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RAM usage - a comparison

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NFT5
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RAM usage - a comparison

#1 Post by NFT5 »

Looking at resource use in Debian Buster on KDE Plasma desktop and was quite surprised to see that it was well over 2GB.

Of course, that had been running for a while so restarted and had another look with nothing having been done since restart other than start a terminal. :o

Went through the process on all the releases (only Debian on this machine) and came up with some results:

Code: Select all

XFCE (Buster)

chris@BOSSDESK:~$ free
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:        8135768      472628     7234232       36980      428908     7382780
Swap:      15802364           0    15802364


XFCE (Stretch)

chris@BOSSDESK:~$ free
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:        8145096      831828     6462344       19432      850924     7052344
Swap:      15802364           0    15802364


MATE (Jessie)

chris@BOSSDESK:~$ free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       8145000    1063772    7081228      20032      52168     549936
-/+ buffers/cache:     461668    7683332
Swap:     15802364          0   15802364


KDE (Buster)

chris@BOSSDESK:~$ free
              total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:        8135768     1081900     6266016       21912      787852     6781756
Swap:      15802364           0    15802364
Now I thought that KDE had gone from a memory hog to a light user. It would seem not.

With 8GB I have plenty of RAM and a ridiculously big Swap file on the SSD, so it's not causing any problem but I'm curious as to why so high.

Any ideas?

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Re: RAM usage - a comparison

#2 Post by Hallvor »

I think you may want to run this:

http://www.pixelbeat.org/scripts/ps_mem.py

Without proper numbers for each process, it is just guesswork.

Removing akonadi will save you some 200 MiB alone.
Now I thought that KDE had gone from a memory hog to a light user. It would seem not.
I don't think KDE was ever *light*. Better than rumors, maybe, but light? No. My own installs use some 400 MiB at boot.
Last edited by Hallvor on 2019-09-03 07:15, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: RAM usage - a comparison

#3 Post by NFT5 »

Thanks. That was interesting.

Code: Select all

chris@BOSSDESK:~/Desktop$ sudo ./ps_mem.py
[sudo] password for chris: 
 Private  +   Shared  =  RAM used       Program

