You are not logged in.

#1 2007-12-17 21:23:51

axion419
Member
Registered: 2007-04-12
Posts: 185

» The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

OS
-Arch
-DSL
-Slax,vector, a lot of the smaller distros fit here.

Window Manager
- EvilWM - No flair, no waste, No Panel, no need smile KeyBindings are a must, mouse moves, sends to bottom, and resizes  windows.
- OpenBox - Once again, manages windows nothing more.  Some configuration required but overall its fast and clean.  Need to reserve space on the bottom of the screen or run a panel to really be able to launch applications when you want, this i Dont like.

File Manager
- MC - Does everything you need, loads fast with mc -b option. Allows you to run commands from within. Also FTP
- EmelFM/2 - Does everything MC does but wastes a few more resources. 

Archive Manager -
- MC - allows you to enter tarballs/zip/rar and view documents and extract all in one handy FM.

Best Text Editor
- LeafPad - Loads fast, doesnt do anything you dont need it to do.
- Beaver - Same as above, handy for coding etc.
-nano,vi,vim,emacs are all faster and load quicker and are also just as handy if not more. Edit xinitrc when x crashes etc.

Music Player
- Cplay - ncurses based, fasst, easy to learn and navigate. Lighter on resources that anything else ive used.
- MPD + ncmpc - works great, fast, plays anything.

Web Browser
- Links2 - graphics, fast load, keyboard controls and mouse support.  What more do you need?
- kazehakase - Faster than Firefox, if you use Kmandla scripts you can control history, Full Flash support.
--Opera seems to load qt libraries that id never install unless i used opera, firefox 2 is a drag.

Email
- Sylpheed Claws - GTK, No wasted libraries, simple and fast. 
--Thunderbird - seems a alot slower to me then sylpheed, overall good features though.

Post more, running out of time at work smile

Offline

#2 2007-12-17 21:34:25

dolby
Member
From: 1992
Registered: 2006-08-08
Posts: 1,581

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

OS: Archlinux, ttylinux
WM: dwm
File Manager: ls cd rm cp etc
Archive Manager: tar,vim
Text Editor: vim
Music Player: cmus
Web Browser: w3m
Email: mutt+offlineimap


There shouldn't be any reason to learn more editor types than emacs or vi -- mg (1)
[You learn that sarcasm does not often work well in international forums.  That is why we avoid it. -- ewaller (arch linux forum moderator)

Offline

#3 2007-12-17 22:01:14

gunnihinn
Member
From: Torreón, Mexico
Registered: 2007-10-28
Posts: 81

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

I've just made the switch from EvilWm to Openbox, and I couldn't be happier for several reasons:

For one, I used to be struck by a fairly random bug which made all keyboard shortcuts (except control+alt+backspace) unusable upon exiting Firefox or Vlc. This does not happen in Openbox. But the reason I'm sticking with Openbox, even though I've got a new laptop now and don't need either EvilWm or Openbox, is the customizability. A couple of hours with Vim editing xml files, and now I've got most of the keybindings of EvilWm working (the ones I used anyway), with some revision, and a menu that gives me the option to select a wallpaper, attach a running screen session and select a song from the current mpd playlist. It's light, fast, extendable as hell if you know at least one scripting languague, and a compelling reason to learn one if you don't.

Other than that, I second mpd, it's made me happier playing music than anything before it. I also nominate screen and the Vimperator plugin for Firefox; the first one because anyone who uses the terminal ever should have heard of it, and the second because along with Swiftfox it actually manages to turn Firefox into a fast-as-hell browser. Don't know about light, though.

Offline

#4 2007-12-18 01:47:00

caust1c
Member
Registered: 2005-12-02
Posts: 56

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

i'm still searching for a mp3 player that doesnt eat that much cpu, like mplayer, cmus etc do.
the best i found is mocp, but i dont like that player very much.
so, any suggestions? smile

Offline

#5 2007-12-18 04:58:09

MartinZ
Member
From: Chiloé, Chile
Registered: 2005-06-10
Posts: 379

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

I care a lot about resources, but also usability and eyecandy. So, many may found my preferred apps not so "light and fast":

