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For me Synapse idles at approximately 7MiB, Kupfer at 23MiB.

That is with nearly all except four plugins off for Kupfer. I thought it was supposed to be the lightest and I love the plugins for it.

I used to be a die hard Gnome-Do fan, Then I switched to Synapse when it lost development because I heard a developer from Do went to Synapse.

I want to like Kupfer more but if the memory consumption could match Synapse I'd be sold.

Oxwivi
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winchendonsprings
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    Where does this idea come from that lighter = less memory = better/faster? Programs store data in memory because memory is fast. Barring any major memory cleanup issues, a program that stores more information in memory has faster access to more data than a program that uses less memory -- this is a good thing! And 23 MiB certainly shouldn't be a problem if your computer is less than 10 years old. – Michael Martin-Smucker Jun 23 '11 at 11:16
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    You're right. I guess I tend to favor fairly light applications. I often have multiple applications, including virtual machines, open which soak up loads of memory, so for very simple applications I look for lightweight. – winchendonsprings Jun 23 '11 at 18:23
  • In Xubuntu/Xfce I have a problem with Kupfer: just like xfce4-appfinder, it cannot search for sub-sections of Settings Manager, while Synapse does that very well. Can Kupfer search for such items in other desktops like Unity and KDE? –  Nov 19 '14 at 11:49
  • How to index System Setting in Kupfer –  Nov 19 '14 at 11:56

3 Answers3

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It's a trade-off. Kupfer might have a larger memory footprint (and you're right, on my system it reserves 32 MB of writeable/private memory), but it is fast to load and find the desired application/file. It's up to you what you prefer.

And (come on!) are you running on 128MB RAM or something?

arrange
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You have to consider that Synapse uses zeitgeist as it's backend and that also uses several MB of ram, so the comparison is not exactly fair.

Also, as MichaelMS pointed out it's wanted that those programs use memory! You want to access your data/actions/bookmarks really fast so you don't want to access the slow HDD for it. The more ram it uses the faster it will respond. It's not a bug it's a feature ;)

turbo
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    What's the argument against Synapse if Zeitgeist is going to be running anyway? – winchendonsprings Jun 23 '11 at 19:16
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    Well you don't have to run zeitgeist. But since you normally do - you're right :P – turbo Jun 23 '11 at 20:10
  • maybe because Synapse uses Zeitgeist and Kupfer does not, the later, just like xfce4-appfinder, is not able to find the sub-sections of Settings Manager in Xubuntu, like Keyboard, Updates, Appearance and many many others that Synapse can of course find. –  Nov 19 '14 at 11:50
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Whenever kupfer offers a zeitgeist plugin I'll drop synapse, until then I'll use both.

  • Kupfer : noticeably better at delivering/predicting the program i want to launch or the document i intend to find.

  • Synapse : feel is FAST, thanks to zeitgeist backend.

Hence, I'll use both because they're complementary. Given the apparent similarity between gnome-do, syanpse, kupfer, I assume we'd all appreciate a merger of all these projects.

Keep synapse as a name, it is the coolest one ;-) and as such sticks better to memory.

Braiam
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JLambrecht
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