It has been said that systemd is an obstacle to achieving my goal of increasing the efficiency by reducing resource usage: CPU-RAM.
It would be easy for me to fully accept this but for this review of LXLE distro which not only uses LXDE desktop as I do, but also has systemd…!
The thing is DistroWatch LXLE review…

Quote:- “I found the distribution used approximately 190MB of memory, which seemed unusually high for an operating system running the LXDE desktop. A quick check showed that LXLE ships with the preload service running. The preload service loads commonly accessed programs into memory to make opening them faster. This leads to more RAM being used while some frequently accessed programs are loaded more quickly.”

The implication of the above should be obvious – What would DistroWatch make of a LXDE desktop distro that gobbles up twice as much resource - Debian-LXDE


https://distrowatch.com/weekly.php?i...140707#feature

So I still need help to get down to sub 200MiB RAM at idle – thanks guys.
190MiB RAM used “unusually high” – Love it…!

Correlation is not the same as causation. If a package is not being used, it is not using RAM: pretty much by definition.

Evo2.

That article was written in 2014. To say that systemd has substantially changed in the intervening 9 years would be an understatement.
I remember when my computer had 1Mb RAM, I'd spend hours tweaking the configs to minimise DOS's footprint.

Today, I'm here at work using Firefox on a fully functional KDE Plasma desktop on a machine which has 32Gb RAM. I say "fully functional" because it has all of the applications, applets and widgets which enable me to work effectively and also make the experience enjoyable. It's showing 1.3Gb RAM used and 4.6Gb cached, and I'm not worried at all... because it's not 1993 any more.

Ain't nobody got time for that!
Surely there must be a TikTok...

LXLE = Debian + (l)ubuntu LTS + systemd + Preload + LXDE = 190MiB
Debian = Debian base + systemd + LXDE = 386MiB

Please explain - Anybody

My Antix = Debian-Antix-22 Full + LXDE = 150MiB
I have ALL the apps including LO, Gimp and video editing to carry out all tasks efficiently without requiring a shedload of wasted RAM to heat up the planet.

It has already been explained to you that Antix/LXLE (or whichever distribution you're using this week) is optimised for particular hardware.

The kernel is responsible for memory management. If you want to know where to start, you should compare the kernel configs for both distributions to see some of the exact differences. Seemingly little things can make big differences in both optimisation and applicability.

You avoided this question before, but why did you waste all of that money on 8Gb RAM when you clearly don't need it?

If you think a few million Linux users can heat the planet, wait until you hear about the 3 billion Windows users.

Sorry for late reply - see here for full answer....

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...04#post6415304

Cheers

So what…? There are loads of videos and articles using a plethora of different hardware and the results are similar. However I have made comparisons on my Dell for consistency and removing very minor deviations.
As for your remarks on DW article being from 2014 again – So what…
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/MYrTLJ8A38c Daniel Reviews Shorts

Latest LXLE Focal - 236MiB RAM being used shown in Task Manager - that is with two panels, extensive weather app, screen lock, cpu monitor and memory monitor running. I would soon reduce that with a few clicks down to the 190s – so what is your point -
https://imgur.com/a/nb08c7B
Take this next video of LXLE Focal that has the screencast recorder in use live. When you subtract VocoscreenNG 162 from total RAM 356 used you get 194MiB RAM used…! Same as LXLE back in 2014.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OW1D_ImzKMM

Looks like those LXLE users are – just like me – dig getting lighter still and hence more efficient...

https://www.lxle.net/forums/discussi...ter-or-remove-

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Is it really so difficult to grasp the concept that a leaner kernel uses less RAM?

When I said this:
I was trying to help you to figure out what some of the key differences in optimisation could be.

Have you ever looked at the Linux kernel source code? It's freely available.
Again, is it so difficult to grasp the concept that a project which has substantially grown since 2014 uses more RAM now?
Yeah, they'll grow up one day. If it's true efficiency you want, then the *BSDs are a much better place to start.

Anyhow, good luck on your quest!

Over and out.

1 members found this post helpful.

I appreciate your help but my knowledge of kernels is very minimal, superfluous even and source code is zero. I am a design engineer – mechanical..! - who considers all aspects of efficiency at every stage of design – even conception.. I know that newer kernels are more likely to be best with a newish Laptop-Computer and that Anticapitalista has special customised kernel versions for his AntiX OS. I trust him implicitly to supply what is needed for his Distro, similarly I trust the devs at Debian, LXLE, Endeavour etc to do same. It would be above my pay grade to suggest that some devs do not have efficiency front and centre in their minds but firmly believe that Anticapitalista and some others place efficiency high in their deliberations. Then there is the Arch KISS principle: Keep it Simple Stupid…

We can see that as projects grow year on year; devs keep in step with developments in hardware, desktops etc. As I have clearly demonstrated some devs have their fingers on the pulse and keep the demand on resources minimal whilst other devs squander resource knowing that users will buy more RAMmed up laptops. I would never tolerate such inefficiency in my designs so expect high standards of others. Take desktop devs for example Xfce gets heavier whilst heavy KDE gets lighter on resource year on year.

