On Thu, 10 Aug 2000, Jens Benecke wrote:
> KFM is not half as unstable as you make it seem. At least, here.
>
> And why does KDE "suck up" more resources than fvwm? Because it DOES hell
> of a lot more, doesn't it? I want you to try out CDE, the commercial
> desktop. You'll come whining back to me begging for your old KDE desktop...
> because it was so FAST.
>
KFM is really not too bad, but on some occassions, I've seen it cause some
weirdness in my laptop. Perhaps on a system that has very few resources,
KDE wasn't meant to be too light on usage. Ever tried running KDE on 16 mb
of ram? I can tell you that is not a fun experience. But usually the KDE
problems are generated when starting something like Netscape, which sucks
up the other half of your ram.
For me, I like to do things cleanly, in the console, avoiding the use of X
whenever possible, as that allows the highest level of portability between
machines of differing hardware, including machines that X hates.
> The only real gripe I had with the windowmanager is that it
_always_
> positions Netscape windows in the upper left corner. No "intelligent"
> window placement, Sawmill / Enlightenment / ... do this correctly.
>
Enlightenment was sweet, but I eventually stopped using it, once again
because of resource usage. Call me paranoid, but every amount of CPU power
used on a laptop translates to lost battery life. Also, when wrestling
with limited space, a lightweight WM has it's advantages.
> Sorry, I don't get you. I've been running KDE with Windowmaker (because I
> liked the dockapps), no problem. You probably mean they are written with
> the same toolkit (Qt), but that does not "tie" them together.
>
Well, I didn't try that far to tweak the default config of KDE, but those
Kpanel apps and stuff seem a little more stable than their Gnome
counterparts.
> With no theming and default configuration, kwm (the KDE windowmwanger) uses
> 800k of memory on my machine. I don't really want to call that "too much".
> Add the panel if you want (another megabyte), and how does that compare to
> Windowmaker, for example?
>
That's not too bad, but for me, I like to start most apps from the
terminal, and can do away with a "start" bar. This was not meant as a
flame to kde, but I really have very limited use for a start bar anyhow.
> I too was shocked when I started the KDE "konsole" for the first time, and
> ps says it uses 10MB of memory. WTF...? But 9 MB of those are SHARED
> SEGMENTS, with all the other KDE applications. Just a little over 1MB is
> really private konsole RAM, and that is LESS THAN XTERM uses! (While still
> remembering, that konsole lets you have multiple terminal sessions in one
> window, adding about 100kb for each session - MUCH MUCH less than a couple
> xterm windows would use).
>
That doesn't sound too bad, but I've had bad interactions with Ncurses
stuff like mc, ssh, and telnet interacting inside konsole. Especially
stuff like running Linuxconf thru telnet/ssh from a remote machine. Then
again, I much prefer using vi anyhow, just when I forget the syntax to
things. I don't prefer to use Xterm too much, because as you noted that it
still takes up too much mem. Rxvt is much better, but then once in a while
for the heck of it, Eterm, but then the background makes it impossible to
read anything without shading it.
> The KDE 2 panel (kicker) is all modules based. You can load (but don't have
> to) an icon module, and choose between lots of taskbar / dock / clock /
> gimmick / ... modules.
>
Sounds cool, but KDE2 still hates my laptop, I'm tired of reloading stuff
on here, as I have a Sony SuperSlim notebook where the CDROM is a messed
up PCMCIA card that the MDK installer has failed to work with since 7.1.
> The trick is, that kicker CAN OPTIONALLY run them as seperate processes, if
> you "don't trust" their stability. They need more memory that way, because
> they cannot use shared memory, but if one of them crashes, it's just
> removed from the panel, the panel itself keeps on running.
>
I used to think that these applets were cool, but they just increase my
desktop clutter too much, as screen size is an issue on a laptop. These
days, I just prefer Gkrellm running with XFCE, everything is nice and
stable. When Netscape crashes, I can tell, as the CPU meter on Gkrellm
turns red. When my battery is low, similar situation. I don't really need
a docked icon in the taskbar to tell me the same thing. In fact, Gkrellm
is usually behind a couple windows most of the time, since a larger
terminal is of more use to me.
