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well when it comes to window managers, i've been using window maker. i dunno, i like it better than fluxbox or the other window managers. but i'm normally always in kde. open office does load slow the first time running it, but it's fast any time after that, for me anyway. but yeah, i'm having a hard time understanding what it is you need convincing of. and are you short of hard disk space? if not then why do you really care about the size between kde and koffice compared to kde and openoffice? memory usage and hard drive capacity is no big deal if you have the resources, so why make it a big deal if you have the resources? from reading your post (for the third time), it sounds to me like you're going the DE route anyway.
Distribution: Red Hat 8.0 (Home), Red Hat 8.0 (Work)
Posts: 388
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I hate DEs, they are always more bloated and slower than WMs and they are IMHO made for people who want the Windows feel on a Linux system. I agree that KDE looks really good, and I have heard really goof things about 3.2 but just the simple fact that it has a "start" button, and not a root menu (which is ***SO*** much more logical to me) means that I will never use it. I still use some KDE apps however, such as K3b which is really great.
I use WindowMaker, and (rarely) XFCE4. I tried all the WMs really (well most of them) but Windowmaker is just what I need. If OpenOffice is the only thing that annoys you, well then you can always use KOffice with flux, or even use Abiword for docs and Gnumeric for spreadheets etc.
You have a relatively slow computer, so running a lean WM sounds much better to me than a bloated DE. ANother thing that I want to mention is that programs which are part of DEs are rarely as good as stand-alone, DE independent applications.
I have a similar box pIII 733 with about 500Mb ram. old ram is cheap these days it's worth the investment.
I run fluxbox on it and have tried kde. Fluxbox is, for lack of a better word, pretty snappy, while kde drags. Fluxbox is very configurable which might take a bit of time getting it setup exactly the way you like it, but once it's done it's done. And to compare looks check this thread out, there are screen shots of different WMs and DEs.Examples
"Wm's are great because they're so lite, but by the time you add enough other programs to equal a desktop environment, it's hard to tell what's more bloated."
What are you adding to make a WM like fluxbox equal KDE? Please give a little more info.
When you say "disk-space wise" I am a little confused. Are you short on hard disk space? If not, it doesn't matter how much room they take up on the hard disk. That will not impact performance.
Programs like OpenOffice.org are seperate from the WM and when ther program exits the memory it takes up is reclaimed. The same for KOffice and fluxbox.
I use Kword and Abiword in Fluxbox all the time. I also use Kedit and Gnumeric once in a while too.
It's all a matter of what apps you add to your Fluxbox main menu.
Personally, I like a lot of the KDE applications, but I don't like running KDE all the time because it's too Windows-like for me. I like a bit more simplicity and better resource management, so I just use Fluxbox... and run the apps from KDE that I like to use regularly.
I've generally found distro-specific apps pretty crappy, so it was easy to ditch kde and gnome. They're really bloated and full of unnecessary rubbish...on the other hand, I like the simplicity and speed of icewm, pekwm etc. but it's hard to get them looking nice.
I've found a good compromise is xfce4 - light, fast, but it still impresses your friends.
I'm in the same boat here. KDE is just too bloated for my 500mhz machine but I use some of KDE's applications. Just compile kde support into fluxbox(--enable-kde) and your good to go!
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