intel® GM45 Express Chipset

The CPU and memory consumption of pure KDE Plasma with only the
"Konsole" terminal app open for generating the presented data are these:

$ sudo inxi -Cm
Memory: RAM: total: 2.88 GiB used: 1.2 GiB (41.8%)
Array-1: capacity: 4 GiB slots: 2 EC: None
Device-1: M1 size: 2 GiB speed: 667 MT/s
Device-2: M2 size: 2 GiB speed: 667 MT/s
CPU: Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core2 Duo P7450 bits: 64 type:
MCP L2 cache: 3 MiB
Speed: 798 MHz min/max: 800/2133 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 798 2: 798

$ free -h
total used free shared buff/cache
available
Mem: 2.9Gi 779Mi 1.2Gi 282Mi 959Mi
1.7Gi
Swap: 7.6Gi 71Mi 7.6Gi

You will see that pure KDE Plasma is easily provided at lowest processor
speed and with a smaller than 800 MB memory footprint.


If running Thunderbird for writing this answer to you, having a
messenger app running, having the System Monitor and the terminal app
Konsole started in order to check for you my current memory usage, and
having Firefox open with 6 Tabs while all Firefox cache for better
responsiveness is placed in the RAM and not on the HDD (actually I am
running all my system even without a HDD from a USB2.0 pendrive only),
you will see that the CPU is busy - but my system is still nicely
responsive and doing for me flawlessly what I ask it to do.
You might have noticed that on my hardware I am only getting access to 3
GiB RAM, although 4 GiB are installed, and I never found out how I could
overcome this limitation.
When "inxi" (see below) reports that almost all this 3 GB of RAM would
be in use, then this is because Debian is nicely using all RAM not
claimed by my running apps for caching, in my configuration mainly for
caching file system information. So, all memory is fully in use, this is
how it should be, there is no need to have RAM and then not using it.
The systems gives to my apps what they require and is then using the
rest for caching mechanisms enhancing for me the system responsiveness
and thus user experience. Either the KDE System Monitor, or simply the
"free" command (see below) confirm that only 2.2 GiB are in use by me,
the free rest is taken advantage of by the nice caching features.
Here the data at usual load when using my laptop as my office computer:

$ sudo inxi -Cm
Memory: RAM: total: 2.88 GiB used: 2.71 GiB (94.3%)
Array-1: capacity: 4 GiB slots: 2 EC: None
Device-1: M1 size: 2 GiB speed: 667 MT/s
Device-2: M2 size: 2 GiB speed: 667 MT/s
CPU: Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core2 Duo P7450 bits: 64 type:
MCP L2 cache: 3 MiB
Speed: 2124 MHz min/max: 800/2133 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2124 2: 2113

$ free -h
total used free shared buff/cache
available
Mem: 2.9Gi 2.2Gi 66Mi 436Mi 625Mi 103Mi
Swap: 7.6Gi 18Mi 7.6Gi

I know that half of the "used" RAM usage is caused by Firefox, its
opened tabs, and me having configured all Firefox cache temporarily
being moved into the RAM.


In another output I show you the memory consumption with only
Thunderbird being opened while all other apps have been closed, and
having applied the "sync" command before gathering the data:

$ free -h
total used free shared buff/cache
available
Mem: 2.9Gi 1.1Gi 1.1Gi 277Mi 707Mi 1.4Gi
Swap: 7.6Gi 74Mi 7.6Gi


To summarize my years long experience being bound to very old hardware:
The most critical parameter is to have the L2 cache of your specific CPU
to equal as the absolute minimum at least 2 MiB and then accept in any
graphical desktop environment some lag in responsiveness, or to highly
preferred have at least 3 MiB or more L2 cache available and then being
able to get usual office work done at acceptable performance.
It then are the running apps which let you face performance limits, but
not the KDE Plasma (or LXQt or LXDE or Xfce). Concerning this, you will
nowadays need at least 3 GiB of RAM, and if your motherboard supports it
you want 8 GiB of RAM or more.

