why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

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mark9950
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why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

Post by mark9950 »

Im running lm 18 xfce and have 3 gb of ram and the system is running with firefox and the system uses about 1.2 gb memory with no other programs running but the system and firefox with no flash and html 5 everywhere.The claim is that this desktop is supposed to be a low resource desktop,1.2 GB is not low.It uses more than kde and cinnamon.
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karlchen
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Re: why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

Post by karlchen »

Hello, mark9950.

Well xfce itself uses less memory than the other desktop environments, although the difference is sometimes overestimated.
But applications like e.g. Firefox will use the same amount of memory, no matter on which desktop environment they are launched.
Firefox can use quite a lot of memory at runtime, depending on which webpages you have opened simultaneously.

Have you checked e.g. with the help of gnome-system-monitor which process(es) use most memory? - Oops, xfce, you use xfce4-taskmanager instead. :wink:

In general, 1.2 GB of memory usage at runtime is not necessarily a lot of memory. It all depends on which applications have been launched and what they are doing.
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richyrich

Re: why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

Post by richyrich »

Yes, Firefox does use a lot of ram, and so does each and every Firefox tab, and each and every add-on.

I'm on Mint 17.3 Xfce, and at idle with no apps running, I'm at approx 200 mb. When I start Firefox, it jumps to close to a Gb, additional tabs even more.
chrisuk

Re: why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

Post by chrisuk »

I think it's more the fault of the Ubuntu base than XFCE - I'm running MATE on LMDE2... Firefox with 4 tabs open, Caja with 3 tabs open, System Monitor for the screenshot attached. All, apart from System Monitor, running constantly for the last 9 hours.

(The CPU spikes is caused by System Monitor... system load is usually negligible)
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Re: why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

Post by Flemur »

mark9950 wrote:uses about 1.2 gb memory with no other programs running but the system and firefox
Why measure Xfce memory usage with a memory hog like firefox running? (chrome is even worse...)

An xfce system should use about 200-250 M after boot, or even after running all day with other programs stopped.

The below will drop cached memory, so a "free -m" will be more representative of what's actually used:

Code: Select all

# This needs to be run as REAL root: "sudo -l"  or "sudo -s"
sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches
Please edit your original post title to include [SOLVED] if/when it is solved!
Your data and OS are backed up....right?
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Re: why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

Post by Hoser Rob »

chrisuk wrote:I think it's more the fault of the Ubuntu base than XFCE - I'm running MATE on LMDE2...
Yes, LMDE will tend to use less RAM because it's Debian based. But this is something else. I run Mint 17.3 Xfce on a 1Gb netbook. If it took anything like 1.2 Gb running FF it wouldn't be useable and I would have installed a really light distro on it ages ago. I've had Mint 17 Cinnamon installed on my 4Gb laptop and it didn't need 1.2Gb running FF.

As flemur said it isn't all that straghtforward in Linux to see how much RAM your software is using. That's because Linux/Unix (unlike WIndows) doesn't lleave free RAM unused. It uses it for app software caching. This is why users wanting more speed in Linux are often advised to cram as much RAM into the machine as possible.
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hcentaur13

Re: why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

Post by hcentaur13 »

Please tell me why the system should not use avalable RAM?

Using free RAM for buffers, caching speeds up system throughput. Having less free RAM than used slows down, having multiple less RAM as used slows down wextremely.

Be happy thazt the system knows how to use RAM instead to shrunk down the usage to a bare minimum by holding a maximum amount of unused only to show that it is not using availöable RAM so much iot can while shrinking down througput to a minimum too.
mark9950
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Re: why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

Post by mark9950 »

But according to my monitors on xfce Firefox must be using 800-900 MB of ram because with firefox close first at boot it runs 300 mb freshly booted with no apps started.

Firefox is the only browser thats available midori crashes too much.As for lxde lubuntu xfce and lxde use about the same amount of ram.I tried lubuntu dont like it.

