Xfce vs Gnome how much faster

Question

We all know there are clear differences between xfce and gnome. I've been using xfce for the past 5 years on my computers (xubuntu) and it does fullfil my expectations and requirements that are low ram usage low cpu usage and low resource usage overall and that is becouse of my OCD that i have to keep everything at low level.

But with a computer that uses intel i5 2th generation 3.5 Ghz and 120 GB SSD and good graphics, how noticable is the speed difference between gnome 3 and xfce 4.12 if they both use same applications (now I'm talking about program that you use to write a report or make some simulations with matlab and Android programming)?

I personally use lightweight applications excapt chromium. I use only gtk applications and so on.

Common sense says that XFCE should run faster. But how faster? Are we talking about miliseconds on a computer like mine? Notice that boot time is not a really good measurement for me since i boot my computer at most frequently 1 time a week.

Solution 1

Measuring speed between two environments is very subjective, and not something that can really be accurately and definitively "measured". It depends on the machine entirely. Yes, XFCE is supposed to average faster than GNOME, but it really does depend on the machine.

My machine is System76's Serval WS. It has a M.2 drive, Nvidia 6 GB GeForce GTX 970M, 3.6 GHz i7-4790, and 16 GB HyperX Dual Channel DDR3 at 1866MHz.

Both are the same speed on my machine...very fast. There is no difference between them. If I start a Blender render, it will take the same time on both environments. Sometimes it will be faster on one, sometimes faster on the other, kinda depends on other programs and the current state of the computer, but for me, it averages to the same speed, no difference.

I think the biggest differences between DE's is the startup time (like, logging in) and maybe some window animations (but every DE can be configured to have / not have animations). Other than that, programs, rendering, anything really is the same speed.

It's not like we're comparing Windows to Linux, or even one kernel build to another. Both DE's are using the same environment, the same hardware, the same programs.

Solution 2

With your computer you won't notice much difference. 5th generation i5's and a an SSD are a very good combination.

The biggest difference you will see between Xfce and gnome is in the amount of memory usage it takes. So if you are running a machine with only 1GB of ram then you will notice a significant difference.