Your Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 comes with 4 MiB of L2 cache, and with the
already present 4 GB of RAM you can use it for KDE, and then for running
in parallel some (few) usual office apps. If it is possible for you to
spend some money on the machine, then getting more RAM into it will
provide you with a noticeable win, though. I am here answering from an
only 3 MiB L2 cache CPU driven laptop with 3 GiB of RAM, and this is
fine for getting my office work done. I also have a more powerful
machine with a CPU comparable to yours, coming with 8 GiB of RAM
installed there. For now I did not consider to upgrade it. I get all my
daily many-tabs-browsing and small programming tasks flawlessly done on
it. I would need to consider an upgrade, if I would be interested in
compiling apps from larger code sources, or if I would need to run image
processing and image analysis tasks, in general if I would have needs
where the high throughput of data through the motherboard, disk
controller, network hardware, RAM and CPU is of importance.

Best wishes, Marco.

[Nicholas Geovanis]

Commandante Alpha-

Full disclosure, I have always preferred KDE over gnome and alternatives. It's just more complete and tight. But there are some older systems I can't really use it on. I don't NEED a massive window manager and apps, I was a fan of twm for years. I dont mind xfce either, it's light and solid. But can't really be compared to KDE. Over and out.

SubCommandante Geovanis 😊

[Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z]

> Commandante Alpha-
> Full disclosure, I have always preferred KDE over gnome and alternatives. It's just more complete and tight. But there are some older systems I can't really use it on. I don't NEED a massive window manager and apps, I was a fan of twm for years. I dont mind xfce either, it's light and solid. But can't really be compared to KDE. Over and out.
> SubCommandante Geovanis 😊

Received, SubCommandante Geovanis.
Looks like it might deserve a try.
Commandante Alpha, out.
:)

[Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z]

Thanks for your comprehensive explanation.  It looks very fine then.
Since you're using Debian from a USB, the results might be
even better if the system were entirely on the hard disk.

My last doubt is if should use Debian 10 with KDE Plasma or Debian Bullseye instead.
Apparently, only the newer versions of KDE Plasma have the performance boost.

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 10 mar 21, 08:51:33, Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z wrote:
>
> My last doubt is if should use Debian 10 with KDE Plasma or Debian Bullseye
> instead.
> Apparently, only the newer versions of KDE Plasma have the performance
> boost.

Debian bullseye (soon to be Debian 11) is already in the "freeze" stage.

It should be quite reliable in daily usage though you are still going to
see (small) updates to many packages.

Official security support is not started yet, but security relevant
updates should be prioritised whenever possible.

In my opinion it should be fine for a desktop system, but I wouldn't run
it on a server exposed to the internet.

Kind regard,
Andrei
--
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

[Kent West]

If you have the drive-space for it, install it, along with something lighter like Cinnamon or LXQt.

Then all it takes to switch between the alternatives is to log out, find the settings icon on your login manager, select your alternative, and log back in.

If KDE proves to be too sluggish, log out/in, switching to a leaner alternative.

You can install and try dozens of alternatives.

--

Kent West                    <")))><
Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com

[Marco Möller]

On 10.03.21 13:51, Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z wrote:
(...)

> My last doubt is if should use Debian 10 with KDE Plasma or Debian
> Bullseye instead.

I recommend to use "testing" (currently Bullseye) on an individual
Laptop/Desktop Computer, and leave "stable" for server or cooperate end
user installations. Usually "testing" is very stable concerning
reliability for the every day interactive work and during the frequent
upgrades (which you should frequently apply).

"stable" is so stable, that it already when published is not being
perfectly up to date anymore with the newest software versions
available. But for sure the provided software releases are so long time
tested that no mayor bugs are expected to hit you under usual circumstances.
Where you cannot risk the work load to maybe having to react on
complaining users, or your running system simply does not need much
modernization because it is doing its job and then better don't touch it
unless a security update would need to be applied, then "stable" is
excellent.

If a user is willing to step by step face the changes of a system
following current software releases, then "testing" is offering this to
you. The all over experience of the users with "testing is, that it
rarely breaks. Actually I never experienced this. It simply runs. It is
not long time tested as "stable" because everything is always in the
"testing" period for the next "stable", but "testing" does not mean
"unstable". The comfort of having modern software releases available
instead of feeling parked for years on unchanged apps is often worth the
risk to maybe run into a bug found in a new release. In my experiences,
these bugs then are usually not mission critical and users can most
often afford to wait that the bug gets solved by a soon delivered next
release of the software, which you can expect to soon also arrive in the
"testing" distribution of Debian.

So, Debian "stable" is for mission critical apps and services, therefore
not offering short time only tested, newest software. Debian "testing"
brings the comfort of much more up-to-date software to the screen and is
commonly stable enough for the continuous, interactive desktop usage.

