Mouseless and fast Arch

tetrao · 2010-10-09 16:48:49

Hi all,

I am tuning my asus eeepc (1000HE) laptop.

I have two goals:
1. No mouse
2. Arch should operate as fast as possible. (fast boot, light programs etc. )

Here are thing what I would like to do with my pc:

1. Use internet
2. Read pdf and txt -files
3. Write applications
4. Listen music
5. watch movies
6. browse pictures

I dont wanna have file manager but I am using a terminal.

What would be best WM/DE and what programs do you recomment for those purposes above?

Currently I am using:
openbox
jumanji (web browser)
zathura (pdf viewer)
open office (text editor. I really wanna change this)
mplayer (for music and videos)
feh (browsing pictures)

I read this instruction for fast boot:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Imp … erformance

Any hints for tuning are welcome!

Edit: I am not sure if this is right chain for this topic. Hope somebody moves this, if not

Last edited by tetrao (2010-10-09 16:53:19)

lagagnon · 2010-10-09 16:59:41

For a faster boot:
-do not use a splash application nor a login manager. Login from console.
-remove any unnecessary daemons from your /etc/rc.conf that you really do not need.
-read the wiki stuff about replacing HAL with udev.

As to my other suggestions:
-do not use OO as a text editor. If just editing text try vim.
-use "mc" as a file manager from the terminal.
-uzbl is another browser you might want to check out

Otherwise you seem to have considered your choices well...

ZekeSulastin · 2010-10-09 17:15:46

Also consider using a tiling window manager, i.e. dwm, xmonad, awesome, etc.

Last edited by ZekeSulastin (2010-10-09 17:16:03)

thestinger · 2010-10-09 17:18:40

for a vim-like setup (you already have zathura ):
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=733185

mpd + mpc/ncmpc(pp) are a must-have for music

also, ranger is a great file manager that feels just like using coreutils (cd, ls, chmod, rm) with vim keybindings (I like it a lot more than vifm) and it mixes quite well with feh for browsing pictures in multiple directories

Last edited by thestinger (2010-10-09 17:28:39)

Inxsible · 2010-10-09 18:03:22

i3, wmii, musca or ratpoison -- actually pretty much any tiling wm should do.

also consider mpd + ncmpc or deadbeef as audio player

mhertz · 2010-10-09 18:26:31

What Inxsible said, + cmus for music. (cmus is a lightweight console music player featuring replaygain, vim command mode and gappless playback etc etc.)

And for editing text and programming of course Vim(as allready stated).

I use mupdf for pdf's, as the only gui app i need is a webbrowser! (btw, kudos on your choise of jumanji!)

Inxsible · 2010-10-09 18:38:12

I have noticed that sometimes zathura will not correctly display some pdfs. But this is not a problem with zathura, but rather with poppler because evince does the same. So I keep xpdf installed as well -- just in case.

I didn't know about mupdf, does it also depend on poppler? I will check it out.

katafrakt · 2010-10-09 19:04:12

From my experience with wind u100 (so pretty much the same equipment) xmonad is damn fast. Faster even than other tiling wms. It has some irritating (me) features, so I'm using awesome, which is also quite fast.

kinhodder · 2010-10-09 19:15:40

apvlv is another option for PDF viewing.

I find tabbed essential for keeping surf and urxvt windows under control. Oh, and if you're not into using a file manager, autojump is well worth investigating.

mhertz · 2010-10-10 12:52:23

@Inxsible

mupdf uses it's own rendering engine and not poppler

CU, Martin.

tetrao · 2010-10-10 12:54:06

Thank you everybody for good advices! I already installed some new programs and started studying usage of vim. As well compared tiling window managers.

Cheers!

urist · 2010-10-10 14:59:04

If vim's learning curve proves too steep, you could start off with nano. It doesn't have all of the nifty features of vim, but at least you can edit text. If I'm not mistaken, it's even got syntax highlighting.

When I first began programming, my professor only showed us nano. Therefore, I used it for two years until I found something better.

mhertz · 2010-10-11 07:24:35

About leightweight tilling WM's, then first you need to figure out if you want automatic or manual tilling i.e. if you want the WM to automatically divide the screen up for you whenever opening new apps, or you want complete control of it yourself.

For leightweight automatic tilling WM's, then imho there's only one superior choise: dwm. (considering size and ram usage!)

Then for leightweight manual tilling WM's, then I would recommend i3 for a full featured advanced WM, and musca if you don't need the extra stuff of i3 and wants a even lighter solution(actually the lightest of all maual tillers i've tested and only about 100kb more ram usage than dwm). I personally use musca, but unfortunetly develoment has ended, but it does all that I need.

Check out the arch wiki artícle about tilling WM's as it's a good reference...

Last edited by mhertz (2010-10-11 07:48:03)

oscar · 2010-10-11 07:38:19

I use Openbox, Chrome, Emacs and xpdf. Since I tend to write in LateX, I don't need OpenOffice but I keep it installed anyways. For music I use Pragha and mplayer for movies. But I mostly use Emacs for everything.

And bootup time - do you people turn your laptops off? I put mine to sleep. Takes 5 seconds to make it sleep, and 2 seconds to wake it up again. The same with Emacs, it might take a few seconds to start (I use a lot of packages...), but who turns it off anyways? That's just stupid.

And btw - why not use a graphical login manager? It takes longer for me to type in my passwords (and I'm a dvorak typist) than it takes for SLiM to start up, and since I don't wait for my shell to start up, then type "startx" and then wait for X to startup and THEN wait for my desktop, I think it's actually faster to use a login manager in the long run.

mhertz · 2010-10-11 08:11:34

Why not use a login manager? Well, for me because I personally find it retarded to use a graphical app to handle stuff like logins and starting X!

