Cinnamon vs. KDE -- is it noticeably faster on old hardware?

[dibl]

I'm looking for advice.  I recently "inherited" an HP Pavilion dv9500 laptop which was only lightly used by its former elderly owner, and is in immaculate condition.  I thought it would be an upgrade for my wife's beat up old Dell E6500.  I installed "patience" KDE on it, and everything works correctly, but it is a slow boot and fairly doggy to use.  I already ordered a 4 GB memory upgrade to replace the 2 GB that it has, and I'm thinking one of the cheaper SSDs might be worthwhile as well.


Today I made a bootable Cinnamon USB stick (Nice Job, btw!), and tried it on the HP, and as a Live session it seems fairly nimble.  But before I spend another bunch of time configuring it with Cinnamon, I thought I would ask the forum members whether anyone has compared Cinnamon to KDE on the same hardware platform.  Could you see a real difference?


Thanks for whatever you can share.  Specs below, from the Cinnamon session:

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System:    Host: siduction Kernel: 4.10.1-towo.1-siduction-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit)
           Desktop: Cinnamon 3.2.7
           Distro: siduction 17.1.0 Patience - cinnamon - (201703051734)
Machine:   Device: laptop System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP Pavilion dv9500 Notebook PC v: Rev 1
           Mobo: Quanta model: 30D1 v: 85.24
           BIOS: Hewlett-Packard v: F.2A date: 02/22/2008
Battery    BAT0: charge: 17.9 Wh 94.9% condition: 18.9/60.0 Wh (31%)
CPU:       Dual core AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile TL-58 (-MCP-) cache: 1024 KB
           clock speeds: max: 1900 MHz 1: 800 MHz 2: 800 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA C67 [GeForce 7150M / nForce 630M]
           Display Server: X.Org 1.19.2 drivers: nouveau (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1440x900@59.90hz
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on NV67 GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 13.0.5
Audio:     Card NVIDIA MCP67 High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
           Sound: ALSA v: k4.10.1-towo.1-siduction-amd64
Network:   Card-1: NVIDIA MCP67 Ethernet driver: forcedeth
           IF: enp0s10 state: down mac: xxx
           Card-2: Broadcom Limited BCM4311 802.11a/b/g
           driver: b43-pci-bridge
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: xxx
Drives:    HDD Total Size: NA (-)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: ST9120822AS size: 120.0GB
           ID-2: /dev/sdb model: ST9120822AS size: 120.0GB
           ID-3: USB /dev/sdc model: U3_Cruzer_Micro size: 2.0GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 1.8G used: 28M (2%) fs: overlay dev: N/A
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 34.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 47.0
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 177 Uptime: 1 min Memory: 412.4/1941.9MB
           Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.5

[melmarker]

@dibl - 4G are sufficient for both Cinnamon and KDE - i think i would prefer Cinnamon for daily usage. Lets face it, Cinnamon can start a browser nicely and a mail client too - things like libre office are genuine GTK too.

BTW - the latest KDE is really cute - but i think cinnamon would match better with both machine and intended usage.

If i wouldn't be slightly biased about other DEs i would have to descide between cinnamon or KDE - no clue what i would use in the end, maybe a heavy altered cinnamon or KDE. (Or both, depending on weekday and/or mood)

[dibl]

Vielen dank, Alf!

[dibl]

Following up with my final answer -- it is LXQt.


With a cheap PNY SSD and LXQt, my boot time on this old hardware is down to 26 seconds.

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System:    Host: susan-dv9500 Kernel: 4.10.4-towo.1-siduction-amd64 x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: LXQt
           Distro: siduction 17.1.0 Patience - lxqt - (201703051830)
Machine:   Device: laptop System: Hewlett-Packard product: HP Pavilion dv9500 Notebook PC v: Rev 1
           Mobo: Quanta model: 30D1 v: 85.24 BIOS: Hewlett-Packard v: F.2A date: 02/22/2008
Battery    BAT0: charge: 10.9 Wh 25.2% condition: 43.2/60.0 Wh (72%)
CPU:       Dual core AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile TL-58 (-MCP-) cache: 1024 KB
           clock speeds: max: 1900 MHz 1: 800 MHz 2: 800 MHz
Graphics:  Card: NVIDIA C67 [GeForce 7150M / nForce 630M]
           Display Server: X.Org 1.19.3 drivers: nvidia (unloaded: modesetting,fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1440x900@59.90hz
           GLX Renderer: GeForce 7150M / nForce 630M/integrated/SSE2 GLX Version: 2.1.2 NVIDIA 304.135
Audio:     Card NVIDIA MCP67 High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.10.4-towo.1-siduction-amd64
Network:   Card-1: NVIDIA MCP67 Ethernet driver: forcedeth
           IF: enp0s10 state: down mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Broadcom Limited BCM4311 802.11a/b/g driver: b43-pci-bridge
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 360.1GB (1.9% used)
           ID-1: /dev/sda model: PNY_CS1311_240GB size: 240.1GB
           ID-2: /dev/sdb model: ST9120822AS size: 120.0GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 20G used: 4.5G (25%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
           ID-2: swap-1 size: 2.15GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda2
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 49.0C mobo: N/A
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 161 Uptime: 8 min Memory: 606.3/3706.4MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.3.5


Tips:


1. Boot the Patience LXQt usb stick or dvd with a "nomodeset" option if you find that you can go through the entire setup, click "Install" at the end of the Calamares process, and have it crash silently.


2. Connman was a problem and somehow rfkill started hard blocking my wifi switch, which almost caused me to give up on the LXQt DE.  Fortunately @melmarker gave me advice to try network-manager-gnome and with this I did not run into the rfkill issue.  For my home wifi, I configured /etc/network/interfaces to automatically connect, so network manager will only be used if we take the laptop elsewhere.


3. I followed this advice to remove the nouveau driver, plus

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apt remove xserver-xorg-video-nouveau


Then

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apt install nvidia-legacy-304xx-driver


and it did the job perfectly.  It seems to boot a little faster with the nvidia blob.