Maxxed Out Distro + X enviroment + window manager

Hey my situation is actually kind of similiar to the post I've seen seaching through the fourms. But I need some more suggestions towards what I'm trying to do.

What I'm trying to do is install a distro that has good support towards software/hardware but takes up little RAM and CPU. Once I find that, I want to put XFce on it because I've heard it takes up less resources than GNOME and KDE. I am also intrested in window managers... I have read up on it but not sure which one would suite me best. I am looking for something that is good performance wise but still has a nice look to it.

I've tried Gentoo but things have not worked out so well getting ndiswrapper on my computer... very hard to explain lol... Gentoo was looking good because it was only using a 100MB RAM and an average of 0.1% on both my CPUs. That's with GNOME... So XFce should be faster.

I am open to Distro's, XFce or better enviroment(balence of performance and looks) and a nice window manager combination.

I suggest using either xfce, fluxbox, or openbox with either gentoo, arch, slackware, or DSL. Xfce is easier to use and looks nicer, but fluxbox and openbox are much more minimalistic. If I remember right, DSL (damn small linux) uses fluxbox and very few resources. I have archlinux on my desktop with xfce, and it is very fast.

I'd suggest installing debian, then putting LXDE on it. This is like XFCE, but a bit more user-friendly.

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Originally Posted by da-man9191

What I'm trying to do is install a distro that has good support towards software/hardware but takes up little RAM and CPU. Once I find that, I want to put XFce on it because I've heard it takes up less resources than GNOME and KDE.

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It all depends on what do you do, and what applications you choose to use. XFCE is absolutely not that light as many people pretend. After all, it's based on gtk2 just like gnome. It's an interesting desktop, though, but I wouldn't call it "light" by any means.

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I am also intrested in window managers... I have read up on it but not sure which one would suite me best. I am looking for something that is good performance wise but still has a nice look to it.

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This is the part where everyone answers by inserting his/her favourite window manager. I can't give you any advice but to try them all yourself. Install xfce if you are comfortable with it. Then you can install as many standalone window managers as you want. You can have many of them installed at once and start X with a different one each time to test them. Note that standalone window managers often require the usage of additional programs, panels and tools to expand their functionality, because window managers are just what their name say: "window-managers". Some of them include a taskbar, a tray, or even pagers and some other things, but little more.

You can investigate lynucs.org to see screenshots. Besides that, visit the web page of each wm before installing it, and see what it's like. That time you will save yourself the pain of installing something that you are not interested in.

Okay I'm going to try to give Arch and Debian a shot. I had debian on there when I first started linux but I had to go to Ubuntu lol. I have about 5 months experience now so hopefully I can get it going.

Thanks for that site that shows me the screenies:) If XFCE will not be considered the absoulute lightest I'm going to use Gnome. I used XFCE on Virtualbox today and I think I perfer GNOME and KDE.

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Originally Posted by beojan

I'd suggest installing debian, then putting LXDE on it. This is like XFCE, but a bit more user-friendly.

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LXDE lacks several basic features. I recommend Xfce any day over LXDE

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Originally Posted by da-man9191

Okay I'm going to try to give Arch and Debian a shot. I had debian on there when I first started linux but I had to go to Ubuntu lol. I have about 5 months experience now so hopefully I can get it going.

Thanks for that site that shows me the screenies:) If XFCE will not be considered the absoulute lightest I'm going to use Gnome. I used XFCE on Virtualbox today and I think I perfer GNOME and KDE.

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Your situation sounds 100% similar to mine.

Take my advice and install Sidux. Its a Debian Sid based distro running KDE and is blazing fast. The best part is that it comes with everything you need and nothing more. Well, the bundled Samba sever may be a white elephant to many (quite useless unless you use windows), but everything else is so perfect.

In Sidux, manually install IceWM window manager via apt-get. Now, you can use KDE for administration and other programs available only through KDE, and IceWM when Speed is important. IceWM launches KDE applications faster than the bundled FluxBox. I think Konqueror will be your best friend since it browses both files and internet.

