WM performance

Forum: X and Fluxbox
Topic: WM performance
started by: bamicro

Posted by bamicro on Sep. 07 2005,18:41

Hello;
I have been trying out various live CDs for a few months for a particular purpose. I need a lightweight linux build for my Toshiba 4030 laptop, which I use to have sessions on another box over a wireless link. I want to remove the hard drive from the laptop (to lighten it up) and boot directly from CD into RAM (no noisy disk accesses etc -- also, the laptop becomes more or less disposable.) I'm connecting via NoMachine to the Athlon 3200 box running SuSe 9.2. DSL works really well (!!) except for one thing: the window manager isn't as responsive as the setup in miniKnoppix. So for now, I'm using miniKnoppix 2005, which cannot fit into RAM -- only 192 mb (max) on board.

How can I improve the performance of DSL's window manager? Sometimes there is (for lack of a better phrase) double rendering of the screen. Drawing is also, generally, slower than miniKnoppix. Could a heavier window manager be installed?

Many thanks.

Brian.

Posted by Your Fuzzy God on Sep. 07 2005,18:58

There are a couple of different window managers in the DSL repository. You might want to start with fluxbox-0.9.11 and see if it is any better. If not, then try ICEwm. ICEwm is pretty nice, however, the .dsl has a problem with themes (you can't get it to stop looking like windows 95). Look around in the WM_Apps section of MyDSL and see what you like.

Posted by cbagger01 on Sep. 07 2005,19:06

The DSL window manager is about is very fast compared to most others.

Try booting with the "minimal" cheatcode to see if it speeds things up.

Posted by mikshaw on Sep. 07 2005,19:24

Fuzzy: flux-0.9.11 is actually slower than the stable fluxbox in DSL.

For "faster than" from the repository, I'd say twm, evilwm, and ratpoison.

Posted by SaidinUnleashed on Sep. 08 2005,01:01

/o/ \o\

twm!!

Fastest of the fast! Savior of systems with under 512k of ram! ALL HAIL X11R5!!!

I like twm.

-J.P.

Posted by dare2dreamer on Oct. 06 2005,05:53

You could also edit .xinitrc so it only fires up the nxclient when X starts.

There's even some options for the nxclient that allow you to set it up in a kiosk mode, which makes it automatically restart on loss of connection or logout.