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I was curious how much memory do "lightweight" window managers consume [after someone boasting about how many SLOC were added to awesome after forking dwm], so I did some rough comparison. WMs are sorted by VSZ, and I threw in some more programs to compare.
VSZ SZ RSZ CMD
148008 37002 10012 /usr/bin/awesome
88084 22021 10788 /usr/bin/openbox
68620 17155 6708 /usr/bin/fluxbox
39088 9772 4268 /home/me/.xmonad/xmonad-x86_64-linux
38140 9535 3420 /usr/bin/xmonad
36036 9009 1868 /usr/bin/ratpoison
29200 7300 1536 /usr/bin/dwm
25712 6428 1472 /usr/bin/evilwm
19804 4951 1304 /usr/bin/dzen2
31868 7967 2556 /usr/bin/xbindkeys
31016 7754 3048 /bin/zsh
19468 4867 2152 /bin/bash
256 64 100 /bin/dash
63692 15923 6704 /usr/bin/urxvt
63460 15865 8636 /usr/bin/xterm
490324 122581 83952 /usr/bin/firefox
276132 69033 63760 /usr/lib/opera/9.61/opera
Some explanations: I have 64 bit system (so the numbers are probably a bit bigger than on i686).
The lines were generated by: ps -o vsz,sz,rsz,cmd -C <name>
All wms were with the default configuration (except the fully configured xmonad on line 4), and they were measured right after they were started, with one urxvt window open.
From ps manpage:
VSZ = virtual memory size of the process in KiB (1024-byte units)
SZ = size in physical pages of the core image of the process. This includes text, data, and stack space
RSZ = resident set size, the non-swapped physical memory that a task has used (in kiloBytes)
I'm pretty confused by the manpage saying that it's in KiB, because to me it looks like the output is in bytes.
As far as I understand, VSZ is the total size, including the libraries that are used by the process (some of which might be shared with some other processes). This is the reason why it's generally hard to get a reasonable comparison of memory consumption in linux.
Some of these WM are commonly used with an extra panel program or something similar; this is not reflected by the above table.
I know that on the today's common machines all these WMs are really small and fast, but what was striking for me that awesome (apart from the really annoying name that is impossible to reasonably google for) is so much bigger that most of the other ones.
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Add haskell for xmonad. (it's separate right?)
Very interesting though, didn't think awesome would take so much.
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I've heard about awesome's apparent bloatedness--someone, somewhere was protesting about it. I shouldn't pull words out of thin air, but that's my impression of it. It's a rather full-featured tiling window manager compared to its brothers. It would be interesting to see how wmii fares, too.
The numbers for Firefox look rather alarming in comparison with Opera's, but we shouldn't make too much of arbitrary figures anyway.
*waves a dwm flag*
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Add haskell for xmonad. (it's separate right?)
Hm? haskell is needed to compile xmonad, but it's by no means necessary to run xmonad...
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I've heard about awesome's apparent bloatedness--someone, somewhere was protesting about it. I shouldn't pull words out of thin air, but that's my impression of it. It's a rather full-featured tiling window manager compared to its brothers. It would be interesting to see how wmii fares, too.
The numbers for Firefox look rather alarming in comparison with Opera's, but we shouldn't make too much of arbitrary figures anyway.
*waves a dwm flag*
The only thing I would consider bloat would be the newly added composite features. Other things (tagging/systray/etc) can be turned off or not used
edit: cant spell
Last edited by heleos (2008-10-31 17:31:00)
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Must have had CL in mind. That's quite impressive of xmonad/haskell then, I didn't think it was like that. Makes me want to try it again.
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This system (E17) has been up for a while. I have some things open, but I don't know if that matters. Anyway:
VSZ SZ RSZ CMD
384568 96142 24540 enlightenment
99244 24811 1336 /usr/sbin/entranced
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VSZ SZ RSZ CMD
17416 4354 11000 stumpwm
In CLISP.
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compiz fusion with emerald, though I can hardly believe those numbers are right. I must have missed something. That's what they give me though. But I must say it starts up really quick and it doesn't include any sorts of bars, panels or other things, so it might as well be reasonable. It's just a window manager after all...
VSZ SZ RSZ CMD
15232 3808 11012 compiz
21472 5368 12620 emerald
--------------------------------
36704 9176 23632 TOTAL
Last edited by Shapeshifter (2008-10-31 20:58:05)
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Very interesting though, didn't think awesome would take so much.
well, awesome picked up where dwm left off (which, i guess, explains why dwm stopped when it did).
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haxit < ps -o vsz,sz,rsz,cmd -C openbox
VSZ SZ RSZ CMD
10976 2744 5756 /usr/bin/openbox
Archi686 User | Old Screenshots | Old .Configs
Vi veri universum vivus vici.
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Procyon wrote:Very interesting though, didn't think awesome would take so much.
well, awesome picked up where dwm left off (which, i guess, explains why dwm stopped when it did).
Brilliant post.
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
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compiz fusion with emerald, though I can hardly believe those numbers are right. I must have missed something. That's what they give me though. But I must say it starts up really quick and it doesn't include any sorts of bars, panels or other things, so it might as well be reasonable. It's just a window manager after all...
VSZ SZ RSZ CMD 15232 3808 11012 compiz 21472 5368 12620 emerald -------------------------------- 36704 9176 23632 TOTAL
I get about the same, Im just guessing but it could be because compiz uses vram instead of system ram for most of its extra eyecandy?
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