> > Also, KDE and Gnome are nice for what the do when they *work* properly,
> > but sometimes something like a messed up web page, a lost internet
> > connection, or a small bug screws up one of the modules/kfm, the entire
> > system goes to wreck, just like that other piece of junk. I can tolerate
> > bugs in kde/gnome, as long as something killing the browser, or an
> > individual module does not affect the functionality of the window manager
> > itself.
>
> It never has, here. Once or twice - after >50h continuous stress, compiling
> jobs and so on for the machine, an app woke up a hidden bug in the X server
> and I had to relogon. That has happened with other WMs as well, though.
>
In my experience, I have the YMF744b chip, which the commercial OSS driver
had incompatibilities with kde. Perhaps some of my anger vented from that,
as every time I touched anything APM related in KDE, it resulted in a hard
crash. As well as the mean interactions I had with commercial OSS drivers
and anything KDE related. The funny thing is that other window managers
like Gnome and XFCE had no such limitation. It still makes me wonder what
KDE was doing to hang the machine every time. I don't have that problem
anymore, because I use ALSA now.
So far, XFCE has run flawlessly, minus a couple random crashes I get from
playing with experimental USB drivers being connected/disconnected.
> > In my experience, it is best to go with something light, like XFCE, which
> > is purely made to handle window management, yet allows for some higher
>
> XFCE is nice, but it's not a full desktop and doesn't want to be. For a
> laptop it's a good choice, also because it uses relatively little screen
> real estate for the window borders. (KDE does as well, though...)
>
Good that we agree on at least that, I don't have much of a use of desktop
icons either, as on some machines that are real slow, I can watch them
draw the icons one-by-one, like Windows 95 on a 486.
> > level functions like icons and drag-and-drop. TWM was just too annoying
> > having to place the windows, ...
>
> Then configure it correctly.
>
Can TWM autoplace windows? I never knew that you could do the menuing on
TWM, enlighten me a bit on this, and I may just switch back to good old
TWM again :)
> > Afterstep rocked, but XFCE is the best balance. Besides, that, being on a
> > laptop, I need a window manager that doesn't access the HD every 5
> > seconds, like KDE or Gnome, so that my hard drive shut off will have a
> > chance to work properly and save some battery.
>
> Don't blame your problems on the wrong apps. It's Linux itself, thinking
> "oh, low load, let's flush some HD buffers and maybe clean up some shared
> memory segments and page space". Nothing KDE or Gnome does has anything to
> do with this, although with all the gizmos that these environments offer,
> you tend to have more applications loaded and therefore more memory is
> used, making Linux clean up more frequently - perhaps. I don't know.
>
KDE seems to do some weird things once in a while. I already changed the
flush settings and stuff a long time ago. It seems like from actual
testing that KDE and GNOME do in fact make the hd access more for
me. Whatever it be, the applets, low memory, or even the screensaver,
something in the background once in a while causes the hd to power on for
no apparently good reason.
I noticed that linux does flush buffers, and run cron jobs, but those are
minimized on my machine. Just that the full-blown desktop enviroment is
nice for newbies, but really serves no real purpose for me, as the console
suffices 90% of the time. Of course, occasionally having a couple GUI
stuff is cool, but on a laptop that dislikes Linux as it is, I don't think
I want to risk too many more suspend hangs by doing strange things.
For example, I noticed that some applets really hate suspend, and not
everything behaves too well with it. I just like to keep a set up as
generic as possible, while offering some functionality.
> > Then again, this is tailored for specifically my purpose, so some of you
> > out there may prefer something else for your set ups, but I stick to the
> > one that causes the least crashing, most responsiveness, and most of all,
> > gives me the best battery life :)
>
> That, of course, is a sound reason. If it really makes a difference.
Do you guys have any other suggestions of a better window manager,
terminal, etc? It must be good at the following:
1. Use minimal CPU/mem
2. Use minimal disk space
3. Run decently on something like a 386
4. Semi-intelligently place windows (unlike twm)
5. Be very tolerant to misbehaving apps (unlike the gnome hang)
6. Be friendly to a small display
7. Have neat features
Elsewise, I think XFCE is my best choice for this machine.
>
>
>
--
Regards,
Ellick Chan
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Aug 10