> Apparently, only the newer versions of KDE Plasma have the performance
> boost.

I cannot confirm this. KDE Plasma is high performant and low on memory
usage for years already. This was different in the far past. Consider
that the internet does not forget and still shows you complains from the
past although they might not apply to the current situation anymore.
Also, enthusiast of other graphical desktop environments sometimes still
publish such obsolete information, maybe because they years ago became
full satisfied with their desktop of choice and since then did not
notice the changes around anymore and are now no more well informed?
Having had the urgent need for a more modern but also low footprint
desktop to subtitute Window Maker, I years ago did not consider KDE as
my candidate, because of information from highly ranked links in the web
search engines. I ended up testing Xfce, Openbox and LXDE. And I tested
LXQt, which was still in experimental state that time - and found that
the window manager in use by LXQt could be exchanged for various
available candidates. Noticing that kwin performed excellent in LXQt I
wondered why KDE was reported to be sluggish and heavy on resources, if
its component kwin was performing so excellently in LXQt. I gave KDE
Plasma a try and found to have been blinded by obsolete reports still
popping up high ranked in the web search engines. KDE Plasma was that
time already a very nice choice for old machines, and nowadays it
continuous to do so. KDE Plasma resource requirements compete very well
with other "small footprint" desktop environments. In the end you might
ask why I then decided for KDE over LXQt with kwin. Well it is because I
much like the administration of keyboard shortcuts in KDE Plasma, and I
much like Kate and Konsole, and also Dolphin and Krunner are very
competitive, and baloo is quite helpful once the initial indexing is
achieved. All this comes with KDE Plasma kind of out of the box - and
perfectly competitive where only small hardware resources are available.

Best wishes, Marco.

[Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z]

> Debian bullseye (soon to be Debian 11) is already in the "freeze" stage.
>
> It should be quite reliable in daily usage though you are still going to
> see (small) updates to many packages.
>
> Official security support is not started yet, but security relevant
> updates should be prioritised whenever possible.
>
> In my opinion it should be fine for a desktop system, but I wouldn't run
> it on a server exposed to the internet.
>
> Kind regard,
> Andrei
> --
> http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

Thanks for the advice

[Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z]

Very impressive that you can even compare KDE Plasma to LXQt.

I don't think there is a Debian DVD iso I can use to install Debian Bullseye.
I think I'll have to install Buster and then switch to Bullseye.
Is there a better option?

Thank you and thanks everyone for all your help.

[Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z]

> If you have the drive-space for it, install it, along with something lighter like Cinnamon or LXQt.
>
> Then all it takes to switch between the alternatives is to log out, find the settings icon on your login manager, select your alternative, and log back in.
>
> If KDE proves to be too sluggish, log out/in, switching to a leaner alternative.
>
> You can install and try dozens of alternatives.
> --
> Kent West                    <")))><
> Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com

Thanks for the suggestion.  But, according to the others here
I think that everything should go fine.

I'm a little optimistic now.  Everything I was looking is an opinion
from someone already using KDE Plasma and some advice.

[Marco Möller]

On 10.03.21 19:28, Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z wrote:
(...)

> I don't think there is a Debian DVD iso I can use to install Debian
> Bullseye.
> I think I'll have to install Buster and then switch to Bullseye.
> Is there a better option?

To my knowledge, there is a Bulleye installer available here:
https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
It is still a test version, but you have good chances that it will work
just fine. As described before, "testing" in Debian does not mean
"unstable". With some bad luck for you, you might find a bug in it. If
you could then report it, then luck for the Debian community because
someone found it and it can be corrected for pushing the installer a
step forward to soon become "stable".

Well, not the best answer for being on the Debian mailing list, but if
you are entirely new to Debian or even Linux then it could be a good
option to start with the distribution Sparky Linux (there is a KDE
Edition available) for getting up and running and obtaining insides into
many available options and learning about the usage of the apt package
manager and other tools. Sparky Linux is not Debian, because it has some
fine extras for making it much easier accessible to new Linux users. But
there is so much Debian under the hood, which is configured so close to
the original Debian, that I recommend it for entirely new Linux users.
It is the Debian derivative being closest to Debian of all Debian
derivatives I would know of. It comes with easy options to install
almost any desktop environment around. Use it for testing and getting up
and running, and you are of course free to return to Debian after you
already have a clear idea of what is good for you and your hardware.
In the sense of the Debian community I advice that in Sparky Linux
offered software is not all following the Debian software license policy
concerning GNU/Linux and Open Source, because it also provides out of
the box access to third party software installations which wouldn't have
place in Debian.

