fastest linux distro

[tom arnall]

I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following purposes.


System:

Dell latitude D630
dual core
2g memory


most used applications:

icewm
gnome-terminal
vim
perl
chrome browser
transmission


Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of it.

Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.


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[Zenaan Harkness]

On 1/25/14, tom arnall <klor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following purposes.
>
> System:
> Dell latitude D630
> dual core
> 2g memory
>
> most used applications:
> icewm
> gnome-terminal
> vim
> perl
> chrome browser
> transmission
>
> Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of it.
> Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

You probably won't get any reponses, so I'll put in at least one, as I
recommend as follows:

For convenience (package/application installation), choose Debian -
largest selection of software "should you ever need something".

For stable (sort of but not really like Ubuntu), go with Debian Wheezy
(also called Debian stable).

For more cutting edge (sort of but not really like Fedora), go with
Debian Sid (also called Debian unstable, but it's pretty stable by
most standards, all things considered, so an excellent choice).

Run the latest -rt linux kernel (from Debian), for sort of low latency
- the timer tick is 4 ms, should be 1ms for best pro audio, so if you
want the latest cutting edge:
download and build your own custom Linux kernel. (Then you're in
Gentoo land sort of but not really).

Oh, and add the Debian multimedia repository to your package sources
(gives you MMX instructions and other goodies and plugins all compiled
into nice Debian packages for you)!

Finally, choose a lightweight desktop, such as XFCE (quite popular
around here), or LXDE (still a good light weight choice, but I believe
they're moving to QT, so there might not be a lot of advancement for
the next year).

Welcome to Debian if you choose Debian (good choice since you're
coming from Ubuntu).

Good luck,
Zenaan

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[doug]

On 01/24/2014 09:17 PM, tom arnall wrote:
> I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following purposes.
>
>
> System:
>
> Dell latitude D630
> dual core
> 2g memory
>
>
> most used applications:
>
> icewm
> gnome-terminal
> vim
> perl
> chrome browser
> transmission
>
>
> Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of it.
>
> Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
>
>

Altho I am not familiar with the Dell D630, I have a Dell laptop,
probably 7 or so years old, in
which Dell swears you can only have 2GB ram. I discovered you can
physically put 4GB in it,
and I did so. This model can only access a little over 3GB, but I can
tell you that it made a very
noticeable difference in the performance of Windows 7 Pro. I didn't
notice any difference in my
Linux performance, but it never seemed slow in the first place. Running
PCLinuxOs-KDE-32-bit.
If you're lucky, your machine may have the capability of running a PAE
kernel, and then you
could access a full 4GB. Do a little homework on the model--outside of
Dell--and I bet you'll find
you can put more memory in it.

--doug

--
Blessed are the peacemakers...for they shall be shot at from both sides. --A. M. Greeley

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[tom arnall]

Zenaan,

thanks for the rundown. very helpful.

i'm running icewm btw. i can't imagine using ubuntu's bloatware
manager, altho' i do use gnome-terminal, initially (10 years ago)
because i didn't know any better, now because i don't have the time to
relearn with xterm.

how does icewm compare to xfce and lxde?

Tom

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[Chris Bannister]

<Sorry about the broken thread, there appear to be issues with regards
to my ISP being regarded as legit. :(>

On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 03:17:29PM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> Oh, and add the Debian multimedia repository to your package sources
> (gives you MMX instructions and other goodies and plugins all compiled
> into nice Debian packages for you)!

I wouldn't be so quick to recommend the deb-multimedia third party
repository considering the problems it can cause to your system.

--
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the
oppressing." --- Malcolm X

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[Chris Bannister]

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 09:30:55PM -0800, Go Linux wrote:
>
> -------------------------------------------- On Fri, 1/24/14, Chris
> Bannister <cbann...@slingshot.co.nz> wrote:
>
> Subject: Re: fastest linux distro To: debia...@lists.debian.org
> Date: Friday, January 24, 2014, 11:21 PM

>
>
> I wouldn't be so quick to recommend the deb-multimedia third party
> repository considering the problems it can cause to your system.
>

> ------------------------------
>
> Indeed! dmo broke my wheezy install. Had to nuke everything in dmo
> but the key and start over using other options (except for one package
> not available elsewhere).

That wouldn't be libdvdcss2, by any chance, would it? :)

--
"If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people
who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the
oppressing." --- Malcolm X


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[Go Linux]

--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 1/24/14, Chris Bannister <cbann...@slingshot.co.nz> wrote:

Subject: Re: fastest linux distro
To: debia...@lists.debian.org
Date: Friday, January 24, 2014, 11:21 PM

I wouldn't be so quick to recommend the deb-multimedia third
party repository considering the problems it can cause to your
system.

------------------------------

Indeed! dmo broke my wheezy install. Had to nuke everything in dmo but the key and start over using other options (except for one package not available elsewhere).

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[Zenaan Harkness]

On 1/25/14, Chris Bannister <cbann...@slingshot.co.nz> wrote:
> <Sorry about the broken thread, there appear to be issues with regards
> to my ISP being regarded as legit. :(>

Oh wow! You have your own ISP ... no wonder you are so knowledgeable

:)

> On Sat, Jan 25, 2014 at 03:17:29PM +1100, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
>> Oh, and add the Debian multimedia repository to your package sources
>> (gives you MMX instructions and other goodies and plugins all compiled
>> into nice Debian packages for you)!
>
> I wouldn't be so quick to recommend the deb-multimedia third party
> repository considering the problems it can cause to your system.

Thanks, good to know. I was actually unaware of the breakage
possibilities there...

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[Zenaan Harkness]

On 1/25/14, tom arnall <klor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> i'm running icewm btw. i can't imagine using ubuntu's bloatware
> manager,

I'm a bit of a command line junkie actually ... I have alii (aliases?) for
aks = apt-cache search and akw = apt-cache show, since I use them
so often, and agi for apt-get install.

There was a while some years back, that I just ran plain X, with a
single xterm, and can't remember which window manager, but that was it
- the X gray hatchet background, a terminal and a window manager.

>From there ... the possibilities :)

Of course I still run most of my apps from the command line, even gui
apps. It's just quicker for most things.

There are only a few file management type tasks and some graphics
development and audio stuff, where it's either more efficient for my
limited use patterns, or not possible that I'm aware from the command
line.

I also like a graphical web browser.

> altho' i do use gnome-terminal, initially (10 years ago)

Heathen!!! 16 lashes and a hessian bed for a week!

> because i didn't know any better,

You ignorant SOD!

> now because i don't have the time to relearn with xterm.

I used gnome-terminal in the Ubuntu 8.04 days (perhaps the best/most
compatible version of Ubuntu ever), and eventually found a performance
limitation which effected me significantly, and xterm did not have the
problem (or perhaps, had already solved that problem), so I went back
to xterm, and have never looked back. Now I use the uxterm wrapper but
it's still just plain ol xterm.

> how does icewm compare to xfce and lxde?

Dunno, never used it, but if you are running just the minimum apps you
want - perhaps a task bar app, and a browser or whatever, then that is
going to be less resources that running all the XFCE4 or LXDE "desktop
environment" daemons (which, by the way, are still a much lighter
weight than GNOME or KDE).

I hear rumours that with a modern PeeCee with fast graphics card,
running a compositing "3D" window manager can be higher performance
than our old window managers, since the compositing and window moving
etc all occurs on the card, not through the CPU - so that could
actually be a "lighter weight" option for a modern pc...

If you actually wanted to transition to xterm, and listed a clear and
concise set of problems you experience trying to use it, I and others
would be happy.

Sorry, I mean, happy to provide solutions :)

Good luck,
Zenaan

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[Go Linux]

--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 1/24/14, Chris Bannister <cbann...@slingshot.co.nz> wrote:

Subject: Re: fastest linux distro
To: debia...@lists.debian.org

Date: Friday, January 24, 2014, 11:34 PM

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 09:30:55PM
-0800, Go Linux wrote:
>
> -------------------------------------------- On Fri,
1/24/14, Chris
> Bannister <cbann...@slingshot.co.nz>
wrote:
>
>  Subject: Re: fastest linux distro To: debia...@lists.debian.org
>  Date: Friday, January 24, 2014, 11:21 PM
>
> 
>  I wouldn't be so quick to recommend the
deb-multimedia third party
>  repository considering the problems it can cause
to your system.
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Indeed!  dmo broke my wheezy install.  Had to
nuke everything in dmo
> but the key and start over using other options (except
for one package
> not available elsewhere).

That wouldn't be libdvdcss2, by any chance, would it? :)

----------------------------------

Nope. It was avidemux that I needed from dmo. At some point I might need libdvdcss2 but right now my media work-flow is working without it. It took over a year to get the same setup that worked perfectly on squeeze up and running on wheezy. But let's not get too OT.

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[berenge...@neutralite.org]

Le 25.01.2014 07:02, Zenaan Harkness a écrit :
> On 1/25/14, tom arnall <klor...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> i'm running icewm btw. i can't imagine using ubuntu's bloatware
>> manager,
>
> I'm a bit of a command line junkie actually ... I have alii
> (aliases?) for
> aks = apt-cache search and akw = apt-cache show, since I use them
> so often, and agi for apt-get install.
>
> There was a while some years back, that I just ran plain X, with a
> single xterm, and can't remember which window manager, but that was
> it
> - the X gray hatchet background, a terminal and a window manager.

I second you here.
A good shell with auto-completion is better than most GUI, and
regularly better than ncurses interfaces, for several reasons, but only
if the user knows the commands by heart and is a fast keyboard user.
This, because typing a name with auto-completion is way faster than
using a mouse. Also, a shell + a x-terminal-emulator + any "old UI
software" is always way lighter than most popular GUI libraries.

Just note that, at least in my own opinion, using ncurses softwares is
sometimes better than simple command line, especially when you need some
immediate visualization. Examples which comes immediately into my mind
are aptitude ( software management, versus apt-get ) or ncmpcpp ( a
client for mpd, a music player to which even VLC is way behind if you
just need playing music. Unlike this one, it have a real random feature,
for example, and a ton of good clients for every grapphical-or-not
toolkit you prefer ).
On the other hand, I do not think that mc ( midnight commander ) is
better than typing my commands. My opinion, as I said.

> I also like a graphical web browser.

Agree. And I will add to this statement, that there are a lot of
"small, lightweight and efficient" web browsers, which are not. In the
end result, only mainstream browsers were able ( on all my computers,
every time I tried, which is not once ) to download webpage from the
internet and render it fast. Lighter are also slower ( yes, it's quite
strange but it is ) at least with the debian default configurations,
which are usually very good ( so, why would them be bad only for that
category of tools? ).

>> how does icewm compare to xfce and lxde?
>
> Dunno, never used it, but if you are running just the minimum apps
> you
> want - perhaps a task bar app, and a browser or whatever, then that
> is
> going to be less resources that running all the XFCE4 or LXDE
> "desktop
> environment" daemons (which, by the way, are still a much lighter
> weight than GNOME or KDE).

Here, I have to correct you.
First point, there were no daemons last time I tried XFCE or LXDE.
Second point, if XFCE is a real DE, with common dependencies doing stuff
you do not really need ( but less than KDE or Gnome ). Unlike LXDE,
which is more a bunch of softwares installed through a meta-package. For
that reason, I find lxterminal quite good for it's job, and lightweight.
It needs less time to configure than any other x-terminal-emulator I
have tried ( and I have tried most of them ) and is lighter ( I mean
that it does implement less features that I do not need ) than some
which are most popular.

> I hear rumours that with a modern PeeCee with fast graphics card,
> running a compositing "3D" window manager can be higher performance
> than our old window managers, since the compositing and window moving
> etc all occurs on the card, not through the CPU - so that could
> actually be a "lighter weight" option for a modern pc...

Those are simply rumors. People saying so have never used a tiling
window manager, how could they determine the faster way to manage
windows? Those GPU-accelerated softwares are better than others, if you
want beautiful corners, transparency, fire effects and other useless (
well, those can be useful if you need to sell some crap to someone else,
or to prove that your favorite distro is far more advanced in eye-candy
stuff than windows ) stuff, but for real use, do you need those
"features" ?