 92.0 KiB +   5.5 KiB =  97.5 KiB       start_kdeinit
224.0 KiB +  14.5 KiB = 238.5 KiB       startkde
220.0 KiB +  69.5 KiB = 289.5 KiB       agetty
312.0 KiB +  41.5 KiB = 353.5 KiB       cron
352.0 KiB +  30.5 KiB = 382.5 KiB       rtkit-daemon
512.0 KiB + 147.5 KiB = 659.5 KiB       kwrapper5
704.0 KiB +  11.5 KiB = 715.5 KiB       ssh-agent
660.0 KiB +  76.5 KiB = 736.5 KiB       rpcbind
732.0 KiB + 115.5 KiB = 847.5 KiB       dconf-service
456.0 KiB + 592.0 KiB =   1.0 MiB       avahi-daemon (2)
860.0 KiB + 221.5 KiB =   1.1 MiB       at-spi-bus-launcher
848.0 KiB + 312.5 KiB =   1.1 MiB       dbus
968.0 KiB + 220.5 KiB =   1.2 MiB       at-spi2-registryd
  1.1 MiB + 181.5 KiB =   1.3 MiB       obexd
  1.1 MiB + 220.5 KiB =   1.4 MiB       sudo
  1.0 MiB + 387.5 KiB =   1.4 MiB       alsactl
  1.1 MiB + 257.5 KiB =   1.4 MiB       gvfsd-fuse
  1.2 MiB + 340.5 KiB =   1.5 MiB       gvfsd
  1.0 MiB + 565.5 KiB =   1.5 MiB       systemd-timesyncd
  1.4 MiB + 396.5 KiB =   1.8 MiB       sshd
  1.2 MiB + 574.5 KiB =   1.8 MiB       systemd-logind
  1.8 MiB + 116.5 KiB =   1.9 MiB       bluetoothd
  1.7 MiB + 316.5 KiB =   2.0 MiB       sddm
  1.7 MiB + 504.5 KiB =   2.2 MiB       sddm-helper
  2.2 MiB + 113.5 KiB =   2.3 MiB       systemd-udevd
  2.3 MiB +  53.5 KiB =   2.3 MiB       bash
  2.3 MiB +  54.5 KiB =   2.3 MiB       rsyslogd
  2.1 MiB + 312.5 KiB =   2.4 MiB       upowerd
  2.5 MiB +  96.5 KiB =   2.6 MiB       wpa_supplicant
  2.5 MiB + 275.5 KiB =   2.7 MiB       dhclient
  2.6 MiB + 163.5 KiB =   2.8 MiB       agent
  2.4 MiB + 557.5 KiB =   2.9 MiB       cups-browsed
  3.2 MiB +  18.5 KiB =   3.2 MiB       haveged
  2.9 MiB + 379.5 KiB =   3.3 MiB       cupsd
  3.1 MiB + 498.5 KiB =   3.6 MiB       xembedsniproxy
  3.5 MiB + 172.5 KiB =   3.6 MiB       accounts-daemon
  3.5 MiB + 220.5 KiB =   3.7 MiB       polkitd
  3.3 MiB + 491.5 KiB =   3.7 MiB       gmenudbusmenuproxy
  2.9 MiB +   1.0 MiB =   3.9 MiB       gnome-keyring-daemon (2)
  3.5 MiB + 532.5 KiB =   4.0 MiB       systemd-journald
  3.7 MiB + 502.5 KiB =   4.2 MiB       kscreen_backend_launcher
  2.2 MiB +   2.1 MiB =   4.2 MiB       nmbd
  4.3 MiB + 367.5 KiB =   4.6 MiB       minidlnad
  4.2 MiB + 435.5 KiB =   4.7 MiB       colord
  4.1 MiB + 615.5 KiB =   4.7 MiB       dbus-daemon (3)
  4.3 MiB + 410.5 KiB =   4.7 MiB       ModemManager
  4.5 MiB +   1.3 MiB =   5.8 MiB       packagekitd
  4.9 MiB + 987.5 KiB =   5.9 MiB       kactivitymanagerd
  5.3 MiB + 995.5 KiB =   6.3 MiB       kglobalaccel5
  5.3 MiB +   1.0 MiB =   6.3 MiB       kaccess
  6.0 MiB + 743.5 KiB =   6.7 MiB       NetworkManager
  5.8 MiB + 932.5 KiB =   6.7 MiB       akonadi_control
  5.8 MiB +   1.1 MiB =   6.9 MiB       polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1
  5.7 MiB +   1.2 MiB =   6.9 MiB       akonadi_contacts_resource
  5.8 MiB +   1.4 MiB =   7.2 MiB       akonadi_maildir_resource
  5.9 MiB +   1.3 MiB =   7.2 MiB       akonadi_birthdays_resource
  7.4 MiB + 502.5 KiB =   7.9 MiB       udisksd
  6.7 MiB +   1.3 MiB =   7.9 MiB       kup-daemon
  6.4 MiB +   1.9 MiB =   8.3 MiB       ksmserver
  7.2 MiB +   1.2 MiB =   8.5 MiB       klauncher
  4.5 MiB +   4.2 MiB =   8.7 MiB       systemd (3)
  6.7 MiB +   2.1 MiB =   8.8 MiB       org_kde_powerdevil
  7.7 MiB +   1.2 MiB =   8.9 MiB       akonadi_migration_agent
  8.0 MiB +   1.1 MiB =   9.0 MiB       kwalletd5
  7.4 MiB +   1.7 MiB =   9.1 MiB       kdeconnectd
  7.8 MiB +   1.3 MiB =   9.2 MiB       akonadi_akonotes_resource
  7.8 MiB +   1.5 MiB =   9.3 MiB       akonadi_indexing_agent
  8.1 MiB +   1.5 MiB =   9.6 MiB       akonadi_followupreminder_agent
  8.0 MiB +   1.6 MiB =   9.6 MiB       akonadi_newmailnotifier_agent
  8.2 MiB +   1.6 MiB =   9.9 MiB       akonadi_ical_resource
  8.5 MiB +   2.3 MiB =  10.8 MiB       unattended-upgr
  8.4 MiB +   2.4 MiB =  10.9 MiB       python3.7
  9.3 MiB +   1.9 MiB =  11.2 MiB       akonadi_notes_agent
 10.2 MiB +   1.4 MiB =  11.6 MiB       akonadi_maildispatcher_agent
  5.9 MiB +   7.1 MiB =  13.1 MiB       smbd (4)
 13.4 MiB +   1.7 MiB =  15.1 MiB       pulseaudio
 12.4 MiB +   3.2 MiB =  15.6 MiB       korgac
 14.7 MiB +   2.3 MiB =  17.0 MiB       kuiserver
 20.5 MiB +   1.0 MiB =  21.5 MiB       akonadiserver
 21.0 MiB +   4.9 MiB =  25.9 MiB       Xorg
 23.4 MiB +   4.3 MiB =  27.7 MiB       kwin_x11
 19.0 MiB +  10.5 MiB =  29.5 MiB       kdeinit5 (6)
 22.9 MiB +   6.6 MiB =  29.5 MiB       konsole
 19.6 MiB +  10.7 MiB =  30.3 MiB       akonadi_sendlater_agent
 24.8 MiB +   8.6 MiB =  33.4 MiB       krunner
 22.0 MiB +  11.5 MiB =  33.4 MiB       akonadi_archivemail_agent
 22.3 MiB +  11.8 MiB =  34.1 MiB       akonadi_mailfilter_agent
 31.7 MiB +   9.5 MiB =  41.3 MiB       blueman-applet
 72.8 MiB + 185.5 KiB =  73.0 MiB       mysqld-akonadi
117.0 MiB +  14.9 MiB = 132.0 MiB       plasmashell
174.3 MiB +   3.4 MiB = 177.8 MiB       dropbox
---------------------------------
                          1.1 GiB
=================================
Looks like I have a bit of research to do........

