Recently in Fluxbox Category

I decided to start adding apps to the Self-Reliant Thin Client, which is running Debian Etch from an 8GB CF card as the boot drive with a 1 GHz VIA CPU that insists at running at 500 MHz, plus 256 MB of RAM.

I used aptitude to add the Geany text editor and the Fluxbox window manager.

Fluxbox runs great, as usual, but I really don't see any app-speed improvement with Iceweasel, OpenOffice, Geany or Gedit.

In previous tests, I saw a real advantage to using Fluxbox or Xfce over GNOME, but here in Debian, GNOME is running well enough that I'll probably use it quite a bit. I'll continue testing Fluxbox, but I imagine that GNOME will continue to be my main window manager on this box (as it has been when running off of a traditional hard drive).

It definitely depends on the specific box, and especially on the available RAM. I guess that 256 MB of RAM is enough for good GNOME performance. With 128 MB of RAM, Xfce, Fluxbox, Fvwm or other lightweight window managers might dramatically improve performance vs. GNOME.

One thing I have to do is run top when running the same apps in both GNOME and Fluxbox. If the same amount of swap, relatively speaking, is being used in both window managers, that tells me why my GNOME performance is so relatively good. But if there was a lot more swap used in GNOME vs. Fluxbox, then I'd know that the lighter-weight window managers are really making a difference.

I've come to the conclusion that GNOME is not quite ready in Debian Lenny. A lot of strange things have been happening on my screen. There's the ghosting in the upper menu bar, as well as various hard-to-describe funky things happening in other windows opened by various applications on the screen.

I've had Fluxbox installed in Lenny for awhile, and I have used it from time to time, but today I decided to see how Xfce is progressing in Lenny.

It was easy to install in a root terminal with Aptitude:

# aptitude update
# aptitude install xfce4
# aptitude install xfce4-goodies

And so far Xfce looks pretty darn good. I had used Xfce quite a bit in Debian Etch, and it also works great in Wolvix. So using it in Lenny is a bit of a no-brainer.

All display weirdness is gone, and Xfce remains incredibly fast.

And if GNOME didn't run so damn well in Ubuntu 8.04, I'd probably try Xfce there, too. I just might do it anyway.

I booted into Debian Lenny for the first time in a while on the $0 Laptop (Gateway Solo 1450), and after doing about 150 updates, I logged out of the GNOME desktop and switched over to Fluxbox.

Now this PC, for me, anyway, is quite powerful — 1.3 GHz Celeron, 1 GB RAM — so GNOME runs quite well on it.

But with Fluxbox (and even with Xfce, I suspect) it really flies. Apps load way quicker than they do in GNOME, and if you can deal with a more minimalist window manager, you get a lot more in terms of performance.

I had my Alps Touchpad's tap-to-click function turned off in GNOME, but in Fluxbox I had to use GSynaptics to turn it off. I wonder if things will be screwed up in GNOME as a result. The first thing I'll do is see if I can easily turn off the touchpad's tapping for my other users. That doesn't work so well in GNOME, where the "primary" user has control over the touchpad but the others do not.

I logged into one of my other user accounts, turned off tapping in GSynaptics, and everything worked. That's the way it's supposed to be in GNOME.

One thing I'd like to do is modify the Fluxbox menu to make things quicker, with my most-used apps higher up so I don't have to mouse through so many menus to get to them.