[bmw]

I'm using KDE, it's killing my P3 500 w/256M RAM. Half of my 512M swap is used up and the disk light is on most of them time. Gack!

xfce4 looks kewl, somebody says look at FluxBox. Life's short people: what should it be, FluxBox or xfce? Or have I missed another obvious solution ... ?

[elmore]

fluxbox is super fast and is a lighter windows manager than XFCE4.

Though if you like the CDE look and feel XFCE4 is for you. Personally I moved to fluxbox a while ago and have never looked back. Super easy to customize and it has the capability to run your KDE menu's integrated now. Check out the fluxbox-devel port and use WITH_KDE=YES with your make. :wink:

[frisco]

What do you want out of your window manager?

All i want is something to manage windows and otherwise stay out of the way. So for the longest time i used fvwm b/c i didn't have to think about it. Then migrated on to pwm until i found pekwm. Now evilwm looks attractive too, though i sometimes like title bars on my windows, so i'll probably stick to pekwm.

If you want a desktop environment as well, then look into xfce. But really consider what you expect your "window manager" to do, and look for something that best fulfills those goals.

[Strog]

twm for life. :shock:

I use fluxbox personally. It's nice clean and fast. There's several others that fit that bill well too.

If you really like KDE then there are things to tweak it to make it run better on your system. There's some good docs on KDE's site to modify the startup script to enable and disable various parts of it. Disable artsd sound server, turn off eyecandy efffects, etc. and it can work decently on any reasonable hardware like your P3.

xfce4 uses more resources than xfce3 but it is much prettier and still is less than KDE3.

If you are running OpenOffice, Mozilla, Evolution, etc. at the same time then you are going to need more than a new window manager, you need more ram. :wink: It's all about finding a nice balance that you like to use.

[z0mbix]

I'm a pekwm kinda guy. I'm very fond of the *box wm's too especially openbox but for the last 3 months i've been all about pekwm. They've even got my screenshot on their website:

http://www.pekwm.org/screenshots/index.php

I like the look of xfce4 too, but i'm just not into the "heavier" wm/de's

[bmw]

What do you want out of your window manager?
Now that's a key question, I guess. Ok:

What I really do:
- zillions of terms (presently konsole)
- Netscape 7
- read PDFs (docs)
- xmms (which I presently dock as an applet in kpanel)
- once in a blue moon, OpenOffice.

What I want the wm to provide:
- 4 views/tabs/workspaces
- don't have to muck around setting stuff up; basically works out of the box (or pretty close)
- anti-aliased TrueType and Postscript fonts useable in apps and wm
- fonts easily selectable in the term app
- minimal real-estate used by window bars, resizing handles, kill/minimize buttons, etc.
- be able to run a decent mp3 player, eg gqmpeg or xmms

What I use once in a while, but don't really need (tho I'll use 'em if they're there and work):
- file manager
- desktop icons


All i want is something to manage windows and otherwise stay out of the way.
I hear ya! I thought that something with a file manager would be neat to have, but let's face it, I'm a shell kinda guy. :-)


Ok, so far, sounds like FluxBox is closest to a good fit. And I better check out pekwm too.

BTW: the best windowing/desktop environment I've ever met was the NeXTSTEP system. When I eventually spring for that Mac I've promised myself, I will be in heaven again with MacOS X. (I've got my eyes on a dual CPU G5 at present. :-)

[bsdjunkie]

BTW: the best windowing/desktop environment I've ever met was the NeXTSTEP system.

This is why after trying everything out, I always end up with Windowmaker as my main desktop...

[frisco]

- zillions of terms (presently konsole)


I find tabbed windows a necessity for managing multiple terms (screen is also a necessity, of course). These days i don't even use multiple workspaces/desktops as tabbed windows and window shading has helped organize the space of one desktop.

I originally used pwm b/c it had tabbed windows and i wasn't aware of others that did. Moved to pekwm b/c it was similar to pwm and was easy to make my own theme (wanted smaller window dressings). What other window managers offer tabbed windows these days?

[elmore]

What other window managers offer tabbed windows these days?

fluxbox supports tabbed windows. One other neat feature of fluxbox is scrolling through your desktops with the mouse wheel. Make multiple desktops a breeze to manage.

[socomm]

xfce4 looks kewl, somebody says look at FluxBox. Life's short people: what should it be, FluxBox or xfce? Or have I missed another obvious solution ... ?


XFCE is a minimalistic Desktop, not a Window Manager. XFWM is the XFCE window manager, alone it is pretty light but when combined with the rest of XFCE it can get bog down some of your system resources. If you'd like to use XFWM alone, I'd recommend XFWM 3.*, since it utilizes the much lighter GTK 1.* engine. On the other hand if you like GNOME 2.* and don't mind alittle performance hit go with XFWM4 which is not really heavy but with some of the GTK 2.* themes, namely liquid, and ones with horizontal lines, can really bog down your system. As for fluxbox it is really not all that heavy and alot people love the tabs, though some of it's default keybindings will have you reaching for the mouse in no time.

[soup4you2]

[quote:8470074d60="frisco"]What other window managers offer tabbed windows these days?
[/quote:8470074d60]

the CVS release of waimea supports tabbed windows, only they call it merged windows. However unlike the previous release the CVS version doesnt seem to have support for the GTK libraries :( which sucks because waimea is really nice.. best WM twords transparency effects i think. but they just need those gnome libraries and i'll be happy.

other than that it's console for me.. i dont need a gui.

[optyk]

Waimea has a branch, too- kahakai. Haven't tried it yet, but it looks interesting.

http://kahakai.sourceforge.net/

[soup4you2]

Waimea has a branch, too- kahakai. Haven't tried it yet, but it looks interesting.

http://kahakai.sourceforge.net/

needs merged windows.. you combine that w/ GTK and i'll play w/ it..