Re: [seul-edu] Best wm for tiny slow computers?

[Dave Prentice <dprentice@uno.edu>]

I have to disagree. If you increase the memory to 32meg (lots of memory
available on ebay), gnome runs acceptably even on a 75mhz Pentium. I've got
a lot of them in my classroom.
Dave Prentice
prentice@instruction.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Felipe Bergo <bergo@seul.org>
To: seul-edu@seul.org <seul-edu@seul.org>
Date: Friday, February 01, 2002 12:14 PM
Subject: Re: [seul-edu] Best wm for tiny slow computers?


>On Fri, 1 Feb 2002, Ralph M. Deal wrote:
>
>> system to use it more widely.  The users will be most happy with a gui
>> like the MSwindows they are accustomed to.  However, thes are small (16M
>> RAM, ca 500M hard disk, no CDROM drives) slow (75MHz is fast in this
>> bunch) in which gnome will be sluggish and much to large.
>
>Forget Gnome and KDE on such machines. here goes a simple list of
>possibilities and impossibilities:
>
>Impossibilities (don't go for them):
>
>Sawmill/Sawfish: it relies on Lisp interpreting, not a good
>                 idea for slow boxes.
>Enlightenment:   excessive eye candy that consumes cpu.
>KDE:             too heavy
>Gnome:           too heavy
>
>Possibilities:
>
>IceWM:           Ice is probably the most Windows-ish lightweight
>                 window manager, if the users are familiar with windows
>                 and not willing to learn a new interface, IceWM will
>                 provide the usual task bar with a "Start" menu.
>
>WindowMaker:     The best cost/benefit ratio among all. It is not
>                 straightforward for Windows users (will take them
>                 like a week to get used to it) but provides much
>                 functionality with low CPU/memory usage.
>
>XFCE:            mimics the Sun CDE environment. It's not so light
>                 but is probably the closer you can get to the complexity
>                 of Gnome/KDE without paying the full price (cpu cycles,
>                 not dollars)
>
>Blackbox:        very minimalist WM yet cool-looking, but you need a set
>                 of helper applications to get key shourtcuts and other
>                 functionalities going (bbkeys, application launchers,
>                 the balckbox page will probably recommend some)
>
>> What, in your experience in similar situations, is the best compromise
>> in a window manager to be reasonably fast and small but look familiar to
>> students?  Right now I'm using xfce which I use myself but it would be
>> nice to have icons representing files and have double clicks thereon to
>> open the appropriate program with that file.
>
>Sounds like IceWM is what you want.
>
>See
>http://www.icewm.org/images/shots/warp3.png
>
>(the task bar can be put on the bottom as Windows has as default)
>
>> Most of the monitors in this batch are labelled with names not in the RH
>> LINUX list of recognized monitors so that will be time-consuming. Any
>> suggestions there?
>
>My experience with "unlabelled" monitors is that most of them fit in the
>"vanilla SVGA that can do interlaced 1024x768 @87Hz" option of
>XF86Config.
>
>> PS How do I get onto the schoolforge mailing list?
>
>Go to
>
>http://schoolforge.net/sfdiscuss.php
>
>.........................................................................
>Felipe Paulo Guazzi Bergo - Free Software Developer (bergo@seul.org)
>GPG/PGP mail welcome - GPG/PGP Key: EF8EE808 (keyserver pgp.mit.edu)
>http://www.advogato.org/person/khazad - Brasilia - DF - Brazil - Earth
>
>* In topologic hell, beer comes in Klein's bottles.
>
>