[GRLUG] Desktop managers

[Greg Folkert]

On Tue, 2008-11-11 at 22:48 -0500, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 9:48 PM, Adam Tauno WIlliams
> <awilliam at whitemice.org> wrote:
> > Is the disk light constantly going?  Curious what the performance
> > constraint is;  if you run "top" in a terminal window does it show your
> > CPU as consistently pegged?
> >
> > I've never found that GNOME-XFCE-whatever ever delivered much of a
> > real-world performance improvement.  Most of the time, if performance
> > can be fixed, it can be fixed by other means.  But if you just don't
> > have enough resources.... the small difference between window managers
> > isn't going to make much of a dent.
> 
> Running a modern GNOME desktop on 310MB of RAM is bad news.  I'd be
> curious how much memory metacity and gdm were consuming, and what the
> output of "free -m" is after logging in without loading any
> applications.  I found GNOME to be sluggish on 512MB of RAM as well,
> which was when I switched to wmii on my 2.4GHz P4.

Don't run GDM. Use a different display manager if you must use one, use
the one that X (XDM) provides its no frills and very light in most
respects.

Otherwise, "startx" saves considerable resources... though you have to
login on the "icky" command line.

"XFS" (X Font Server) if you have the fonts locally and in the proper
place, you don't need it.

Any "mouse manager" isn't needed as long as you don't need it outside of
X.

Run X at a lower color resolution, it amazing at how much the memory
difference is between a 24/32bit display color vs 8 bit is. Yes 8 bit is
256 colors... but aren't we talking about a small resource machine? Oh
yes and try not running at 1600x1200 or other HUGE resolution, as that
ALSO cranks the memory the X server requires.

Also, since it *IS* an older machine consider running a framebuffer
display environment. They rock awesome... but then you'll need the mouse
manager.

Also, since it *IS* an older machine perhaps you don't need HAL/udev and
other scanning processes, like ACPID or APMD or any kind of an AVAHI
(and related services) running.

If you use static IP address setups... you can remove Network Manager
and any DHCP* packages and setup /etc/network/interfaces

Don't know if DBUS can be easily removed, but there are things t does to
suck resources.

Anything Bluetooth can go, update-notifier and its kind of easy update
stuff can go.

Start using things like mutt for e-mail vs Thunderbird or Evolution or
Kmail. Use w3m-image for frambuffer goodness.

There are other things you can do even more, but go way beyond the scope
of this e-mail
-- 
greg at gregfolkert.net
PGP key 1024D/B524687C 2003-08-05
Fingerprint: E1D3 E3D7 5850 957E FED0  2B3A ED66 6971 B524 687C
Alternate Fingerprint: 09F9 1102 9D74  E35B D841 56C5 6356 88C0
Alternate Fingerprint: 455F E104 22CA  29C4 933F 9505 2B79 2AB2
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 197 bytes
Desc: This is a digitally signed message part
Url : http://shinobu.grlug.org/pipermail/grlug/attachments/20081112/13f346e2/attachment-0001.pgp