Desktop for 512MB RAM

[Kurmis]

Good day experts.

I have old Pentium4 laptop with 512MB RAM.
It seems that this will be still enough for dump1090 service.
I wanna also simple desktop, terminal, mc, text editor , nm-applet .
My candidates for now are x11-wm/e16 , x11-wm/enlightenment , x11-wm/fluxbox .

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* x11-wm/enlightenment
     Available versions:  (0.17) 0.26.0(0.17/0.26.0)
       {acpi bluetooth connman doc exif geolocation nls pam policykit systemd udisks wayland xwayland}

* x11-wm/e16
     Available versions:  1.0.25-r1 1.0.29
      {+alsa audiofile dbus debug +dialogs doc examples gnome libhack modules nls no-container opengl +pango player +poll pulseaudio select +sndfile sound +themes xcomposite +xft xi2 xinerama xpresent +xrandr +xrender +xsm +xsync zoom}

* x11-wm/fluxbox
     Available versions:  1.3.7-r5^t {bidi +imlib nls +slit +systray test +toolbar +truetype vim-syntax xinerama}
     Homepage:            http://www.fluxbox.org
     Description:         X11 window manager featuring tabs and an iconbar

Which one eat less RAM, which one (probably) will be supported longer ... ?

According https://www.enlightenment.org/ :
We have included common features such as a terminal emulator (Terminology), video player (Rage), a photo viewer (Ephoto), and even the makings of an IDE (EDI). We have a basic text editor (Ecrire), a process monitor (Evisum), simple image viewer (Entice), a screen magnifier/measuring tool (Eruler) and more.

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$ eix terminology
* x11-terms/terminology
     Available versions:  1.13.0 {extras nls}
     Homepage:            https://www.enlightenment.org/about-terminology
     Description:         Feature rich terminal emulator using the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries

How can i know wheter terminology (and another packages) is compatible with e16 or with enlightenment-26


For now i have on another Pentium4 desktop with 2GB RAM installed stage3-i686-systemd-20241209T170323Z.tar.xz without GUI.

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$ free
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:         2017188      214692     1896624         676       86628     1802496
Swap:              0           0           0

Without GUI it already need ≈200MB RAM.
Is here any way to reduce RAM eating ?

Thanks in advance @ all

[pingtoo]

I don't know any of DE you mentioned so I cannot comment on them.

However based on you idea of small memory footprint. What is your idea of Desktop Environment (DE) is?

You may not need a DE, may be just individual X applications will be sufficient for your need. I.E. XServer(Xorg), twm (Window Manager), Xterm (Terminal app). And may be some script to manage network.

[user]

Hi Kurmis

Which one eat less RAM, which one (probably) will be supported longer ... ?

I can provide memory stats for daily workhorse X+fluxbox over two decades only. Fluxbox support from original author is questionably but hey it is open-source.

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# ps o size,rss,vsz,comm $(pgrep X$) $(pgrep fluxbox)
 SIZE   RSS    VSZ COMMAND
154188 244404 1291284 X
 2760 12072  20072 fluxbox

Is here any way to reduce RAM eating ?

One step is to identify memory usage per process.

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# ps -eo user,pid,size,rss,vsz,comm --sort -rss

[bstaletic]

For such a limited system, I'd go for something even smaller than fluxbox, like dwm.
Fair warning: dwm is not anything like a usual desktop.

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 SIZE   RSS    VSZ COMMAND
47656 46024 302660 X
  856  6812  14740 dwm

[Zucca]

I'd go for something even smaller than fluxbox, like dwm.

... Speaking of... I wonder if dwl is even lighter on resources? I mean being able to drop the whole X could make it quite light... I haven't measured, so just a thought.

[sublogic]

There is also x11-wm/ctwm . Not a desktop environment, just a window manager with multiple workspaces. You install X applications separately, as pingtoo said.

[skellr]

How can i know wheter terminology (and another packages) is compatible with e16 or with enlightenment-26

They are not a part of e16, but made for e17+ (e26). You will need to install the EFL toolkit to use them with e16. They are separate from e16 but also not incompatible, just an extra toolkit like with GTK or QT applications.

