Linux Mint Forums

Posted: **Wed Sep 19, 2018 11:06 am**

I have a 4GB laptop I want to install LM on, but not sure which is lighter on resources.

Posted: **Wed Sep 19, 2018 11:28 am**

The performance difference will depend mostly on your grahics chipset.
Please post the results of the terminal inquiry:

inxi -Fxz

Posted: **Wed Sep 19, 2018 12:08 pm**

Best recommendation is always: Just try both in a live environment (= boot from the USB) and see for yourself. MATE is lighter, but as all41 said, it might not be noticeable on your hardware and you might enjoy Cinnamon more (happy MATE user myself but you never know).

Posted: **Wed Sep 19, 2018 4:03 pm**

In general:

The graphics load of cinnamon is somewhat heavier than that of MATE - animations, etc
The animations can be somewhat heavier on the CPU than that of MATE, but as mentioned above, whether it's enough to notice depends on your graphic chipset
The memory load of Cinnamon is also just a bit heavier than MATE - but just a couple of hundred megabytes

Finally, like gm10 said, try them and decide for yourself if you notice a difference.

Posted: **Thu Sep 20, 2018 8:54 am**

Yes, the performance will depend largely on your graphics card.

But the answer to your question is that Cinnamon is much heavier than Mate. Cinnamon needs over 1G RAM just by itself, which IMO is insane for a Linux DE.

Posted: **Thu Sep 20, 2018 9:33 am**

Hoser Rob wrote: ⤴Thu Sep 20, 2018 8:54 am Yes, the performance will depend largely on your graphics card.

But the answer to your question is that Cinnamon is much heavier than Mate. Cinnamon needs over 1G RAM just by itself, which IMO is insane for a Linux DE.

But, with a SSD and 12gB RAM, 18.3 Cinnamon is my favorite of all the DEs that I have tried.
it seemed that I spent more time in the other DEs trying to make them perform, or feel like, Cinnamon.
so, why bother, I run Cinnamon because I like the taste of cinnamon

Posted: **Thu Sep 20, 2018 1:57 pm**

Yes, but tweaking Cinnamon, Cinnamon can be as light than Mate. Anyway Mate is faster and easier to use (my opinion).

Posted: **Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:23 pm**

I recently read some experiences by LM19 users complaining about far less battery power with the new LinuxMint 19 operating system in comparison to LM18.3. They did some tests by themselves that were favoring LM18.3. And the margin of profit was almost half an hour more battery power. That's a lot!

I havent read many comments or questions about this subject. But if it is true then it would surely be advisable for laptop users to install LM 18.3. regardless which desktop version one prefers. One could choose any of them, because all LM18.3 desktop versions seem to be far more power efficient than LM19. Of course Xfce is the most power efficient, but not very attrative in every day usage for most people.

LM18.3. Cinnamon would be the ideal power efficient STABLE version of Linux. LM 19 has gotten me into trouble for 6 times already. LM18.3. has never gotten me into trouble. Still I do stick with LM 19 because I love the look and feel of it.

Posted: **Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:30 pm**

Hoser Rob wrote: ⤴Thu Sep 20, 2018 8:54 am Cinnamon needs over 1G RAM just by itself, which IMO is insane for a Linux DE.

It would be, if true. If I load the LMDE3 Cinnamon live USB in a VM the entire system, not just the DE, clocks in at less than 500 MB total memory used. The Mint 19 live USB comes in a bit heaver with over 530 MB total. Again, that's total usage, not just the desktop environment. Both are a far cry from 1G.

administrollaattori wrote: ⤴Thu Sep 20, 2018 1:57 pm Anyway Mate is faster and easier to use (my opinion).

Cinnamon is more like Windows, slick at the surface but to actually get at the options you need to navigate through a gazillion of windows and menus, and a lot of things you just cannot do without additional add-ons. MATE, on the other hand, is less polished but much more versatile and puts it all at your fingertips. Question of preference I suppose. I'm firmly in the MATE camp myself but I can see why others may prefer Cinnamon.

Posted: **Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:32 pm**

gm10 wrote: ⤴Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:30 pm
Hoser Rob wrote: ⤴Thu Sep 20, 2018 8:54 am Cinnamon needs over 1G RAM just by itself, which IMO is insane for a Linux DE.
It would be, if true. If I load the LMDE3 Cinnamon live USB in a VM the entire system, not just the DE, clocks in at less than 500 MB total memory used. The Mint 19 live USB comes in a bit heaver with over 530 MB total. Again, that's total usage, not just the desktop environment. Both are a far cry from 1G.

administrollaattori wrote: ⤴Thu Sep 20, 2018 1:57 pm Anyway Mate is faster and easier to use (my opinion).
Cinnamon is more like Windows, slick at the surface but to actually get at the options you need to navigate through a gazillion of windows and menus, and a lot of things you just cannot do without additional add-ons. MATE, on the other hand, is less polished but much more versatile and puts it all at your fingertips. Question of preference I suppose. I'm firmly in the MATE camp myself but I can see why others may prefer Cinnamon.

I have both MATE and Cinnamon installed side by side with seperate partitions on the same EVO860 SSD.
According to the conkys MATE boots to the desktop using 404MB ram while Cinnamon uses 569MB ram.
systemd-analyze for MATE:
Startup finished in 5.708s (kernel) + 2.571s (userspace) = 8.279s graphical.target reached after 2.565s in userspace
systemd-analyze for Cinnamon:
Startup finished in 5.843s (kernel) + 7.896s (userspace) = 13.740s graphical.target reached after 7.874s in userspace
Both Mints are fully updated with identical conky.rc
The Cinnamon install is only used for comparison purposes. I also prefer MATE for the reasons mentioned in the posts above.

