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Low RAM usability: Difference between revisions

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* LXQT, i3, sway for 256MB+ RAM
* LXQT, i3, sway for 256MB+ RAM
* MATE, XFCE for 768MB+ RAM. In both cases, make sure to disable the "compositing" window manager feature from settings to achieve much higher performance on older processors.
* MATE, XFCE for 768MB+ RAM.  
* Phosh, KDE Plasma for 1GB+ RAM
** In both cases, make sure to disable the "compositing" window manager feature from settings to achieve much higher performance on older processors.
* Phosh, KDE Plasma for 1GB+ RAM.
** KDE Plasma Desktop should be used in "Xorg mode" for lower resource consumption
* GNOME for 2GB+ RAM
* GNOME for 2GB+ RAM



Revision as of 08:58, 11 July 2021

While postmarketOS has been historically used on devices with as little as 256MB RAM (see Nokia N900), modern usage on less than 2GB RAM can be challenging.

Interfaces

UIs can be categorized as follows, considering at least some space left to running applications.

  • LXQT, i3, sway for 256MB+ RAM
  • MATE, XFCE for 768MB+ RAM.
    • In both cases, make sure to disable the "compositing" window manager feature from settings to achieve much higher performance on older processors.
  • Phosh, KDE Plasma for 1GB+ RAM.
    • KDE Plasma Desktop should be used in "Xorg mode" for lower resource consumption
  • GNOME for 2GB+ RAM

Browsers

Not much, since latest versions of both Firefox and Chromium are intensive on RAM usage. Netsurf is arguably still the best choice for low-power devices, but text-based browsers are ultimately the best choice for very limited devices.

Apps

For basic GUI utility apps, the set of CoreApps (Qt5) may be a good choice to minimize the memory footprint.