>
> If you actually wanted to transition to xterm, and listed a clear and
> concise set of problems you experience trying to use it, I and others
> would be happy.
>
> Sorry, I mean, happy to provide solutions :)
>
> Good luck,
> Zenaan


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[berenge...@neutralite.org]

Le 25.01.2014 03:17, tom arnall a écrit :
> I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following purposes.
>
>
> System:
>
> Dell latitude D630
> dual core
> 2g memory
>
>
> most used applications:
>
> icewm
> gnome-terminal
> vim
> perl
> chrome browser
> transmission
>
>
> Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of
> it.
>
> Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

We can not reply to your question, because it is incomplete.

All distros make a choice between:
* time the user have to spend to install, configure and maintain,
* user's knowledge,
* freshness of packages ( with problems of too recent or too old
softwares, indeed )
* effective speed of the system.

Debian is interesting, and maybe the best choice for my needs, because
it allows me to tinker a lot to have a minimal system. Install it
without any option at first, then on your first run, just use aptitude,
disable "automatically install recommended softwares" and select the
tools you need one by one.
If you wants it on your desktop, for simple uses which are not
critical, testing is very good: less outdated than stable, and I have
seen less breakages than in unstable, and those breakages are probably
due to the fact I am a dependency nazi. I send every package I do not
know why they are on my system in the void, which can happen to break
features I need, but I have seen lot of powerful computers running so
slowly compared to my netbook...
Also, if you want speed, forget about classic DEs: unity, gnome, kde
are not built for speed, they are built to be easy to use. You want
speed? You have to take time to discover exactly which features you
need, and to select softwares which does not implement features you do
not need.
My personal choices:
opera ( web browsing ), lxterminal, i3-wm ( if you are a keyboard lover
and have more than one screen - or only small ones - then you *need* it
) , mpd, mpc, ncmpcpp, galculator, vim, transmission, skype, mumble,
clang, git, meld, dia and ssh, aptitude, lilo, and some games. Probably
some other minor tools, too, for programming.
This selection implied lot of time spent into removing bloated stuff
like file explorers, in testing ( I spent the most time testing web
browsers, text editors, terminal emulators and window managers ).
Using a mix between stable and testing on my desktop (I need at least a
computer to be usable everytime ), and unstable/experimental on my
netbook.

If you have plenty of time and knowledge, you can try LFS ( linux from
scratch ) or gentoo. But since you come from Ubuntu, I very doubt that
it can be recommended to you. Those distros* needs a deep knowledge of
internals of your computer. They'll require you to compile everything**
so you will be able to select the exact optimization options you want
and the precise instruction set of your processor.
You will earn some CPU cycles ( I *did not* said that this will be
measurable )... but will spend hours to get them. Those options are the
fastest distros you could have. It will also give you the really last
version of softwares, since it is built from source directly, so you can
even choose to build from development repositories.
There are some other source distros around: source mage, sorcerer,
funtoo...

Then, you have some distros like archlinux, which needs a little less
knowledge, but still lot of time. Arch is a rolling release distro, with
the problems it gives: when you update your system, you *have to* read
the notes, or it can break everything. Some will say I troll, and some
others will give you real stories about such failures.
AFAIK, fedora needs far less time and is more stable, but since I was
never really interested by it, I can not give you any opinion about it (
I have at least tried to install each other I speak about here ).

And you came from Ubuntu, which, with some others like mint, is only
built to give an easy to use system, with almost no administration
tasks. You can not have something tailored for your needs with such
mind, but you won't have any brain damage to choose between alternatives
for your software, or by trying to configure them.
On this list, we probably have ours brains a little damaged, especially
people which used Debian in it's first days ;) freedom can hurt, you
know.

So, really, you did not asked your question correctly.
How many time do you have?
How many knowledge do you have?
Do you need shiny, very recent softwares?
Do you prefer stable stuff or fast ones?

To conclude this long mail, I will give you a link:
http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php

This is a website which will asks you the same questions as me, plus
some others, and which will give you some hint about what distro could
be the good one for your needs. Just note that it is not really a very
recent test, and it have been made by humans and so results contains
opinions.
You can also use distrowatch to read a little about the distros it will
advice you to use, and/or wikipedia articles about them.
This way, you will have an idea of the picture, and may be able to have
a not too bad choice.

*: note that LFS is not a real distro, but a book about how to build
your own distro
**: I have read that, for gentoo, there are now some packages with
binaries, so not really everything...

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[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 2014-01-24 at 18:17 -0800, tom arnall wrote:
> I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following purposes.
>
>
> System:
>
> Dell latitude D630
> dual core
> 2g memory
>
>
> most used applications:
>
> icewm
> gnome-terminal
> vim
> perl
> chrome browser
> transmission
>
>
> Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of it.
>
> Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Differences for speed could exist, e.g. if a distros compile for
different architectures or do use different flags for e.g. the math or
if they use different settings. However, if everything is ok all distros
more or less provide the same performance.

What does slow down your machine using Ubuntu? No culprit shown by the
command "top"?

JFTR startup using upstart or systemd is faster than using init scripts.

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[Richard Owlett]

tom arnall wrote:
> I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following purposes.
>
>
> System:
>
> Dell latitude D630
> dual core
> 2g memory
>
>
> most used applications:
>
> icewm
> gnome-terminal
> vim
> perl
> chrome browser
> transmission
>
>
> Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of it.
>
> Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
>
>

What is your metric for speed?
What are the two or three most annoyingly slow operations?

What purpose the the computer fulfill?
[You listed software you use. But is that collection optimal?]

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[Klaus Jantzen]

Just for the fun of it I took the test.
As 'graphical installer' was one of my requirements, Debian was not
recommended. Reason: It does not have a graphical installer ?!?!?!

> You can also use distrowatch to read a little about the distros it will
> advice you to use, and/or wikipedia articles about them.
> This way, you will have an idea of the picture, and may be able to have
> a not too bad choice.
>
> *: note that LFS is not a real distro, but a book about how to build
> your own distro
> **: I have read that, for gentoo, there are now some packages with
> binaries, so not really everything...
>
>


--

K.D.J.

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[Patrick Bartek]

On Fri, 24 Jan 2014, tom arnall wrote:

> I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following purposes.
>
>
> System:
>
> Dell latitude D630
> dual core
> 2g memory
>
>
> most used applications:
>
> icewm
> gnome-terminal
> vim
> perl
> chrome browser
> transmission
>
>
> Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of
> it.
>
> Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

First, add more RAM
Eliminate unneeded background processes
Use a lightweight desktop like LXDE or XFCE; or
Use only a lightweight window manager
Switch to a distro designed for old hardware like AntiX; or
Install a "base" terminal system, add only the components you need

B

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[sp113438]

On Fri, 24 Jan 2014 18:17:34 -0800
tom arnall <klor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following purposes.
>
>

Did you try the tinycore distribution?

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[berenge...@neutralite.org]

Le 25.01.2014 14:08, Klaus Jantzen a écrit :
>> To conclude this long mail, I will give you a link:
>> http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php
>>
>> This is a website which will asks you the same questions as me, plus
>> some others, and which will give you some hint about what distro
>> could
>> be the good one for your needs. Just note that it is not really a
>> very
>> recent test, and it have been made by humans and so results contains
>> opinions.
>
> Just for the fun of it I took the test.
> As 'graphical installer' was one of my requirements, Debian was not
> recommended. Reason: It does not have a graphical installer ?!?!?!

As I said, it's not a recent test. But still, it asks questions which
helps to know what you wants.
Also, I just noted that there is some mail address in case someone find
errors ( and not recommending Debian because of this is obviously an
error ).

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[Weaver]

On Sat, January 25, 2014 9:17 am, Patrick Bartek wrote:
> On Fri, 24 Jan 2014, tom arnall wrote:
>
>> I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following purposes.
>>
>>
>> System:
>>
>> Dell latitude D630
>> dual core
>> 2g memory
>>
>>
>> most used applications:
>>
>> icewm
>> gnome-terminal
>> vim
>> perl
>> chrome browser
>> transmission
>>
>>
>> Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of
>> it.
>>
>> Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
>
> First, add more RAM
> Eliminate unneeded background processes
> Use a lightweight desktop like LXDE or XFCE; or
> Use only a lightweight window manager
> Switch to a distro designed for old hardware like AntiX; or
> Install a "base" terminal system, add only the components you need

Yes, a D630 will carry double that RAM factor and, if it's a speed boost
you are after that's the way to effect it with what you have now. After
that, if it is so vital that you have your friends round for speed
competitions, install Slackware if you can handle it, or VectorLinux if
you can't. The one is based on the other and both are notably quick.
Cheers!

Weaver


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[Mihamina RKTMB]

On 01/25/2014 05:17 AM, tom arnall wrote:
> Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of it.
> Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

What actions are slow?
- boot time?
- window switch?
- application launch?
- web page rendering?

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[Jeff Bauer]

> On 01/25/2014 05:17 AM, tom arnall wrote:
>> Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of it.
>> Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

As the automotive mechanic said to the (pick your least favorite
make/model car) owner:

"I'd suggest you jack up the gas cap and put a new car under it."

Consider LFS, Gentoo, Arch, or Slackware.

Jeff

P.S. You do realize that this is the Debian user list and not the Ubuntu
user list, don't you? ;)

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[Garry]

> On Jan 27, 2014, at 6:09 AM, "Jeff Bauer" <alie...@charter.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>>> On 01/25/2014 05:17 AM, tom arnall wrote:
>>> Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of it.
>>> Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

I had similar issues and that's one of the reasons why I switched to Debian a few years ago.

> As the automotive mechanic said to the (pick your least favorite make/model car) owner:
>
> "I'd suggest you jack up the gas cap and put a new car under it."
>
> Consider LFS, Gentoo, Arch, or Slackware.
>
> Jeff
>
> P.S. You do realize that this is the Debian user list and not the Ubuntu user list, don't you? ;)
>

Come on now. That's a moment to win souls over. ;)

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>
>
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[Pete Orrall]

On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 9:17 PM, tom arnall <klor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following purposes.

<snip>

> Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of it.
>
> Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

I run Debian Wheezy with a stock kernel on my aging Toshiba Tecra A8.
It has a 1.7GHz Core Duo with 2GB of RAM. With xfce performance is
acceptable, ie much better than heavy-weight DEs like KDE or GNOME but
still leaves some room for improvement. Instead, I use openbox and
there is a noticeable improvement in speed and resource usage. It
took me a little while to adjust to such a minimal environment
especially when coming from GNOME or even xfce but now I much prefer
it, even on faster systems.

Hope this helps.

--
Pete Orrall
pe...@cs1x.com
www.peteorrall.com
"If there isn't a way, I'll make one."

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[Patrick Bartek]

On Mon, 27 Jan 2014, Pete Orrall wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 9:17 PM, tom arnall <klor...@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following
> > purposes.
> <snip>
> > Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of
> > it.
> >
> > Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
>
> I run Debian Wheezy with a stock kernel on my aging Toshiba Tecra A8.
> It has a 1.7GHz Core Duo with 2GB of RAM. With xfce performance is
> acceptable, ie much better than heavy-weight DEs like KDE or GNOME but
> still leaves some room for improvement. Instead, I use openbox and
> there is a noticeable improvement in speed and resource usage. It
> took me a little while to adjust to such a minimal environment
> especially when coming from GNOME or even xfce but now I much prefer
> it, even on faster systems.

I'll trump that ;-)

EeePC 900 (900MHz Celeron M, 1GB RAM, 4GB & 16GB drives): Wheezy/LXDE
32-bit, standard install, Laptop option, ext2 filesystem. Replaced
Eeebuntu 3.0 that I put on it 3 or 4 years ago. Absolutely no install
problems. Runs great. Better than Eeebuntu: seems smoother, snappier.
Certainly is more contemporary.

B

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[Andrei POPESCU]

On Vi, 24 ian 14, 21:21:03, tom arnall wrote:
>
> how does icewm compare to xfce and lxde?

I've used IceWM in the past and would recommend LXDE to replace it. It
adds more features without sacrificing much speed.

Kind regards,
Andrei
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[Andrei POPESCU]

I think the point was about use of computer resources, not about the
ways humans interact with the window manager, which is very subjective.

