JWM in antiX 19A2 looking great (without installing anything)

[PPC]

Hi everyone!
It just came to me that after tweaking Fluxbox and JWM, I never put any of my screenshots here…
So, here it is: JWM running after altering just 2 configuration files (I have a thread on antiX forum, on that, even a newbie can do it- but read all the way till the last post to understand how do to it) ends up being light and looking as most modern desktops do… Adding a couple of lines can even get you a very simple looking “dock”… Also adding half a dozen lines of text can get you window decorations similar to MX Linux (already provided out of the box)… there are too many variables to talk about here… JWM has my newfound admiration- when I tried it I thought it was just a very light but very ugly desktop- but now I see it can look great out of the box, in very low system resources…


P.

JWM-final-nonMX.jpg

[manyroads]

Same response I placed on antiX:

As an interesting aside regarding resource consumption, my testing is indicating, that:
— “when desktop functionality is matched” –and
— when these desktops run on the same hardware –and
— use the same version of antiX,

the difference in RAM use is +/-10% (the typical band I’m seeing is 275MB – 305MB) between the following :
1. iceWM
2. fluxbox
3. jwm
4. openbox
5. xfce

The only way to achieve a broader difference in RAM use is to restrict comparisons to each desktops’ standard feature set; and then, they are no longer matched/ equivalent.

As they say here, when you compare “apples to apples” the performance across these desktop platforms is quite excellent and similar.

Anyway, that’s what my two weeks of testing indicates.

PS. Looking at your screen shot (conky), I can tell you that I am getting a clean version of xfce to run at 305MB, fluxbox at about 280MB as a comparison to the 380-ish yours shows.

[PPC]

@Manyroads: Hi again, Mark/Manyroads, I also replied to you in the antiX forum - screenshots (no point repeating here)...

Maybe this forum is the more appropriate place for me to talk about RAM consumption by the Desktops... And say that, in my particular case - one netbook with 1 Gig of shared RAM, the less idle RAM I use, the better- and not using desktop icons and composition can make a tiny, but useful difference on RAM usage.
100Mb of RAM is nothing for a computer with less than 4-5 years, for someone like me, it's having more than 10% more of RAM, that I can use in my browser, or office application, delaying/avoiding the slowdown that comes from using the swap.
In the antiX screenshots thread there are some images of people running FluxBox live, in antiX 17.x in very low idle RAM, even below 80Mb! (Like you once said, Mark, a almost "invisible" footprint). That means they can use a browser and have 1 to 3 tabs or so (depending on the sites, even more), without using swap space.
I can come close to that (but not that low doing stuff like closing down Volumeicon - in my customized FB desktop I had in it's place, a desktop with the "speaker" icon, that fired up my mixer...- a solution that shaved a few Mb or idle RAM...

@Manyroads: I tried some of you desktop costumizations. Very, very nice looking. Usable in my desktop, but, unfortunately, my netbook has to stick less RAM hungry desktops :-( Also, like I believe, you feel, one likes using a computer personalized to our own private taste- you like antiX and OpenBox- you built one such distro and made it available, I like antiX and the very light JWM, and I wish it could look more modern? I did that I made it also available (via a couple of config files anyone can use). It's the beauty of using opensource software!

P.

[manyroads]

Hola Paulo... (I know Hola is Spanish sorry...)

I agree we are of the same mind. Have you tried using a tiling manager? I think you might be able to squeeze those down quite a bit further. For starters, why not give herbstluftwm a try. i3 and awesome seem quite popular 'in the wild world of arch'.

[manyroads]

@ppc (Paulo)

Here are some itty bitty window managers that might be fun to explore on antiX:

https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comme ... omparison/

Here is another place to save RAM... have you tried these to see if any will help you in your causse?

https://www.linuxlinks.com/smallfootprintwebbrowsers/

[Richard]

Thanks to both of you.
I appreciate your trials.
They are informative, regardless of whichever one prefers.

Looking forward to a final antiXfce-19 or the tutorial.
Can't help with testing due to limited internet at the moment.

[PPC]

@ppc (Paulo)

Here are some itty bitty window managers that might be fun to explore on antiX:

https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comme ... omparison/

Here is another place to save RAM... have you tried these to see if any will help you in your causse?

https://www.linuxlinks.com/smallfootprintwebbrowsers/

Thanks, for the links, Mark
I found out about some new browsers, thanks to you. But for my daily home browsing needs Firefox and Ungoogled Chromium, carefully used (so I don't have many tabs open) are extremely usefull in 1 Gb of RAM. I tried palemoon, dillo a few others. Palemoon was just a bit leaner on ram than Firefox, I ran with it for a while... I found that "Small" browsers (not based in FF or Chromium) usually don't render modern web pages correctly. With one exception: Surf browser. I have that one configured on my MX box- it's as light as a browser can get, but a pain to use if you are doing anything more than browsing through a single webpage (it uses dmenu to enter a new web address!... Go figure!), it's so light on RAM it's perfect for running "web apps"- for example- open your webmail, or a on-line office suite, etc, etc... Leave the window open, like you would leave a normal application running (it's really just a window with the webpage redered inside it, nothing more), and click it when you need it...

Once again, good research on the desktops matter, Mark... I thank you for that, but I'm quite pleased with the desktop enviroments provided in antix out of the box, I don't really want to mess with those, other than trying antiX OpenBox ... I tried Herb... (I can't even write it :-( ), but I'm too used to my window managers to move to a tiling only system... I'm too set in my ways of clicking icons and a start menu... And not that good with key binds... :-(
For now JWM/FluxBox and Firefox/ungoogled chromium work well for my antiX needs!

P.

[manyroads]

No problems. I have to agree tiling window managers seem awkward to me.