favorite wm for the low end

I like Blackbox.  It's minimal on screen (which is good when
your monitor is 640x480 or maybe even less) and in resource
usage (which is good when you've only got 16MiB and 20MHz). 
I've tried others on my mac68k boxen, but keep coming back
to it.  I even use it on faster machines because it doesn't
make them feel bogged down like KDE and GNOME do.  Blackbox
gives me what I need, and then stays out of my way so I can
get work done.

IceWM is also a good choice for low end machines.  The UI is
more like Win95 in feel, if you like that style.  More
features and options, but not so much that it feels
significantly slower than Blackbox.

I can't recommend Windowmaker on 68k.  It was long enough
ago that I don't remember the experience except that it was
not positive.

EDE is very slow on 68k, marginally usable on the faster
machines, but any kind of CPU load would probably push it
over that edge.  Still, it looked nice.  Might be a nice
desktop on faster machines.  (I should try that sometime...)
 The drawback is that very few apps use its toolkit, so you
can't get much benefit from shared libraries.

Xfce would be painful on 68k.  I compiled it (took close to
a week IIRC) but I don't think I ever actually tried it.  I
used Xfce for awhile on a P3, and it felt much quicker than
GNOME or KDE, but I never did figure out how to edit the
menus.

All these are available (for 2.1 or later) from my site.  If
anyone has experience with other wms, I'd love to hear them.


Tim

PS I created a theme for Blackbox 0.70 that mac68k folks
would probably appreciate.  It's at themes.freshmeat.net
with many others.
-- 
Tim & Alethea

> All these are available (for 2.1 or later) from my
site.  If anyone
> has experience with other wms, I'd love to hear them.

Well, there's the one I wrote.  It's very minimalist
on-screen (no
window decoration or menus or taskbars or anything) and
pretty
lightweight in RAM footprint (the one running on this
machine right now
is VSZ=192 RSS=144 according to ps, and that's a statically
linked
version).  It's probably not what you want, but if it does
prove useful
to you, great.

ftp.rodents.montreal.qc.ca:/mouse/X/mwm.c and mwm.doc.

/~ The ASCII				der Mouse
 / Ribbon Campaign
 X  Against HTML	       mouserodents.montreal.qc.ca
/  Email!	     7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39  4E F1 31 3E E8 B3
27 4B

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Hash: SHA1

Hello,

On Dec 7, 2006, at 11:38, <thelarsons3cox.net> wrote:

> I can't recommend Windowmaker on 68k.  It was long
enough ago that I 
> don't remember the experience except that it was not
positive.

WindowMaker really needs at least 16bit colour. In 8bit or
less it will 
eat palette registers like there's no tomorrow and still
look crappy.

> Xfce would be painful on 68k.  I compiled it (took
close to a week 
> IIRC) but I don't think I ever actually tried it.  I
used Xfce for 
> awhile on a P3, and it felt much quicker than GNOME or
KDE, but I 
> never did figure out how to edit the menus.

Anything gtk2-based should be just painful. Xfce3 might
still be usable 
though, it uses gtk1, is relatively light on the palette and
is still 
in pkgsrc.

And to add a recommendation - I like amiwm. Very low on
colour usage 
and pretty small.

have fun
Michael
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At 11:38 Uhr -0500 7.12.2006, <thelarsons3cox.net> wrote:
>IceWM is also a good choice for low end machines.

IceWM is my window manager of choice. Back, when I tested
it, it was the
fastest wm I could find, faster even than FVWM v1.

>  The UI is more like
>Win95 in feel, if you like that style.

I use the Java "Metal" style, which looks very
good both on colour and
greyscale screens.

>More features and options, but not
>so much that it feels significantly slower than
Blackbox.

The applications menu is cool because IceWM checks if the
listed
applications are actually there before displaying the entry.

	hauke

--
"It's never straight up and down"     (DEVO)

Hauke Fath wrote:
> I use the Java "Metal" style, which looks
very good both on colour and
> greyscale screens.

While my BB style looks nice at 24-bit, I intended for it to
be usable 
even on 1-bit systems.  I've only tested it personally on
16- and 24-bit 
systems though.

> The applications menu is cool because IceWM checks if
the listed
> applications are actually there before displaying the
entry.

That is a very slick feature.  You can add everything to
your menu that 
you might want on any system, and use the same file on all
of them.

Tim
-- 
Tim & Alethea
christtrek.org

On Thu, 7 Dec 2006 thelarsons3cox.net wrote:

>  If anyone has experience with other wms, I'd love to
hear them.

   I sometimes use flwm.  It's pretty minimal, and weird
(titlebars go on 
the *left*) but it has the basics, and is very economical
with screen real 
estate.  I suspect it might work well on 1-bit displays too.

http://flwm.sourceforge.
net/

   Haven't used it on any 68k machine though.  I use it on
my old laptop 
(Pentium MMX, 266MHz) and that's about as slow a machine I
have tried it 
on (yet).

   I recall that Windowmaker worked pretty well, in 8-bit
even, on my old 
486 though.


MAgnus

Hi,

I've very partial to tvtwm.  Set with no window borders and
almost no color.  I find it very relaxing and quick to work
with.  Others in my office seem to hate it.  Works with 
m68k systems on up.  

