LM 13 Maya XFCE vs LMDE Xfce

[trevva]

Hi,

Can anyone please give me a touch of guidance about the differences between the two XFCE versions in terms of speed and lightness. I am interested in having the lightest and fastest desktop and boot possible, and don't mind the other caveats that come with e.g. LMDE. How much difference is there likely to be between the two versions?

Mark

[DrHu]

I expect lmde to be the quicker(less Gnome integrated features..)
--despite that I sometimes add Gnome apps (if I find them useful), such as gnome commander, and remove some others, such as mono (means I have to get rid of tomboy notes..)

Although I can also say that an integrated gnome desktop is not the lightest in terms of system resources, but the menus and general operations are just as quick as the XFCE menu structures, in terms of user selection: meaning Gnome 2x or Gnome forks such as cinnamon, maya and so on, but not unity Gnome 3x.)

[TheDynamicHamza21]

I used both version months ago and from I recall both systems are not that far apart in terms of lightweight and speed. The huge difference between the two is one LMDE is rolling release and you need to understand things won't work as smoothly as the LM XFCE version. My advice is unless you're comfortbale using or learning use the terminal LMDE is not for you. Many things that can installed on LM need work arounds for the LMDE. Just as the FAQ page states:

it's not as stable. Things are likely to break more often but fixes can also come quicker. For this reason, LMDE requires a deeper knowledge and experience with Linux, dpkg and APT.
Debian is a less user-friendly/desktop-ready base than Ubuntu. Expect some rough edges.

As a caveat I'm found Xubuntu 12.04 ran faster in my virtualbox with 800mb RAM and 30GB of HD space then both LM XFCE versions did.

[Beardedragon]

IMO the two are enouigh alike that the desktops are going to work close to the same speed. However, with LMDE you have constant updates that may crash your system until they are corrected. LM 13 is stable and has the LTS (Long Term Support) along with it.

[trevva]

Hi thanks for the replies.

It sounds like the general opinion is that there is not a huge different - this would therefore suggest that reinstalling LMDE in place of LM Maya is probably not going to pay off, and that my efforts are better spent optimising what I have, rather than trying to start from scratch elsewhere...

Cheers for the comments.

Mark

[cwwgateway]

My experience is that LMDE Xfce is faster, but only slgihtly. The problem (if you want something that's light) is that Mint Xfce editions have lots of heavier stuff installed by default. I find that Ubuntu hits a wall around 150 MB of RAM - it doesn't go too far below that easily (although you can do it, especially if you scrap Xfce and use a WM). I did a test to look at a Debian net install with no desktop environment or other non-critical packages installed. I then added the mint repo, the multimedia repo, and the contrib and non-free repos. I did an apt-get update, apt-get install linuxmint-keyring deb-multimedia-keyring, apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade, apt-get install lightdm xfce4 xfce4-goodies lxtask htop. The latter 3 are optional. I found that on restart after login I was using about 74 MB of RAM, which is well under a lot of other desktops/distros. I think you could get something fairly similar with CrunchBang (the testing version) with xfce. The point of this is that the Mint Xfces won't be as lightweight because they have lots of gnome packages.

[Fajah]

I've been using LMDE/XFCE for quite some time now. I've found it to be quite fast and very stable. The last major update (UP5) went without a hitch. I haven't received constant updates but whatever I have received, there haven't been any issues.

[Lanser]

Mark. FYI Only I have a couple of Lenovo S10-3's with SSD's that are dual booting different Mint flavours.
One is running LMDE1204 and LMDE Xfce. I don't see much of a difference between the two in terms of stability or speed.
The other is running LM13 Mate and LM13 xfce. Big difference in performance.
Overall I find the LMDE1204 the most usable distro on these low powered Atom 455, 2 Gb mem machines.
But it may depend on how graphics intensive your target apps are. My machines are browser, email, docs & google earth only.


Lanser