[GRLUG] Desktop managers

[Adam Tauno Williams]

On Wed, 2008-11-12 at 15:10 -0500, Michael Mol wrote:
> On Wed, Nov 12, 2008 at 2:21 PM, Greg Folkert <greg at gregfolkert.net> wrote:
> > 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.>

Can someone document that disabling GDM makes any difference?  Once you
are logged in GDM is out of the picture,  the very few pages it
allocates that aren't shared will get paged out (if needed).  So long as
GDM isn't doing anything in the back ground (is it), it will have no
affect at all.

> > Otherwise, "startx" saves considerable resources... though you have to
> > login on the "icky" command line.
> startx is fine, but I haven't notice gdm continue to consume resources
> after I log in.  Besides, being able to switch sessions when needed is
> helpful.
> > "XFS" (X Font Server) if you have the fonts locally and in the proper
> > place, you don't need it.

I don't believe most workstation oriented installed run XFS by default.
openSUSE doesn't.

> > Any "mouse manager" isn't needed as long as you don't need it outside of
> > X.
> True, but gpm was designed to run on systems with 64MB of RAM...it's
> hardly a resource hog.

The question is whether it is active while X is running.  I have no
idea.

> > 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.
> Very true.

Yep, this is the in the top three ways to improve performance.

> The problem with a framebuffer X server is that it's largely
> unaccelerated.  Last time I used one, I had terrible tearing and lag
> when simply scrolling a web page in phoenix or opera.

Agree,  I've never had acceptable performance running a frame buffer.

> > 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.
> acpid isn't a resource hog.  And even a 700MHz system is new enough to
> use ACPI over APM.  If you get rid of HAL/udev, though, you're
> sticking yourself with the responsibility of managing device nodes
> manually, which is no longer a simple thing to do.  Worse, most
> current distros would have those packages in their "required" list.

Agree,  but if you just don't have sufficient resources you have to
start giving things up.  The only way, IMO, to get acceptable
performance out of a paltry 310Mb is to strip things down to a point
where you won't enjoy using the box anymore.

> > Don't know if DBUS can be easily removed, but there are things t does to
> > suck resources.
> I don't know about this one either...

It will break numerous apps that make the desktop usable.  Even the
clock applet uses D-Bus these days.