I did the exec sawfish and 'startx' and I got a grey screen with nothing at all on it, and some menus when you middle-click. This definitely is much different than windows and KDE like the page said, no little bar at the bottom .

I don't want to start yet another thread so I'll ask another question here (actually 2). Every once in a while, in KDE or Gnome or anywhere in Linux, I get two little bars underneith my mouse that follow it along. These are almost always never there in KDE, but in Sawfish now their always a part of the mouse. Are these video settings that I did wrong, or something else?

Second, how do I go about configuring my modem on Sawfish?

Thanks again,
JMagi

Ok, the Sawfish FAQ helped clear up a few questions. It said that Sawfish is only designed to be a window manager, not a desktop environment, so no background, no launching programs, unless something like Gnome is used (basically). I guess this isn't exactly what I'm looking for (although yes, it does run fine). Is there something inbetween sawfish and KDE? (e.g. at least a background for the desktop and more than 4 programs in the menu bar?)

Maybe I'm not understand the concept completely. Anyway if there are other window managers (with backgrounds, etc.) that arn't as processor intensive as KDE that I could play with, maybe you Gurus and LQ Addicts could recommend some (and where they can be found, of course!)

I'd appreciate it, thanks again,
JMagi

Basically what you were trying to find out with the sawfish was that the X server or Window Manager were not eating up all the resources. If this proved to be true then there is a problem with KDE. If you found the system still unresponsive running simply sawfish and a terminal window, then you need to figure out what is causing that.

To me it sounds like you were happy with the performance of sawfish by itself?

If so, then you may want to see if gnome has the same problems as KDE.

If not, then you may want to look at a different window manager or even update your XFree86 installation.


On a side note, you can configure sawfish to automatically start other items such as the tool bar at the bottom of the screen. I believe you can also use the command "xsetroot" to change the background (if this is important to you). I have not actually gotten to that on my system yet as I am playing with RH 8 currently.

<RANT>
I like the idea of configuring my X session to only give me exactly what I need. Even though I have the horsepower (P4 1.5GHZ 384MB RAM) to run everything, I don't see any reason to.
</RANT>

I'd love to stay with KDE but it sounds like its too processor-intensive to work with my system. I was satisfied with the performance of sawfish, as far as speed, but I'd prefer something like KDE. Since we have determined that there is a problem with KDE, what else can I do/try?

-JMagi

Honestly, XFCE. It's just about as user friendly as KDE, without all the bells and whistles that take up all your resources. Fluxbox is geared a little more towards intermediate users, but also is very easy to run.

But XFCE, check it out. The link is above, but I think it was www.xfce.org

Cool

I'll check those out, thanks.