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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.
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
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...
my friend had a pentium 100 with 16 megs of ram (recently upgraded to 32) and he had mandrake running on it quite well, for a while he used KDE but he switched to icewm and it seemed to work quite well, it ran at a decent res. and color setting unlike kde. It took me a while to get used to all the right clicking but all in all it was a decent wm
Okay, the first thing you need to do is understand the difference between a Window Manager, and a Desktop Environment.
Gnome and KDE are desktop environments. They run on top of X Windows, providing a number of extra services and features, but they still rely on a Window Manager to handle basic window appearance, changes, etc. XFCE is kind of a hybrid choice. It is a Desktop Environment, like Gnome/KDE, and thus provides many similar features, but it was designed to be lightweight and small. Thus, it falls somewhere in the middle between running just a Window Manager, and running one of the "heavyweight" Desktop Environements. It generally doesn't provide as many features as Gnome or KDE, but it runs faster than either. It requires more resources than a simple Window Manager, but it also provides more features.
If you want something really lightweight, what you need to do is to stop running Gnome or KDE. Now, note, if you have the Gnome/KDE libraries installed, you can still run Gnome and KDE applicatoins, even when that Desktop Environement isn't running.
As far as lightweight Window Managers, when Gnome/KDE are not running, almost any basic Window Manager will feel lightweight by comparison. Personaly, I like Sawfish, for it's customization abilities, and scriptability. However, WindowMaker, AfterStep, fvwm2, BlackBox, etc, will all perform fine on that machine.
Topher
I might be a freak, but I use BlackBox on all my computers. From a dual Celeron 466Mhz w/512Mb RAM to a k6 200Mhz w/32Mb RAM. And on my next box, it's still going to be BB.
It is extremely light wight, extremely simple to configure (I won't call it easy, because it would sound too much like other marketing campaigns). It also accepts WindowMaker and AfterStep dock apps, has a few of its own (pager, etc). This allows you to gain some of the functionality of gnome or kde monitors, etc, without the huge memory footprint.
It is rock solid. In the year that I have been using it, it has never crashed on me. Mozilla, xmms, quake3, rtcf, and plenty other apps managed to crash my X, but never BB.
So give it a try, you might like it.
Another wm I used to use (for 3 years actually) was WindowMaker. It has most of the qualities BlackBox has, but it is a bit bigger memory-wise. And it has a way of placing icons around the border of the desktop that strarted bugging me, and I could never get rid of them. But that wasn't the main reason I switched. I guess after 3 years, I got bored with the same look, and I wanted something different...
But give it a try too, and pick the best one you like.
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.