Posted: **Thu Oct 04, 2018 4:17 pm**

On my system after boot up and login to desktop:

Cinnamon:

Code: Select all

             total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            15G        1.3G        8.5G        201M        5.8G         13G
Swap:          7.4G          0B        7.4G

Mate:

Code: Select all

              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            15G        472M         13G         31M        2.0G         14G
Swap:          7.4G          0B        7.4G

XFCE:

Code: Select all

              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            15G        430M         14G         16M        563M         14G
Swap:          7.4G          0B        7.4G

I'm currently testing out Cinnamon. It feels somewhat sluggish compared to Mate or XFCE.

So I think I'll end up doing yet another fresh install of Mint 19, this time hopefully finally settling on Mate DE. (XFCE is nice and lightweight, I just prefer the look and feel of Mate) Just a shame Mate doesn't have as good a bulk rename tool compared to Thunar.....

Posted: **Thu Oct 04, 2018 4:34 pm**

BrianI wrote: ⤴Thu Oct 04, 2018 4:17 pm Just a shame Mate doesn't have as good a bulk rename tool compared to Thunar.....

Did you do:

Code: Select all

apt install caja-rename

Posted: **Thu Oct 04, 2018 4:45 pm**

gm10 wrote: ⤴Thu Oct 04, 2018 4:34 pm
BrianI wrote: ⤴Thu Oct 04, 2018 4:17 pm Just a shame Mate doesn't have as good a bulk rename tool compared to Thunar.....
Did you do:
Code: Select all
apt install caja-rename

I never did, before wiping mint mate to try mint xfce then mint cinnamon. Once I get Mint Mate re-installed, I'll be sure to do so!

Posted: **Fri Oct 05, 2018 7:21 am**

MATE is most definitely lighter than Cinnamon, Cinnamon looks better & way more modern, that's just out of the box, MATE can be customized to look just as cool, not sure if Cinnamon can be customized to be lighter though

Posted: **Fri Oct 05, 2018 11:02 am**

snowflake wrote: ⤴Fri Oct 05, 2018 7:21 am MATE is most definitely lighter than Cinnamon, Cinnamon looks better & way more modern, that's just out of the box, MATE can be customized to look just as cool, not sure if Cinnamon can be customized to be lighter though

Personally I prefer a nice lightweight yet functional desktop environment. I'm not really a fan of whizz bang fancy effects on a desktop! But each to their own, that is the beauty of Linux, the freedom of choice

Posted: **Mon Oct 08, 2018 1:24 am**

snowflake wrote: ⤴Fri Oct 05, 2018 7:21 am MATE is most definitely lighter than Cinnamon, Cinnamon looks better & way more modern, that's just out of the box, MATE can be customized to look just as cool, not sure if Cinnamon can be customized to be lighter though

Yeah I've seen those statements quite often myself,
cinnamon looks better, more modern AND more eye candy.
Once you change Mate to dark theme, change icon color, it's hard to see a difference. Mate can enable compiz, now who has the most eye candy ? Zoom out and transparency on rotate cube, with a nice skydome image is cool,

I'm in the mate camp too. I did try mint 19 cinnamon v2, but slow boot, and another bug prevented me from wasting my time with it.

Posted: **Sat Nov 17, 2018 8:23 am**

Apparently cinnamon has improved more recently, being less prone to buggyness and not as resource intensive as previously, so it isn't that much worse than MATE. Again reiterating the 'try and see' because you may have no noticeable difference on performance (4GB of RAM is PLENTY for either), but the windows managers (eg right click on desktop or opening file manager) is Caja with MATE and nemo with Cinnamon. Cinnamon also allows 'desklets' which you don't get in MATE. So, if you prefer feel of Cinnamon you can just reduce some of the effects and it wi be pretty much the same as MATE.

Personally I prefer MATE as it has always served me well and Cinnamon provides me nothing extra I want. I'd still consider Cinnamon less stable than MATE too (but been a while since I used Cinnamon).

If you are looking to reduce power useage (as opposed to increasing performance) I'd also ensure installing TLP and cpu-frequency from Software Manager. Cpu-frequency will provide applet on panel, being 'power saver' mode after bootup but allowing you to put it in performance mode. I've noticed no difference in power useage between 18.3 and 19.0. If you REALLY want to reduce resource useage, XFCE is lighter DE.

Posted: **Sat Nov 17, 2018 10:07 am**

I've tried them all and don't see any difference on my machine. I don't turn on all the 'eyecandy' stuff either.

Posted: **Sat Nov 17, 2018 1:13 pm**

I just started using Cinnamon again after years of Mate, and I can say that Cinnamon has really improved and is a lot less buggy. With that being said, Mate is lighter and more perfect. Cinnamon still has some buggy behavior like video glitches and hangs with my nvidia 1050ti card using proprietary drivers. I have never had issues or glitches with Mate. I put Cinnamon on my laptop with Intel video, and I have not noticed any issues yes.

Posted: **Tue Nov 20, 2018 10:33 pm**

Running Cinnamon on an i7 with 32gb Ram and a GTX 1070 it is WAY more snappy than Windows 7 or Windows 10.

Of course YMMV depending on your system.

I MUCH prefer pretty with a modicum of impact on RAM over plain and boring. As a matter of fact I'll be looking to get Compiz working on my install soon.

As said tho, I have the CPU, RAM and Video to minimize the impact of such.

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