[berenge...@neutralite.org]

Le 27.01.2014 18:09, Andrei POPESCU a écrit :
> On Sb, 25 ian 14, 11:16:45, berenge...@neutralite.org wrote:
>> Le 25.01.2014 07:02, Zenaan Harkness a écrit :
>>
>> >I hear rumours that with a modern PeeCee with fast graphics card,
>> >running a compositing "3D" window manager can be higher performance
>> >than our old window managers, since the compositing and window
>> moving
>> >etc all occurs on the card, not through the CPU - so that could
>> >actually be a "lighter weight" option for a modern pc...
>>
>> Those are simply rumors. People saying so have never used a tiling
>> window manager, how could they determine the faster way to manage
>> windows? Those GPU-accelerated softwares are better than others, if
>> you want beautiful corners, transparency, fire effects and other
>> useless ( well, those can be useful if you need to sell some crap to
>> someone else, or to prove that your favorite distro is far more
>> advanced in eye-candy stuff than windows ) stuff, but for real use,
>> do you need those "features" ?
>
> I think the point was about use of computer resources, not about the
> ways humans interact with the window manager, which is very
> subjective.
>
> Kind regards,
> Andrei

If you not implement transparency ( this one is simply an example ), it
will be faster than if you implement it, GPU accelerated or not, in my
opinion.

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[tom arnall]

debian over ubuntu hands down for speed and for efficient resources
utilization. it's a harder install, but for me well worth the extra
work.

On 1/24/14, tom arnall <klor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following purposes.
>
>

> System:
>
> Dell latitude D630
> dual core
> 2g memory
>
>
> most used applications:
>
> icewm
> gnome-terminal
> vim
> perl
> chrome browser
> transmission
>
>

> Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of it.
>
> Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.
>

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[Tony Baldwin]

On Wed, May 28, 2014 at 02:24:32PM -0700, tom arnall wrote:
> debian over ubuntu hands down for speed and for efficient resources
> utilization. it's a harder install, but for me well worth the extra
> work.
>
> On 1/24/14, tom arnall <klor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following purposes.
> >
> >
> > System:
> >
> > Dell latitude D630
> > dual core
> > 2g memory
> >
> >
> > most used applications:
> >
> > icewm
> > gnome-terminal
> > vim
> > perl
> > chrome browser
> > transmission
> >
> >
> > Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of it.
> >
> > Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Any distro you strip down to basics will be faster.
It depends on what you run on it.
I have Debian with openbox, no DE, and it flies at warp speed
(esp. on my desktop, 4x2.8ghz with 16gb ram), but also on an old Dell d420
laptop I got used on ebay (only 750mhz with 1.5gb ram).
But any distro you load up with bloat (gnome, kde, desktop animations
crap), is going to get bogged down in comparison.
Looks like you're running a light system, but if you installed default
ubuntu then just added icewm, you might have extra, unnecessary garbage
running underneath.
Try Debian with netinstall and only install what you want/need.
If you already did similar with the ubuntu, I'm not sure how much of a
difference you will see. I haven't used Ubuntu since Dapper Drake.
jwm, openbox, wmii, tritium, etc., are window managers that might reduce
your load.

Tony

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art, music, software by me, tony
3F330C6E

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Wed, 2014-05-28 at 20:15 -0400, Tony Baldwin wrote:
> jwm, openbox, wmii, tritium, etc., are window managers that might reduce
> your load.

Correct, however, it doesn't matter if you run JWM or KDE4, when just
using a browser, on an averaged dual-core machine. There won't be
noticeable performance differences. I've got a Debian install on such a
dual-core machine with KDE4 and JWM installed.

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[Ralf Mardorf]

On Wed, 2014-05-28 at 14:24 -0700, tom arnall wrote:
> debian over ubuntu hands down for speed and for efficient resources
> utilization. it's a harder install, but for me well worth the extra
> work.

This claim is nonsense. Upstart likely will shorten the startup for
Ubuntu, even while it might start tons more unneeded services, than
Debian does, assumed your Debian does use SysVinit. 32-bit packages are
better optimized to modern CPUs by Ubuntu, than Debian packages.

> On 1/24/14, tom arnall <klor...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I am looking for the fastest Linux distro for the following purposes.
> >
> >
> > System:
> >
> > Dell latitude D630
> > dual core
> > 2g memory
> >
> >
> > most used applications:
> >
> > icewm
> > gnome-terminal
> > vim
> > perl
> > chrome browser
> > transmission
> >
> >
> > Currently I am running ubuntu 12.04. I am unhappy with the speed of it.
> >
> > Any info/suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

Shortest startup? Best graphic performance? IOW fastest what? You're
using apps that aren't critical regarding to performance and you run
those apps on a lightweight WM, so I wonder what performance you want
improve.

There's no more or less fast distro. Linux is the kernel and even a
distro specific patch unlikely has got noticeable impact to performance
for your setup. Sure, Ubuntu by default likely starts tons of unneeded
services, while Arch doesn't start any service, but a user could set up
Ubuntu, Debian, Suse, Arch or any other distro the same way.

What performance do you want to increase? I suspect you want to know
what distro's default install will provide the best performance for the
task/s you didn't mention.

An example:

-If I use Debian with a vanilla kernel, then the GUI performance is
good, but the audio performance is bad.

-If I use Debian with a real-time patched kernel, then the GUI
performance is bad, but the audio performance is good (because it's
wanted this way ;).

IOW sometimes you simply need to take care about priorities and when not
using real-time, you also could care for nice values.

If you e.g. use PAM:

$ cat /etc/security/limits.conf
# [snip]
# - priority - the priority to run user process with
# [snip]
# - nice - max nice priority allowed to raise to values: [-20, 19]
# [snip]

Regards,
Ralf

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[Raffaele Morelli]

2014-05-29 6:27 GMT+02:00 Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net>:

On Wed, 2014-05-28 at 20:15 -0400, Tony Baldwin wrote:
> jwm, openbox, wmii, tritium, etc., are window managers that might reduce
> your load.

Correct, however, it doesn't matter if you run JWM or KDE4, when just
using a browser, on an averaged dual-core machine. There won't be
noticeable performance differences. I've got a Debian install on such a
dual-core machine with KDE4 and JWM installed.

Don't you spread confusion, a standard kde or gnome install "sucks" memory because of that, Awesome or JWM they run with a ridicoulus memory usage, so DE matters a lot on systems with 2gb of memory.

If you have daemons/services running in the background it matters, everything matters on machines of that kind if you don't need (ssh, cups, cron, ntp, at, syslog, exim, etc etc...) 

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Thu, 2014-05-29 at 06:43 +0200, Raffaele Morelli wrote:
> 2014-05-29 6:27 GMT+02:00 Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net>:
> On Wed, 2014-05-28 at 20:15 -0400, Tony Baldwin wrote:
> > jwm, openbox, wmii, tritium, etc., are window managers that might
> > reduce your load.
>
>
> Correct, however, it doesn't matter if you run JWM or KDE4, when just
> using a browser, on an averaged dual-core machine. There won't be
> noticeable performance differences. I've got a Debian install on such
> a dual-core machine with KDE4 and JWM installed.
>
>
> Don't you spread confusion, a standard kde or gnome install "sucks"
> memory because of that,

Because of what does it sucks memory? It sucks (memory) if somebody
claims something that isn't true by an email sent as HTML + plain text.

There's no need to sent the same text in one mail two times, especially
when HTML is frowned upon. And now the bomb drops ...

> Awesome or JWM they run with a ridicoulus memory usage, so DE matters
> a lot on systems with 2gb of memory.
>
>
>
> If you have daemons/services running in the background it matters,
> everything matters on machines of that kind if you don't need (ssh,
> cups, cron, ntp, at, syslog, exim, etc etc...)

... there's also no need to start services that are unneeded and there's
no need to use KDE4 with desktop effects. You are free to run KDE4
without 3D or sound effects, you are free to use any DE without services
that upstream or distro maintainers make a default.

2GB on a dual-core and you won't see a difference in performance when
running vim in gnome-terminal, no matter if you run it on KDE4 or
JWM.

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[Raffaele Morelli]

2014-05-29 7:08 GMT+02:00 Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net>:

On Thu, 2014-05-29 at 06:43 +0200, Raffaele Morelli wrote:
> 2014-05-29 6:27 GMT+02:00 Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net>:
> On Wed, 2014-05-28 at 20:15 -0400, Tony Baldwin wrote:
> > jwm, openbox, wmii, tritium, etc., are window managers that might
> > reduce your load.
>
>
> Correct, however, it doesn't matter if you run JWM or KDE4, when just
> using a browser, on an averaged dual-core machine. There won't be
> noticeable performance differences. I've got a Debian install on such
> a dual-core machine with KDE4 and JWM installed.
>
>
> Don't you spread confusion, a standard kde or gnome install "sucks"
> memory because of that,

because of that [standard install].

 

Because of what does it sucks memory? It sucks (memory) if somebody
claims something that isn't true by an email sent as HTML + plain text.

There's no need to sent the same text in one mail two times, especially
when HTML is frowned upon. And now the bomb drops ...

Ralf, you are well known for your neverending-aka-lord-of-the-ring-history-threads so I won't feed you.

/r

[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 28 May 2014 14:24:32 -0700
tom arnall <klor...@gmail.com> wrote:

> debian over ubuntu hands down for speed and for efficient resources
> utilization. it's a harder install, but for me well worth the extra
> work.

Also, Debian is more configurable with Vim, doesn't require you to
install a GUI, and has less whacko dependencies (Plymouth, anyone?).
With Debian, if you want to boot to CLI and run startx, by George,
you're free to do that.

When I have an extremely RAM starved computer, I put Debian on it every
time. CLI Network install works with almost no RAM, and granular
choices of things to install guarantees I'll have a small system.

The one problem I've had with Debian is on new notebook computers
(UEFI, GPF, Secure Boot etc) on which I want to keep the original
Windows and dual-boot. With Ubuntu, it's almost impossible to screw
this up. With Debian, I've screwed it up twice.

SteveT

Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance

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[Steve Litt]

On Wed, 28 May 2014 20:15:32 -0400
Tony Baldwin <to...@tonybaldwin.info> wrote:

> Any distro you strip down to basics will be faster.
> It depends on what you run on it.
> I have Debian with openbox, no DE, and it flies at warp speed
> (esp. on my desktop, 4x2.8ghz with 16gb ram), but also on an old Dell
> d420 laptop I got used on ebay (only 750mhz with 1.5gb ram).

Tony, do you know of any documentation or other evidence of how
Openbox, Xfce, LXDE, IceWM, and fvwm2 stack up against each other as
far as "lightness"? My subjective guess would be fvwm2 is the
"lightest", but I don't enjoy using it and save it for those 128MB and
256MB RAM computers we all sometimes encounter. I've been under the
impression that IceWM hasn't been maintained for some time, but that
could be just a rumor. LXDE has an (all other things being equal) slow
mouse that's disturbing, and a recent encounter tells me LXDE isn't as
lightweight as everyone thinks, although it's incredibly stable. I'm
madly in love with Xfce and Openbox and keep switching between them,
and would love to know if one's "lighter" than the other.

By the way, no matter what DE/WM I'm using, I *always* install Xfce
just to get xfburn, xfce4-appfinder, and a few other priceless apps. I
usually install LXDE to get lxrandr.

We all have subjective opinions, but does anyone know of objective
information about the "lightness" of these various interfaces?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance

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[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 2:54 AM, Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> When I have an extremely RAM starved computer, I put Debian on it every
> time. CLI Network install works with almost no RAM, and granular
> choices of things to install guarantees I'll have a small system.

How RAM-starved can you put Debian on, without faffing around too much
to go minimal? I have a video-playing laptop (drives a TV via S-Video)
with 1.5GB RAM. Granted, I couldn't go CLI only there, but in the end,
rather than trying to manually cut Debian down to fit inside that RAM
while still leaving enough to play videos (including scaling them up
or down to fit the screen), I ended up installing AntiX, which seems
to have done all the work for me already. It's Debian-derived, so all
my knowledge of Debian still applies, and it's been running happily
for the month since I installed it.

Would be interested to know if anyone's run a recent Debian, with a
GUI, in less memory than that. Which WM and DE did you use?

ChrisA

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[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 29 May 2014 06:27:50 +0200
Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net> wrote:

> On Wed, 2014-05-28 at 20:15 -0400, Tony Baldwin wrote:
> > jwm, openbox, wmii, tritium, etc., are window managers that might
> > reduce your load.
>
> Correct, however, it doesn't matter if you run JWM or KDE4, when just
> using a browser, on an averaged dual-core machine. There won't be
> noticeable performance differences. I've got a Debian install on such
> a dual-core machine with KDE4 and JWM installed.

