Well, no wonder!
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| Author | Content |
|---|---|
| notbob Apr 15, 2013 11:22 AM EDT |
It's no surprise this author can't quite decide what constitutes a lightweight desktop, as it appears he's never actually used one. Since he's a developer for KDE, it should be no surprise to readers, as well. I think perhaps he meant lightweight GUI-laden desktop. Thinking on it, I've come to realize I don't even use a DE or desktop environment, at least not a proper one. I use a WM or windows manager, but I don't think of it as a DE, even thought it probably is, technically. I never ever tile windows or make my xterms transparent so I can see the wallpaper or click on a group of desktop icons. I jes alt-tab through a buncha maximized windows and never ever see my desktop. But, fluxbox definitely IS lightweight. I run an ancient 1.4MHz P4 with a measly 750 MB RAM and I have no probs. I can even stream Crackle and Youtube, usually at max screen. If I was to run KDE, my system's speed would be cut in half. And yes, I do a full install of KDE, but never use its DE. I jes run FB and call up native KDE apps like gwenview or konsole from FBs spartan right-click menus or keystrokes. This way, I don't hafta disable akinasty, nipplepunk, and stringi cuz they don't boot in the first place. No doubt WMs like twm and wmaker are jes as "lightweight". I certainly wouldn't call XFCE lightweight. Heck, I dumped it as a resource hog yrs ago. |
| CFWhitman Apr 15, 2013 1:15 PM EDT |
It seems to me that this author is being deliberately obtuse about what constitutes a "lightweight" desktop. He dismisses memory usage/efficiency as a possibility based first on the idea that there is no good way to measure it. It's fairly obvious, though, that just because memory usage tests of desktops/window managers have used poor methods to test that usage doesn't mean that no desktop environment uses less memory. His second reason for dismissing it is that you're comparing features. He says this as though more features is always better, while it's pretty clear that more features will become impractical when the cost/convenience ratio gets too high (either because the convenience is too low or because the cost is too high). He mentions the time memory trade-off as though its mere existence could somehow invalidate the idea of one environment being more efficient. He dismisses support for old systems on the basis that support for old systems means optimization for old systems (that's not necessarily true) and that support for old systems means a piece of software won't take advantage of new hardware technologies (that's not necessarily true either). Less memory and less processing power devoted to one task leave more memory and more processing power free to do other tasks. Also, lighter weight environments generally allow you to add on supporting software to give you the features that you find to be worth it without including all those that will end up being dead weight. I find it hard to believe that he can't see that there are going to be systems where a lightweight desktop environment or a window manager will significantly improve performance of certain software. It doesn't take much experience to see this for yourself regardless of the underlying reasons. I use or make available for others lots of hardware that is five years old or more (sometimes ten years or more). I also have a netbook for which the right distribution/environment selection makes it so high resolution Flash videos play correctly or they simply don't. @notbob - I'm just curious as to what methods you use to stream Crackle and YouTube. I know that they can be problematic with older hardware if you just use the Flash plugin the conventional way from the browser. |
| Fettoosh Apr 15, 2013 2:09 PM EDT |
When I want to watch a long video from Youtube, I usually download it first using youtube-dl It is on K/Uubuntu depository and installed using "sudo aptitude install youtube-dl" I use next command to check what formats the file is available in. Choose whichever is available and convenient and enter its code in the download command shown as an example below. youtube-dl -F http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq0Dx04PcHk (Link on youtupe) Next command will download the file with format code 35 in the current directory. youtube-dl -f 35 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wq0Dx04PcHk I find that convenient also when Youtube/network is slow or acting up. |
