this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
34 points (94.7% liked)
Linux
59379 readers
824 users here now
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
Rules
- Posts must be relevant to operating systems running the Linux kernel. GNU/Linux or otherwise.
- No misinformation
- No NSFW content
- No hate speech, bigotry, etc
Related Communities
Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I'd suggest EndeavourOS with XFce (removing the endeavouros addons after installation to save ram). I can make it boot at 460 MB of RAM. Hyprland uses about 900 MB. Might be of interest with just 4 GB of RAM. For example, on Omarchy, which uses arch/hyprland, it uses about 900 mb of ram, but it's super slow with btrfs and some changes they've made. So on an old PC, XFce might be your friend. XFce can be themed really well, here are my attempts:
macos: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/114009689446895521
macos classic: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/114875117360852977
win11: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/114874435763184758
beos: https://mastodon.social/@eugenialoli/114751365408638345
Actually plasma uses less resources than xfce. Not many people seem to know this, but its both better looking and more efficient.
You also get full Wayland support. So I would actually recommend plasma, but both can be installed and tried since we are blessed with choice in the Linux world.
Erm, no, it doesn't. Plasma requires over 1.2 GB of RAM on a clean boot. It's a much more complex DE.
It is NOT more efficient than Xfce. I live booted Fedora KDE, and it was painfully slow. Mint Xfce and Void Xfce, on the other hand, worked perfectly.
Ok :)
This mainly depends on the distribution and default configuration of the desktop environment. You can make KDE Plasma use less RAM comparable to XFCE, but that's not the case with the default setup which most people compare.