In theory, the preceding paragraph might be correct, but
in practice, counterexamples abound. KDE spawned dbus-daemon processes
often hold 97% of a core hostage. Gigabyte-sized soprano-virtuoso.db
files. Neopmuk and Akonadi. All sorts of other problems.

http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/201202/201202.htm

I don't talk about it much on this mailing list, but
Troubleshooters.Com has a policy against putting any KDE library or
anything depending on a KDE library on any of our computers. Back at my
home LUG, one of our smartest guys, a guy who changes his DE every
couple months to get the most perfect interface, started using KDE,
telling me I was unduly prejudiced against KDE. 3 months later, he tore
KDE off his system and told me I'd been right all along.

I know there are distros that do KDE right, without problems. But my
stance is that, if using a given user interface requires me to install
a specific distro, I won't use that interface.

SteveT

Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance

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[Steve Litt]

On Fri, 30 May 2014 03:00:21 +1000
Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 2:54 AM, Steve Litt
> <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> > When I have an extremely RAM starved computer, I put Debian on it
> > every time. CLI Network install works with almost no RAM, and
> > granular choices of things to install guarantees I'll have a small
> > system.
>
> How RAM-starved can you put Debian on, without faffing around too much
> to go minimal?

The least RAM machine I have available is 128MB. Debian CLI installs
and runs fairly well on it. Debian + X + fvwm2 runs on it, but you
wouldn't want to do any actual work on it. Upgrading it to 256MB with
Debian + X + fvwm2 makes a decent machine for somebody who does nothing
but web browsing without video and email. This information is about 6
months to a year old, and I think it involved a Debian 7.X OS.

> I have a video-playing laptop (drives a TV via S-Video)
> with 1.5GB RAM. Granted, I couldn't go CLI only there, but in the end,
> rather than trying to manually cut Debian down to fit inside that RAM
> while still leaving enough to play videos (including scaling them up
> or down to fit the screen),

That's a much bigger challenge than what I was doing.

> I ended up installing AntiX, which seems
> to have done all the work for me already. It's Debian-derived, so all
> my knowledge of Debian still applies, and it's been running happily
> for the month since I installed it.

Thanks for the tip on AntiX. I'll try that the next time I experiment.

>
> Would be interested to know if anyone's run a recent Debian, with a
> GUI, in less memory than that. Which WM and DE did you use?

Based on way too little experimentation (in other words, take this as
my subjective opinion), if it can't run with fvwm2, it's not going to
run with anything that imparts windows to applications. Although one of
the smartest guys in our LUG uses fvwm (predecssor to fvwm2) and loves
it, fvwm and fvwm2 are very hands-on, requiring extensive config,
aren't particularly good for the person with less than 20/20 vision. If
fvwm2 works, try Openbox: That's actually useful without working hard to
interact with it.

SteveT

Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance

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[Ralf Mardorf]

On Thu, 29 May 2014 19:04:13 +0200, Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com>
wrote:

> Tony, do you know of any documentation or other evidence of how
> Openbox, Xfce, LXDE, IceWM, and fvwm2 stack up against each other as
> far as "lightness"?

What's your definition of lightness?

WM/DE Memory (MB):
https://l3net.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/cmp-all4.png

What ever versions of those WMs and DEs are compared, it's irrelevant.

I experience JWM on Debian and Arch as the environment that fit good to my
needs. Most important for me are stability and that nothing annoys me, so
for my taste I for example don't want GVFS and pulseaudio. I want to use
the mouse, I dislike too many shortcuts.

However, IMO using less RAM usage by the WM/DE is relatively unimportant,
it anyway depends to the used applications. Does a lightweight app support
the functionality I need? For those who care (too) much about RAM,
consider to thin out the kernel too.

Regarding to performance, nowadays, when using modern computers, it's much
more important to get rid of shared interrupts. Consider to unbind USB
ports that share interrupts with other hardware, consider to mount some
cards to another PCI(e) slot, than the one they use now etc., assumed
there are shared interrupts.

Linux does handle RAM very smart, to get a faster startup or a faster
performance you need to care much more about other issues, than you should
care about RAM usage.

JFTR your really oldish PCs likely consumes more power, than a decent
energy saving dual-core does, so if you want to save the environment or to
save money, a relatively new computer could be appropriated.

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[Chris Angelico]

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 3:36 AM, Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> On Fri, 30 May 2014 03:00:21 +1000
> Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 2:54 AM, Steve Litt
>> <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
>> > When I have an extremely RAM starved computer, I put Debian on it
>> > every time. CLI Network install works with almost no RAM, and
>> > granular choices of things to install guarantees I'll have a small
>> > system.
>>
>> How RAM-starved can you put Debian on, without faffing around too much
>> to go minimal?
>
> The least RAM machine I have available is 128MB. Debian CLI installs
> and runs fairly well on it. Debian + X + fvwm2 runs on it, but you
> wouldn't want to do any actual work on it. Upgrading it to 256MB with
> Debian + X + fvwm2 makes a decent machine for somebody who does nothing
> but web browsing without video and email. This information is about 6
> months to a year old, and I think it involved a Debian 7.X OS.

Yeah, I wouldn't want to run anything graphical with less main memory
than a cheap on-board video card offers VRAM :) Good to know that
256MB is viable for basic work, but I'm really glad I'm not trying to
run VLC in 256MB.

>> I have a video-playing laptop (drives a TV via S-Video)
>> with 1.5GB RAM. Granted, I couldn't go CLI only there, but in the end,
>> rather than trying to manually cut Debian down to fit inside that RAM
>> while still leaving enough to play videos (including scaling them up
>> or down to fit the screen),
>
> That's a much bigger challenge than what I was doing.

It sure is. Without any hardware changes, I've made it so we can watch
much higher-bitrate movies on the new Yosemite than we could on the
old one, running Windows XP (and still VLC). But there's still a
limit, and we get glitchy playback on even 720p movies sometimes. I'm
guessing something's having to scale them down to the resolution of
S-Video, and either the RAM or the CPU (single core Pentium M 1600MHz)
is getting bottlenecked at that. (Interestingly, one of my original
fears has turned out to be completely unfounded: the commodity hard
drive in the disk server is easily capable of handling several
concurrent playbacks without anyone getting stuck.)

It seems that AntiX gave me IceWM 1.3.7, which is definitely one of
the lighter options. Whether simply installing IceWM on a vanilla
Debian system would have been sufficient or not, I don't know, which
is why I'm happy to let someone else make those decisions :)

ChrisA

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[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 29 May 2014 19:32:01 +0200
"Ralf Mardorf" <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net> wrote:

> On Thu, 29 May 2014 19:04:13 +0200, Steve Litt
> <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> > Tony, do you know of any documentation or other evidence of how
> > Openbox, Xfce, LXDE, IceWM, and fvwm2 stack up against each other as
> > far as "lightness"?
>
> What's your definition of lightness?
>
> WM/DE Memory (MB):
> https://l3net.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/cmp-all4.png

Thanks Ralf,

This is exactly the type of information I was looking for. The guy
actually did tests to determine how much RAM they used. The actual
article, for anyone wanting to read it, is here:

http://l3net.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/a-memory-comparison-of-light-linux-desktops-part-3/#more-2638

The article confirmed my suspicion that Unity is not only confusing,
but it's a bloated pig. I was surprised that OpenBox and WindowMaker
(which I've never been able to operate) use less memory than fvwm.

One more thing I've discovered: Whatever window manager you're using,
if you can assign keyboard shortcuts to application menu, running app
list (by workspace), navigate workspaces, close window, and arbitrary
executables, then, after a little practice, in most cases it becomes
easy to get along without panels and start-menu buttons.

Also, in interfaces requiring you to click on blank desktop to get app
menu and app list, be sure there's a way to leave a small portion of
the desktop blank at all times. Openbox's margins do this for you.

Thanks for the objective data on WMs.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance

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[Andrei POPESCU]

On Jo, 29 mai 14, 13:04:13, Steve Litt wrote:
> LXDE has an (all other things being equal) slow mouse that's
> disturbing,

Mouse speed can be adjusted.

> and a recent encounter tells me LXDE isn't as lightweight as everyone

> thinks.

If there's a lighter weight DE I'd like to know.

[Gour]

Andrei POPESCU <andreim...@gmail.com> writes:

> If there's a lighter weight DE I'd like to know.

http://i3wm.org/


Sincerely,
Gour

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[Andrei POPESCU]

On Vi, 30 mai 14, 03:00:21, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 2:54 AM, Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> > When I have an extremely RAM starved computer, I put Debian on it every
> > time. CLI Network install works with almost no RAM, and granular
> > choices of things to install guarantees I'll have a small system.
>
> How RAM-starved can you put Debian on, without faffing around too much
> to go minimal? I have a video-playing laptop (drives a TV via S-Video)
> with 1.5GB RAM.

That's plenty.

> Granted, I couldn't go CLI only there, but in the end,
> rather than trying to manually cut Debian down to fit inside that RAM
> while still leaving enough to play videos (including scaling them up
> or down to fit the screen),

Specs would be nice, but I think the processor and/or video card is
doing all the heavy lifting in such a case. Having dedicated video RAM
is usually a plus, but I had something like this running on a PIII 500
MHz with 768 MB RAM and a 512 MB Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 (running only
with OpenBox).

I replaced it with a Raspberry Pi (512 MB RAM) that can handle 1080p
videos, uses 3,5 W (not including the external drive), is completely
silent (no fans) and cost me thirty-something euros including shipping
and a box (but no SD card and no power source).

> I ended up installing AntiX, which seems
> to have done all the work for me already. It's Debian-derived, so all
> my knowledge of Debian still applies, and it's been running happily
> for the month since I installed it.
>
> Would be interested to know if anyone's run a recent Debian, with a
> GUI, in less memory than that. Which WM and DE did you use?

I've just recently replaced Windows XP on a 512 MB RAM laptop with
stable (default LXDE install, minimal adjustments). The owner was very
pleased with the feel of the new system and I can attest it felt usable
to me as well. Youtube videos seemed to work fine.

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Thu, 2014-05-29 at 22:26 +0200, Gour wrote:
> Andrei POPESCU <andreim...@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > If there's a lighter weight DE I'd like to know.
>
> http://i3wm.org/

A tiling WM isn't a DE.

Regarding to this https://l3net.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/cmp-all4.png
comparing MB, JWM is as lightweight as i3, but the WM already comes with
a panel, multiple desktops, a Window behaviour similar to LXDE's and
Xfce's.

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[Joe]

On Fri, 30 May 2014 03:00:21 +1000
Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 2:54 AM, Steve Litt
> <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> > When I have an extremely RAM starved computer, I put Debian on it
> > every time. CLI Network install works with almost no RAM, and
> > granular choices of things to install guarantees I'll have a small
> > system.
>
> How RAM-starved can you put Debian on, without faffing around too much
> to go minimal? I have a video-playing laptop (drives a TV via S-Video)
> with 1.5GB RAM. Granted, I couldn't go CLI only there, but in the end,
> rather than trying to manually cut Debian down to fit inside that RAM
> while still leaving enough to play videos (including scaling them up
> or down to fit the screen), I ended up installing AntiX, which seems
> to have done all the work for me already. It's Debian-derived, so all
> my knowledge of Debian still applies, and it's been running happily
> for the month since I installed it.
>
> Would be interested to know if anyone's run a recent Debian, with a
> GUI, in less memory than that. Which WM and DE did you use?
>

Here's what you can do with half a gig on an ARM:

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Raspberry_Pi
http://www.raspbmc.com/about/

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[Gour]

Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net> writes:

> A tiling WM isn't a DE.

Can you tell me what is missing?

It has status bar, systray, launcher, workspaces...ability to launch
specific app in a specific workspace. There is upcoming feature to save
one's layout.


Sincerely,
Gour

--
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[Ralf Mardorf]

On Thu, 2014-05-29 at 23:07 +0200, Gour wrote:

> Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net> writes:
>
> > A tiling WM isn't a DE.
>
> Can you tell me what is missing?
>
> It has status bar, systray, launcher, workspaces...ability to launch
> specific app in a specific workspace. There is upcoming feature to save
> one's layout.