| notbob Apr 15, 2013 3:46 PM EDT |
CFWhitman wrote:@notbob - I'm just curious as to what methods you use to stream Crackle and YouTube. Nothing special that I'm aware of. I'm currently running slackware 13.37 and seamonkey is my primary browser. The plug-ins are nothing exotic, being the std installs of mplayer w/ mp-plugin, I do run IcedTeaPlugin.so in place of the std javascript plug-in. Shockwave flash is the standard Adobe libflashplayer.so file that I install manually from Shockwave Flash 10.3 r183. Granted, not every streaming vid feed is as good as youtube and crackle. I'm now watching ABC live streaming and it's extremely herky-jerky, but I don't know if it's me or them or my bandwidth or what. |
| djohnston Apr 15, 2013 6:49 PM EDT |
I guess I read it differently. He seems to me to be making the case that no one should be running "older" hardware.Quoting:What about support for old systems? That’s not lightweight, that’s support for old hardware. And it’s something which doesn’t make any sense given Moore’s law. And Quoting:Optimizing for old hardware means not making use of modern hardware capabilities. But does that make sense to not use modern hardware if it is available? And Quoting:Who tests the kernel against old hardware? Ummm, has this guy ever heard of Debian? Or Slackware? Finally, there's this jewel of wisdom: Quoting:Who provides DRI drivers for obsoleted hardware which doesn’t fit into modern mainboards (who remembers AGP or PCI)? Who ensures that software is still working on 32 bit systems, who would notice such a breakage for example in the X-Server? So lightweight cannot be fit for old hardware. Got news for this guy. I still use a (special purposed) PCI nVidia card in a 64bit desktop machine. Yes, PCI. Half of my 'puters are 32bit and half are 64. All the 32bit 'puters have AGP cards. One of the 32bits is a PIII on a motherboard which will only accept 512MB maximum. KDE4 will not run on it. But, LXDE, Openbox (the DE) and e17 will. Easily. |
| BernardSwiss Apr 15, 2013 7:36 PM EDT |
Good stuff, CFWhitman and djohnston -- you saved me a lot of writing :-). One question: Am I correct in my assumption that a "light" desktop environment (whether it be a mere "Window Manager" or full-fledged DE) is going to provide significant benefits to power usage and consequently to laptop battery run-time? |
| djohnston Apr 15, 2013 7:54 PM EDT |
@Bernard, I can't say, as I have no laptops. I can only repeat what others have said about power usage. Some make the claim that the power manager daemon makes a difference. Most swear by xfce-power-manager, regardless of the DE used. My $0.02. |
| BernardSwiss Apr 15, 2013 8:14 PM EDT |
@djohnston Thanks (I was already considering trying XFCE on my laptop, anyways) |
| CFWhitman Apr 16, 2013 8:33 AM EDT |
I've never really run anything on a laptop heavier than XFCE, so I I'm not sure how much power benefit you'd get over KDE, Unity, or GNOME. I haven't really noticed a stupendous difference between XFCE and something lighter, but I haven't really been looking for one either. I've been experimenting with a few distributions recently that default to lightweight environments like Antix (IceWM, Fluxbox, or JWM), Semplice (Openbox - I'm pretty impressed with this distribution so far), and Salix Fluxbox (I like this distribution - it reminds me of when I ran Slackware with Fluxbox all the time). I also have Crunchbang Statler (Openbox) on my netbook, but I'm looking to either update or replace it, which is one of the reasons I'm experimenting with lightweight distributions. When I run one of these desktops it makes me feel like I've put down an oppressive burden, and that's only coming from XFCE (which I still run on my primary machines at home and at work). |
| BernardSwiss Apr 16, 2013 6:23 PM EDT |
Well, I've been looking at Crunchbang, too, actually, and thinking about fluxbox as well. And Bodhi. Icewm was once my full-time desktop, so I'll probably look at it again just to see how much it's changed. - - - Aside: One wag upon seeing my Icewm desktop, suggested that it would be perfect for a laptop, because I could safely leave it unattended at my Starbuck's table while getting another coffee -- it looked so "Win'95" that no one would steal it. :-P Of course I didn't care -- I was getting distinctly better performance than he got from his (more powerful) Win XP system. |
| djohnston Apr 16, 2013 6:42 PM EDT |
To anyone considering Openbox on Debian Wheezy, try this one. |
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