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Window Managers For Small Screens?
saintlupus writes "I've got a question for the rest of the Slashdot community. I'm using an old clamshell iBook at work with Debian/PPC on it. As any Apple site can tell you, the iBooks of that era had a maximum resolution of 800x600.
Now, I use a 19" monitor and a 17" monitor running together with Xinerama on my machine at home, and I'm used to that much space. I use WindowMaker on that computer, but on an 800x600 screen those Dock icons look the size of buses. Can anyone recommend a window manager that uses a minimum of screen real estate so that I can fit a bit more on the iBook's LCD?"
Not sure if you're requiring icons or don't mind being a console jockey, but give evil windowmanager a try. Guaranteed the only thing on your screen will be the windows themselves.
spam, spam, spam, spam, e-mail, news and spam.
Before to the KDE-Gnome era, any windowing manager would suit that spec. So it shouldn't be all that difficult to find something
((lambda x ((x))) (lambda x ((x))))
Try Enlightenment.
Give fluxbox a shot, it uses almost no space at all except for a little slit. And the app menu appears by right clicking on the desktop.. Although iBooks only have one mouse button don't they.. WELL Then, NEVERMIND..
Perhaps XFce would suit you better. The panel can auto-hide and everything.
Klowner
openbox or blackbox are well suited when you have little physical screen space available.
Ratpoison
Alternatively you can get wmakerconf to remove the dock, workspace applet, etc. Also would recommend editing ~/GNUstep/Default/WMWindowAttributes to remove titlebars, resizebars, and window borders.
After spending literly 30 seconds reading the man page, and a day getting used to it, Ion was the best window manager I have ever used. It was designed to be very efficent, and worked great as a programming interface.
http://modeemi.cs.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/
Matchbox is specifically designed for low resolutions.
I've come to... anesthetize you!
I don't care what anyone says, It's quick, small, and configurable
--Keeping the flame wars alive, one post at a time
mounted volumes
running applications
stadard locations
a bunch of stuff I have not figured out it is payware though. .
Oh really?
KDE rules man!
fvwm is quite good for some time now and it does not take up so much space (both screen space and harddisk space). give it a try: http://www.fvwm.org
Just choose a smaller size for the icons. Start the config app, choose Icon Preferences, and size. 24 pixels is ridiculously small. OTOH, XFCE should possibly be nice on small screens. Autohide (or do without) the panel, and make the panel really thin (and autohide that too), and choose a thin and light theme like Microcurve (sorry, can't find a screenshot). It's nice when you're used to WindowMaker, since it's much of the same, only with lots of extra features.
For a while I was obsessed with non-overlapping window managers, and ran a window manager called Ion for a while. It lets you split the screen into resizable panes, each with a tab. I actually ran this under Solaris with two monitors (not xinerama however). Screenshots here and here.
This may not be exactly what you want, but it's worth trying out especially on a limited sized screen.
_______
2B1ASK1
Fluxbox is a featureful offshoot of Blackbox. I use it on small screens as well as on large screens connected to slow computers. A nice simple design, with just enough information on the taskbar to make everything flow smoothly.
FWIW, WindowMaker also supports 48x48, 32x32, 16x16 and 8x8 dock sizes. dockapps wont necessarily work with that, but windowmaker will.
800x600 on 17" is totally insane.
fucktard is a tenderhearted description
KDE with the laptop window decorations and the panel set to the smallest height.
I should not post till I have had at least a pot.
Oh really?
any of the old tiny windowmanagers will do.
listed in order of memory footprint above.
because it's the only window manager that lets you set a huge 'virtual desktop' and scroll around it by moving the mouse to the border. Great when you're in low-res.
ratpoison takes up zero pixels, and all commands are issued from the keyboard.
Anything worth doing is worth doing badly -- G.K. Chesterton
I used to use and like windowmaker, but of late I gave up on it because there was no way (that I could find) to get completely rid of the dock/paper-clip/squares. Have you ever done this?
I run at about 133 dpi, and find that most window managers (& their themes) have rediculously tiny and hard to configure titlebars etc. I kinda get by with windowmaker and more lately metacity (which has AA fonts in the titlebars), but I'm not happy with either.
the Fast Light window manager. It really is pretty fast and light. It also places the window decorations on the left side of the window rather than the top, taking advantage of the aspect ratio. It's nice.
I'll also second the Ion recomendation. The gimp is painful in it, but if you're programming mostly like I am, it is an absolute godsend.
all of those have fairly amounts of window furniture, especially twm and olvwm (olwm). also they're all low on demands on the processors, so run quicker than gnome or kde etc.
Well, IMHO, the problem it's not related with a Window Manager, but with the config you are using. You can disable de dock and the clip and even the icons, so you can have all the screen just for you, even still using Window Maker.
There are also some other window managers that you can try:
- enlightenment: try the spiff theme
- sawfish: spiff theme
- icewm: there is a port of tigertcrack, I think it's called 'tgc' or 'IceCrack'. Very small borders and very keyboard friendly.
- blackbox, openbox, fluxbox: all the box variants have small borders, and using the slit you can still use your favorite dockapps, using the "auto-hide" feature.
- metacity: I don't know how usable it is when not coupled with all the GNOME stuff, but the window title bar is always resized to the size of your font. So, smaller fonts, smaller borders.