If so, then still resizing and moving windows by the mouse is missing,
assumed even this isn't missing, then it's not a tiling WM anymore.

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[Tony Baldwin]

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 03:00:21AM +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:
> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 2:54 AM, Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> > When I have an extremely RAM starved computer, I put Debian on it every
> > time. CLI Network install works with almost no RAM, and granular
> > choices of things to install guarantees I'll have a small system.
>
> How RAM-starved can you put Debian on, without faffing around too much
> to go minimal? I have a video-playing laptop (drives a TV via S-Video)
> with 1.5GB RAM. Granted, I couldn't go CLI only there, but in the end,
> rather than trying to manually cut Debian down to fit inside that RAM
> while still leaving enough to play videos (including scaling them up
> or down to fit the screen), I ended up installing AntiX, which seems
> to have done all the work for me already. It's Debian-derived, so all
> my knowledge of Debian still applies, and it's been running happily
> for the month since I installed it.
>
> Would be interested to know if anyone's run a recent Debian, with a
> GUI, in less memory than that. Which WM and DE did you use?

As mentioned in my previous post in this thread,
I have an old Dell d420 I got off ebay for like $100 running Wheezy with
openbox, no DE, it's only 750mhz with 1.5gb ram.
Plays videos fine (youtube, in a browser, even).
I have a bunch of movies on a server here in my office (not publicly
available), and watch them from said laptop sometimes.

tony

[Tony Baldwin]

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 10:26:56PM +0200, Gour wrote:
> Andrei POPESCU <andreim...@gmail.com> writes:
>
> > If there's a lighter weight DE I'd like to know.
>
> http://i3wm.org/

Looks kind of like ion3, which I LOVED and used until Tuomo went to the
darkside.
Ion3 was pure genius, IMHO.
We have Tritium http://tritium.sourceforge.net/ in Debian,
which behaves a lot like ion3, but is written in python, and is very
light.
I like wmii for tiling wm's too,
however, the question was about a DE, not a WM.
DE = desktop environment, this includes a WM, and generally a bunch of
integrated packages/software that go with it and run a lot of stuff in
the background.
WM = simply a window manager.
I generally use just a WM, primarily openbox, but I have used Ion3,
wmii, dwm, tritium, and others. (of these, openbox is the only one that
isn't a "tiling wm").

I installed LXDE on my Mom's computer (when I fixed her crappy Win2k
machine for the last time, by installing Debian, about 4 years ago, since
which she's never had single computer problem, whereas I was constantly
having to mess with that win2k installation, and used to spend visits
fixing the computer. Now I spend them drinking tea and watching Game of
Thrones with Mom. Much better!)

tony

[Steve Litt]

On Thu, 29 May 2014 23:02:06 +0300
Andrei POPESCU <andreim...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Jo, 29 mai 14, 13:04:13, Steve Litt wrote:
> > LXDE has an (all other things being equal) slow mouse that's
> > disturbing,
>
> Mouse speed can be adjusted.

How? Remember, I'm talking speed, not acceleration. When you up the
acceleration, mousing becomes a golf game, with a drive, a tee shot,
and a putt.

It's been years since I was able to up the mouse speed with the old
X config standby:

option "Resolution" "1600"

>
> > and a recent encounter tells me LXDE isn't as lightweight as
> > everyone thinks.
>
> If there's a lighter weight DE I'd like to know.

My experience tells me that fvwm2 is lighter. According to Ralf's link,
several others are lighter.

SteveT

Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance


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[Charlie]

On Thu, 29 May 2014 23:27:12 +0300 Andrei POPESCU sent:

> I've just recently replaced Windows XP on a 512 MB RAM laptop with
> stable (default LXDE install, minimal adjustments). The owner was
> very pleased with the feel of the new system and I can attest it felt
> usable to me as well. Youtube videos seemed to work fine.

I still use 2 laptops, both 8 years old, with only 512MB RAM running
Jessie one is an XP dual boot one running fvwm carried over through the
various system upgrades. The other xfce.

What I usually have open are 3 terminals, LyX, 2 browsers, Iceweasel
and Chromium, then open anything else I need gedit, gimp, vlc etc., on 8
desktops.

If there are too many applications running, moving from one to the
other does tend to enter the desktop but stall a moment before the
app/s are useable.

There is a bit of a lag to shut everything down before halting and
shutting down the system.

On a 4GB lappy it shuts down everything on the desktop one after the
other instantly.

Charlie
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[David]

On 30 May 2014 08:36, Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 29 May 2014 23:02:06 +0300
> Andrei POPESCU <andreim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Jo, 29 mai 14, 13:04:13, Steve Litt wrote:
>> > LXDE has an (all other things being equal) slow mouse that's
>> > disturbing,
>>
>> Mouse speed can be adjusted.
>
> How? Remember, I'm talking speed, not acceleration. When you up the
> acceleration, mousing becomes a golf game, with a drive, a tee shot,
> and a putt.
>
> It's been years since I was able to up the mouse speed with the old
> X config standby:
>
> option "Resolution" "1600"

I use lxinput, see below. My mouse feels fine with acceleration=20 and
sensitivity=100.

$ cat /etc/debian_version
7.5

$ aptitude show lxinput
Package: lxinput
State: installed
Automatically installed: no
Version: 0.3.2-1
Priority: optional
Section: x11
Maintainer: Debian LXDE Maintainers <lxde-...@lists.lxde.org>
Architecture: i386
Uncompressed Size: 771 k
Depends: libatk1.0-0 (>= 1.12.4), libc6 (>= 2.4), libcairo2 (>=
1.2.4), libfontconfig1 (>= 2.9.0), libfreetype6 (>= 2.2.1),
libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0 (>= 2.22.0), libglib2.0-0 (>= 2.16.0), libgtk2.0-0
(>=
2.18.0), libpango1.0-0 (>= 1.14.0), libx11-6, lxsession
Description: LXDE keyboard and mouse configuration
LXInput is a GUI application for the Lightweight X11 Desktop
Environment (LXDE).

It configures keyboard and mouse settings:

* Delay and Interval for character repeat
* Enable/Disable beeps of keyboard input error
* Swap left and right mouse buttons
* Mouse acceleration and sensitivity
Homepage: http://www.lxde.org/

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[Chris Bannister]

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 01:04:13PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> By the way, no matter what DE/WM I'm using, I *always* install Xfce
> just to get xfburn, xfce4-appfinder, and a few other priceless apps. I

I find that mp3burn and wodim cater for all my 'burning' desires. :)
DE, WM, X, not required.

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[Gour]

Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net> writes:

> If so, then still resizing and moving windows by the mouse is missing,

This is also possible...

> assumed even this isn't missing, then it's not a tiling WM anymore.

...but not to the extent that tiling does not work.

Moreover, every Tiling WM I was using so far had the ability to 'float'
windows which is required/useful for programs like Gimp, so it seems to
be that your definition of either DE or WM is lacking a bit. ;)


Sincerely,
Gour

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[Andrei POPESCU]

On Jo, 29 mai 14, 22:39:24, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-05-29 at 22:26 +0200, Gour wrote:
> > Andrei POPESCU <andreim...@gmail.com> writes:
> >
> > > If there's a lighter weight DE I'd like to know.
> >
> > http://i3wm.org/
>
> A tiling WM isn't a DE.

I'd say that a WM (whether tilling or not) is not a DE.

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Jo, 29 mai 14, 23:07:40, Gour wrote:
> Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net> writes:
>
> > A tiling WM isn't a DE.
>
> Can you tell me what is missing?

- file manager
- text editor
- image viewer
- terminal emulator
- etc.

(just have a look through the dependencies of lxde and lxde-core)

Basically a bunch of tools for everyday use. Of course, one might argue
that you can install these separately, but most people don't actually
care enough to select from the 10-20 alternatives for *each*.

> It has status bar, systray, launcher, workspaces...ability to launch
> specific app in a specific workspace. There is upcoming feature to save
> one's layout.

Sounds interesting. Session saving is the one feature I'm missing with
LXDE (actually the lxsession component). I hope it's planed for LXQt.

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Jo, 29 mai 14, 18:36:09, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Thu, 29 May 2014 23:02:06 +0300
> Andrei POPESCU <andreim...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Jo, 29 mai 14, 13:04:13, Steve Litt wrote:
> > > LXDE has an (all other things being equal) slow mouse that's
> > > disturbing,
> >
> > Mouse speed can be adjusted.
>
> How? Remember, I'm talking speed, not acceleration. When you up the
> acceleration, mousing becomes a golf game, with a drive, a tee shot,
> and a putt.

LXDE's component for input only has two sliders (translated from
Romanian):

1. acceleration
2. sensitivity

I'd see it as a bug if
- the initial values for these are not taken from X settings
- would adjust any other parameters

(please do report a bug if any of these is true)

Therefore...

> It's been years since I was able to up the mouse speed with the old
> X config standby:
>
> option "Resolution" "1600"

There were lots of changes in this area in X. I'd recommend you
thoroughly study xorg.conf(5), evdev(4) and xinput(1) and xset(1).
Especially the option "AccelerationProfile" seems interesting. 6 seems
to work fine for my TrackPoint, my mouse uses the X default (0 according
to /var/log/Xorg.0.log).

[Patrick Bartek]

On Fri, 30 May 2014, Chris Angelico wrote:

> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 2:54 AM, Steve Litt
> <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> > When I have an extremely RAM starved computer, I put Debian on it
> > every time. CLI Network install works with almost no RAM, and
> > granular choices of things to install guarantees I'll have a small
> > system.
>
> How RAM-starved can you put Debian on, without faffing around too much
> to go minimal? I have a video-playing laptop (drives a TV via S-Video)
> with 1.5GB RAM. Granted, I couldn't go CLI only there, but in the end,
> rather than trying to manually cut Debian down to fit inside that RAM
> while still leaving enough to play videos (including scaling them up
> or down to fit the screen), I ended up installing AntiX, which seems
> to have done all the work for me already. It's Debian-derived, so all
> my knowledge of Debian still applies, and it's been running happily
> for the month since I installed it.
>
> Would be interested to know if anyone's run a recent Debian, with a
> GUI, in less memory than that. Which WM and DE did you use?

Wheezy/LXDE (dedicated install CD) 32-bit on EeePC 900MHz Celeron, 512
MB RAM. Standard partitions. No LVM. Ran fine, but up'd RAM to 1GB
anyway.

B

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[Andrei POPESCU]

On Vi, 30 mai 14, 09:09:39, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
>
> LXDE's component for input only has two sliders (translated from
> Romanian):


> 1. acceleration
> 2. sensitivity

... and a check box for left handed use

> I'd see it as a bug if
> - the initial values for these are not taken from X settings

Correction: the defaults are indeed taken from
/etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/desktop.conf:

[Mouse]
AccFactor=20
AccThreshold=10
LeftHanded=0

and I can't find what the X defaults for these values are :(

Worst case look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log with and without LXDE and reset
the values as needed.

> - would adjust any other parameters
>
> (please do report a bug if any of these is true)

This one still holds though.

[David Dušanić]

29.05.2014, 22:27, "Gour" <go...@atmarama.net>:
> Andrei POPESCU <andreim...@gmail.com> writes:
>> О©╫If there's a lighter weight DE I'd like to know.
>
> http://i3wm.org/
>
> Sincerely,
> Gour

i3 is not a desktop environment. ;)

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[David Dušanić]

29.05.2014, 23:07, "Gour" <go...@atmarama.net>:
> Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net> writes:
>> О©╫A tiling WM isn't a DE.

>
> Can you tell me what is missing?
>
> It has status bar, systray, launcher, workspaces...ability to launch
> specific app in a specific workspace. There is upcoming feature to save
> one's layout.
>
> Sincerely,
> Gour

Ok, we have to be even more correct on this, even JWM is just a window manager.

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[Gian Uberto Lauri]

David Du¨aniå writes:

> Ok, we have to be even more correct on this, even JWM is just a
> window manager.

One may agree with the precision of your classification.

Or the same one may increase confusion by (rightfully) asserting that
depending on user skills and habits, a WM and shell may be all the
"desktop environment" a user needs, especially when she already has
(or can create easily) all the inter-program communication required.

