Re: [seul-edu] Best wm for tiny slow computers?

[Felipe Bergo <bergo@seul.org>]

On Fri, 1 Feb 2002, Ralph M. Deal wrote:

> system to use it more widely.  The users will be most happy with a gui
> like the MSwindows they are accustomed to.  However, thes are small (16M
> RAM, ca 500M hard disk, no CDROM drives) slow (75MHz is fast in this
> bunch) in which gnome will be sluggish and much to large.

Forget Gnome and KDE on such machines. here goes a simple list of 
possibilities and impossibilities:

Impossibilities (don't go for them):

Sawmill/Sawfish: it relies on Lisp interpreting, not a good 
                 idea for slow boxes.
Enlightenment:   excessive eye candy that consumes cpu.
KDE:             too heavy
Gnome:           too heavy

Possibilities:

IceWM:           Ice is probably the most Windows-ish lightweight
                 window manager, if the users are familiar with windows
                 and not willing to learn a new interface, IceWM will
                 provide the usual task bar with a "Start" menu.

WindowMaker:     The best cost/benefit ratio among all. It is not
                 straightforward for Windows users (will take them
                 like a week to get used to it) but provides much
                 functionality with low CPU/memory usage.

XFCE:            mimics the Sun CDE environment. It's not so light
                 but is probably the closer you can get to the complexity 
                 of Gnome/KDE without paying the full price (cpu cycles,
                 not dollars)

Blackbox:        very minimalist WM yet cool-looking, but you need a set
                 of helper applications to get key shourtcuts and other
                 functionalities going (bbkeys, application launchers,
                 the balckbox page will probably recommend some)

> What, in your experience in similar situations, is the best compromise
> in a window manager to be reasonably fast and small but look familiar to
> students?  Right now I'm using xfce which I use myself but it would be
> nice to have icons representing files and have double clicks thereon to
> open the appropriate program with that file.

Sounds like IceWM is what you want.

See
http://www.icewm.org/images/shots/warp3.png

(the task bar can be put on the bottom as Windows has as default)

> Most of the monitors in this batch are labelled with names not in the RH
> LINUX list of recognized monitors so that will be time-consuming. Any
> suggestions there?

My experience with "unlabelled" monitors is that most of them fit in the 
"vanilla SVGA that can do interlaced 1024x768 @87Hz" option of 
XF86Config.

> PS How do I get onto the schoolforge mailing list?

Go to

http://schoolforge.net/sfdiscuss.php

.........................................................................
Felipe Paulo Guazzi Bergo - Free Software Developer (bergo@seul.org)
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