If you still prefer to use Xfce, go ahead as nobody is stopping you. But I recommend this setup because you get both the Most Feature Rich and Cool Looking environment(KDE) as well as the lightest, fastest and meanest yet sufficiently feature rich environment(IceWM).

My config:
P4 2.66GHz CPU with 1MB L2 Cache
256MB DDR1 400MHz RAM
Onboard Intel GMA900 Video
Onboard Realtek ALC880 Audio

Even on this eyesore of a rig, I am able to comfortably use any software in KDE without lag, and I have the exact configuration I told you to use.


And yes, IceWM is the absolute lightest yet usable environment, and for all practical perposes, THE lightest. It looks good enough to use, and compliments KDE rather well when needed.

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Originally Posted by MetalheadGautham

In Sidux, manually install IceWM window manager via apt-get. Now, you can use KDE for administration and other programs available only through KDE, and IceWM when Speed is important. IceWM launches KDE applications faster than the bundled FluxBox. I think Konqueror will be your best friend since it browses both files and internet.

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There are many strange things here. First, there's nothing that is available *only* when using kde. You can use all the kde programs under icewm. In fact, nothing stops you from using even the kde panel and desktop under icewm.

The only thing that makes a kde application load slower is if no other kde program has been launched before. So, in either icewm or flux you can use konqueror -preload to preload the kde stuff, for example. In both of them, kde programs should work exactly the same. The wm only maps and handle windows, it has nothing to do with the speed of a given window. So, it seems to me that you are just partial to icewm.

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And yes, IceWM is the absolute lightest yet usable environment, and for all practical perposes, THE lightest. It looks good enough to use, and compliments KDE rather well when needed.

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Not really. That's very subjective. Lots of persons are using something lighter, and find it much more usable than icewm. I am sure than an experienced ratpoison user can be much more profitable in raptoison than any icewm user can be on icewm. Even a full blown build of fvwm is lighter in ram than icewm even was, and fvwm is much more featureful and functional than icewm will ever be. The downside is that fvwm is not trivial to configure.

As said above, everybody will always advise his/her wm as the best wm ever. Which doesn't make it true.

Hrm I hear a lot of people imply that XFCE is very fast...
I can't really agree to it, surely it's faster than KDE or Gnome, but it uses quite some resources if you run a few basic apps. I know last time I used XFCE with some text editing tool and a music player and some instant messengerit used about 20-25 % of my memory, I have 1 GB so it's quite something.

In my opinion, if you really want speed I suggest you pick up fluxbox or openbox...

I went with Arch Linux... Debian was good but Arch felt better to me. Arch is currently using 75mb/500mb and bouncing between 10-30% CPU. I am still not happy with as much CPU as it is using but it is better than what I had:p Also, I can't get compiz setup on my ati radeon card because I need to do something to the X11 config but I can't do that just because I'm a noob:D Currently running Gnome (Now if I went to something that used less resourses would that help my CPU any? or just RAM?).

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Originally Posted by da-man9191

I went with Arch Linux... Debian was good but Arch felt better to me. Arch is currently using 75mb/500mb and bouncing between 10-30% CPU. I am still not happy with as much CPU as it is using but it is better than what I had:p Also, I can't get compiz setup on my ati radeon card because I need to do something to the X11 config but I can't do that just because I'm a noob:D Currently running Gnome (Now if I went to something that used less resourses would that help my CPU any? or just RAM?).

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Ofcourse it would, KDE uses the most recources, after that comes gnome, and after that probably XFCE and waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay after that comes fluxbox/openbox/blackbox.

IMHO if you really want speed and low resources (say less than 10% ram usage if you have 1 GB), you should got for fluxbox or something, and also forget about compiz...that will eat resources. Compiz doesn't work with fluxbox anyway.