KDE 4 Uses 40% Less Memory Than 3 Despite Eye-Candy

An anonymous reader writes "Pro-Linux reports that KDE 4, scheduled to be released in January 2008, consumes almost 40% less memory than KDE 3.5, despite the fact that version 4 of the Free and Open Source desktop system includes a composited window manager and a revamped menu and applet interface. KDE developer Will Stephenson showcased KDE 4's 3D eye-candy on a 256Mb laptop with 1Ghz CPU and run-of-the-mill integrated graphics, pointing out that mini-optimizations haven't even yet been started." Update: 12/14 22:40 GMT by Z : Or, not so much. An anonymous reader writes "The author of the original KDE 3.5 vs KDE 4.0 memory comparison has come out with a more accurate benchmark. In reality, KDE 4.0 uses 110 MB more memory than KDE 3.5.8.

Comments

Wow it runs well on a throttled Core2,

[ak3ldama]

Too bad it doesn't look good. Seriously, KDE 4 looks like the retard offspring of Vista and OS X. Look at this and tell me I'm wrong. I could not even imagine using KDE4 at the default appearances. Not even the search box has a nice appearance and why is the battery "widget" so large?

Re:To compare with GNOME...

[Kent Recal]

Ok, maybe Ion can run on smaller hardware, but it isn't exactly a feature worth trumpeting that the fonts are going to look like crap.

Actually they look very nice. I would go on a limb and say they are *more* readable than the anti-aliased fuzz.
There is a reason why you run your xterm with a bitmap font.

Xft/fontconfig was a brilliant piece of work that finally put to rest all of the moronic "X11 is obsolete and must be completely replaced" ranting.

Now that one gave me a good laugh!
X11 is obsolete, should and will be replaced.
The only reason we're still coping with it is because it is
such a HUGE undertaking.

While the dorks were chanting for X11 to be replaced, the Xft/fontconfig people were fixing the exact problems that were supposedly insurmountable.

Insurmountable? You're kidding, right?
Font rendering is not hard and the concepts involved haven't changed much for decades (remember postscript, NeXT?).
It was considered "insurmountable" (or rather: a strong case for masochism) to tack sane font rendering
on top of the broken X11 infrastructure. Well yes, they did it. But it's a hack and it shows.
How often have *you* fought obscure font problems? How often have *you* wondered why fonts on windows
and OSX still look better?

And they did so in a way that preserves X11's legendary network transparency.

You really need to pass on some of that crack you're smoking there...
When was the last time that you tried to use, say, firefox, via X11
across even a fast LAN network?
Legendary, my ass. Well, maybe legendary for being slow as molasses, locking
up hard and just not working right. Don't even get me started on XDMCP...

From your post I can tell that you have never written a line of code
against libX. If you had then you wouldn't be spurting nonsense like
"legendary" or "brilliant".

Oh, and ever notice how an X11 UI (regardless of windowing toolkit)
feels sluggish and less "solid" than the competition?
Must be the stupid KDE and Gnome developers doing something wrong, right?

Yes, X11 has had it's time. But nobody in their right mind would claim
it's a good platform by today's standards. It still exists because
decades of graphical software is built on it so we can't just put it away.