EFL is used in embedded devices and is a bit lightweight but the Enlightenment WM might be a bit much for your system. It is a bit slower to start and has some "bling" like startup sounds and compositing. I don't know if you can disable compositing on recent versions of Enlightenment but you can disable the window and transparency effects in the options.

I would try all three of your candidates. You should be able to install all of them without conflict.

You may want to consider disabling truetype fonts and use bitmap fonts. Bitmap fonts take a lot less resources to render and it will make a huge difference in application loading times. Disable font scaling for bitmap fonts and try to use them at the pixel size they were made for and they will look better. Truetype fonts are "heavy".

[bstaletic]

There is also x11-wm/ctwm . Not a desktop environment, just a window manager with multiple workspaces. You install X applications separately, as pingtoo said.

Well, I got nerdsniped...

Wayland:

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 SIZE   RSS    VSZ COMMAND
  336  1844   2712 seatd
  340  1604   3004 dbus-run-sessio
  344  2896   4304 dbus-daemon
48692 50092 824296 dwl
35688 18676 836872 foot
10296 13540  94140 wmenu-run

X11:

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 SIZE   RSS    VSZ COMMAND
50972 49108 318264 X
  856  7344  14740 dwm
 2192  8724  17020 st
 1436  7824  15220 dmenu

I've included dbus and seatd on the wayland side only, because those wouldn't be running on my system if I were not trying dwl.

[Banana]

Just for getting ideas what to run or even maybe use them:
http://www.slackware.com/
http://tinycorelinux.net/

[Zucca]

X11:

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 SIZE   RSS    VSZ COMMAND
50972 49108 318264 X
  856  7344  14740 dwm
 2192  8724  17020 st
 1436  7824  15220 dmenu

Quite a much lighter on memory then.
I was surprised by the... footprint of foot.
X still using the most, by a long shot. But I guess that's not a any significant amount. Next step would be tinyX.

[Adel Ahmed]

fluxbox is the lightest of those 3, in light of such contrained memory, might i recommend icewm which uses even less memory and comes with its own panel.
here are some things I do to reduce memory consumption taht have little impact on my daily usage:
- for a terminal emulator st uses around 4mb memory , no tab support though
- for the text editor vim,once you get used to it it's not too bad
- i use busybox sh instead of bash(set in /etc/passwd, i compile custom options in busybox so I save around 05-1mb per shell open)
- dropbear instead of openssh saves me another megabyte I think
- use busybox inetd, will save you whatever amount of memory for listeneners you have running(it takes up 160k memory)
- also note if your setup is eating 200M on a 2GB machine, it will eat up less on a 512MB machine
- i have been testing wayland on a modern machine, while ps reports less memory usage than xorg+icewm, free -m reports more memory usage

[Zucca]

- for a terminal emulator st uses around 4mb memory , no tab support though

Fluxbox, for example, can "tab windows". ;)

[Adel Ahmed]

thanks zucca.
there is also tabbed from suckless which can tab st and other programs with xembed
I've been looking at ways to cut back the memory consumption of X, I've been looking for a window manager to run on the framebuffer, wayland compositors use up alot of memory unfortunately
I also found:
https://github.com/tinycorelinux/tinyx

which I am to test

[CaptainBlood]

As an example LDXE desktop logged at <190 Mb with NM & WPA running:
Slim down kernel, activate CONFIG_TRIM_UNUSED_KSYMS. favor size over speed.
Compile packages with -Oz, with lto when smaller, with no-semantic-interposition when smaller.

As systemd has been mentioned, unsure which of openrc and systemd is best in this regard.

Off topic: an ebuild for tinyx would be welcome if available .

Thks 4 ur attention, interest & support.

[saturnalia0]

I have used a 512MB ThinkPad with Gentoo for several years, with suckless' dwm as the WM of choice, and no DE. Never had any issues with RAM or sluggishness.