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Sadi
Asked: 2013-04-23 06:12:33 +0800 CST

Does installing a KDE application under Ubuntu mean more CPU load and/or memory usage even when it's not running?

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The title says it all actually. There might be one or two KDE apps that I might prefer to the Gnome alternative.

  • I'm not afraid of having to install many KDE packages (libs, etc.) which might take considerable amount of disk space.
  • I'm not afraid of having to use some additional packages (libs, etc.), probably meaning more CPU load and/or memory usage than its Gnome equivalent, when that application is running either.
  • But I'm afraid installing a KDE application might entail some KDE software constantly being loaded and running in the background every time Ubuntu starts, even when that application is not being used.

So, I will very much appreciate an answer from people who really know and who really have experience on this subject.

gnome

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Short answer: NO.

    • Unless you load a KDE application, libs will not be loaded, nothing will run.
    • Even if you load KDE applications, the rest like Nepomuk won't run. So basically that means no extra load.
    • Only kdelibs get loaded most of the time. No plasma, no plasmoids, no stuff like that.
    • If you start a KDE application AT startup, then the boot will be of course, longer. As Ubuntu will have to load the kdelibs just to run your application. (How longer? Depends on your storage speed.)
    • There will be no overhead or CPU load increase because you run KDE apps. They will run just as fast as they would run under KDE. You might want to check "systemsettings" and "qt4-qtconfig" though, to set up a lightweight theme/disable animations, and so on.
    • Loading up Kate gave me ~80MB more memory usage. Closing it dropped this to 40MB. Applying the manual drop cache gave back all the memory.

    Corrrection:
    You guys were right. Kdeinit4 indeed stays in memory.
    To read about it, check man kdeinit4.

    There is a way to kill it to free up every last bit of memory.
    It eats no CPU though. Idles with a ~40MB of memory usage.

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