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Window Managers For Small Screens?

Posted by timothy on from the rat-poison dept.

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?"

15 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Evil WM by truefluke · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

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    1. Re:Evil WM by truefluke · · Score: 3, Informative

      Argh. I forgot that I wrote a review of this thing that goes into more detail than the brief splatter of words I posted above. Here's the URL: evilwm review.

      I explain my reasons behind trying out this minimalist wm and how I found the experience. Quite positive actually.

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  2. No problem by nepheles · · Score: 2, Informative

    Before to the KDE-Gnome era, any windowing manager would suit that spec. So it shouldn't be all that difficult to find something

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  3. Enlightenment by gooru · · Score: 2, Informative

    Try Enlightenment.

  4. Fluxbox? or any other *Box? XFce? by Klowner · · Score: 2, Informative

    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

  5. One of the *boxes by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    openbox or blackbox are well suited when you have little physical screen space available.

    1. Re:One of the *boxes by n1ywb · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ditto that. I run BlackBox on my PowerMac 7500 w/800x600 screen. It's very real-estate efficient. It's also very fast, which makes it good for slow computers. The same could be said of other WMs, but few are as fast AND as pretty as BB et al. There are several BlackBox clones that also work well.

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  6. Ratpoison by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  7. Ion by rawgod0122 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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/

  8. Matchbox by Moghedien · · Score: 4, Informative

    Matchbox is specifically designed for low resolutions.

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  9. yeah, shua by mike77 · · Score: 2, Informative
    try fvwm

    I don't care what anyone says, It's quick, small, and configurable

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  10. Eh? by psavo · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

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  11. fvwm, twm, blackbox, sawfish by Splork · · Score: 2, Informative

    any of the old tiny windowmanagers will do.

    listed in order of memory footprint above.

  12. Re:Windowless window manager by RevAaron · · Score: 2, Informative

    fyi- GIFs are bad for screenshots. Use PNG or JPG. Your images look utterly horrendous. :P

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  13. usable link by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Come on, this is the web. Make a usable link. At any rate, it makes sure that /. doesn't reformat it.