Which desktop manager for older PC? Nice and fast???
 

Hi there

I would like to install Linux on my old laptop P3 800 MHz 192 MB RAM 20 Gb Hard drive.
Which desktop manager is fast and looks good? Which Linux distro???
Need: copy and paste, Skype, gimp, office, vlc player, internet connection and more.....

FVWM
MWM
CTWM
wm2/wmx
AfterStep
AmiWM
Enlightenment
IceWM
Sawfish
Blackbox
Fluxbox
Metacity


GNOME
KDE
CDE
XFce

Thanks

None of those have anything to do with your desktop/window manager.

Personally I like Openbox, but I think it's best to just try them all and see what you like!

If you are a newbie... then go with XFCE because the rest of the lightweight WM/DE will not be too user-friendly.

I suggest going with LinuxMint XFCE or LinuxMint Fluxbox or Crunchbang for starters.

Again, if you are not a newbie and want to have a stable (you must work on it)... try Debian with XFCE.

Xubuntu (by Ubuntu) is not lightweight.

Cheers!

GNOME is something I started with.
Simple and sweet to start.
You can get lot number of help from net and here too.

slackware, debian, puppy, vector linux with xfce

I have a 700MHz P3 with 320M RAM and it runs just about any version of Linux.

192M of RAM is going to be marginal with anything except the most minimalistic system..I recommend getting more RAM regardless of which distro you select.

I am running Arch and I have most of the common DEs and WMs installed. The ones that look most promising are:
DEs: XFCE and LXDE
WMs: Fluxbox and OpenBox

If you want REALLY lean and mean, look at Ratpoisin

A quick check on this computer shows I'm using 245MB with Fedora, Gnome, Opera, and OpenOffice. In other words, forget about mainstream distros like Fedora or Ubuntu, and big desktops like Gnome and KDE. Xfce cuts the memory use by about 120MB, so XUbuntu might do.

Personally, I'd advise a light-weight distro. Slitaz and Puppy are both excellent on much smaller and slower computers than yours. You may also need to consider a less demanding graphics program than Gimp.

If your previous experience of Linux is Mint, forget Slackware. It can run on a small computer, but it's strictly for professionals and hobbyists.

Lightweight window managers:
openbox
ratpoison
wmi
wmii
xmonad
pekwm
ion3

However, the lightweight ones are usually lighterweight because they are not feature packed like your KDE's and your Gnome's. Start with something that has more features like openbox and work your way to the less featurefilled, more efficient wm's like xmonad.

I like fluxbox. Never tried the othe *boxes.

I believe that you guys should try out the latest release of the user-friendly and newbie-friendly complete out of the box OPENBOX EDITION of PCLinuxOS

http://pclinuxos.com/

It was just release today.

Cheers!

Gnome is not considered lightweight at all.

It is considered a heavyweight.

One of the best Fluxbox distros would be the Linuxmint Fluxbox edition. http://www.linuxmint.com/download_ce.php

Flux comes on Slackware which I've moved to on all four boxes. I primarily use it for XDMCP sessions although I have to admit it is great on my laptop for general use. I liked it on Ubuntu when I still had Ubuntu on my oldest box; it was quite a noticeable performance boost.