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Kurmis
n00b
Joined: 04 Jun 2010
Posts: 45
Location: LV
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 Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2025 8:52 pm Post subject: Desktop for 512MB RAM |
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Good day experts.
I have old Pentium4 laptop with 512MB RAM.
It seems that this will be still enough for dump1090 service.
I wanna also simple desktop, terminal, mc, text editor , nm-applet .
My candidates for now are x11-wm/e16 , x11-wm/enlightenment , x11-wm/fluxbox .
| Code: | * x11-wm/enlightenment
Available versions: (0.17) 0.26.0(0.17/0.26.0)
{acpi bluetooth connman doc exif geolocation nls pam policykit systemd udisks wayland xwayland}
* x11-wm/e16
Available versions: 1.0.25-r1 1.0.29
{+alsa audiofile dbus debug +dialogs doc examples gnome libhack modules nls no-container opengl +pango player +poll pulseaudio select +sndfile sound +themes xcomposite +xft xi2 xinerama xpresent +xrandr +xrender +xsm +xsync zoom}
* x11-wm/fluxbox
Available versions: 1.3.7-r5^t {bidi +imlib nls +slit +systray test +toolbar +truetype vim-syntax xinerama}
Homepage: http://www.fluxbox.org
Description: X11 window manager featuring tabs and an iconbar |
Which one eat less RAM, which one (probably) will be supported longer ... ?
According https://www.enlightenment.org/ :
We have included common features such as a terminal emulator (Terminology), video player (Rage), a photo viewer (Ephoto), and even the makings of an IDE (EDI). We have a basic text editor (Ecrire), a process monitor (Evisum), simple image viewer (Entice), a screen magnifier/measuring tool (Eruler) and more. | Code: | $ eix terminology
* x11-terms/terminology
Available versions: 1.13.0 {extras nls}
Homepage: https://www.enlightenment.org/about-terminology
Description: Feature rich terminal emulator using the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries |
How can i know wheter terminology (and another packages) is compatible with e16 or with enlightenment-26
For now i have on another Pentium4 desktop with 2GB RAM installed stage3-i686-systemd-20241209T170323Z.tar.xz without GUI. | Code: | $ free
total used free shared buff/cache available
Mem: 2017188 214692 1896624 676 86628 1802496
Swap: 0 0 0 |
Without GUI it already need ≈200MB RAM.
Is here any way to reduce RAM eating ?
Thanks in advance @ all |
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pingtoo
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Joined: 10 Sep 2021
Posts: 1364
Location: Richmond Hill, Canada
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| Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2025 9:20 pm Post subject: |
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I don't know any of DE you mentioned so I cannot comment on them.
However based on you idea of small memory footprint. What is your idea of Desktop Environment (DE) is?
You may not need a DE, may be just individual X applications will be sufficient for your need. I.E. XServer(Xorg), twm (Window Manager), Xterm (Terminal app). And may be some script to manage network. |
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user
Apprentice
Joined: 08 Feb 2004
Posts: 214
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| Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2025 9:57 pm Post subject: Re: Desktop for 512MB RAM |
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Hi Kurmis
| Kurmis wrote: | | Which one eat less RAM, which one (probably) will be supported longer ... ? |
I can provide memory stats for daily workhorse X+fluxbox over two decades only. Fluxbox support from original author is questionably but hey it is open-source.
| Code: | # ps o size,rss,vsz,comm $(pgrep X$) $(pgrep fluxbox)
SIZE RSS VSZ COMMAND
154188 244404 1291284 X
2760 12072 20072 fluxbox |
| Kurmis wrote: | | Is here any way to reduce RAM eating ? |
One step is to identify memory usage per process.
| Code: | | # ps -eo user,pid,size,rss,vsz,comm --sort -rss |
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bstaletic
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Joined: 05 Apr 2014
Posts: 446
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| Posted: Sun Jan 05, 2025 10:15 pm Post subject: |
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For such a limited system, I'd go for something even smaller than fluxbox, like dwm.
Fair warning: dwm is not anything like a usual desktop.
| ps o size,rss,vsz,comm $(pgrep X$) $(pgrep dwm): | SIZE RSS VSZ COMMAND
47656 46024 302660 X
856 6812 14740 dwm |
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Zucca
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Joined: 14 Jun 2007
Posts: 3836
Location: Rasi, Finland
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| Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 1:32 am Post subject: |
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| bstaletic wrote: | | I'd go for something even smaller than fluxbox, like dwm. |
... Speaking of... I wonder if dwl is even lighter on resources? I mean being able to drop the whole X could make it quite light... I haven't measured, so just a thought.
