[Debian-eeepc-devel] Minimal X installation for 2Gb eeepc - what do I need?

[Axel Beckert]

Hi,

Iván Sánchez Ortega wrote:
> El 30/04/2010 10:45, Chris G escribió:
>> [...] I'm perfectly happy using the command line for just about
>> everything [...]
>>
>> I'm even happy going for a non-mainstream window manager if that's
>> more economical on space, I used fvwm for many years for example.
>
> If you love using the keyboard, you should try ratpoison as your window  
> manager. At 400 Kb, you can't get much more "economical on space" than 
> that.

There's another big advantage: It doesn't uses up any screen size for
window titles, buttons or window frames. Since the 2G has the 7"
screen, this shouldn't be ignored.

I use ratpoison with i3status and xmobar (initially trayer, then
lxpanel, then i3status+dzen2) for two years now on the 4G and I'm
really happy with it. :-)

Other programs I can really recommend for small screens:

* yeahconsole (drop down terminal, bound to Ctrl-Alt-Z on my boxes)

* conkeror (Gecko based webbrowser with Emacs look and feel, no button
  clutter, uses only very small amount of screen space for non-website
  stuff)

* xterm or urxvt: Terminals without menubar or other screen clutter.

> StumpWM and Awesome are other ultra-lightweight options you should
> consider.

Not StumpWM. StumpWM is very similar to ratpoison WRT to key bindings
and window management, but needs a complete LISP installation to run.

I'd rather recommend i3 which is a light-weight tiled window manager
written from scratch which is modeled after awesome, ion, wmii, etc.
with focus on maintainable code and working Xinerama support. There
was an interesting talk at FOSDEM this year about its developement and
goals.

The only mouse driven window manager, I use on the EeePC occasionally
is flwm, the Fast and Light Window Manager. It needs nearly no
learning to use it, even if you just used Windows before, but looks
unusual enough to be recognized as "this is surely not Windows". :-)

		Regards, Axel
-- 
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