Slashdot Mirror
Lightweight Window Managers?
bcrowell asks: "We have an old Intel machine (166 Mhz pentium, 32 Mb), previously used only for playing Civilization, on which I've now got Mandrake running. The problem is, it doesn't seem possible to run KDE in this amount of memory. I've heard about Linux being a good way to run serious software gracefully on older hardware, but not having a GUI is pretty limiting, unless you just want a server. Has anyone used a more lightweight window manager that they could recommend? Are there ways of configuring X, KDE, or GNOME so as to cut down on the memory requirements?" Yes, a simple browse of Freshmeat will net you loads of answers, but I'm sure the submittor would appreciate some of your experiences with the numerous choices of WMs, out there.
XFCE... oh yes, XFCE. You can use GNOME stuff if you want, but it isn't neccesary. It is especially freindly to laptops and older low-Pentium-class hardware. I use it on high-end systems, too.
Amateurs discuss tactics. Professionals discuss logistics.
Aside from it looking a bit like CDE of pre-gnome Solaris fame, its actually a nice little wm. Totally configurable, fast as hell, small footprint, everything you could want or need. Even has its own desktop background and sound apps. I actually use this on one of my high-end Dell machines @ work, and haven't had a single problem with it.
www.xfce.org is where its at!
First, I would recommend taking a look at blackbox - it's lightweight enough to run on quite a few lower-end machines nicely. Or maybe ion, which is decent for some types of work-related activities.
And then I would say that a lot of larger desktop environments (gnome/kde/enlightenment/etc) can probably be configured to run slower systems. most of the development work on E (before 0.14), for example, was done on a p120 and a p133. So I wouldn't completely discount these systems if you're used to them - you can probably make them run happily by tweaking configurations in them. Of course, you may not be interested in that, in which case I'd stick with something like ion or blackbox.
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
I run Afterstep and Mandrake 7.2 (came with that version, don't know why they took it off newer versions) on a 32mb machine at home. Afterstep has a very small footprint. If you are running a different version of Mandrake you'll have to grab the code from Afterstep.org (which seems to be dead in the water as I write this)
Nice features over twm : Virtual desktops, pixmap `themes' if you want that kind of stuff. Probably others, but I'm a bit of a minimalist so I don't go for WM fluff.
Obligatory links :
WindowMaker runs fine on my 486, as will blackbox, AfterStep, bare Sawfish and the rest. Depending on what you want to do, you may want to try an older distribution instead -- Redhat 5.2 or something like that. Everything in it will be a lot lighter weight so it will be easier than trying to cut a recent distro down to size. KDE 1.x will run faster on that box than KDE 2 does on a 800 MHz system. You can still update all the console stuff to new versions with no loss of performance.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I use wmx on a laptop with similar resource constraints; I like it a lot for that application because of the inovative way it handles window labels: instead of a title bar at the top, there is a tab on the left, which is more efficient on a little 10 inch screen.
It had good key binding to reduce mousage, which is particularly helpful with an anoying little pointing stick, but which is becoming habit forming on my desktoip as well, and supports virtual desktops.
I also occasionally use aewm, which is also nice, configurable, and somewhat more aesthetically pleasing, in a less-is-beautiful sort of a way.
It's kind of lame, but I had a little more trouble configuring it, which initially steered me to wmx, but that should not influence you at all: I'm a knucklehead.
I believe that because of the window tabs, wmx excercises the X server more (shaped windows or something), but that has never been noticeable for me.
-------------------------
A person of moderate zeal
The two best lightweight window managers are lwm and ion. lwm is like an even lighterweight twm; you can start xterms, move windows, close windows, and make windows disappear into a right-click menu. That's it; that's all it does. As an added bonus, the binary is something like 26k on an x86 FreeBSD box.
ion is totally different; it takes over your entire screen, which is very nice for limited resolutions where you don't want pixels wasted on borders, widgets, etc.; it's controllable completely through the keyboard; it looks nothing like any other window manager (in my eyes, a big benefit, as all other window managers are broken); however, it's also quite light on the system.
I also hear good things about wm2 and wmx, but I can't stand the little tiny title bar on the side, so I don't use 'em.
Peace,
(jfb)
To spur "enterprise Linux," Big Bang, the distributed two-phase commit.
This really depends on what you intend to do inside that window manager. I recently put Debian 2.2 r4 stable on a 32 MB P-120 box. I have Gnome launching under Windowmaker. Runs great. If I try to run something big under it, say, Mozilla, the disk swapping starts immediately and a page load of Slashdot takes 30 seconds or so via cable modem. Launching a second session of Mozilla or accessing the mail client will leave me with a 3-5 minute wait just to bring the window up. I avoid this by using Balsa for mail, and running Mozilla by itself when I want to browse the web. Certainly I could alleaviate some of the waiting by going with a less resource-hungry browser.
In short, A decent window manager like Windomaker can run Gnome on a resource-limited box; you just have to stick to smaller applications and/or avoid multitasking on the desktop if you're going to run an advanced window manager or desktop environment.
"Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"