mate is better than xfce in resource usage and speed?

[nasser.man]

I have an old system with 2 gig of ram and an one core sepron cpu. currently i installed mint 18 xfce on it, but some times it seems to be slow, for example clicking on start button or switching apps ( but is not very serious).
Now i want to use linux mint 18.2 mate version instead of it. this pc is used for learning programming (such php) purpose and mostly used application are atom/apache/gimp/mysql/firefox/filezilla.

i could not found any compaction between XFCE and Mate resource usage and speed, customization is second factor to me but is important ( not as performance and speed).

What would you suggest, MATE or XFCE?

[Neil Edmond]

They are about the same. Not enough difference either way that you would notice.

[jimallyn]

I tested 18.0 XFCE, MATE, and Cinnamon on a computer I was preparing for a friend. XFCE used 303 megs of RAM while idling, and 680 megs with Firefox running. MATE used 514 megs of RAM while idling, and 895 megs with Firefox running. So, XFCE will keep a couple hundred more megs of RAM available for your applications. I tried MATE, but couldn't figure out how to do some things that are fairly important to me, so stuck with XFCE. XFCE out of the box doesn't do select to copy, both mouse buttons to paste, but it can be added.

[richyrich]

I'm still on 17.3 Xfce and I've always used select to copy and middle click to paste, has that been removed/changed in 18.x ?

[Hoser Rob]

Is Mate faster than Xfce? Having used both, no. It isn't a great difference but Mate is a bit slower. Definitely noticeable in 1Gb RAM, less so with 2Gb.

I strongly suspect that machine also has AMD graphics but to be sure post more complete system info. Copy/paste this to the terminal and copy/paste the text output here:

Code: Select all

inxi -Fxz

Ont thing you'll really want to do is to turn off ALL the eye candy/desktop compositing if you haven't already. That'll make a big difference. The easiest way in Xfce is to go to settings > desktop settings > window manager. In the popup menu the default is "Wfwm + Compositing". Change that to just Xfwm.

[prestonR]

turn off ALL the eye candy/desktop compositing ... That'll make a big difference ... in Xfce: settings > desktop settings > window manager. In the popup menu the default is "Wfwm + Compositing". Change that to just Xfwm.

Absolutely, in Mate: Menu>> Control Center >> Desktop Setting >> Windows >> pick 'Marco'.

A more radical step is to strip the panel of notifiers, each of which consumes about 45Mb. Combine eg clock, update and network info within a text based conky; it uses under 10Mb. (install conky-manager as well, it's great to browse and compare a number of different designs and functionalities).

Also, the often stated 'Mint17 is lighter than 18' is too simple. Modern desktops have to offer contemporary look and feel. Xfce/Mate 18 may appear bloated at first start-up on older hardware but with the steps mentioned above you can bring them back to what they are; responsive DEs that often are the only practical way to extend the lifespan of machines that have become dear to their owners.

As an afterthought; maybe the installer of Xfce/Mate should offer a 'start my desktop responsive' option after old hardware was detected and set eye candy/desktop compositing defaults accordingly.

[Schultz]

With only 2 gigs of RAM I'd go with Xfce. But if it were my computer, I'd bump the RAM up to 4 gigs and use Mate.

[strypey]

This thread is a few years old now, but here's a perspective from 2019. I have an ancient 32-bit laptop with 2GB or RAM (maxed out) and an SSD in place of the original spinning HDD (the SSD made *way* more difference to its performance than doubling the RAM). I would definitely pick Mate over Cinammon for a device with less than 4GB of RAM or with a spinning HDD. I am running Mate (on Trisquel not Mint) as my day-to-day desktop. It works smoothly enough for my needs. When I want to claw back that little bit more RAM for apps, I login with OpenBox. It's a lot less user-friendly but if know the terminal commands to open the apps you need, or you only need a web browser it's fine.

It's been a long time since I tried XFCE, but I did try LXDE (default desktop in Trisquel-Mini) before I settled on Mate. Any performance gain, even on such an old device, wasn't worth the crappy UI.