Looking for fast and good windows managers for my laptop

[jailed]

Hello,

I'm using FreeBSD 8.1 with WindowMaker on a 1.73 ghz 512 mb ram laptop.

PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU COMMAND
81946 jailed 13 44 0 231M 116M ucond 317:04 3.47% firefox-bin
1860 jailed 1 45 0 333M 281M select 110:19 0.00% Xorg
1878 jailed 1 44 0 4820K 660K select 10:59 0.00% wmbsdbatt
1864 jailed 1 44 0 9896K 3664K select 9:47 0.00% wmaker

I use gedit, urxvt, amsn, firefox and gimp on this laptop. I don't use and need any other programs.

As you see on top, firefox eats 116 mb and Xorg eats 281 mb ram. Both of two equals 397 mb ram.

I feel so slow on this system. Even if switching windows with alt+tab, system gets very slow.

I wonder if eating 281M ram is normal for Xorg? Or is it related with WindowMaker?

What about other windows managers?

Waiting advises from you all.

Thanks.

[vermaden]

firefox-bin

Change that one to Midori or Epiphany, or a tiny surf browser.

gedit
Geany uses less resources and has more features.

What about other windows managers?
Check Openbox, even should be lighter.

Also show output of top -b -o res command.

[jailed]

Hello vermaden,

Thank you for your reply. I will install and try the programs you've suggested. Here's the result of top -b -o res

%top -b -o res
last pid: 7999; load averages: 0.06, 0.04, 0.06 up 12+06:34:59 14:09:47
174 processes: 2 running, 147 sleeping, 25 zombie

Mem: 247M Active, 24M Inact, 168M Wired, 11M Cache, 58M Buf, 19M Free
Swap: 958M Total, 377M Used, 582M Free, 39% Inuse


PID USERNAME THR PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE TIME WCPU COMMAND
1860 jailed 1 44 0 334M 291M select 111:01 0.00% Xorg
81946 jailed 12 44 0 243M 123M ucond 320:42 1.95% firefox-bin
6170 jailed 1 52 0 218M 38000K futex 0:05 0.00% npviewer.bin
6190 jailed 1 44 0 218M 38000K futex 0:00 0.00% npviewer.bin
6171 jailed 1 48 0 218M 38000K futex 0:00 0.00% npviewer.bin
86068 jailed 2 44 0 71220K 28392K select 1:55 0.00% wish8.6-threads
6303 jailed 1 44 0 76360K 16604K select 0:14 0.00% npviewer.bin
86038 jailed 2 44 0 79372K 13864K select 4:19 0.00% wish8.6-threads
89548 jailed 1 44 0 35452K 7800K select 0:06 0.00% gedit
1401 mysql 10 44 0 52868K 4212K sigwai 8:07 0.00% mysqld
1864 jailed 1 44 0 9896K 4012K select 9:51 0.00% wmaker
1699 www 1 44 0 24124K 3836K lockf 0:01 0.00% httpd
2310 www 1 44 0 24124K 3816K lockf 0:02 0.00% httpd
2309 www 1 44 0 24124K 3800K lockf 0:02 0.00% httpd
2307 www 1 44 0 24124K 3784K lockf 0:02 0.00% httpd
1703 www 1 44 0 24124K 3712K lockf 0:02 0.00% httpd
5765 jailed 1 44 0 17036K 3632K RUN 0:00 0.00% urxvt
2308 www 1 44 0 24124K 3448K lockf 0:02 0.00% httpd

[vermaden]

npviewer.bin

Disable Flash, enable it only if necessary, for example I use Opera without Flash, and Midori with Flash enabled just to watch/browse content that requires flash, then after I am finished I kill all npviewer.bin processes.

httpd
Drop Apache and use hiawatha/nginx/cherokee/lighttpd unless You need Apache only extensions/modules.

[wblock@]

If switching windows with alt-tab is slow, I'd suspect an xorg configuration problem first.

[jailed]

Hello,

I'm already do the same thing with npviewer.bin. After I watched a flv content, I do killall npviewer.bin

I've installed Midori and geany. I've loved them so much. Midori eats half of the ram firefox do. Geany eats a half more ram than gedit but, it's so faster. Thank you for this suggestions.

