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.

Comments

a couple of suggestions.

[Mandrake]

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.

Ctwm

[pastie]

I use Ctwm, which is a variant of twm which looks a bit nicer but is still pretty lightweight. I've run it for years, on everything from a 386/25 to my current 1.2Ghz Athlon, and I don't find I need anything more to shuffle the windows around the desktop.

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 :

• CTWM homepage
  
• Window Managers for X
  

Some ideas...

[Otter]

A mandrake help doc on this subject.

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.

lwm and Ion

[nosferatu-man]

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)