OS: Arch - isn't that obvious??
Kernel: zen-git, with many optimizations for my box.
WM: Xfce - does everything I want in an easy and fast way and supports smoothly both gtk and qt apps
File Manager: Thunar is too good, I find it much better, simplier and faster than Rox, Nautilus, Konqueror, Dolphin (last time i tried it, a few weeks ago) and others i don't remember right now.
Archive Manager: Squeeze or XArchiver, depending on your personal taste. Squeeze seems a little faster.
Text Editor: Mousepad and gvim under X, depending what you wanna do. Vim under console.
Music Player: This is always a hard point. I personaly use amarok (+ Postgresql) half of the time even considering the highweight, because i haven't find any so featurefull player yet (even when it lacks some basic things like native replaygain support). The next version for qt4 should be much lighter and faster, but last time I tried it was still too unstable to everyday use. In summary, i didn't like any of the many players available that I tried.
The other half of time i use mpd + sonata, both are very good and stable with lots of features.
Web Browser: I'm an Opera fan, it's an awesome browser. The 9.5 version (unstable) is even faster and integrates better with gtk.
Kazehakase is a good alternative to firefox, but even when it loads very fast, the rendering is as slow and resources-hungry as under any gecko-based browser.
Midori looks promising, but still unusable.
Email: I check gmail online, but a very good one is the included mail app in Opera. The 9.5 release includes many improvements.
I hate thunderbird, find it bloated. Never tried Sylpheed Claws.
Video player: I find the mplayer backend better than xine for most uses (but dvd playing). Mostly i watch videos with it alone, but when i need/want GUI i prefer sometimes gmplayer and sometimes Smplayer with qt4. Both are very good frontends.
Office: There is no real alternative to Openoffice. Lotus Symphony should be a good replacement, but unfortunelly we haven't yet a pkg for it.
Photo viewer: GQview
Photo editor: Gimp - is there really any choice? Though it is very good, i guess we don't need one.
PDF viewer: Epdfviewer or Evince, depending if you already had gnome libs installed.
Kpdf when you need to extract text and/or images from docs.
Torrents: Deluge if you need all those features, transmission if you don't. The Opera client isn't very good.
Messaging: Pidgin
CD/DVD recording: K3b. It isn't light nor fast, but works very good, with more features than any other recording app i tried.
Xfburn should be an excelent alternative for basic functions, but not yet (at least the last time i tried it)



caust1c: I find audacious a very good music player, featurefull, robust, stable, and doesn't eat too much resources. However, an obvious lighter alternative is mpd with a frontend like sonata, gmpc or any other if you need it(xmms2 is too unusable yet, in my opinion).

Last edited by MartinZ (2007-12-18 05:00:53)


All your base are belong to us

Offline

#6 2007-12-18 09:33:54

b9anders
Member
Registered: 2007-11-07
Posts: 691

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

MartinZ wrote:

I care a lot about resources, but also usability and eyecandy. So, many may found my preferred apps not so "light and fast":

Likewise, I try to achieve as good a blend between looks, features and lightness. So for me:

OS: Arch - duh

Kernel: Standard. I really need to get into this stuff. It's still alien land to me.

WM: Xfce - Full de, while still light on resources. If not for my compiz needs, I'd go for e17 though.

File Manager: Thunar is simple better and faster than the rest. Once it gets network browsing, it will be complete. I recompiled it to get thumbnails working properly and oddly enough, it seems a bit slower to startup now than the binary version. I use tux commander for my alternate total commander clone.

Archive Manager: squeeze, but mostly I just use a custom configured 'tar' thunar action. Even faster.

Text Editor: Mousepad in x, nano in console. My editing needs aren't that big.

Music Player: This is a toughie. I prefer amarok but its too slow and heavy outside of kde, so I use exaile. Been looking at trying out sonata but can't get it to work properly.

Web Browser: Opera is simply the fastest, lightest and bestest browser there is. And with qtconfig it looks just fine in a gtk environment as well.

Video player: Vlc. I want to use xfmedia but it sucks and isn't that fast. Could be good eventually though. Don't like Mplayer's playlist function and its dvd capability isn't very good. Also slightly buggy on my system although I keep it around 'just in case.'

Office: Abiword mostly. Openoffice when it doesn't fit the bill. sad

Photo viewer: Mostly Ristretto. Superbly fast. Also use Mirage, a bit slower, but has some minor editing capabilities like resizing, rotating and such which is nice. Suitably powerful for a light photo viewer.

PDF viewer: Epdfviewer.

system monitoring htop is excellent.

