suggestions for a lightweight window manager?

andrewlkho · 07-02-2003, 11:18 AM

Hi,
I'm looking for an extremely lightweight window manager. I've tried KDE and gnome so far, and I like KDE, although it's a bit too heavy for me. I want a nice and simple window manager? What are the differences in your opinion with different window managers?
thanks,
andy

finegan · 07-02-2003, 11:43 AM

Fluxbox is a huge favorite these days, it has compatibility with gnome and KDE so apps run correctly, it does window grouping, etc... its usually packaged with any major distro.

XFCE, the clone of good old CDE, the Solaris standard for eons...

Blackbox is another favorite, fluxbox was a fork of that tree.

FVWM, WindowMaker, these are pretty common too, I think the latter is still debian default.

Cheers,

Finegan

contrasutra · 07-02-2003, 01:17 PM

My vote is XFCE4. Its not as light as Fluxbox/WindowMaker, because its a Desktop Environment, not a Window Manager. It includes lots of extra utilities (like GNOME, KDE).

But its much less bloated than the big two, so I get an "environment", but no random crashes and slowdowns.

If you had to pick a WM, I like Fluxbox (be sure to get the latest version, not the stable), and WindowMaker. (get the CVS of that too, if you want Anti Aliased fonts and Xinerama support).

dh3rm3 · 07-08-2003, 06:24 PM

I would suggest pekwm
It's lightweight and stable, accepts themes... and I really dig for it since I discovered it ...
here it is
http://pekwm.org

andrewlkho · 07-08-2003, 07:28 PM

thanks for the advice...however, i'm now firmly hooked onto windowmaker

..if i have time at some point, i'll check pekwm out..

lokee · 07-15-2003, 07:40 PM

If you want a real WM try IceWM...
http://www.icewm.org

Proud · 07-16-2003, 01:26 PM

Enlightenment! I swear it uses about 20megs less than even Flux.

tcaptain · 07-16-2003, 01:35 PM

blackbox baby! Just the bare essentials

(although you can always add bbkeys)

MasterC · 07-16-2003, 01:39 PM

And still not a mention of OpenBox?

OpenBox is definitely a viable option, definitely worth checking out.

<--- Uses flux religously, but prefers OpenBox

Cool

TexasDex · 07-16-2003, 08:15 PM

MWM is good and simple for my VNC computing. Keeps the bandwidth down and prevents lots of resources from being used in the background.

andrewlkho · 07-16-2003, 10:06 PM

Thanks guys, but I'm now absolutely hooked onto WindowMaker. I've tried Fluxbox, Blackbox, Enlightenment, TWM and WindowMaker, [and also KDE and Gnome, but I didn't want a desktop environment in the end], and out of all of them, I prefer WindowMaker. It's extremely lightweight, has virtually nothing there, and yet configuration is very easy through WPrefs. Also, slackware installation with it is a breeze