[it is my case, if you are wondering about :) - I agree that someone can
argue that Emacs is my desktop environment :)]

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già sistemista a tempo (altrui) perso... Debian"

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[David Dušanić]

29.05.2014, 23:19, "Ralf Mardorf" <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net>:

> On Thu, 2014-05-29 at 23:07 +0200, Gour wrote:

>> О©╫Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net> writes:
>>> О©╫A tiling WM isn't a DE.
>> О©╫Can you tell me what is missing?
>>
>> О©╫It has status bar, systray, launcher, workspaces...ability to launch
>> О©╫specific app in a specific workspace. There is upcoming feature to save
>> О©╫one's layout.

>
> If so, then still resizing and moving windows by the mouse is missing,
> assumed even this isn't missing, then it's not a tiling WM anymore.

Yes, you can resize windows with the mouse but it still tiles windows if you want. i3 is a dynamic (tiling) WM.

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[Thierry de Coulon]

On Friday 30 May 2014 10.23:42 David Dušanić wrote:
> 29.05.2014, 23:19, "Ralf Mardorf" <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net>:
> > On Thu, 2014-05-29 at 23:07 +0200, Gour wrote:

> >>  Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net> writes:
> >>>  A tiling WM isn't a DE.
> >>

> >>  Can you tell me what is missing?
> >>

> >>  It has status bar, systray, launcher, workspaces...ability to launch

> >>  specific app in a specific workspace. There is upcoming feature to save

> >>  one's layout.
> >
> > If so, then still resizing and moving windows by the mouse is missing,
> > assumed even this isn't missing, then it's not a tiling WM anymore.
>
> Yes, you can resize windows with the mouse but it still tiles windows if
> you want. i3 is a dynamic (tiling) WM.
>
> --
> David Dusanic

That's like Frank's symphony that was "not a symphony" because he gave the
theme to the "wrong" instrument in the second movement.

Who cares if "it's a DE" or not if it does all one expects from one?

T. de Coulon

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[Tony Baldwin]

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 08:49:01AM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> On Jo, 29 mai 14, 23:07:40, Gour wrote:
> > Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net> writes:
> >
> > > A tiling WM isn't a DE.
> >
> > Can you tell me what is missing?
>
> - file manager
> - text editor
> - image viewer
> - terminal emulator
> - etc.
>
> (just have a look through the dependencies of lxde and lxde-core)
>
> Basically a bunch of tools for everyday use. Of course, one might argue
> that you can install these separately, but most people don't actually
> care enough to select from the 10-20 alternatives for *each*.

This is where I differ from most people.
To me, FLOSS is about freedom to make my own choices.
I don't want a distro or DE to choose my packages.
I install a WM, then choose the editor, terminal, etc., that I want.

[Tony Baldwin]

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 06:50:22AM +0200, Gour wrote:
> Ralf Mardorf <ralf.m...@alice-dsl.net> writes:
>
> > If so, then still resizing and moving windows by the mouse is missing,
>
> This is also possible...
>
> > assumed even this isn't missing, then it's not a tiling WM anymore.
>
> ...but not to the extent that tiling does not work.
>
> Moreover, every Tiling WM I was using so far had the ability to 'float'
> windows which is required/useful for programs like Gimp, so it seems to
> be that your definition of either DE or WM is lacking a bit. ;)

I would say you've misunderstood something.
A window manager manages windows.
This is what sawfish, openbox, wmii, tritium, and various other packages
do. They manage windows, and that's it.
That's why I like to use openbox. It manages windows and otherwise stays
out of my way/doesn't make decisions for me or hold my hand.
A Desktop Environment is a whole suite of tools for managing a desktop
experience. It usually includes a window manager (sometimes
interchangeable, like, you can use openbox, a wm with xfce, lxde, kde,
etc.), as well as various other programs (as mentioned, editor, terminal
emulator, often multimedia software, office software, etc., i.e., a lot
of handholding or making decisions for the user).
Tiling has nothing to do with the definition of a DE or WM.

[Steve Litt]

On Fri, 30 May 2014 10:38:50 +0200
"Gian Uberto Lauri" <sa...@eng.it> wrote:

> David Dušanić writes:
>
> > Ok, we have to be even more correct on this, even JWM is just a
> > window manager.
>
> One may agree with the precision of your classification.
>
> Or the same one may increase confusion by (rightfully) asserting that
> depending on user skills and habits, a WM and shell may be all the
> "desktop environment" a user needs, especially when she already has
> (or can create easily) all the inter-program communication required.

And in addition to everything you just said, the WM/DE distinction
isn't binary, it's a spectrum. At one end is KDE, where everything's
provided and interconnected. At the other is something like JWM, which
pretty much just manages windows.

Between those extremes are things like LXDE, which provides quite a few
apps, and IceWM, which provides a few. Then there's WindowMaker, which
doesn't ship with all that much, but there are dozens of little apps
and applets built from the ground up to interact with it.

If I stretch, I could even make an assertion that a DE is a document
telling what software to install and how to use it within your
environment. For instance, there are tray and panel type things you can
add to your OpenBox. The document could tell how to install
suckless-tools and then add dmenu_run as a hotkeyed option for quicker
running of programs.

I guess what I'm saying is this: I know KDE is a Desktop Environment,
and I know that JWM is a Window Manager, but with anything between
those extremes, I don't know what to call it, and I guarantee you that
if I call it one or the other, the guy I'm talking with will tell me
I'm wrong.

And even beyond that, I just don't understand the significance of the
distinction.

SteveT

Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance

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[Gour]

Tony Baldwin <to...@tonybaldwin.info> writes:

> I would say you've misunderstood something.

I believe I didn't. ;)

> A window manager manages windows.

Correct.

> Tiling has nothing to do with the definition of a DE or WM.

I believe I never did imply that tiling is any in any way related to DE.

My point was simply that e.g. i3 wm along with its status bar, dmenu app
launcher provides pretty much everything one needs (along with one's own
choice of editor, terminal emulator etc.)

However, some people believe that DE is somehow connected with the bloat
where specific DE forces one to install tons of apps no matter whether
one likes/needs them or not.

Finally. my original reply was jsut attempt to provide hint for the

> If there's a lighter weight DE I'd like to know.

query. ;)

Sincerely,
Gour

--
Whatever action a great man performs, common men follow. And
whatever standards he sets by exemplary acts, all the world pursues.

[Brian]

On Fri 30 May 2014 at 14:09:53 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
>
> I guess what I'm saying is this: I know KDE is a Desktop Environment,
> and I know that JWM is a Window Manager, but with anything between
> those extremes, I don't know what to call it, and I guarantee you that
> if I call it one or the other, the guy I'm talking with will tell me
> I'm wrong.
>
> And even beyond that, I just don't understand the significance of the
> distinction.

History helps. Or should do.

The start.
----------

http://www.kde.org/announcements/announcement.php

The reaction.
-------------

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/1997/08/msg02286.html

The underdog.
-------------

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:udEA7QaDm88J:linuxgazette.net/issue43/jacobowitz.xfce.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

http://linuxgazette.net/issue43/jacobowitz.xfce.html

The newcomer.
-------------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LXDE#History

The plan.
---------

Common look and feel. Visual elements and UI concepts shared amongst
applications. Standardise the desktop. One set of widgets. Parts
should fit together and work together.

The outcome.
------------

Variety within Debian is alive and thriving.

The future.
-----------

History will continue to be ignored. The difference between a WM and
a DE will continue to be misunderstood. Technical developments will
be heavily criticised on the grounds they are new. Most people will
be happy with a metapackage which gives them a set of applications
they are comfortable with and can work with. I will carry on building
my own desktop environments and use fvwm.

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[Andrei POPESCU]

On Vi, 30 mai 14, 20:20:32, Gour wrote:
>
> However, some people believe that DE is somehow connected with the bloat
> where specific DE forces one to install tons of apps no matter whether
> one likes/needs them or not.

Yes, that is the generally accepted definition of a Desktop Environment.

[Brian]

On Fri 30 May 2014 at 03:00:21 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:

> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 2:54 AM, Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> > When I have an extremely RAM starved computer, I put Debian on it every
> > time. CLI Network install works with almost no RAM, and granular
> > choices of things to install guarantees I'll have a small system.
>
> How RAM-starved can you put Debian on, without faffing around too much
> to go minimal? I have a video-playing laptop (drives a TV via S-Video)
> with 1.5GB RAM. Granted, I couldn't go CLI only there, but in the end,

Surely you are not saying 1.5GB is "RAM-starved" for playing video? The
machines here manage with less.

> rather than trying to manually cut Debian down to fit inside that RAM
> while still leaving enough to play videos (including scaling them up

If you had only 1 GB of disk space to play with you might try harder. X
and vlc in about 500 MB is possible. Memory? The existing 1 GB doesn't
seem to limit video playback. The limitation lies in the CPU and video
chip. No 1080p video for me, I'm sorry to say ; the software is impotent
to change that.

> or down to fit the screen), I ended up installing AntiX, which seems
> to have done all the work for me already. It's Debian-derived, so all

What work has it done? It needs 2.5 GB of disk space and has two or
three WM's and a couple of file managers. Plus libreoffice. I think
AntiX is quite a nice distro but do you need all of this to play a
video?

Oh, and vlc has to be installed because it doesn't come with it! Talk
about faffing around when you could just build (not "cut down") a
dedicated Debian machine which performs just as well.

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[Chris Angelico]

On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 9:12 AM, Brian <ad...@cityscape.co.uk> wrote:
> On Fri 30 May 2014 at 03:00:21 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:
>
>> On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 2:54 AM, Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
>> > When I have an extremely RAM starved computer, I put Debian on it every
>> > time. CLI Network install works with almost no RAM, and granular
>> > choices of things to install guarantees I'll have a small system.
>>
>> How RAM-starved can you put Debian on, without faffing around too much
>> to go minimal? I have a video-playing laptop (drives a TV via S-Video)
>> with 1.5GB RAM. Granted, I couldn't go CLI only there, but in the end,
>
> Surely you are not saying 1.5GB is "RAM-starved" for playing video? The
> machines here manage with less.

No no, I was thinking more of <1GB as "starved". Even for rescaling
video on the fly (as often happens - the files come at whatever
resolution they're at, and they're all played in full-screen mode),
1.5GB isn't bad. But if you have just 1GB, or 768MB, or 256MB, or
whatever figure, can you still run a default Debian? How low can you
go, without fiddling around enormously?

> If you had only 1 GB of disk space to play with you might try harder. X
> and vlc in about 500 MB is possible. Memory? The existing 1 GB doesn't
> seem to limit video playback. The limitation lies in the CPU and video
> chip. No 1080p video for me, I'm sorry to say ; the software is impotent
> to change that.

Really? Disk space has never seemed much of a problem - I've
live-booted a variety of Linuxes on the same hardware, so the "disk"
space is somewhere between the 700-odd meg of the CD and the 1.5GB of
RAM, depending on how much it takes over. I was fully expecting the
bottlenecks to be the network (or, to be more precise, the disk at the
other end of the network - the 100Mb NIC can easily supply video), the
CPU, and main memory.

>> or down to fit the screen), I ended up installing AntiX, which seems
>> to have done all the work for me already. It's Debian-derived, so all
>
> What work has it done? It needs 2.5 GB of disk space and has two or
> three WM's and a couple of file managers. Plus libreoffice. I think
> AntiX is quite a nice distro but do you need all of this to play a
> video?

It's a bit more than just playing videos; it's a set of related tools
for managing them, controlling playback remotely, etc. Not huge, and
I'm sure I could create a massively cut-down system (is it possible to
run VLC on top of X without a window manager??) and fit the same tasks
into far less memory and a far less powerful CPU, but that would
require a lot more fiddling.

> Oh, and vlc has to be installed because it doesn't come with it! Talk
> about faffing around when you could just build (not "cut down") a
> dedicated Debian machine which performs just as well.

Hmm, not sure that default Debian performs as well. My first
Linification of that hardware was with Debian Jessie as of whenever it
was I did it (earlier this year sometime), running Xfce with all the
defaults. Playback, while immensely smoother than it had been under
Windows, still glitched fairly often on largeish files. Now, with
AntiX, the glitching is only on the highest of bit-rates, again with
basically all the defaults, so I'd say there is a performance
difference between the two. What the cause of that difference is,
though, I can't say.