Many of us use console apps dominantly, so at times we dont need to enter X at all. (based on your apps list, then you too!)

And if your note about that it takes time to enter the password, was reffering to autologin, then you can easilly do that also without a login manager(I don't, but it just takes a couple of lines of C, as described in the arch wiki).

Last edited by mhertz (2010-10-11 08:15:30)

ngoonee · 2010-10-11 09:01:01

mhertz wrote:

Many of us use console apps dominantly, so at times we dont need to enter X at all. (based on your apps list, then you too!)

But X makes your console apps look so much nicer .

mhertz · 2010-10-11 09:30:23

Agreed! I generally also use urxvt more than bash...

Last edited by mhertz (2010-10-11 11:12:14)

egan · 2010-10-11 13:36:16

If you use urxvt, I highly recommend ber_t's plugins for mouseless text selection and url yanking.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=102671
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=102972

hatten · 2010-10-11 13:49:07

I have considered to go framebuffer-only, screen is really useful, uzbl can run in fb (have i been told), otherwise links-g, for the occasional pdf you could start x though. Mplayer works in fb too.

/me currently uses ratpoison, uzbl, zathura, mplayer, mocp, feh.

Army · 2010-10-11 16:44:33

hatten wrote:

for the occasional pdf you could start x though

That's not necessary, check out fbida http://linux.bytesex.org/fbida (it's in [extra])

gorky · 2010-10-11 20:11:01

For picture viewing I recommend geeqie - it is not VERY lightweight, but has much more power than you would suspect.

mhertz · 2010-10-11 22:42:07

Here's how much ram musca, i3, ratpoison and dwm uses on arch64(I've previously posted such measures for arch32).

Note, that it's not only the private ram of the actual wm that's relevant, but also Xorg. A good example is e.g. xterm vs. urxvt, which uses about the same private ram, but where xterm uses about 3mb more in Xorg! This is also mentioned in the ps_mem.py notes:

# I don't take account of memory allocated for a program
# by other programs. For e.g. memory used in the X server for
# a program could be determined, but is not.

These WM tests here though, only shows Xorg differences with at highest 300kb, but nonetheless, then this actually shows musca to be even lighter than dwm with regards to private ram! The total ram usage(private+shared) of all running processes where also 200kb lower on the musca run compared to the dwm one.

Finally, note that these numbers are generated with ps_mem.py, which uses PSS values for total ram usage + to calculate the shared ram. This means that the shared ram reported of a program is the ram by the used shared libs divided with the number of processes using it and the total value is the private ram added to the shared ram. It's the best method to calculate these things imho.

Private + Shared = RAM used Program
592.0 KiB + 306.0 KiB = 898.0 KiB musca
13.7 MiB + 211.5 KiB = 13.9 MiB Xorg
-------------------------------------------------------
Private + Shared = RAM used Program
876.0 KiB + 190.5 KiB = 1.0 MiB i3
14.0 MiB + 219.0 KiB = 14.2 MiB Xorg
-------------------------------------------------------
Private + Shared = RAM used Program
1.3 MiB + 393.0 KiB = 1.7 MiB ratpoison
13.8 MiB + 211.5 KiB = 14.0 MiB Xorg
-------------------------------------------------------
Private + Shared = RAM used Program
404.0 KiB + 286.5 KiB = 690.5 KiB dwm
13.9 MiB + 222.5 KiB = 14.1 MiB Xorg

PS: I really recommend checking out the following article about determinating memory usage on GNU/Linux, so as to get a clear understanding off why it's so important to using e.g. ps_mem.py or other tools using PSS and USS values, instead of just going by RSS of conventional tools!

http://lwn.net/Articles/230975/

Last edited by mhertz (2010-10-13 07:46:16)

mhertz · 2010-10-13 08:15:06

I've edited my previous post...

Sorry for bumping, won't happen again...

Texas · 2010-10-13 15:39:16

dwm

tetrao · 2010-10-13 16:05:04

Thx for many replies (More than I expected)

About tiling managers:

dwm:

It is more lightweight than the others listed here, at the expense of certain features

source: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Com … w_Managers

Can somebody tell me, what are those features?

Cheers!

Arch Linux

#1 2010-10-09 16:48:49

Mouseless and fast Arch

#2 2010-10-09 16:59:41

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#3 2010-10-09 17:15:46

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#4 2010-10-09 17:18:40

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#5 2010-10-09 18:03:22

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#6 2010-10-09 18:26:31

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#7 2010-10-09 18:38:12

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#8 2010-10-09 19:04:12

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#9 2010-10-09 19:15:40

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#10 2010-10-10 12:52:23

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#11 2010-10-10 12:54:06

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#12 2010-10-10 14:59:04

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#13 2010-10-11 07:24:35

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#14 2010-10-11 07:38:19

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#15 2010-10-11 08:11:34

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#16 2010-10-11 09:01:01

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#17 2010-10-11 09:30:23

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#18 2010-10-11 13:36:16

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#19 2010-10-11 13:49:07

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#20 2010-10-11 16:44:33

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#21 2010-10-11 20:11:01

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#22 2010-10-11 22:42:07

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#23 2010-10-13 08:15:06

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#24 2010-10-13 15:39:16

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

#25 2010-10-13 16:05:04

Re: Mouseless and fast Arch

Board footer