To be fair, in comparison to most other DEs, it is still rather heavyweight. Definitely more heavyweight than LXDE and Xfce, and Unity is pretty well-optimised at this point, too.
But yeah, for what KDE is capable off, especially in comparison to GNOME or the Windows-world, it's actually incredibly lightweight.
I run it on a 4 year old mid-range laptop with 4 GB of RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000, and as long as my system isn't under heavy load, it's buttery smooth, even with many of the bells and whistles enabled.
> I run it on a 4 year old mid-range laptop with 4 GB of RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000, and as long as my system isn't under heavy load, it's buttery smooth, even with many of the bells and whistles enabled.
It is a desktop environment, not a 3D game. It should ALWAYS be buttery smooth. You can run a desktop environment on a 20 year old machine.
I used to run Kubuntu (with KDE 4) on an old Yakumo laptop, with 384 megs of RAM and a 600 MHz Celeron. Ran very smoothly. Coudn't have more than 2 apps open at a time, though. (And even that was sometimes pushing it.)
But yeah, for what KDE is capable off, especially in comparison to GNOME or the Windows-world, it's actually incredibly lightweight.
I run it on a 4 year old mid-range laptop with 4 GB of RAM, Intel HD Graphics 4000, and as long as my system isn't under heavy load, it's buttery smooth, even with many of the bells and whistles enabled.