Good Luck!
Marco.

[Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z]

Thanks. I think I would rather prefer non-free software as a second option.

Since I'm new to this, I would prefer to go the safe way: first Debian
10, then testing.

[Kent West]

On Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 1:42 PM Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z <santia...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks.  I think I would rather prefer non-free software as a second option.

Since I'm new to this, I would prefer to go the safe way: first Debian
10, then testing.

Be aware that although testing has less churn than unstable, that also means that when a bug does creep through, it may take a week or two to see the next release of the software, whereas unstable might see the fix come in later that same day.

It's a trade-off.

[Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z]

> Be aware that although testing has less churn than unstable, that also means that when a bug does creep through, it may take a week or two to see the next release of the software, whereas unstable might see the fix come in later that same day.
>
> It's a trade-off.

Sorry, I wasn't clear: first Buster then Bullseye. That way I will stay on Bullseye
when it becomes "stable". I think it will happen soon, won't it?

Anyway, thanks for your remark.

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Mi, 10 mar 21, 16:55:39, Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z wrote:
>
> Sorry, I wasn't clear: first Buster then Bullseye. That way I will stay on
> Bullseye
> when it becomes "stable". I think it will happen soon, won't it?

It's a few months away, which in Debian's timeline is indeed soon ;)

Kind regards,
Andrei
--
http://wiki.debian.org/FAQsFromDebianUser

[Felix Miata]

Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z composed on 2021-03-10 07:26 (UTC-0400):

> How is that TDE? Is it like KDE but much lighter?
> What are the main differences?

<http://trinitydesktop.org/>
TDE is the only DE I use on my Debians. Light it is, but with a feature set that
floats my boat very well.
I had only 2GB RAM on this old Core2Duo until recently:

# free # on fresh boot to multi-user.target

total used free shared buff/cache available

Mem: 4040856 126748 3771060 2936 143048 3722780
Swap: 1903664 0 1903664
# free # after startx into TDE and Konsole

total used free shared buff/cache available

Mem: 4040856 264720 3500924 3080 275212 3552548
Swap: 1903664 0 1903664
137972 used to get TDE session with Konsole started
# inxi -CGISy
System:
Host: p5bse Kernel: 4.19.0-13-amd64 x86_64 bits: 64
Desktop: Trinity R14.0.10 Distro: Debian GNU/Linux 10 (buster)
CPU:
Info: Dual Core model: Intel Core2 Duo E7500 bits: 64 type: MCP
L2 cache: 3 MiB
Speed: 1600 MHz min/max: 1596/2926 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 1600 2: 1600
Graphics:
Device-1: NVIDIA GF119 [NVS 310] driver: nouveau v: kernel
Display: server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: loaded: modesetting
unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 1920x1200~60Hz
OpenGL: renderer: NVD9 v: 4.3 Mesa 18.3.6
Info:...Shell: Bash inxi: 3.3.01
--
Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion,
is based on faith, not on science.

Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks!

Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/

[Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z]

Thanks, I think I could try it on my mini laptop with 1 GB of RAM and an Intel Atom N455 @ 1.66 GHz.

[songbird]

Marco Möller wrote:
> On 10.03.21 19:28, Cmdte Alpha Tigre Z wrote:
> (...)
>> I don't think there is a Debian DVD iso I can use to install Debian
>> Bullseye.
>> I think I'll have to install Buster and then switch to Bullseye.
>> Is there a better option?
>
> To my knowledge, there is a Bulleye installer available here:
> https://www.debian.org/devel/debian-installer/
> It is still a test version, but you have good chances that it will work
> just fine. As described before, "testing" in Debian does not mean
> "unstable". With some bad luck for you, you might find a bug in it. If
> you could then report it, then luck for the Debian community because
> someone found it and it can be corrected for pushing the installer a
> step forward to soon become "stable".

for the record, the daily images worked fine for me the other
day as i wanted to be sure the recent daily netinst image
would boot and get as far as partitioning on this new motherboard.
all that went ok. i did not actually do any further installation
with it though because i have to do some resizing and moving of
partitions to set up a free spot to do a new install and i'm not
sure i really want to do that yet. mainly i just wanted to make
sure i had a recent rescue image that would boot just in case my
future poking at UEFI things on this machine turns it into non-
functional.


songbird