Arch Linux

Michael-Maver

Member

Registered: 2008-02-01

Posts: 2

Lightweight Applications

Hello, I'm setting up Arch Linux on a slightly older laptop, but not ancient. It's got 256mb of Ram, and a 1.4(or perhaps 1.6) M processor.

Now, I really don't use my Computer for too much, and I definitely don't need any 'eye candy'. So, I've decided to go with xfce, as It looks alright (I've used it previously) but isn't a resource hog. Other than this, I'm not really sure what applications I should download and install.

Could anyone give me some suggestions? I haven't gotten up to installing the DE yet, I had to leave before I got to that, unfortunately. So, if you think there is another DE that is lightweight, yet still looks pleasant, I'd like to hear your opinions.

The type of things I do need on a computer are a nice text-editor/simple IDE that supports syntax highlighting for various languages, and perhaps code-completion(Not a biggy, though), a webbrowser, some multimedia programs (Music, DVD's) and the other basic utilities one expects to find on a modern OS (Picture veiwer, etc).

I don't need any games or anything, I have a console for that, so I'm really just looking for a minimalistic install, and I really haven't done anything of this kind before, so any help would be wonderful.

P.S. I may need some more help, my previous Linux experience has been with Ubuntu(Various versions), Suse 10.x(something....) and a few live CD's. Also, if there is already a post on this, or perhaps a webpage, sorry. I couldn't find it.

Thanks very much for taking the time to read this.

ibendiben

Member

Registered: 2007-10-10

Posts: 519

Re: Lightweight Applications

Doing a "topic subject only" search you find two (the same?!) topics, which cover your interests, have a look:
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=41168
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=18880

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bionnaki

Member

Registered: 2006-09-05

Posts: 289

Re: Lightweight Applications

thunar
rtorrent for bittorrent
pyburn for burning
moc for music playing
mplayer for video
leafpad for text
xarchiver for archiving
calc for calculator (terminal)
htop for system monitor
conky for eye candy system monitor
abiword for word processing
epdfview for pdf
mirage for picture viewing
urxvt or xterm for terminal
thunar-media-tags-plugin or omptagger for id3 tag editor
irssi for irc
pypanel for panel
feh for wallpaper

that's what I use. I recommend openbox.

Last edited by bionnaki (2008-02-01 15:09:33)

ProzacR

Member

Registered: 2007-04-29

Posts: 272

Re: Lightweight Applications

I have some alternatives I personally like more:
mpd with ncmpc and mpc for music
evince for pdf (xpdf also not bad)
vim or gvim or nano for text
feh both for wallpaper and for pictures
CLI tools like tar, compress zip, unzip for archives without GUI frontend.

Agent69

Member

Registered: 2006-05-26

Posts: 189

Re: Lightweight Applications

I would suggest also giving the new version of Mpg123 a try, which is again under active development. It now has support for gapless playback and Replay Gain, not to mention more advanced hot key support. It is in Extra, I believe.

Feh is a great choice for setting wallpapers and viewing images. I would also recommend installing Scrot if you need to be able to take screenshots, since all of its dependencies are taken care of by the installation of Feh.

bionnaki

Member

Registered: 2006-09-05

Posts: 289

Re: Lightweight Applications

http://kmandla.wordpress.com/software/

synthead

Member

Registered: 2006-05-09

Posts: 1,337

Re: Lightweight Applications

Don't forget kazehakase

Michael-Maver

Member

Registered: 2008-02-01

Posts: 2

Re: Lightweight Applications

Thanks very much for your replies. Sorry for it took awhile to respond, but I haven't been at home.
I'll look at those programs and pick the ones I think will work best. =]

jacko

Member

Registered: 2007-11-23

Posts: 840

Re: Lightweight Applications

Don't forget kazehakase

I tried it and all it did well was CRASH!

iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: Lightweight Applications

you could run almost anything on that fine. Just use what's most comfortable.

Last edited by iphitus (2008-02-04 10:31:28)

Allan

Pacman

From: Brisbane, AU

Registered: 2007-06-09

Posts: 11,484

Website

Re: Lightweight Applications

I agree. That is about the same specs as my old laptop and it ran an XFCE desktop with usual GTK applications fine.

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