Other Lightweight Window Manager for FreeBSD on Intel Atom N270 & 2Gb RAM

Sergei_Shablovsky

Sergei_Shablovsky

Hi, FreeBSD Gurus !

Is that possible to install FreeBSD on this machine ONLY for viewing YOUTUBE IN WEB BROWSER.

(standard aspect ratio of 16:9, H. 264 video codec, MPEG-DASH over HLS, and AAC-LC audio codec - if I remind correctly)

Thank You so much for time and BSD-passion! ;)
 

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Hi, FreeBSD Gurus !

Is that possible to install FreeBSD with some window manager on this machine ONLY for viewing YOUTUBE IN WEB BROWSER.

(standard aspect ratio of 16:9, H. 264 video codec, MPEG-DASH over HLS, and AAC-LC audio codec - if I remind correctly)

Thank You so much for time and BSD-passion! ;)
 

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Hi Mate, you can use mpv to play youtube videos which will use less ram

for windows managers heres a couple of suggestions

Wayland

Tiling window manager
codeberg.org

dwl

dwm for Wayland
codeberg.org codeberg.org

Stacking window manager
github.com

GitHub - labwc/labwc: A Wayland window-stacking compositor

A Wayland window-stacking compositor. Contribute to labwc/labwc development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com github.com

X11

Tiling window manager

Stacking window manager

Openbox

openbox.org openbox.org

I wrote some tutorials on the forum about install dwl, dwm and labwc
 
I have an n270 machine and I can tell you you can run a lightweight window manager and web browser but it's not going to be playing videos very well on YouTube. It looks more like stop motion.

That goes for all video playback by the way anything greater than 480i is going to look like stop motion video. It may have been handy for LiveLeak back in the day but it's really not good for anything else video related.

Also it's important to note that 32-bit support is going to be dropped soon.
 
At the first thank You SO MUCH about detailed explanation!

LibreQuest said:
I have an n270 machine and I can tell you you can run a lightweight window manager and web browser but it's not going to be playing videos very well on YouTube. It looks more like stop motion.
Click to expand...
I’m afraid I thinking something like that ;)
So slow CPU…

LibreQuest said:
That goes for all video playback by the way anything greater than 480i is going to look like stop motion video. It may have been handy for LiveLeak back in the day but it's really not good for anything else video related.
Click to expand...
Hm…

And what about using it as for external cameras (non-PTZ):
the recorder have ETH 100Mb/s for access thru the browser and view recordings (720x240pix, 60fps, M-JPEG format) ?

LibreQuest said:
Also it's important to note that 32-bit support is going to be dropped soon.
Click to expand...
Yes, we love dinosaurs! ;)
Of course, thank You!
 
I'm not sure about recording video I'm sure it could keep up perfectly well. But I doubt it could play anything back successfully. It is possible though my n270 is a netbook and also has 2 GB of RAM and uses an SSD it's running FreeBSD 14 32-bit.

It is possible you could get some accelerated playback to be smooth with MPEG files but I've not tried that myself. I've only done playback in Firefox using picom on lxqt with openbox.
 
I have something like that (Samsung NC10, 2GB). I would try Haiku on it, and use the Falcon browser. That can give you a working system for this.
 
I have two old netbooks with the same CPU as yours, but with 1 Gb of memory instead of two. They both run FreeBSD and it works very well for many things, but not for a heavyweight web browser playing YT videos. For a window manager, I strongly recommend Openbox first. It only takes up only 150-200 Mb of RAM, depending on what extra you use. With some keybindings. Openbox is really nice and lightweight. If you want a somewhat fancier "almost desktop" window manager, I would recommend IceWM. They both make my old machines alive. You can also use XFCE, which is a fully-fledged desktop, takes up only ~350 Mb of RAM in 32-bit (which is impressively lightweight for a desktop), and it works - but it is noticeably slower in such old machines.

I doubt your extra Gb of RAM will make much of a difference as far YT video playing is concerned, because web browsers became really resource demanding - and those that are lightweight won't play YT videos. Still, if you insist using a web browser for YT video, try Invidious instead of YT (because YT itself is really heavy with all the spyware it has built-in).
It is worth trying other solutions, avoiding a heavyweight web browser. Your best bet is gtk-youtube-viewer or even command-line tools like ytfzf or yt-dlp.

All the above mentioned applications are available in FreeBSD 14, 32-bit. The problem is 32-bit is going to be dropped in FreeBSD 15, meaning sooner or later we will have to look for other solutions in such old machines. In that case I would recommend trying Haiku or antiX GNU/Linux.
 
Pap said:
I have two old netbooks with the same CPU as yours, but with 1 Gb of memory instead of two. They both run FreeBSD and it works very well for many things, but not for a heavyweight web browser playing YT videos. For a window manager, I strongly recommend Openbox first. It only takes up only 150-200 Mb of RAM, depending on what extra you use. With some keybindings. Openbox is really nice and lightweight. If you want a somewhat fancier "almost desktop" window manager, I would recommend IceWM. They both make my old machines alive. You can also use XFCE, which is a fully-fledged desktop, takes up only ~350 Mb of RAM in 32-bit (which is impressively lightweight for a desktop), and it works - but it is noticeably slower in such old machines.

I doubt your extra Gb of RAM will make much of a difference as far YT video playing is concerned, because web browsers became really resource demanding - and those that are lightweight won't play YT videos. Still, if you insist using a web browser for YT video, try Invidious instead of YT (because YT itself is really heavy with all the spyware it has built-in).
It is worth trying other solutions, avoiding a heavyweight web browser. Your best bet is gtk-youtube-viewer or even command-line tools like ytfzf or yt-dlp.

All the above mentioned applications are available in FreeBSD 14, 32-bit. The problem is 32-bit is going to be dropped in FreeBSD 15, meaning sooner or later we will have to look for other solutions in such old machines. In that case I would recommend trying Haiku or antiX GNU/Linux.
Click to expand...
Another descent system to consider for 32-bit is OpenBSD. Their installer is a bit different but straight forward. They have a very large packages selection available as well. That is what I plan to continue using for 32-bit hardware after the release of FreeBSD 15. I currently have 3 systems with OpenBSD, one is due to a required 32-bit efi.
 
SirDice said:
I've restored the post I deleted, they're EXACTLY the same. Same text, same pictures, even the same serial number.
Click to expand...

Thank You so much about care and PATIENCE!

You are absolutely right: really two THE SAME messages,- may be some browser-cache-changeIP-forum engine- related issues ON MY SIDE.
So better to delete copy.
 
SirDice said:
I've restored the post I deleted, they're EXACTLY the same. Same text, same pictures, even the same serial number.
Click to expand...
Sorry my stupidness, I mean miss thinking with this one https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/lightweight-window-manager-for-freebsd-on-mpc8343e-powerquicc-ii.93181/

Till now I cannot find solution to transform this Polycom HDX-4500 to fast FreeBSD machine for GRAFANA DASHBOARD view (and may be Skype/Viber/Telegram video calls)…
(And also I afraid that proprietary(?) BIOS prevent to loading FreeBSD core & device drivers CORRECTLY…)

Please take a look,- may be You able to see some new idea.
Thank You so much!
 
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