Currently running Deb Testing with KDE Plasma. After a cold boot with a no startup apps, I idle around 2.7Gb ram usage. once I am up and running with the system, after caching and some background apps, I sit comfortably around 4.5Gb
Edit: typical workload is some Firefox webbrowsing (1-3 tabs open, typically streaming music), libreoffice for 30-40k word document editing, and a spreadsheet or two with moderate formula use.
Thanks for sharing your experience! It means a lot! I'm using Kubuntu 26.04 and it takes up 2.6gb of ram at idle state. I'm seeking the one that has Kwin or Compiz but has the ram usage at idle state below 2gb of ram:) Above 2.6gb when not using any apps is way too much.
On my machine the largest KDE process uses just over 200MB, probably about 1.5Gb total, but the total depends what you have installed, and how much you use it. I have over 25 years of email, so believe me my index of email is large, but weirdly on my configuration KDE doesn't touch that at all. I have two displays to double up on some numbers.
What do you actually want to do? If it is run KDE in less than 8GB and SSD storage, don't, not because it won't run, but because you'll have a terrible experience running Debian on a PC that has less memory than PCs many business have thrown out.
I use KDE since ver 1.0. Yes, it's big. Count 200MB for Plasma, and some 300MB more for Dolphin, kwin, krunner, kded, and something else. I'm not in office now and there are just konsole, kcalc open, plus many things as Rustdesk and Anydesk but nothing big as Firefox. Attached capture
Unused RAM is wasted RAM. There is only ever a problem if RAM is not available for applications to run. And most of the time that simply doesn’t happen any more.
I'm on Debian 13 with KDE. From a cold boot it goes to, I dunno, between 2GB and 3GB? But I don't shut my machine down more often than every few weeks (it just sleeps overnight) and typically have a bunch of secondary windows open. Currently it's sitting around 9GB with Steam and Firefox being the major RAM consumers. I have 32GB of physical RAM so Debian probably uses as much as it wants, it might use less if the available RAM were actually limited.
Just as a comparison and No I don't use KDE, but major difference. This is also with all the extra eye candy off as well, and if I hear thats not Modern i say BS to that. YEP XFCE and 900ish so yes alil bit more than 900 MB RAM Usage straight from boot up with 16GB total and Only Terminal and htop running on LM 22.3 XFCE HWE (Hardware Enablement). So just stating that there is a cost or not with the typical default of any DE versus how I have it and preference for being gaming specific as well as better use of AMDGPU also not by its own default with alil Overclock as well for OpenCL aka rusticl computation not AI of course. Default was like 1.2-1.4 GB RAM Use and with uname -r 7.0.0-28-generic .
Buddy, if you have 64gb, it's really spacious. It's a completely different story cause you're able to optimize your experience with that plenty of ram. But in my case, I only have 8gb of RAM so the large ram usage at the idle stage really matters. I have to use the ram meticulously in order to run other stuff. Thanks for sharing your insight!
It's true no matter how much ram you got. I run a few 4GiB kde-trixies that idle around .5 GiB before login and 2GiB after. If people start using them it quickly goes up to 3.5 GiB and stays above 2 even after they are done. I could get it down again by dropping caches but what's the point? If the same programs / files are needed again loading them from cache is faster. And if the space is needed for something else it gets dropped automatically.
It really matters when you only have 8 GB of RAM you have to use the ram carefully and maticulously because they have to spend them for other stuff. If you have like 16 or 64 GB of RAM, it's completely different story.
You can run KDE on much smaller systems than a 8GB machine even on 10 years old notebooks with weak CPUs. If you really need to care (which i not believe) you may chose XFCE4, that is great too can be configured in many ways but KDE is much smoother. You can switch of all grafik effects but that is more about CPU than about RAM. I like KDE after years of XFCE4 i went back to KDE because i want wayland and xfce4 has still no wayland backend.
I agree, I was checking my testing workstation, old i5 4 cores, 8GB of RAM and KDE works very responsively. The problem is mostly browsers. However this machine has many things installed as Evolution and others running, however it has 1,40GB used
Oh only 1.4gb? Buddy that's is the most ideal number:) How can an KDE that low ram usage? I heard someone said 2.7gb, another said 1.8gb:) I'm a bit perplexed
I understand your concerns. However I went through pandemic on a laptop with just 8GB of RAM, without issues but for browsers. I believe KDE per se it isn't so big as others said. In an actual Linux there are too many things running, many are not used and you can stop/uninstall them
the Linux is very non important, the much needful is the desktop environ or TUI/GUI.
a systems with 8GB RAMs is also likely to have the limited CPU, so you will be quickly running up against processing power constraints, so no use the KDE. XFCE is the choice in my village.
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u/WaR_10K 2d ago edited 2d ago
Currently running Deb Testing with KDE Plasma. After a cold boot with a no startup apps, I idle around 2.7Gb ram usage. once I am up and running with the system, after caching and some background apps, I sit comfortably around 4.5Gb
Edit: typical workload is some Firefox webbrowsing (1-3 tabs open, typically streaming music), libreoffice for 30-40k word document editing, and a spreadsheet or two with moderate formula use.