this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2026
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Desktop environments: performance vs modern look (sh.itjust.works)
submitted 1 day ago by pixeldaemon@sh.itjust.works to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Some DEs are focused on resource efficiency, but don't look fancy. Others are fancy, but require a fairly modern setup. I have KDE (Fedora) installed on my laptop, I love its look and options. But it is not always snappy, some little freezes occur as well, even in basic situations (opening Firefox and v2rayN simultaneously was one of the cases). The most problematic thing is almost every app taking around 2-3 secs to open its window.

Many people would just tell me to install Xfce, but I still want a fancy desktop, I believe it is something I can afford on my setup. First I thought of GNOME, but it is controversial: some sources report GNOME as well optimized even for low-end machines, other claim it is much heavier than KDE.

What it your experience with desktop environments and their performance? Perhaps you have compared various DEs within the same distro and setup? How performant GNOME actually is compared to KDE? What are the balanced options to explore?

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[–] Hund@feddit.nu 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I use niri, I don't know if it's ressource demanding or not but the readme seems to say it works fine on old computers: Performance: while I run niri on beefy machines, I try to stay conscious of performance. I've seen someone use it fine on an Eee PC 900 from 2008, of all things.

That sounds promising!

Regarding eye candy it's also very sober by default, it can do animations, blur and transparency but you have to ask for it in conf.

That's good! While I love eyecandy, I don't understand why you want it with a tiling window managers, but that's just me being old I guess.

I use it because It's a nice middle ground between traditionnal wms and tiling ones. No messy stacking windows, no need to think too much about the layout, plus you get a larger screen than everyone at no cost :)

I can't imagine ever using it, but it's great that it works for you (and a lot of other people). :D

I haven't really looked into any of the modern alternatives, but it feels like they're a lot easier to get started with if you're new to tiling window managers, which can be overwhelming as it is.

There are very nice looking things like noctalia or dankmaterialshell that can take care of everything for you (dms in particular), including bar/dock/niri conf/wifi etc. It's much easier to have something functional and nice looking than before (including with other wms like sway).

You lost me here. What is noctalia, dankmaterialshell and dms? :D

And docks? Like those bouncy panel thingies in Mac OS?

[–] alastel@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You lost me here. What is noctalia, dankmaterialshell and dms? :D

Nice "desktop shell" projects that you can install in addition to your wm of choice to get all the stuff that you expect from a DE without having to set it up manually. Otherwise since a wm comes with nothing but window management you've got to go the traditional route of picking up a bar, an app launcher, a screen locker, a widget to connect to wifi and plenty of other things to have a decent experience out of your wm. With noctalia or dankmaterialshell (dms is just the short way to write it) you don't spend a week setting everything up to then be sad it's not as pretty as what people do on unixporn.

[–] Hund@feddit.nu 1 points 1 day ago

I see! I use Gentoo myself. I prefer to setup everything myself, but I understand that those all-in-one solutions might be of great value for others though. :)