I will use Firefox when I want to use Flash.

Apache and MySQL is not important for me. So I disabled them now. I've installed them to my laptop for urgent code tests. I've seperate web servers. I use the local apache server only one time a month. So disabling it is ok for me.

I've just happy for this changes.

[jailed]

If switching windows with alt-tab is slow, I'd suspect an xorg configuration problem first.

Hello,

I don't use a custom configuration for Xorg. startx automatically creates a sample one.

I did the advises of vermaden and restarted the system and alt tab problem had gone too for now. I'm not use if that's realated with this changes or reboot. Because after this reboot, the uptime was 12 days as you see on the top results. I never shutdown the machine unless a hardware issue comes.

[jailed]

Does moving /usr partition to a nfs server make things a little faster or vice versa? Since it's a laptop, it uses 5400 rpm harddrive. I've a quad core nfs server with 7200 rpm disks. Does using nfs affect to speed?

[JuniperSprouts]

Sawfish.

http://sawfish.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

[matoatlantis]

Mhm - that is far from being slow computer what you have. I looked at your top output and I see IMHO a lot of swap is used. When the swapping takes place on a slow disk it is really a pain in the neck (and other places).
I guess MySQL and Apache did take a lot (compared to your amount) of the RAM.

If you run a lot of services and you hit the memory bottleneck every other application will be slow due to swapping - no matter where/what is being started (well depending on its size).

When you experience "slowness", try to run vmstat(8) (http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=vmstat&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+8.1-RELEASE&format=html) to see what is system doing. Also gstat(8) (http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=gstat&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+8.1-RELEASE&format=html) can show a lot.

[vermaden]

@jailed

Welcome mate.

[Crivens]

Just throwing this into the discussion: look for "my system is slow" (iirc) on some video platforms. Excellent tutorial of how to analyze and tune a FreeBSD system.

[sk8harddiefast]

Blackbox or any tiling window manager as dwm. Links for veeery light browser (terminal). With links -g option you get links gui. Don't expect to see videos on youtube but you can see and preview images at least :) Well. If this is too light then midori is a good option. For Text editor, use ee or nano. They are terminals but they are very easy to use so you will have no problem :). For gui me too I give +1 for geany.

[vermaden]

If Midori is 'too heavy' then You can try surf: http://freshports.org/www/surf (even Flash works under surf).

As for the PDF viewer I recommend epdfview, but mupdf is even lighter (but do not cache pages).

[jrm]

As for the PDF viewer I recommend epdfview, but mupdf is even lighter (but do not cache pages).

Careful with mupdf: http://portaudit.freebsd.org/53bde960-356b-11e0-8e81-0022190034c0.html.
graphics/xpdf is a nice, light pdf viewer.

[vermaden]

Careful with mupdf: http://portaudit.freebsd.org/53bde960-356b-11e0-8e81-0022190034c0.html.
graphics/xpdf is a nice, light pdf viewer.

I personally use sumatra pdf thru wine or evince, but thanks for warning.

[loop]

I really liked pekwm when I had a laptop with similar specs

[vermaden]

I really liked pekwm when I had a laptop with similar specs

I also liked pekwm till I hit the wall of lacking features:
http://pekwm.org/projects/pekwm/tasks/210

[graudeejs]

I've started learning x11-wm/hs-xmonad
Frankly I like it... I even started reading haskel tutorials and book

[sk8harddiefast]

Yes. Surf is just the best "terminal" browser ever! Much better than links! Really worth to install it!

[woomia]

Man, use TWM. if you think it's ugly, you are not trying.

[jailed]

Hello,

I was already using xpdf for pdf reading. It's fast for me.

Thing gone good at the first with geany and midori but than system goes slow again.

Then I realized that harddisk gives read/write TIMEOUT error. I think there's some bad sectors on the disk.

I bought this laptop 6 years ago and I was using even KDE with all the effects on and that was fast for me.

Now I think the problem isn't related with my window manager or programs. It's hardware (harddisk) related.

Thank you guys.