ChrisA

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[Brian]

On Sat 31 May 2014 at 09:31:35 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:

> On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 9:12 AM, Brian <ad...@cityscape.co.uk> wrote:
> >
> > What work has it done? It needs 2.5 GB of disk space and has two or
> > three WM's and a couple of file managers. Plus libreoffice. I think
> > AntiX is quite a nice distro but do you need all of this to play a
> > video?
>
> It's a bit more than just playing videos; it's a set of related tools
> for managing them, controlling playback remotely, etc. Not huge, and
> I'm sure I could create a massively cut-down system (is it possible to
> run VLC on top of X without a window manager??) and fit the same tasks

Yes ; all it needs is the line 'vlc' in ~/.xsession.

> into far less memory and a far less powerful CPU, but that would
> require a lot more fiddling.

I'm not an expert with video playback but I think throwing more RAM at a
machine with an inadequate CPU/video card combination generally gains
very little and isn't worth the fiddling.

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[Chris Bannister]

On Thu, May 29, 2014 at 11:27:12PM +0300, Andrei POPESCU wrote:
> Specs would be nice, but I think the processor and/or video card is
> doing all the heavy lifting in such a case. Having dedicated video RAM
> is usually a plus, but I had something like this running on a PIII 500
> MHz with 768 MB RAM and a 512 MB Nvidia GeForce FX 5200 (running only
> with OpenBox).
>
> I replaced it with a Raspberry Pi (512 MB RAM) that can handle 1080p
> videos, uses 3,5 W (not including the external drive), is completely
> silent (no fans) and cost me thirty-something euros including shipping
> and a box (but no SD card and no power source).

... no HDMI cable, doesn't play .webm videos. You have to use youtube-dl
not 'cclive -s best' to download the video from youtube yielding in
a 'lower quality' exoerience. Putting all that aside, it's basically
running Debian Wheezy and I (and presumably Andrei) can recommend it as
a lightweight computer, although not fast at 700Mhz but you can
overclock it.

--
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who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the
oppressing." --- Malcolm X

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[Gian Uberto Lauri]

AFAIK WindowMaker can be part o a GNUStep DE.

I started using it for the reduced colormap (useful with 256 colors), but now I am addicted to its rainbow patterns :D

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[Tony Baldwin]

On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 02:09:53PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Fri, 30 May 2014 10:38:50 +0200
> "Gian Uberto Lauri" <sa...@eng.it> wrote:
>
> > David Dušanić writes:
> >
> > > Ok, we have to be even more correct on this, even JWM is just a
> > > window manager.
> >
> > One may agree with the precision of your classification.
> >
> > Or the same one may increase confusion by (rightfully) asserting that
> > depending on user skills and habits, a WM and shell may be all the
> > "desktop environment" a user needs, especially when she already has
> > (or can create easily) all the inter-program communication required.
>
> And in addition to everything you just said, the WM/DE distinction
> isn't binary, it's a spectrum. At one end is KDE, where everything's
> provided and interconnected. At the other is something like JWM, which
> pretty much just manages windows.

Sawfish and openbox, even metacity would fit in this last "just manages
windows" category, and, in fact, don't even include a panel, which I
think JWM has by default. (although, clearly, any of a variety of panels
can be added. I sometimes use fbpanel with openbox, but often run it
with nothing but a little conky to show CPU/RAM NETUP/DOWN TIME/DATE).
Some of these were essentially created to be the WM of a particular DE,
or can be swapped in. Metacity was initially the gnome wm, afaik, for
instance.
I've never done it, but I imagine one could run the KDE's WM, or XFWM,
or others alone (without the DE stuff).

>
> If I stretch, I could even make an assertion that a DE is a document
> telling what software to install and how to use it within your
> environment. For instance, there are tray and panel type things you can
> add to your OpenBox. The document could tell how to install
> suckless-tools and then add dmenu_run as a hotkeyed option for quicker
> running of programs.

I do this on my openbox.
I have Mod+p open dmenu to launch stuff.

tony

[Andrei POPESCU]

On Sb, 31 mai 14, 09:31:35, Chris Angelico wrote:
>
> No no, I was thinking more of <1GB as "starved". Even for rescaling
> video on the fly (as often happens - the files come at whatever
> resolution they're at, and they're all played in full-screen mode),

I'm assuming 640x480 (since you mentioned Video output)? That's not a
bid deal.

> 1.5GB isn't bad. But if you have just 1GB, or 768MB, or 256MB, or
> whatever figure, can you still run a default Debian? How low can you
> go, without fiddling around enormously?

Debian performs nicely with 512 MB RAM in my experience if the CPU and
video card can keep up.

> It's a bit more than just playing videos; it's a set of related tools
> for managing them, controlling playback remotely, etc. Not huge, and
> I'm sure I could create a massively cut-down system (is it possible to
> run VLC on top of X without a window manager??) and fit the same tasks
> into far less memory and a far less powerful CPU, but that would
> require a lot more fiddling.

startx /usr/bin/vlc

> Hmm, not sure that default Debian performs as well. My first
> Linification of that hardware was with Debian Jessie as of whenever it
> was I did it (earlier this year sometime), running Xfce with all the
> defaults. Playback, while immensely smoother than it had been under
> Windows, still glitched fairly often on largeish files. Now, with
> AntiX, the glitching is only on the highest of bit-rates, again with
> basically all the defaults, so I'd say there is a performance
> difference between the two. What the cause of that difference is,
> though, I can't say.

Xfce might be a bit much, depending on your processor and video card
(you still didn't mention them). LXDE or just plain OpenBox should
perform better.

[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 12:27 AM, Andrei POPESCU
<andreim...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sb, 31 mai 14, 09:31:35, Chris Angelico wrote:
>>
>> No no, I was thinking more of <1GB as "starved". Even for rescaling
>> video on the fly (as often happens - the files come at whatever
>> resolution they're at, and they're all played in full-screen mode),
>
> I'm assuming 640x480 (since you mentioned Video output)? That's not a
> bid deal.

It's S-Video driving a PAL TV, so it's 576 lines of... uhh... and this
is where I demonstrate utter lack of knowledge of TV specs, I've no
idea how many pixels across. According to xrandr, it's running at
800x600, which presumably has to get rescaled down to 576 to get
shoved down the wire.

>> (is it possible to
>> run VLC on top of X without a window manager??)
>

> startx /usr/bin/vlc

Thanks. I might play with that some time to see if getting more stuff
out of the way improves playback. It may and may not give any visible
improvement.

Of course, for any *real* system, I want a window manager. I do like
having those extra features. :)

ChrisA


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[Bzzz]

On Sun, 1 Jun 2014 00:54:45 +1000
Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:

> It's S-Video driving a PAL TV, so it's 576 lines of... uhh... and
> this is where I demonstrate utter lack of knowledge of TV specs,

720x576

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[Chris Angelico]

On Sun, Jun 1, 2014 at 1:00 AM, Bzzz <lazy...@gmx.com> wrote:
> On Sun, 1 Jun 2014 00:54:45 +1000
> Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It's S-Video driving a PAL TV, so it's 576 lines of... uhh... and
>> this is where I demonstrate utter lack of knowledge of TV specs,
>
> 720x576

Thanks. I looked up Wikipedia quickly but couldn't find it.

ChrisA

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[Bzzz]

On Sun, 1 Jun 2014 01:04:16 +1000
Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks. I looked up Wikipedia quickly but couldn't find it.

wikipedia isn't the only information source :)

Anyway, video broadcast formats are quite a mess as
there isn't only one format per standard :( Take a
look at: http://www.videotechnology.com/0904/formats.html

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[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 2014-05-30 at 12:54 +0200, Thierry de Coulon wrote:
> Who cares if "it's a DE" or not if it does all one expects from one?

I don't care and btw. I don't claim that JWM is a DE. The discussion
started about "speed". I don't think it was about a quick startup, but
about a "fast" GUI performance. After a while "lightness" in the sense
of "how much RAM" is needed for the WM/DE became the topic.

It's important to distinguish the RAM space of a WM that only does
handle windows, with a DE where already the desktop is a comfortable
file manager, at least to take care that the lightweight WM does need
more additional things that will need additional RAM.

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[Steve Litt]

On Sat, 31 May 2014 08:51:13 -0400
Tony Baldwin <to...@tonybaldwin.info> wrote:

> Sawfish and openbox, even metacity would fit in this last "just
> manages windows" category, and, in fact, don't even include a panel,
> which I think JWM has by default.

You're just the person I need to talk to, Tony. Right now I've switched
over from Xfce to Openbox, and like it. Except for one thing: the fonts
look a whole lot worse on Openbox, and I have very bad vision, so this
isn't aesthetics: It affects the speed at which I work. Do you know of
a way to make fonts on Openbox look like the ones on Xfce?

Now, about Sawfish...

I just tried Sawfish last night, and was unable to get past the black
screen. Left click, right click, middle click did nothing. I tried
various keys, they did nothing. I think once I can configure the thing
with hotkeys, I can own it, but I can't even get that far. How do you
begin operating Sawfish?

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance


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[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 2014-05-31 at 08:51 -0400, Tony Baldwin wrote:
> Sawfish and openbox, even metacity would fit in this last "just
> manages windows" category, and, in fact, don't even include a panel,
> which I think JWM has by default.

Correct, JWM e.g. provides a panel by default, OTOH JWM anyway needs
less RAM than many other WMs and nobody is forced to use the panel, IOW
comparing WMs and DEs by the minimal needed RAM is tricky. A user should
compare the RAM usage, performance, stability by monitoring it for the
user's individual work-flow in combination with often needed apps.

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[Filip]

On Sat, 31 May 2014 12:59:06 -0400
Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 31 May 2014 08:51:13 -0400
> Tony Baldwin <to...@tonybaldwin.info> wrote:
>
> > Sawfish and openbox, even metacity would fit in this last "just
> > manages windows" category, and, in fact, don't even include a panel,
> > which I think JWM has by default.
>
> You're just the person I need to talk to, Tony. Right now I've
> switched over from Xfce to Openbox, and like it. Except for one
> thing: the fonts look a whole lot worse on Openbox, and I have very
> bad vision, so this isn't aesthetics: It affects the speed at which I
> work. Do you know of a way to make fonts on Openbox look like the
> ones on Xfce?
>

See here:
https://lists.debian.org/20140515211...@orac.fil

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[Tony Baldwin]

On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 12:59:06PM -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
> On Sat, 31 May 2014 08:51:13 -0400
> Tony Baldwin <to...@tonybaldwin.info> wrote:
>
> > Sawfish and openbox, even metacity would fit in this last "just
> > manages windows" category, and, in fact, don't even include a panel,
> > which I think JWM has by default.
>
> You're just the person I need to talk to, Tony. Right now I've switched
> over from Xfce to Openbox, and like it. Except for one thing: the fonts
> look a whole lot worse on Openbox, and I have very bad vision, so this
> isn't aesthetics: It affects the speed at which I work. Do you know of
> a way to make fonts on Openbox look like the ones on Xfce?

I don't see a difference, although Openbox does manage fonts differently
to my knowledge.
They should be anti-aliased and all that.
You can select default fonts and stuff in the rc.xml file or with obconf
(graphical openbox configuration tool). You can choose the font, set size, etc.
Maybe take a look at this thread on the #! forum:
http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=176320
(Crunchbang, #!, is a little distro that is basically Debian with Openbox as default WM).

>
> Now, about Sawfish...
>
> I just tried Sawfish last night, and was unable to get past the black
> screen. Left click, right click, middle click did nothing. I tried
> various keys, they did nothing. I think once I can configure the thing
> with hotkeys, I can own it, but I can't even get that far. How do you
> begin operating Sawfish?

Hmmm....middle click should give you a menu, at least,
from which you should be able to find the keybindings configuration tool
and see the default bindings.
I haven't used it in a good long while, and don't currently have it installed.
Find documentation on their wiki: http://sawfish.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

tony
--
https://tonybaldwin.info
all tony, all day long...

[David Dušanić]

31.05.2014, 18:59, "Steve Litt" <sl...@troubleshooters.com>:

> On Sat, 31 May 2014 08:51:13 -0400
> Tony Baldwin <to...@tonybaldwin.info> wrote:

>> О©╫Sawfish and openbox, even metacity would fit in this last "just
>> О©╫manages windows" category, and, in fact, don't even include a panel,
>> О©╫which I think JWM has by default.