Offline

#7 2007-12-18 10:11:18

F
Member
Registered: 2006-10-09
Posts: 322

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

OS: Arch, FreeBSD
WM: dwm
FM: l = ls, k = cd, m = mv, r = rm, etc.
TE:: vim
MP: mpd + ncmpc (+ icecast!)
Web: Opera (but firefox has vimperator...)

Everything else: Perl

Offline

#8 2007-12-18 10:13:03

quarks
Member
From: Netherlands
Registered: 2007-05-14
Posts: 66

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

OS: Arch 64.
WM: XMonad, the best lightweight tiling WM.
Terminal: urxvt + Z Shell.
File manager: besides basic console functions - Thunar (svn), those console file managers are a real hassle, thunar is relatively light.
Text editor: vim, nano and leafpad
Web browser: Firefox with vimperator (can't live without it), Dillo (light, very fast graphical browser), elinks (best console browser).
Email: mutt.
IRC: irssi, there's no better.
RSS reading: raggle.
Usenet reading: tin.
Music player: Music on console (moc), I find it nicer then mpd + ncmpc.
Video player: SMplayer, mplayer frontend that looks like vlc.
Office: Kile + LaTeX (Abiword for the occasional .doc file).
PDF: xpdf.
Photo viewer: xv, ristretto (for folder viewing) and feh (mostly for setting wallpapers).
Image editing/maipulation: Imagemagick, mtpaint (for simple stuff), Gimp (for serious work).
Sound editing: audacity.
Usenet downloading: hellanzb.
Torrent: rtorrent, can't get any lighter than that.
System monitoring: dzen2 statusbar and htop.
Instant messaging: Pidgin.
CD/DVD burning: k3b, not that light but I need the features.

Last edited by quarks (2007-12-18 10:14:14)

Offline

#9 2007-12-18 10:45:47

pressh
Developer/TU
From: Netherlands
Registered: 2005-08-14
Posts: 1,719

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

OS: Arch
WM: fvwm (-patched)
Terminal: urxvt
File manager: thunar + volman
Text editor: nano and geany
Web browser: links2, opera and firefox (not really light and fast i know wink)
Email: claws-mail
IRC: weechat
Music player: cmus, audacious if I just want to click on a new song
Video player: mplayer
Office: Geany + LaTeX, openoffice for the rest (no, not light)
PDF: no light application, I just use acroread
Image viewer: ristretto
Torrent: transmission
Instant messaging: emesene, pidgin.
CD/DVD burning: bashburn

Offline

#10 2007-12-18 14:36:01

Rumor
Member
From: Albany, NY
Registered: 2006-07-07
Posts: 638

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

File Manager: pcmanfm


Smarter than a speeding bullet
My Goodreads profile

Offline

#11 2007-12-18 14:55:50

Gilneas
Member
From: Netherlands
Registered: 2006-10-22
Posts: 320

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

WM: sithwm
FM: coreutils
Term: aterm
Shell: bash
Text: ed
Video: mplayer
Music: mplayer, timidity, mikmod
Image: feh
Image Editor: mtpaint
Torrent: rtorrent
Web: I can't nominate firefox for this!
Process Viewer: htop

Offline

#12 2007-12-18 16:09:13

GogglesGuy
Member
From: Rocket City
Registered: 2005-03-29
Posts: 610
Website

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

OS: Arch Linux
Text editor: adie
Email: gmail
Music player: Goggles Music Manager (available in community as 'musicmanager')
Video player: mplayer
Office: AbiWord
CD/DVD burning: k3b

Offline

#13 2007-12-18 20:19:35

Moparx
Member
Registered: 2006-02-05
Posts: 136
Website

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

Archive: tar, xarchiver
Audio CD Ripping: abcde
CD/DVD Burning: bashburn
Document Converting:
- MS-Word, RTF, etc. to Text: catdoc
- PDF to Text: pdftotext
Email: muttng
File Manager: mc, thunar, emelfm2
Instant Messaging: bitlbee
IRC: irssi
Image Viewer: feh, ristretto
Music Player: mpd + ncmpc
PDF: epdfview
Podcast aggregator: podget
Process Viewing: htop
RSS: snownews
Text: vim, leafpad, geany
Torrent: rtorrent
Usenet reading: slrn
Usenet Downloading: hellanzb
Video: mplayer
Web Browser: elinks, kazehakase
Window Manager: openbox

Last edited by Moparx (2007-12-18 20:28:23)


And then it happened... a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found.
        "This is it... this is where I belong..."