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Re: RAM usage - a comparison

#4 Post by Hallvor »

It looks like akonadi is eating a lot of RAM, so unless you need it... Dropbox looks like a memory hog as well.

Many plasmoids will also use quite a bit of RAM.
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Re: RAM usage - a comparison

#5 Post by Nili »

There is already a thread not too late from here with this subject.
Perhaps we could find other ones on Search...
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Re: RAM usage - a comparison

#6 Post by None1975 »

NFT5 wrote:Looking at resource use in Debian Buster on KDE Plasma desktop and was quite surprised to see that it was well over 2GB.

Code: Select all

XFCE (Buster)
chris@BOSSDESK:~$ free

Any ideas?
Please, if you use

Code: Select all

 free
command, use it with the -m switch, that displays it in megabytes.
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Re: RAM usage - a comparison

#7 Post by Deb-fan »

Doesn't sound right, so makes me wonder if you're interpreting memory usage correctly. Though don't mess with KDE so lacking in knowledge/experience on it. Still even with every KDE package, all bells, whistles and bling active 2+gbs sounds high. Would Google about minimal KDE plasma install and selectively install what you want-need. Profile the OS w "systemd-analyze blame" and similar and disable unwanted startup services/daemons to further slim things down and speed boot.
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Re: RAM usage - a comparison

#8 Post by NFT5 »

None1975 wrote:Please, if you use

Code: Select all
free

command, use it with the -m switch, that displays it in megabytes.
:D Sounds almost like my wife who, last weekend, insisted on converting measurements that I gave her in millimetres, to centimetres.
Deb-fan wrote:Doesn't sound right, so makes me wonder if you're interpreting memory usage correctly.
The ps_mem.py script result above does give a much more detailed breakdown of memory usage and akonadi does look like a major culprit, along with Dropbox.

Being new to KDE Plasma I must admit that I am revelling in the extent of customisation and choice that this desktop offers. Things like being able to set, permanently, the size and position of an application's window makes for much improved productivity and, of course, the feature list in terms of applications/applets is incredibly rich, especially to someone like me who used MATE for so many years. I'm not complaining about performance. For something with so many features it is as fast as MATE and load times of less than 8 seconds are more than acceptable. Rather the point of this thread is to get a better understanding of what's going on. I do have plenty of RAM on this machine and my other desktop, at home, has even more, with 16GB. The RAM used by the desktop, in each case is not impacting on performance in any way that is noticeable and, since I'm still getting to know the features I'm not quite ready to start removing them. If I had a machine with less resources I may have been using XFCE or MATE, rather than KDE.

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Re: RAM usage - a comparison

#9 Post by Deb-fan »

Nothing wrong with that. No real hardline when it comes to preference and tastes,. I'm sure KDE is a good desktop it's been around forever and had tons of development. Still to me an os using 2gbs at idle would drive me nuts. Always been a resource miser though. Even my crusty laptop has 4gbs-ram but os's 32/64bit still use under 100mbs idle. Brings us back to personal preferences. You'll get to know KDE with some effort and if desired be able to trim it down.
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Re: RAM usage - a comparison

#10 Post by stevepusser »

There's no way XFCE in Stretch is really using a gig, so your measurement technique needs refining. The GTK 3 4.14 version uses a little more, but not much. There's plenty of other testers that report KDE uses ~400 MB after a fresh boot to the desktop.
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