(Oldschool Linux)

Goals:

Pick the lightest possible window manager and window management tools which is still usable to my personal standards.

I will make a choice for Oldschool Linux. I will contemplate providing more than one window manager, or possibly configuring some things to run without X or with X but no window manager.

Also, this research may influence the decision of a default Unity Linux window manager.

Required features:

• Workspaces (aka Desktops)
• Alt-left-click window dragging.
• Alt-left-click on a window to raise it without interacting with it.
• Alt-right-click resizing (from any corner!)
• Hotkeys
  • single-step is ok, but chaining is nice for me for alt-space
  • If none is provided, I'm not sure what I'll use. Perhaps bbkeys.
  • Kicking the currently-selected application to an arbitrary workspace.
  • Kicking the currently-selected application to the back of the window stack. (alt-escape)
  • Opening the currently-selected window's menu. (alt-space)
    • If this isn't available, a chained hotkey would be needed for stuff like alt-space,m for maximize.
• Taskbar
  • If none is provided, I'll probably use lxpanel.
  • Listing current applications.
  • With a tray area that can handle KDE icons. This is simply my standard for testing.
  • date/time clock that can handle strftime:
%F %a %l:%M %P
2009-04-07 Sat 5:33pm
• Simple menu
  • If none is provided then many could be used.
  • I may make one for my own applications but not for system applications.
  • If on the desktop, it must also work on the edges of applications so that I can use the menu even with stuff maximized.
• Run dialogue
  • If none is provided then many could be used, but I'll be making one.

Not required or desired:

• Desktop icons
• Quick launch bar full of icons
• Transparency support
• Widgets
• Bloat

Note that for now I would just use the everyday XOrg server, but there are some minimal X servers which I might examine at some point. This would allow an even more extreme lightness.

Due to issues with my present test environment, I am testing in a VirtualBox environment running Slackware 12.2.

I discounted a number of window managers because I was unable to install them when following proper directions, the project has gone quiet for a couple of years or they fail in some fundamental way which is covered by some/all of the remaining contenders.

There are a number of keyboard-oriented window managers which I tried, but didn't include.

If there is a light/small window manager which you use and it's not in this list, let me know.

If there's a window manager in that list which you've never tried. Do so! They're all compilable with very little effort. Well, except Awesome.

Full reviews will be forthcoming.

Judging speed and memory use

What's the best way?

• Not in a virtual machine, that's for sure!
• Reboot
• Same system workload (same startup conditions)
• Judge memory, virtual memory, cpu usage?

Using what tools?

• top / htop
• Ganglia
• mem.py
• (to research)

ps -ao comm,size,rss,vsize
ldd /path/to/executable | wc -l

Notes

• Didn't I have some kind of system stressing program which would slow down the computer? That would be very handy. Can a virtual environment do this somehow, so it's safer on my machine and only slows down a test environment? Found it: http://directory.fsf.org/project/sloth/
• Include all libraries (see my email notes)
• Include all required tools
  • and their libraries!

Resources

• http://xwinman.org
• Giles's window manager reviews

I cannot install it:

1. Awesome window manager installation misadventure
2. Awesome window manager almost vindicated

I still want to check this damned thing out, if only to know that I was actually able to get it working.

Not configurable enough. It's especially weak with hotkeys.

Argh, my install of EDE got b0rked by my Awesome window manager installation attempt. Boo. Running edewm --version gave me the familiar error and then the screen went black as I was writing notes.

I prefer Openbox. Fluxbox has some annoyances with resizing from any corners. Tabbing is a great feature, but useless to the way I work.

Argh, the default Slackware install of Fluxbox got b0rked by my Awesome window manager installation attempt. Boo.

Not bad, but not good enough. Other WMs are better. Window-altering hotkeys aren't configurable?

This one keeps being recommended, but I don't know why. It's not bad, but it's just not good enough.

Almost perfect.

I have a fair history with it and know it well enough. Without further testing and comparison, this would be my first choice.

For just a basic developer system, Openbox alone is just fine. Otherwise I would recommend at least lxpanel.

Very nice. A definite contender. Cannot hotkey to move a window to another desktop?

I've used it. I like it just fine. I just find it a bit too shiny for my tastes and prefer Openbox.

On PCLinuxOS, there have been reproducible issues with Xfce freezing my system and requiring that I exit X. It seems to have worked fine in Slackware.

Has a complete collection of stuff, and still tries to be light. Not bad, but just not right.