Arch Linux x86_64 | LiCo #213644 | blog / configs

Offline

#14 2007-12-18 21:29:35

sime
Member
Registered: 2007-12-14
Posts: 96

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

Anybody here tried Scribes as a simple light text editor?

Offline

#15 2007-12-19 01:55:18

finferflu
Forum Fellow
From: Manchester, UK
Registered: 2007-06-21
Posts: 1,899
Website

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

OS: Arch tongue
Window Manager: Ratpoison, Xmonad, OpenBox
File Manager: Thunar, mc
Music Player: MPD + ncmpc/Sonata
Text Editor: Vim, Vim and Vim only
Word processing: Vim + LaTeX
Web Browser: Opera (apart from Dillo, it looks like the lightest one)
IM: Bitlbee + WeeChat
FTP client: ncftp


Have you Syued today?
Free music for free people! | Earthlings

"Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away." -- A. de Saint-Exupery

Offline

#16 2007-12-19 14:25:55

N30N
Member
Registered: 2007-04-08
Posts: 273

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

OS: Arch
Window manager: wmiii, openbox
Terminal: urxvt
Shell: bash
Text editor: vim
Archive: atool
File manager: mc, thunar (though I don't really use file managers anymore)
CD/DVD burning: bashburn
Video player: mplayer
Audio player: moc
Web browser: vimperator
Email: mutt
Torrents: rtorrent
FTP: ncftp
IRC: weechat
Instant messaging: bitlbee
PDF viewer: epdfview
Image viewer: mirage
Image editor: gimp
Vector editor: inkscape and xaralx
Desktop publishing: scribus
3D modeling/compositing/animation: blender

Offline

#17 2007-12-19 15:53:21

kazuya
Member
From: Texas
Registered: 2007-09-05
Posts: 24

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

OS: Arch {Also Linux mint(Ubuntu), Vector linux{slack}
Desktop Envirnoment: kdemod{favorite} ; Gnome / xfce /
                                 E17, fluxbox, openbox, icewm
Window manager: konqueror, nautilus , thunar
Terminal: konsole
Text editor: gedit / kedit / mousepad / geany
Office: Openoffice apps. {Abiword not enough for my reqs}
Archive: xarchive
File manager: konqueror / nautilus
CD/DVD burning: k3b{favorite}, gnomebaker, and k9copy
                          Video player: totem-xine{favorite}-                          you can take movie snapshots   
                          more easily to be used for wallpapers. -
                          also like vlc and mplayer.
Audio player: amarok{favorite} , xmms/audacious
Web browser: firefox and opera, swift-fox
Email: from web browsers; Tried evolution & thunderbird
Torrents: ktorrent{favorite}, transmission and deluge
IRC: Xchat
Instant messaging: pidgin and kopete
PDF viewer: evince, epdfview, kpdf, acroread {no favorite}
Image viewer: GQview & another
Image editor: gimp - simply feature rich. my favorite.
Vector editor: inkscape, xaralx
3D modeling/compositing/animation: blender

PS: I may be making some changes after reading this. I may try rtorrent, bashburn, vimperator, MPD + ncmpc/Sonata, ristretto

Last edited by kazuya (2007-12-19 15:53:43)


Opensource; Become a part of it.

Offline

#18 2007-12-19 16:11:25

Gilneas
Member
From: Netherlands
Registered: 2006-10-22
Posts: 320

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

N30N wrote:

Archive: atool

I had been looking for something like that. Thanks.

Offline

#19 2007-12-20 00:45:25

Mantaar
Member
Registered: 2007-12-17
Posts: 70

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

Audio Ripping: abcde - love it. Jack sucks
WM: xmonad.
Programming Language: Haskell!
Terminal: urxvt{d,c}, zsh
File manager: see above
Text editor: vim, and nothing else. Maybe gvim from time to time
Web browser: Opera
Mail: mutt, procmail, fetchmail, msmtp for desktop, postfix for server
IRC: ircii... no, actually that's a bitch. Better use irssi
Audio Processing: jack. No, the other jack, jack-audio-connection-kit, and ardour - not light, but no alternatives.
Music player: mpd, mpc, ncmpc (to impress people with teh clox), and gmpc to manage stuff
Word Processing: LaTeX (& CTAN) & vim
PDF: evince. xpdf sucks and it's slow. Plus evince has this 'b' and 'w' functionality in presentation mode. Really handy!
Images: feh! What a nice-program. And it has a great e-mail adress for bug-reporting, too
Torrents: rtorrent
System Monitoring: htop
Organizing your Music: picard - again, not light, but fast!