And, if you brave enough, you can even try twn!
There's a fairly good list of available window managers over at plig.org. It may take some sifting to find what you're looking for, but then again, you'll have to sift through /. too...
Matchbox is the obvious one to go for because it's been designed especially for "computers with little screen real estate, limited input mechanisms and low cpu/storage resources".
Alternatively, there's WindowLab which might work well since it reuses the top of the screen for both a taskbar and app launcher. This one's probably a bit of an aquired taste.
Don't know about the others, but I am stick to ctwm. The default is very minimalistic, and the customization options are endless.
...that you want smaller dockapps? I mean, most window managers can hide their docks or panels anyway, so i don't see what difference the wm makes.
i ate crayons when i was a kid and now i have two braincells and the blue ones taste nicer
Come on, this is the web. Make a usable link. At any rate, it makes sure that /. doesn't reformat it.
I have configured a custom .fvwm2rc file to make it look and behave like the really old mwm window manager. I've got sizing borders around the windows, a title bar with menu/min/max buttons, context menus on the desktop and some frame controls, and nothing else.
I explicitly turned off all of the "desktop" features and "docked" applets. They just get in the way. I launch programs by typing commands from an xterm. I have a menu item on the root window for launching new xterms.
If anyone is interested in how to do this, I can post my .fvwm2rc file somewhere. It's about 200 lines, including some stuff I don't actually use (leftover from the RedHat-provided file tat I used as my original template.)
I already chimed in on the Blackbox thread, as a longtime user of it, but I was thinking about it since I too have an iBook... Mac OS X's Aqua UI seems pretty minimal. The menu bar at the top of the screen obviously takes some space all the time, but it seems pretty proportional to what Blackbox would use - and because of how it works, that's one less menu bar that has to be in each application window. The dock can be set to totally auto-hide. And with Expose' in Panther... well, let's just say that's it's a great UI for those of us who tend to clutter our desktops! But... he's not using Mac OS X on his iBook, so he misses out on some of these features. ;)
I have a Toshiba portege 3010 with a 10-inch 800x600 screen and use windowmaker without a problem. Icons are not that big. I also guess you could disable the dock; now that I think of it, I hardly ever use it.
You can reduce the Window Maker icon size from the default 64x64 all the way down to 24x24. (You have to restart Window Maker to see the changes.) It looks craptacular but it'll buy you a lot of screen real estate.
I use Gnome on a 1024x768 iBook2. I selected a theme with minimal decorations, small window borders, etc. and I use the menu style top panel which is about the same size as the OSX Menu bar. It's not quite as spacious as the 1280x1024 Studio Display I use on the G4 at work but it's pretty neat.
And how much screen real estate do you need when you have multiple virtual desktops anyway?
Now wash your hands.
After trying Blackbox, I was hooked. Then, Fluxbox, a newer & better Blackbox, came along!
:-)
Flux kicks ass on tiny laptop screens or dual UXGA flatpanels.
It is fairly easy to make your environment work better for you without having to do anything more than just click a few options, and you don't really have to change a window manager or anything. start the windowmaker preferences utility and: 1. reduce the icon size to the smallest possible(if memory serves me right it's 24x24) 2. set some virtual desktops ( at least four) Virtual desktops are the greatest thing in window mangers nowadays. This way it's like having four different screenss or even more, plus you can keep yourself more organized( desktop 1: work, 2: irc, 3: slashdot etc) also click the first two options for worskpace navigation. 3: use some keyboard shortcuts to switch easier between your desktops(virtual desktops are great, have i said that?) Finally if you want to you can give a try to any of the *box, they are great and have a big following( i use fluxbox in all my boxes :-)),
just always have a look at the configuration preferences
Icewm has a full screen mode with Alt-F11. I run a few windows (xterm, xemacs, xdvi, dillo) full screen and switch between them with Alt-Tab. But if you want to go back to a more conventional desktop just hit Alt-F11 again to restore the normal window size.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
it's highly suitable if you like using the keyboard extensively (and if you don't, you should). it's got all the features but no visual cues. if you want a task bar and workspace icons, use it with gnome.
Great ideas for my PII-350/384M/4GB box, currently running Win2k (torrent/P2P/IRC idleman/MP3) running on an old ass packard hell 640x480x60hz radiation generator. VNC is available, but slow (i keep it at 32 bit color, why i don't know). I want to switch it to nix, probably slackware, and will need a WM.
Boxes: 7
M$: 2.5
*nix: 4.5
screen real estate: not enough.
--
Logistical Chaos Officer http://www.slagg.org - LAN Gaming in Sarasota FL,USA
What about Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther)? The dock can be autohidden, and with "expose," the ability to run almost most standard GNU/UNIX apps (as a Debian user, you will be thrilled to know that the dpkg system--including apt-get--is available for Mac OS X through the Fink Project), and increased performance over previous versions (even on your old G3), it might be just the thing you need. Unfortunately virtual desktops are not part of the standard Mac OS, although there are many free utilities to do this, which would provide quite a bit of screen space.
Of course, there is that pesky $129 price tag ($69 educational), but if you hunt around (like ebay) you can probably find it cheaper.
Also, although none of those old iBooks came with VGA out, some did come with composite video out, which you might be able to hook up to a TV for some extra screen real estate, if it comes to that.