I have a desktop PC which double boots #Debian Sid and #Ubuntu 22.04. In Debian I use #Xfce4. In Ubuntu, #Gnome. I executed free -h after a cold boot on both, and, surprise! Gnome uses *less* RAM than Xfce4 (see screenshots). No cheating: Gnome is more modular than most people think, so you can mix and match stuff, making the system lighter or heavier depending on that. And yep, it could be even lighter... Just by removing the snap runtime, for example. ;)
@array GNOME, modular? From using it, I got the impression that it was more modular than it appeared, but I could never quite understand it the way I could KDE.
I'm really curious, how did you mix and match stuff with Gnome, and is there any decent documentation for its architecture?
@golemwire I am really a fan of KISS/UNIX philosophy and I have, say, very built from the ground up Arch and Void installations, so yeah, tinkered they are. ;) But when I need a machine to work with and fast, I can just throw Ubuntu LTS with Gnome on it: everything I need is already on repos or you can easily get from upstream, and all just works, mostly. :) With time dwm may come, but even on dwm the Gnome backup is nice to have. :)