Guy #1: I'd totally hit that.
Guy #2: Dude, I'd hit that so hard whoever could pull me out would become the King of England.
--College Walk, Columbia University (Overheard in NY)

Offline

#20 2007-12-20 07:06:37

notanatheist
Member
From: Tree Hugging Oregon USA
Registered: 2006-08-20
Posts: 11
Website

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

OS: Arch on main box, Gentoo on fileserver, Ubuntu on laptop. I has no real allegiance as nothing is perfect.
WM: Fluxbox
Browser: FireFox
Mail: ThunderBird
IM: Pidgin
IRC: IRSSI
Term: "xterm -bg black -fg white" & "aterm -tr"
PDF: Acroread 8 is actually quite nice. Puts 7 to shame
File Mananager: xterm (ls,mv,rm)
Backup: Rysnc
Music: Beep Media Player 0.9.7 (not the bloated BMP2)
Video: mplayer, Xine
Word Processing? Bah!
Sys Mon: Gkrellm
Effects: 3ddesk

Offline

#21 2007-12-20 08:35:15

stylopath
Member
Registered: 2007-07-26
Posts: 112

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

i've got 4 desktops at the moment (on one machine, dunno which to chose):

1. KdeMod + Openbox
FM: Konqueror
Browser: Konqueror
Music: Amarok
Text-Editor: Kwrite, Nano
Term: Konsole
video: VLC

2. DR17
FM: Thunar
Browser: Firefox
Music: Emphasis
Text-Editor: mousepad
Term: Terminal
video: vlc

3.xfce
FM:Thunar
Browser: Epiphany
Music: mpd+sonata
Text-Editor: mousepad
Term: Terminal
video: vlc

4. Fluxbox (my favorite at the moment)
FM:MC
Browser: Epiphany
Music: MPD+ncmpc+sonata
Text-Editor: "xterm -e vim" or "xterm -e nano" smile
Term: xterm
video: vlc

Offline

#22 2007-12-20 09:09:23

onearm
Member
From: Anywhere but here
Registered: 2006-07-06
Posts: 359
Website

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

OS: Arch
WM: Openbox
DE: Xfce
File Manager: Rox
Terminal: urxvtc+urxvtd
Browser: Firefox (but no one is really fast)
MUA: mutt
MTA: postfix
Irc: irssi
Anti-spam system: bogofilter
Nntp Reader: slrn
Image Editor: gimp
Image Viewer: feh (but for features is better gqview)
Audio Player: mpd+mpc
Video Player: mplayer
Text-Editor: vim
Word Processing: vim+latex
Pdf Viewer: Kpdf
System Monitor: conky
System Panel: pypanel
P2P: rtorrent (for torrents), mldonkey (for everything else)


To get something done, a committee should consist of no more than three persons, two of them absent.
--
My Github

Offline

#23 2007-12-20 11:21:27

caust1c
Member
Registered: 2005-12-02
Posts: 56

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

MartinZ wrote:

caust1c: I find audacious a very good music player, featurefull, robust, stable, and doesn't eat too much resources. However, an obvious lighter alternative is mpd with a frontend like sonata, gmpc or any other if you need it(xmms2 is too unusable yet, in my opinion).

those two players wakeup the cpu quite often (mpd like 150-200).

the problem is, that my cpu will only go to C2, but not to C3, and wastes much power for playing a stupid mp3. the best player in this regard that i found is mocp, but i dont like this one very much.

Offline

#24 2007-12-20 12:53:49

MartinZ
Member
From: Chiloé, Chile
Registered: 2005-06-10
Posts: 379

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

Yeah, you're right.. I never noticed it, since I'm on a desktop box and don't care about power consumption.
Please let us know if you find a better one.


All your base are belong to us

Offline

#25 2007-12-20 19:30:01

Bison
Member
From: Jacksonville, FL
Registered: 2006-04-12
Posts: 158
Website

Re: » The Best Light and Fast Applications - 2007 LnF Awards

ratpoison, gnu screen, emacs and vim (although these aren't all that light), mutt, finch/pidgin

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB