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Hey Everyone,
I'm not sure exactly where to post, and I'm sure this kind of question has been posted several times, but I can't find any ones that following my question exactly.
My question is: Is anyone aware of a great window manager that will basically allow my computer to run firefox, an instant messenger, an office suite, the ability to print, and of course the console? I don't really need more than that -I'm looking for a WM without a lot of overhead, without any extra services. Can anyone recommend a WM that sort of follows these guidelines, and is great ?
Thanks
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I'm in complete agreement with dreamer, XFCE4.2 is excellent. Im running Rhythmbox, Gaim, Firefox, XFCE4.2 w/ Compostie Shadows, and my sysload plugin still only reads 165MB RAM usage... I'd say im doin pretty good...
John Gallias
Technician/Friend/Bassist
http://www.concretearmy.com
john@concretearmy.com
john.gallias@gmail.com
Arch Linux v0.7 (Wombat), XFce 4.2, XOrg, Firefox
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I'd suggest WMI, but it's not for everyone... it's keyboard oriented
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I'll third XFCE4.2 8)
In addition to being lightweight, it's also very modular so you can have as little or as much as you want. For example, all I use is xfwm4 (its window manager) and xfdesktop (which displays a background image and allows right-click on the desktop). If you want more, like a taskbar or panel or session management, you can do so.
I am a gated community.
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I think another big reason I like 4.2 so much is the support it has for programs that are not even its own... For example, I run K3B, gedit, rhythmbox, and gthumb without ANY hicups... its really nice to be able to run Gnome without Gnome
John Gallias
Technician/Friend/Bassist
http://www.concretearmy.com
john@concretearmy.com
john.gallias@gmail.com
Arch Linux v0.7 (Wombat), XFce 4.2, XOrg, Firefox
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I think another big reason I like 4.2 so much is the support it has for programs that are not even its own... For example, I run K3B, gedit, rhythmbox, and gthumb without ANY hicups... its really nice to be able to run Gnome without Gnome
every WM does that... assuming you have the right libraries
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If you're not interested in eye-candy, then I recommend Openbox. It requires fewer dependencies than xfce, but is harder to configure.
I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.
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If you're not interested in eye-candy, then I recommend Openbox. It requires fewer dependencies than xfce, but is harder to configure.
fluxbox is also very common
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xfce isnt a window manager, it is a desktop environment, it has extra services.
minimal: ratpoison, ion (i use this), wmi
easier to use minimal: fluxbox (fav of mine), openbox, blackbox,
just google man, there are literally hundreds.
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I agree that XFCE4 is a nice WM. There is also icewm. I have used it a couple of years ago. It is more lightweight than XFCE4.
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From the screenshots, OpenBox looks pretty awesome However, I can't seem to install it properly, as the wiki isn't exactly accurate at Archlinux for its setup
After I install OpenBox via pacman, there isn't a .config directory in the root home directory
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tried to run openbox without the .config dir? - often such directories are then created.
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I just noticed something Openbox actually worked, I just didn't realize that it would use the same default background as X.
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Openbox is a great WM. It uses less then 1 MB RAM on my box! You should check out the following packages:
1. feh: makes it easy to set the background
2. pypanel: transparent taskbar
3. obconf: gui configuruation
The default menu is written in XML and is easy to modify.
Note that you can use openbox as a replacement for metacity/kde WM, but why would you want to do that?
I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.
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put this in ~/.xinitrc
xterm -e screen
DaDeXTeR (Martin Lefebvre)
My screenshots on PicasaWeb
[img]http://imagegen.last.fm/dadexter/recenttracks/dadexter.gif[/img]
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Openbox is a great WM. It uses less then 1 MB RAM on my box! You should check out the following packages:
1. feh: makes it easy to set the background
2. pypanel: transparent taskbar
3. obconf: gui configuruationThe default menu is written in XML and is easy to modify.
Note that you can use openbox as a replacement for metacity/kde WM, but why would you want to do that?
How is that possible to have OpenBox only use 1 MB!!!!!? Openbox is using 35 MB of RAM for my Desktop, and there's nothing on it, except for top running from xtrem, pypanel, and a background.
...Right now with what I mentioned plus firefox, I'm running at 275 MB of RAM!
Is it normal to have this many processes running?
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 0.0 0.1 1468 504 ? S 13:18 0:00 init [3]
root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SN 13:18 0:00 [ksoftirqd/0]
root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< 13:18 0:00 [events/0]
root 4 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< 13:18 0:00 [khelper]
root 9 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< 13:18 0:00 [kthread]
root 18 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< 13:18 0:00 [kacpid]
root 111 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< 13:18 0:00 [kblockd/0]
root 125 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 13:18 0:00 [khubd]
root 195 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 13:18 0:00 [pdflush]
root 196 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 13:18 0:00 [pdflush]
root 197 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 13:18 0:00 [kswapd0]
root 198 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< 13:18 0:00 [aio/0]
root 281 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 13:18 0:00 [kseriod]
root 365 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S< 13:19 0:00 [reiserfs/0]
root 420 0.0 0.0 1452 396 ? S<s 13:19 0:00 udevd
root 1176 0.0 0.1 1696 764 ? Ss 13:19 0:00 /usr/sbin/syslo
root 1548 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 13:19 0:00 [pccardd]
root 1557 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 13:19 0:00 [pccardd]
root 2175 0.0 0.0 1480 484 ? Ss 13:19 0:00 /usr/sbin/dhcpc
root 2204 0.0 0.1 1624 556 ? S 13:19 0:00 /usr/sbin/crond
root 2225 0.0 0.3 4672 1664 vc/1 Ss 13:19 0:00 -bash
root 2240 0.0 0.0 1464 480 vc/2 Ss+ 13:19 0:00 /sbin/agetty 38
root 2241 0.0 0.0 1464 480 vc/3 Ss+ 13:19 0:00 /sbin/agetty 38
root 2242 0.0 0.0 1464 480 vc/4 Ss+ 13:19 0:00 /sbin/agetty 38
root 2243 0.0 0.0 1464 480 vc/5 Ss+ 13:19 0:00 /sbin/agetty 38
root 2244 0.0 0.0 1464 480 vc/6 Ss+ 13:19 0:00 /sbin/agetty 38
root 2744 0.0 0.2 4496 1332 vc/1 S+ 14:33 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/X1
root 2755 0.0 0.1 2280 652 vc/1 S+ 14:33 0:00 xinit /root/.xi
root 2756 1.8 3.3 20120 16920 ? S< 14:33 0:07 X :0
root 2778 0.0 0.8 9068 4352 vc/1 S 14:34 0:00 openbox
root 2779 0.2 1.4 13212 7324 vc/1 S 14:34 0:01 /usr/bin/python
root 2785 0.0 0.2 4496 1356 vc/1 S 14:34 0:00 /bin/sh /opt/mo
root 2798 0.0 0.2 4628 1372 vc/1 S 14:34 0:00 /bin/sh /opt/mo
root 2803 5.4 6.2 84320 30936 vc/1 Rl 14:34 0:22 /opt/mozilla/bi
root 2836 0.2 0.5 7652 2724 vc/1 S 14:40 0:00 xterm
root 2837 0.0 0.3 4672 1596 pts/0 Ss 14:40 0:00 bash
root 2838 0.0 0.1 4468 832 pts/0 R+ 14:40 0:00 ps aux
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[21:20] police:~ ps aux | wc -l
51
I'm using nothing to fancy, some daemons, cmus and firefox at this moment.
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I meant to say less than 10 MB for the openbox itself. It's still impressive, especially in comparison to KDE/Gnome.
Your not running that many processes. If you use top (or type ps auxw) you can check out which ones are hogging the CPU and memory and deal with those. Deamons and terminals shouldn't slow anything down (unless it's a server).
I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.
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put this in ~/.xinitrc
xterm -e screen
I don't have screen Why is it better than xterm?
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N3xt: It was a poor joke for a Newbie Corner post. You may be interested in investigating screen on google however. It isn't a window manager, its designed to work with the console and allows networked sessions, detaching sessions and reaccessing them via ssh, and dozens of other console utilities. Not really comparable to XFCE4, if you like that, however.
You may also want to check out IceWM, its pretty simple, possibly too simple.
Dusty
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hmmm so screen is really only useful as a replacement to xterm if I'm on a local network? ...or if I carelessly close my windows?
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its only useful if you do a lot of work in the console. I've never used it, so I'm just repeating what I've heard before. From what I understand, it is basically a 'window manager' for the console, NOT for X at all... so you could have multiple consoles open on one virtual console. In addition, you can move console sessions to background and pick them up later and stuff, sort of like unlimited virtual consoles.
Basically, if you were looking for a window manager, screen isn't it. However, it may be something fun to investigate if you do a lot of console work (whether across the network or not).
Dusty
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I'm a little late to the game, but I use the Openbox / PyPanel / feh combo. It works wonderfully. I also use a little program called Devil's Pie for some extra tweaks.
The obligatory screenshot. Your seeing aterm, Gaim, PyPanel, feh, and Openbox there.
·¬»· i am shadowhand, powered by webfaction
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its only useful if you do a lot of work in the console. I've never used it, so I'm just repeating what I've heard before. From what I understand, it is basically a 'window manager' for the console, NOT for X at all... so you could have multiple consoles open on one virtual console. In addition, you can move console sessions to background and pick them up later and stuff, sort of like unlimited virtual consoles.
Basically, if you were looking for a window manager, screen isn't it. However, it may be something fun to investigate if you do a lot of console work (whether across the network or not).
Dusty
Although I've already chosen OpenBox as the WM for now I was just wondering how useful it would be since I'll be using the console as a file manager, etc.
btw shadowhand, what features does aterm have over xterm?
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Although I've already chosen OpenBox as the WM for now I was just wondering how useful it would be since I'll be using the console as a file manager, etc.
btw shadowhand, what features does aterm have over xterm?
Ok, my 2 bytes on the subject:
I think Dusty put it best by stating screen is a window manager for the console. Screen is awesome. However if you're working under X, most have a tendancy to just fire up additional terminals to do additional work. If you want to be picky, screen will save you on screen real-estate, and some ram usage, but that's unimportant. The best features, I think, of screen are a) the ability to save sessions and restore them and b) the ability to split windows.
a) I can start a screen session in an xterm, fire up 4 screen "terminals" inside it, and hit ctrl+alt+backpace (to kill X) and in another terminal, join back to the screen session and everything is still running.
b) you can split windows to see multiple screen terminals at once, which is great in console mode... however, under a WM like WMI, I can split terminals without splitting all my windows (and thus shrinking windows I want fullscreened - like firefox)
oh, PS: aterm is bascially the same as xterm, but supports transparency if you use a proper background-setter (I use aterm)
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