I do hope that people who disregard efficiency will grow up or wise up some time soon – our beautiful planet is degrading so fast

Thanks for good wishes – cheers

I hope you ride a bicycle or walk everywhere, because that will make much more difference to the global environment than the RAM in your computer.

Before you ask: Yes, I rode a bicycle to work every day for 7 years. 22km each way. Rain, hail or shine.

You clearly have much to learn, so I'll just point out that calling a Debian or Slackware user, "inefficient with resources" is probably not the smartest thing to do around here. Yes, efficiency is front of mind for Linus and everyone else along the chain who brings your distribution to you... but there are operational constraints which you're perhaps too inexperienced to understand.

1 members found this post helpful.

rkelsen started you on the correct path. The kernel is configured differently in your "lean" example. The distribution you praise more than likely used different compilation flags for every binary application than the "fatter" distribution you are comparing it to. So, you can not simply take one distribution and compare it to another whose sole goal is being lean. You'll be disappointed.

You want a truly lean, and low footprint distribution that you'll be happy with? You're going to have to configure the kernel, cherry pick your packages, and compile everything yourself. Gentoo is a good start for that. Something tells me however, you don't have the knowledge at this point in time to achieve your goal. You're going to have to keep researching distros until you find the one closest to your requirement.

You have stated along these lines several times. I hope these are not serious reasons for your goal of less memory usage. I hope they're not serious statements at all. Step away from the news programs for a start.

Hey rkelsen and goumba - you took the bait and jumped on the hook of inexperience – is it now time to play an ace card…? You may well be more experienced, though Anticapitalista of Antix certainly is, as are the lead devs of LXLE and Bohdi. Hence I would not dream of altering the kernels that they advise or be so smug as to think I could do better. Anticapitalista has provided two customised kernels for Debian based AntiX – as he would say; they are there for a reason. DistroWatch have vast experience too – LXLE: 190MiB RAM used “unusually high for LXDE distro” – Love it…! My Debian-Antix-22 Full + LXDE = 150MiB…
DistroWatch also say that Debian is heavy – 730MiB Ouch. I am not alone…
Not very clever for you to describe Antix-22 Full as having the sole goal of being lean.

I will now play an Ace Card - Empirical Evidence – Quote: Empirical evidence is the evidence that we directly observe and get from our senses. This might be contrasted to philosophical or theoretical reasoning, which can be done without any direct observation of ‘real life’.
For those who are not connected to real life or are unsure of the exact meaning please visit… It’s very simple...
https://conceptually.org/concepts/empirical-evidence
I have gathered Empirical evidence and shared it with all of you – warts and all. This Empirical evidence was gathered from Empirical testing of heavy and lightweight Distros and DEs on the same Dell laptop to avoid any unknown deviations in comparison. They were full installations, wiping all before, rather than using virtual boxes. By the very definition of Empirical testing there wasn’t any reliance or reference to any persons’ perceived experience, advice, philosophical or theoretical reasoning – totally devoid of such. The results speak volumes in written posts backed up with screenshots and screencast videos. DistroWatch reviews are of course, just that - Empirical tests.
My last little Empirical test of yesterday was switching kernels when booting up Antix – it made no difference at all to resources used.

Are you suggesting that the lead devs of Antix, LXLE and Bodhi are more experienced or are somehow better at their jobs than lead devs of other distributions?
How about providing some empirical evidence that Debian using 730Mb is somehow heating the planet?
Well, that may be what you think you've done, but what you have actually done is compared the differences in RAM usage between different kernels compiled for different purposes with different optimisations and different target users in mind. There is nothing new or surprising about your results. You're not comparing apples with apples.

More "empirical evidence" from one of my machines here:

What you did, was you changed one part in a machine consisting of dozens of interacting parts, expecting a significant change. What concerns me is you keep pointing out you have some background in mechanical engineering.

As stated previously, you'll find differences between comparable systems as a whole. If you were to take the AntiX kernel and use it in place of the Debian kernel, you will see little change as well.

If you compare a distribution compiled using optimizations for speed, you will notice it uses significantly storage space, and perhaps more ram.

Developers of distributions will change code to suit their needs. DistroY will run with upstream code, whereas DistroY developers may find some memory saving tweaks that compromise stability in rare cases or speed.

On a side note, nouns are not capitalized unless used as proper nouns.

A lot of your posts degrade to insults at some point, hardly conducive to meaningful discussion.

He's restating the RAM usage as stated by DistroWatch and not on his own machine. Again, apples and not apples.