_________________
..: Zucca :..
| My gentoo installs: | init=/sbin/openrc-init
-systemd -logind -elogind seatd |
| Quote: | | I am NaN! I am a man! |
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sublogic
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Joined: 21 Mar 2022
Posts: 294
Location: Pennsylvania, USA
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| Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 2:59 am Post subject: |
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| There is also x11-wm/ctwm . Not a desktop environment, just a window manager with multiple workspaces. You install X applications separately, as pingtoo said. |
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skellr
l33t
Joined: 18 Jun 2005
Posts: 982
Location: The Village, Portmeirion
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| Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 3:41 am Post subject: Re: Desktop for 512MB RAM |
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| Kurmis wrote: | | How can i know wheter terminology (and another packages) is compatible with e16 or with enlightenment-26 |
They are not a part of e16, but made for e17+ (e26). You will need to install the EFL toolkit to use them with e16. They are separate from e16 but also not incompatible, just an extra toolkit like with GTK or QT applications.
EFL is used in embedded devices and is a bit lightweight but the Enlightenment WM might be a bit much for your system. It is a bit slower to start and has some "bling" like startup sounds and compositing. I don't know if you can disable compositing on recent versions of Enlightenment but you can disable the window and transparency effects in the options.
I would try all three of your candidates. You should be able to install all of them without conflict.
You may want to consider disabling truetype fonts and use bitmap fonts. Bitmap fonts take a lot less resources to render and it will make a huge difference in application loading times. Disable font scaling for bitmap fonts and try to use them at the pixel size they were made for and they will look better. Truetype fonts are "heavy". |
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bstaletic
Guru
Joined: 05 Apr 2014
Posts: 446
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| Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 9:09 am Post subject: |
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| sublogic wrote: | | There is also x11-wm/ctwm . Not a desktop environment, just a window manager with multiple workspaces. You install X applications separately, as pingtoo said. |
Well, I got nerdsniped...
Wayland:
| Code: | SIZE RSS VSZ COMMAND
336 1844 2712 seatd
340 1604 3004 dbus-run-sessio
344 2896 4304 dbus-daemon
48692 50092 824296 dwl
35688 18676 836872 foot
10296 13540 94140 wmenu-run |
X11:
| Code: | SIZE RSS VSZ COMMAND
50972 49108 318264 X
856 7344 14740 dwm
2192 8724 17020 st
1436 7824 15220 dmenu |
I've included dbus and seatd on the wayland side only, because those wouldn't be running on my system if I were not trying dwl. |
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Banana
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 1825
Location: Germany
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Zucca
Moderator
Joined: 14 Jun 2007
Posts: 3836
Location: Rasi, Finland
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| Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 12:06 pm Post subject: |
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| bstaletic wrote: | X11:
| Code: | SIZE RSS VSZ COMMAND
50972 49108 318264 X
856 7344 14740 dwm
2192 8724 17020 st
1436 7824 15220 dmenu |
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Quite a much lighter on memory then.
I was surprised by the... footprint of foot.
X still using the most, by a long shot. But I guess that's not a any significant amount. Next step would be tinyX.
_________________
..: Zucca :..
| My gentoo installs: | init=/sbin/openrc-init
-systemd -logind -elogind seatd |
| Quote: | | I am NaN! I am a man! |
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Adel Ahmed
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Joined: 21 Sep 2012
Posts: 1586
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| Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 12:56 pm Post subject: |
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fluxbox is the lightest of those 3, in light of such contrained memory, might i recommend icewm which uses even less memory and comes with its own panel.
here are some things I do to reduce memory consumption taht have little impact on my daily usage:
- for a terminal emulator st uses around 4mb memory , no tab support though
- for the text editor vim,once you get used to it it's not too bad
- i use busybox sh instead of bash(set in /etc/passwd, i compile custom options in busybox so I save around 05-1mb per shell open)
- dropbear instead of openssh saves me another megabyte I think
- use busybox inetd, will save you whatever amount of memory for listeneners you have running(it takes up 160k memory)
- also note if your setup is eating 200M on a 2GB machine, it will eat up less on a 512MB machine
- i have been testing wayland on a modern machine, while ps reports less memory usage than xorg+icewm, free -m reports more memory usage |
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Zucca
Moderator
Joined: 14 Jun 2007
Posts: 3836
Location: Rasi, Finland
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| Posted: Mon Jan 06, 2025 6:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Adel Ahmed wrote: | | - for a terminal emulator st uses around 4mb memory , no tab support though |
Fluxbox, for example, can "tab windows". ;)
_________________
..: Zucca :..
| My gentoo installs: | init=/sbin/openrc-init
-systemd -logind -elogind seatd |
| Quote: | | I am NaN! I am a man! |
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Adel Ahmed
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Joined: 21 Sep 2012
Posts: 1586
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| Posted: Tue Jan 07, 2025 8:26 am Post subject: |
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thanks zucca.
there is also tabbed from suckless which can tab st and other programs with xembed
I've been looking at ways to cut back the memory consumption of X, I've been looking for a window manager to run on the framebuffer, wayland compositors use up alot of memory unfortunately
I also found:
https://github.com/tinycorelinux/tinyx
which I am to test |
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