>
> You're just the person I need to talk to, Tony. Right now I've switched
> over from Xfce to Openbox, and like it. Except for one thing: the fonts
> look a whole lot worse on Openbox, and I have very bad vision, so this
> isn't aesthetics: It affects the speed at which I work. Do you know of
> a way to make fonts on Openbox look like the ones on Xfce?

I would make an .Xdefaults/.Xresources in your home folder with this e.g.:

Xft.autohint: 0
Xft.antialias: 1
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
Xft.dpi: 96
Xft.rgba: rgb
Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault

or install lxappearance to adjust fonts.
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[Pete Orrall]

On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Steve Litt <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> On Sat, 31 May 2014 08:51:13 -0400
> Tony Baldwin <to...@tonybaldwin.info> wrote:
>
>> Sawfish and openbox, even metacity would fit in this last "just
>> manages windows" category, and, in fact, don't even include a panel,
>> which I think JWM has by default.
>
> You're just the person I need to talk to, Tony. Right now I've switched
> over from Xfce to Openbox, and like it. Except for one thing: the fonts
> look a whole lot worse on Openbox, and I have very bad vision, so this
> isn't aesthetics: It affects the speed at which I work. Do you know of
> a way to make fonts on Openbox look like the ones on Xfce?

Install the obconf package if you haven't already. It's an easy to
use preference manager for Openbox. You can adjust fonts and sizes
there, along with themes and other stuff without needing to edit
config files.

# apt-get install obconf

Hope this helps!

--
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pe...@cs1x.com
www.peteorrall.com
"If there isn't a way, I'll make one."

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[Celejar]

On Sat, 31 May 2014 17:11:16 +1200
Chris Bannister <cbann...@slingshot.co.nz> wrote:

...

> ... no HDMI cable, doesn't play .webm videos. You have to use youtube-dl
> not 'cclive -s best' to download the video from youtube yielding in
> a 'lower quality' exoerience. Putting all that aside, it's basically

Can you explain? What does cclive do that youtube-dl doesn't?

Celejar

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[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 01 Jun 2014 13:18:11 +0200
David Dušanić <ivano...@gmail.com> wrote:

> 31.05.2014, 18:59, "Steve Litt" <sl...@troubleshooters.com>:
> > On Sat, 31 May 2014 08:51:13 -0400
> > Tony Baldwin <to...@tonybaldwin.info> wrote:
> >>  Sawfish and openbox, even metacity would fit in this last "just

> >>  manages windows" category, and, in fact, don't even include a

> >> panel, which I think JWM has by default.

> >
> > You're just the person I need to talk to, Tony. Right now I've
> > switched over from Xfce to Openbox, and like it. Except for one
> > thing: the fonts look a whole lot worse on Openbox, and I have very
> > bad vision, so this isn't aesthetics: It affects the speed at which
> > I work. Do you know of a way to make fonts on Openbox look like the
> > ones on Xfce?
>
> I would make an .Xdefaults/.Xresources in your home folder with this
> e.g.:
>
> Xft.autohint: 0
> Xft.antialias: 1
> Xft.hinting: true
> Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
> Xft.dpi: 96
> Xft.rgba: rgb
> Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
>
> or install lxappearance to adjust fonts.

Hi David,

Before I start asking a multitude of questions, thanks very much for
this information.

You mention making an .Xdefaults/.Xresources in my home directory. Can
I safely assume the slash meant either/or, rather than directory/file?
I already had a .Xdefaults, but it was a config file, not a directory.

I added your lines to the end of my .Xdefaults, and it kinda sorta
seemed to make things better, but it was so subtle this could be a
placebo effect. So I'm thinking, if I could use settings that make my
fonts look like ugly, unmitigated garbage, then at least I know that
changing these values is doing something. Once I know that, I can
experiment to get the very best look. What could I do to the lines you
quote to make my fonts look very ugly, as a test?

Can I safely assume that if I change "Xft:dpi 96" to "Xft:dpi 48", my
fonts are going to get noticibly bigger if this thing's working? That
would be another test.

Why did you set Xft:hintstyle to "hintlight" instead of "hintmassively"
or whatever the hintiest setting could be?

Can you think of any Xft settings I could make to make my letters look
bolder, without using a bold font? My main concern is that the letters
are thin and reedy.

By the way, for the purposes of Openbox on my machine, lxappearance
doesn't work because whatever you set it to isn't persistent. That's
OK, I'd rather have something I could input from Vim anyway.

Thanks so much for the information,

SteveT

Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance

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[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 1 Jun 2014 07:54:50 -0400
Pete Orrall <pe...@cs1x.com> wrote:

> On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 12:59 PM, Steve Litt
> <sl...@troubleshooters.com> wrote:
> > On Sat, 31 May 2014 08:51:13 -0400
> > Tony Baldwin <to...@tonybaldwin.info> wrote:
> >
> >> Sawfish and openbox, even metacity would fit in this last "just
> >> manages windows" category, and, in fact, don't even include a
> >> panel, which I think JWM has by default.
> >
> > You're just the person I need to talk to, Tony. Right now I've
> > switched over from Xfce to Openbox, and like it. Except for one
> > thing: the fonts look a whole lot worse on Openbox, and I have very
> > bad vision, so this isn't aesthetics: It affects the speed at which
> > I work. Do you know of a way to make fonts on Openbox look like the
> > ones on Xfce?
>
> Install the obconf package if you haven't already. It's an easy to
> use preference manager for Openbox. You can adjust fonts and sizes
> there, along with themes and other stuff without needing to edit
> config files.
>
> # apt-get install obconf
>
> Hope this helps!

Thanks for reminding me of Obconf, Pete!

It turns out whenever you install Openbox, Obconf comes along for the
ride. But I'm always forgetting to use it because you can't edit
hotkeys with Obconf, and hotkeys are my life, so I'm forever Vimming
~/.config/openbox/rc.xml. However, in this case, the things Obconf can
do, making fonts bigger and the like, turns out to be an attack on the
symptom rather than the root cause, because the real problem appears
(to my bad eyes) to be slight pixelization on the same fonts that look
great in Xfce.

However, for other things, I'm going to use Obconf early and often.


Thanks for helping me with this. If I can get the fonts looking good,
I'll probably go Openbox fulltime. It's snappy, and a keyboarder's
dream.

SteveT

Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance

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[Brian]

On Sun 01 Jun 2014 at 10:48:17 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:

> You mention making an .Xdefaults/.Xresources in my home directory. Can
> I safely assume the slash meant either/or, rather than directory/file?
> I already had a .Xdefaults, but it was a config file, not a directory.
>
> I added your lines to the end of my .Xdefaults, and it kinda sorta
> seemed to make things better, but it was so subtle this could be a
> placebo effect. So I'm thinking, if I could use settings that make my

Debian doesn't use a .Xdefaults file.

brian@desktop:~$ grep -r Xresources /etc/X11/
/etc/X11/Xsession:SYSRESOURCES=/etc/X11/Xresources
/etc/X11/Xsession:USRRESOURCES=$HOME/.Xresources
grep: /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config: Permission denied

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[Steve Litt]

On Sun, 01 Jun 2014 13:18:11 +0200
David Dušanić <ivano...@gmail.com> wrote:

> 31.05.2014, 18:59, "Steve Litt" <sl...@troubleshooters.com>:
> > On Sat, 31 May 2014 08:51:13 -0400
> > Tony Baldwin <to...@tonybaldwin.info> wrote:
> >>  Sawfish and openbox, even metacity would fit in this last "just

> >>  manages windows" category, and, in fact, don't even include a

> >> panel, which I think JWM has by default.

> >
> > You're just the person I need to talk to, Tony. Right now I've
> > switched over from Xfce to Openbox, and like it. Except for one
> > thing: the fonts look a whole lot worse on Openbox, and I have very
> > bad vision, so this isn't aesthetics: It affects the speed at which
> > I work. Do you know of a way to make fonts on Openbox look like the
> > ones on Xfce?
>
> I would make an .Xdefaults/.Xresources in your home folder with this
> e.g.:
>
> Xft.autohint: 0
> Xft.antialias: 1
> Xft.hinting: true
> Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
> Xft.dpi: 96
> Xft.rgba: rgb
> Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault

I added those to my ~/.Xdefaults, and whether I set Xft.dpi to 96, 48,
or 192, it always looked the same, so I doubt that these things are
being read or acted upon.

Thanks,

SteveT

Steve Litt * http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training * Human Performance

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[Filip]

It should be ~/.Xresources

You can check if they are read with

$ xrdb -query

or load them manually with

$ xrdb -merge <~/.Xresources

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[Brian]

On Sun 01 Jun 2014 at 13:09:11 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:

> On Sun, 01 Jun 2014 13:18:11 +0200
> David Dušanić <ivano...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > I would make an .Xdefaults/.Xresources in your home folder with this
> > e.g.:
> >
> > Xft.autohint: 0
> > Xft.antialias: 1
> > Xft.hinting: true
> > Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
> > Xft.dpi: 96
> > Xft.rgba: rgb
> > Xft.lcdfilter: lcddefault
>
> I added those to my ~/.Xdefaults, and whether I set Xft.dpi to 96, 48,
> or 192, it always looked the same, so I doubt that these things are
> being read or acted upon.

Because Debian's X doesn't consult or read ~/.Xdefaults.

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[Lisi Reisz]

On Saturday 31 May 2014 00:31:35 Chris Angelico wrote:
> But if you have just 1GB, or 768MB, or 256MB, or
> whatever figure, can you still run a default Debian?

Do you mean with GNOME3? Of course not!! But surely choosing your desktop
isn't that big a deal. I install with LXDE, and add Trinity, and can run
comfortably with less than 1GB.

Lisi

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[Vincent Lefevre]

On 2014-06-01 16:14:24 +0100, Brian wrote:
> On Sun 01 Jun 2014 at 10:48:17 -0400, Steve Litt wrote:
>
> > You mention making an .Xdefaults/.Xresources in my home directory. Can
> > I safely assume the slash meant either/or, rather than directory/file?
> > I already had a .Xdefaults, but it was a config file, not a directory.
> >
> > I added your lines to the end of my .Xdefaults, and it kinda sorta
> > seemed to make things better, but it was so subtle this could be a
> > placebo effect. So I'm thinking, if I could use settings that make my
>
> Debian doesn't use a .Xdefaults file.
>
> brian@desktop:~$ grep -r Xresources /etc/X11/
> /etc/X11/Xsession:SYSRESOURCES=/etc/X11/Xresources
> /etc/X11/Xsession:USRRESOURCES=$HOME/.Xresources
> grep: /etc/X11/Xwrapper.config: Permission denied

You're looking at the wrong place: the .Xdefaults file has never been
a startup file. But it's now ".Xdefaults-<hostname>". See X(7) man
page:

XENVIRONMENT
This must point to a file containing X resources. The default is
$HOME/.Xdefaults-<hostname>. Unlike $HOME/.Xresources, it is
consulted each time an X application starts.

And you can check with strace that this file is read...

But I prefer to use the app-defaults.

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[David Dušanić]

> You mention making an .Xdefaults/.Xresources in my home directory. Can
> I safely assume the slash meant either/or, rather than directory/file?
> I already had a .Xdefaults, but it was a config file, not a directory.

Yes, the slash meant either/or. Xdefaults is the older way of doing it, I still prefer it.

> Can I safely assume that if I change "Xft:dpi 96" to "Xft:dpi 48", my
> fonts are going to get noticibly bigger if this thing's working? That
> would be another test.

This line is for your dpi settings. On a laptop that is often 96 like in my case. I would try your real dpi settings here, not anything else because that can screw with the monitor.
To test your dpi settings from the command line:

xdpyinfo | grep resolution

That will give you the value you need.

> Why did you set Xft:hintstyle to "hintlight" instead of "hintmassively"
> or whatever the hintiest setting could be?

I prefer it slight. Here you can test additionally with "hintfull" (very thin) and probably "hintmedium".

I think the Arch Wiki has a nice entry about it:

https://wiki.archlinux.de/title/Xdefaults

In any case you could also apply one thing more that was mentioned here to make fonts even better.
Making a .fonts.conf file in your home folder.

I think at this point I link you to my fonts how-to for Debian (Openbox).

http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=196047#p196047

Eventually I switched completely to Infinality and love it.

http://www.infinality.net/blog/

--
David Dusanic

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