My .tvtwmrc file is:

=====

NoTitle
RandomPlacement
VirtualDesktop "5x2-0-0"

Color {
        PannerBackground "gray"
}

Sticky {
  "xclock"
  }

Function "move-or-raise"   { f.move f.deltastop
f.raise }

Function "resize-or-zoom"  { f.resize f.deltastop
f.fullzoom }
Function "resize-or-lower" { f.resize f.deltastop
f.lower }
Function "resize-or-raise" { f.resize f.deltastop
f.raise }

Button1 = m : window : f.function "move-or-raise"
Button3 = m : window : f.function
"resize-or-lower"

Button3 =   : window : f.function
"resize-or-lower"

"x"     =   : root   : f.exec "exec xterm -ls
-sb -sl 10000 &"
Button1 =   : root   : f.menu "mgmt"

menu "mgmt" {
        "tvtwm"         f.title
        "Refresh"       f.refresh
        "Resize"        f.resize
        "Move"          f.move
        "Raise"         f.raise
        "Lower"         f.lower
        ""              f.nop
        "Restart"       f.restart
        "Quit"          f.quit
}

===== 
On Thu, Dec 07, 2006 at 11:38:33AM -0500, thelarsons3cox.net
wrote:
> I like Blackbox.  It's minimal on screen (which is good
when your monitor is 640x480 or maybe even less) and in
resource usage (which is good when you've only got 16MiB and
20MHz).  I've tried others on my mac68k boxen, but keep
coming back to it.  I even use it on faster machines because
it doesn't make them feel bogged down like KDE and GNOME do.
 Blackbox gives me what I need, and then stays out of my way
so I can get work done.
> 
> IceWM is also a good choice for low end machines.  The
UI is more like Win95 in feel, if you like that style.  More
features and options, but not so much that it feels
significantly slower than Blackbox.
> 
> I can't recommend Windowmaker on 68k.  It was long
enough ago that I don't remember the experience except that
it was not positive.
> 
> EDE is very slow on 68k, marginally usable on the
faster machines, but any kind of CPU load would probably
push it over that edge.  Still, it looked nice.  Might be a
nice desktop on faster machines.  (I should try that
sometime...)  The drawback is that very few apps use its
toolkit, so you can't get much benefit from shared
libraries.
> 
> Xfce would be painful on 68k.  I compiled it (took
close to a week IIRC) but I don't think I ever actually
tried it.  I used Xfce for awhile on a P3, and it felt much
quicker than GNOME or KDE, but I never did figure out how to
edit the menus.
> 
> All these are available (for 2.1 or later) from my
site.  If anyone has experience with other wms, I'd love to
hear them.
> 
> 
> Tim
> 
> PS I created a theme for Blackbox 0.70 that mac68k
folks would probably appreciate.  It's at
themes.freshmeat.net with many others.
> -- 
> Tim & Alethea

-- 
edoneelsdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

My favorite would be one that does a Mac-like shared
menubar, but I 
don't know if one exists.  I don't know if that's
technically even 
possible with X.  Anyone have any ideas?

It's possible I've asked about this before...I tend to
forget things and 
repeat myself.  


Tim
-- 
Tim & Alethea
christtrek.org

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Hash: SHA1

Hello,

On Dec 10, 2006, at 16:19, Tim & Alethea Larson wrote:

> My favorite would be one that does a Mac-like shared
menubar, but I 
> don't know if one exists.  I don't know if that's
technically even 
> possible with X.  Anyone have any ideas?

pkgsrc/wm/mlvwm

as in Mac-Like Virtual Window Manager. If I remember
correctly it does 
stuff like that ( as in menu bar content depends on which
window has 
the focus ). Last time I tried was about 8 years ago though,

coincidentally on a 68k box ;) (not a mac though - it was a
HP9000/345)

have fun
Michael
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On Sun, Dec 10, 2006 at 03:19:45PM -0600, Tim & Alethea
Larson wrote:
> My favorite would be one that does a Mac-like shared
menubar, but I 
> don't know if one exists.  I don't know if that's
technically even 
> possible with X.  Anyone have any ideas?
> 
> It's possible I've asked about this before...I tend to
forget things and 
> repeat myself.  

There's mlvwm <h
ttp://www2u.biglobe.ne.jp/~y-miyata/mlvwm.html>
(wm/mlvmw in pkgsrc), but it's been long enough since I
tried it that I
don't remember if the menubar is actually shared as it is in
MacOS. The
screenshot shows a menubar at the top of the screen, plus
menubars in
each window, but the top-of-the-screen menubar matches the
menubar of
the active window. It looks like it does change the shared
menubar,
but it's unable to get rid of the per-window menubar.
-- 
Name: Dave Huang         |  Mammal, mammal / their names are
called /
INet: khymazeotrope.org |  they raise a paw / the bat, the cat
/
FurryMUCK: Dahan         |  dolphin and dog / koala bear and
hog -- TMBG
Dahan: Hani G Y+C 31 Y++ L+++ W- C++ T++ A+ E+ S++ V++ F-
Q+++ P+ B+ PA+ PL++