• [1] fbpanel
  • I use this with the "genmon" plugin which allows me to have arbitrary text in the bar. I put a nice clock in there.
• [2] LXPanel
  • Forked from fbpanel, but it's missing hotkeys when right-clicking a taskbar item. Has a nice gui configuration tool. My favourite.
• [3] tint2
  • A new project. Has no menu and is otherwise very configurable and light.

It doesn't show a tray for me, but since it's showing some tray icons in the screenshots I presume I need to configure things differently.

I have a number of other taskbars which I'll be reviewing over time.

Library usage:

ldd /usr/bin/tint2 | wc -l

tint2 28
lxpanel 38
fbpanel 45

ps -ao comm,size,rss,vsize

COMMAND            SZ   RSS    VSZ
tint2              2468  6580  11728
lxpanel          3184 10560  31564
fbpanel          3128 10600  32160

tint2 has no menu functionality. It might be possible to further-slim down any of these by disabling features or configuring them differently.