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Which WM for my old PC

Graphical Environments, Managers, Multimedia & Desktop questions.
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Abyssos
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Which WM for my old PC

#1 Post by Abyssos »

Hello,

I am looking to find some lightweight WM + polybar (or lemonbar), which will take low RAM.

My PC is with low RAM (1.5 GB), so I can't use DE (like Gnome, Xfce)

please, need suggestions. Is bspwm good? Or maybe i3wm?

Thank you !

anticapitalista
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Re: Which WM for my old PC

#2 Post by anticapitalista »

Tilers:

herbstluftwm (my favourite)
spectrwm

Floaters:

IceWM
jwm
fluxbox
openbox
antiX with runit - lean and mean.
https://antixlinux.com

kedaha
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Re: Which WM for my old PC

#3 Post by kedaha »

Hi,
As well as a WM you might consider either LXDE or LXQt. I use LXQt on an Acer Aspire 1, which only has 1GB ofRAM.
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Abyssos
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Re: Which WM for my old PC

#4 Post by Abyssos »

kedaha wrote: 2022-01-12 11:28 Hi,
As well as a WM you might consider either LXDE or LXQt. I use LXQt on an Acer Aspire 1, which only has 1GB ofRAM.
What internet browser you use for this? Firefox?

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Re: Which WM for my old PC

#5 Post by canci »

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kedaha
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Re: Which WM for my old PC

#6 Post by kedaha »

Of course you can use firefox-esr if you tweak it to use less memory when it would probably be fast enough, specially for static content but I just use chromium on my old netbook. Maybe ungoogled-chromium would lower the memory needed for it too.
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manyroads
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Re: Which WM for my old PC

#7 Post by manyroads »

I use dwm & i3wm....
Pax vobiscum,
Mark Rabideau- Prof Genealogist - http://many-roads.com
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spectrwm,SwayWM,i3wm,hlwm,bspwm,dwm on sid
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Bulkley
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Re: Which WM for my old PC

#8 Post by Bulkley »

I use the Openbox window manager with Tint2 for a panel. There's a ton of information on-line for each of them.

I don't want to chase you away from pure Debian but have a look at Antix. If nothing else run it up in virtual or on a live USB stick just to see what is possible and learn how to do it.

seaken64
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Re: Which WM for my old PC

#9 Post by seaken64 »

Abyssos wrote: 2022-01-12 10:41
I am looking to find some lightweight WM + polybar (or lemonbar), which will take low RAM.

My PC is with low RAM (1.5 GB), so I can't use DE (like Gnome, Xfce)
I think it depends. Are you good at setting up your window manager from scratch? Or are you more used to using a distro that features a desktop environment already setup for you?

If you are good at setting stuff up yourself then any of the Window Managers mentioned here will work good in Debian.

My personal preference is IceWM. But I am not very good at setting up the Window Manager from scratch yet. I can make it work with plain Debian, to a degree. I start with minimal and add X and the Window Manager.

I am much more comfortable with a good distro that sets it all up for me. For me, in Debian that has been antiX, MX and Q4OS. AntiX especially is very well done when you want to use a Window Manager. It supports IceWM, Fluxbox, JWM and herbstluftwm. MX supports Fluxbox. Q4OS uses Trinity and runs very well in low ram.

Seaken64

Abyssos
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Re: Which WM for my old PC

#10 Post by Abyssos »

Actually I used Linux on terminal before 20 years ago :) So I am not very familiar with WM, and sadly forgot all commands

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