XFCE vs KDE

[Teddy]

[quote author=Artim link=topic=6940.msg49926#msg49926 date=1576932245]
How has that happened?  KDE on par with Xfce?!  Not long ago I would have thought it impossible.

The main difference is that KDE has a massive, almost inexhaustible supply of developers, where as XFCE have just a handful. I really like KDE and how close it is to Windows and the level of configuration available. Plasma is really nice too.

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KDE has been my go-to DE for many years. Back in the KDE4 days, it was a bit heavy on RAM usage but still, many levels ahead of GNOME which is a downright pig on RAM usage with not that many features to back it up (at least this used to be true a few years ago). KDE5 (Plasma 5) is mostly at the point now where it can compete with XFCE's RAM usage with the compositors and extra eye candy effects disabled. At idle from a cold boot on OpenSUSE (probably KDE's flagship distro besides KDE Neon) it always was below 1GB of usage and more often than not under 650MB.

XFCE's level of polish really doesn't compare to KDE when you compare default look vs default look. With the right theme, fonts and icons and extra applets on the notification area, XFCE isn't that far off from KDE either (LL theming is spot-on!).

I wonder how LXDE and the Enlightenment Desktop compare to XFCE now in polish/features/RAM usage (and the Moksha Desktop fork from Bohdi Linux which I believe came from E17). Clearly its been a few years since I've hopped distros lol. Guess it's time to experiment again!