Of course under windows there are about 30 or more browsers available.
richyrich

Re: why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

Post by richyrich »

To see how much firefox is using (with firefox open): inxi -t m will show the top 5 active users of ram memory.
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jimallyn
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Re: why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

Post by jimallyn »

mark9950 wrote:But according to my monitors on xfce Firefox must be using 800-900 MB of ram because with firefox close first at boot it runs 300 mb freshly booted with no apps started.
Yes, that's about right. On my Mint18.1 XFCE system, Firefox is currently using 1.6 GB. That's with 20 tabs open. Firefox uses a lot of RAM, and the more tabs you have open, the more RAM it will use.
mark9950 wrote:Firefox is the only browser thats available ... Of course under windows there are about 30 or more browsers available.
Firefox is far from the only browser available. On my home computer, I have about a dozen browsers installed. In Synaptic I see the following browsers available for install:

Chromium
Epiphany
hv3
Chimera2
Midori
Netsurf
Dillo
Dooble
Qupzilla
Arora
Surf
Uzbl
Rekonq
Links2

And that doesn't include the text-only browsers, of which there are probably 4 or 5. There are also many more browsers available that are not listed in Synaptic:

Maxthon
Opera
Google Chrome
Brave
Vivaldi
Iceweasel
Pale Moon
Konqueror
Otter
Slimjet
Arachne

And certainly there are more that aren't coming to mind right now.
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thx-1138
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Re: why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

Post by thx-1138 »

...the numbers appear to be appropriate. For the record, on Mate (instead of XFCE) , Firefox with 5 tabs open (no flash / video running), is around 1.2gb. Straight after boot it's around 580-590mb (on 4.10.19 kernel). I have the impression (might be wrong though) that newer kernels from Ubuntu 'require' / allocate more memory by default nowadays.

Another nifty way to check ram usage per program is via ps_mem.py:
https://github.com/pixelb/ps_mem/blob/master/ps_mem.py
As Flemur suggested, first try 'sync; echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches'...(if you've just booted, you don't need to do so...), then check with sudo ps_mem...then open firefox, then check with ps_mem again...
shengchieh

Re: why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

Post by shengchieh »

On firefox, take a look at preference -> advanced -> network. You should be able to reduce FF footprint (it'll run slower) and clear offline web content. Also in
preference -> privacy -> custom setting for history, you should be able to clear history and cookies.

I agree w/ others - FF is a memory hog.

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Re: why does the xfce desktop use 1.2 gb of memory?

Post by MtnDewManiac »

hcentaur13 wrote:Please tell me why the system should not use avalable RAM?

Using free RAM for buffers, caching speeds up system throughput. Having less free RAM than used slows down, having multiple less RAM as used slows down wextremely.

Be happy thazt the system knows how to use RAM instead to shrunk down the usage to a bare minimum by holding a maximum amount of unused only to show that it is not using availöable RAM so much iot can while shrinking down througput to a minimum too.
What he said. I don't think you'd be saving a great deal of electricity by using 35% of your RAM instead of 40%. And, since there are no moving parts in RAM "chips," I doubt that you'd greatly increase the service life of the part, either (although if you plan on using that same RAM for 50+ years, it might make a difference over time).

Speaking of moving parts, my magnetic hard drive has some, so I'd much rather see higher RAM usage and lower drive caching.

It looks like I'm using 1,174 meg of RAM with Xfce and Firefox running (along with gedit). There are 492 tabs open. Only eight have been loaded since rebooting, but I think all those tabs being open might consume some memory; they appear to slow down the application's load time.

If you're at all concerned about Firefox's memory usage (, privacy, etc.) then I suggest you install one of the script-blocking plug-ins. Every website appears to attempt to run scripts on the user's computer these days - including this one. I just see the "linuxmint.com" scrip listed here, but most websites want you to run multiple ones. These plug-ins typically have a whitelist option where you can allow trusted scripts to run, either on a temporary or permanent basis. That way, you retain full functionality on the websites for which you approve scripts. And, most of the time, only one or two scripts need be approved for that purpose. The rest are generally used for tracking the user (often across many different websites) and other privacy invasions.
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