What window manager is faster?

[poofyhairguy]

Many people speculate about WM speed (and DE speed) but we rarely get numbers. Here are some:

http://www.rasterman.com/

Metacity does better than I would have thought and I think he had a bunk version os XFCE (does debian not have 4.2?). Otherwise its neat.

[Ironi]

Not even one typo!? Who made that page, and what happened to the real raster? ;)

Interesting benchmark, even though I'd rather see one for something that I care about (e.g. 3D fillrate performance). Still, the speed at which windows open can be important for "teh snappy" impressions.

[Takis]

:shock:
(KDE user)

That's terrible! Might have to give GNOME a try...

[Psquared]

I'm surprised that Xfce and Fluxbox are rated as so slow. They both seem faster than Gnome/Metacity to me.

I've not tried Enlightenment (E17) or Sawfish. FVWM is too complicated for my taste. I use Flux, Xfce and Gnome with Openbox as WM.

[Ironi]

The topic is misleading; you shouldn't jump to conclusions. From the page:


Remember to take these results with a grain of salt - I only test 1 particular operation - the time when a window manager is most heavily involved in your desktops performance is when moving, resize and showing windows. This mostly handles window maps.

[23meg]

in my experience

xfce > fluxbox > gnome > kde

[XDevHald]

in my experience

xfce > fluxbox > gnome > kde
Agreed and installing Xfce (again)

[oddabe19]

in my experience

xfce > fluxbox > gnome > kde
++

same here.

[bored2k]

Since I use mostly Gnome, I find gnome to react faster than fluxbox. Plus, in my experience, gnome apps look horrid in fluxbox. To me it is:

Xfce > Openbox > Metacity > Kde's

[XDevHald]

I use gnome and gnome only, but I installed Xfce and it gave me a Calendar error with gcc errors in which were not correct, did that like 3 times, and just uninstalled it, my gcc is up to date and also hand compiled as well so I am not sure what the dwal is.

[poofyhairguy]

I'm surprised that Xfce and Fluxbox are rated as so slow.

XFCE is a very old version.

[asimon]

These benchmarks may be interesting for Rasta and some other devs or poeple who want to play the "my desktop is better than your's"-game but when it comes down to earth they just don't matter.

All mentioned window mangers are more than fast enough for everyday work. When it comes to window management I prefer more usability (I won't rant over E17's usability, I don't see it as software for the people, more as a technical testbed) over performance every day.

[ghostrifle]

What I hate about today's window manager or x.org is simply speed. It can't compare to Windows's drawing speed. For sure, X has far more features but however... I'm running a desktop and want speeeeeeed ( faster response times(the graphical way)... faster redrawing etc).

I hope upcoming the OpenGL rendering extension for X will improve the speed a lot.

I know that it isn't X fault in all cases, but you have to start optimize somewhere ](*,)

[Brunellus]

I'm quite shocked--I always thought fluxbox>xfce>gnome>kde on my equipment, anyway.

Although, I end up running a lot of gnome services even when I'm not running full-on gnome. The most helpful one is the gnome-volume-manager, which lets me automount my removeable USB drives--yay!--but undoubtedly takes up preciously limited resources (celeron 800Mhz, 256 mb ram..)

I have come to prefer XFCE 4.2's look and feel over that of gnome. the right-click menu is just too cool, as is the ability to drag windows in the little virtual desktop widgets on the taskbar (sorry for the supertechnical vocabulary!) from one desktop to the next.

Ideally, I'd like to have gnome, but with a right-click menu like XFCE or flux.

[Brunellus]

What I hate about today's window manager or x.org is simply speed. It can't compare to Windows's drawing speed. For sure, X has far more features but however... I'm running a desktop and want speeeeeeed ( faster response times(the graphical way)... faster redrawing etc).

I hope upcoming the OpenGL rendering extension for X will improve the speed a lot.

I know that it isn't X fault in all cases, but you have to start optimize somewhere ](*,)
yeah, I've noticed xorg being pretty sluggish with me lately...it's almost as bad as windows, sometimes!

[poofyhairguy]

Although, I end up running a lot of gnome services even when I'm not running full-on gnome. The most helpful one is the gnome-volume-manager, which lets me automount my removeable USB drives--yay!--but undoubtedly takes up preciously limited resources (celeron 800Mhz, 256 mb ram..)


I know how to get the XFCE mounting pluggin to work. If you want I can make a howto on monday....

[Curlydave]

I only have experience with windows and gnome. I actually find Windows to be slightly, yet significantly faster. Minimal KDE experience, no experience with other GUIs.

[Psquared]

I'm quite shocked--I always thought fluxbox>xfce>gnome>kde on my equipment, anyway.

Although, I end up running a lot of gnome services even when I'm not running full-on gnome. The most helpful one is the gnome-volume-manager, which lets me automount my removeable USB drives--yay!--but undoubtedly takes up preciously limited resources (celeron 800Mhz, 256 mb ram..)

I have come to prefer XFCE 4.2's look and feel over that of gnome. the right-click menu is just too cool, as is the ability to drag windows in the little virtual desktop widgets on the taskbar (sorry for the supertechnical vocabulary!) from one desktop to the next.

Ideally, I'd like to have gnome, but with a right-click menu like XFCE or flux.

I agree with most of this. Xfce 4.2.2 compiled by os-cillation is pretty fast. I still think Fluxbox is faster -- by a hair.

Lets not forget we are talking about WMs vs DEs here. A full-blown DE is going to be slower than a WM. In that regard I would "guess" that the speeds are:

Xfce/xfwm4 > gnome/openbox > gnome/metacity > kde/???

Other combinations might improve relative speeds.

Of the others (WMs with limited Gnome/KDE integration) my experience is that

Openbox > FVWM > ICEwm > Blackbox > Fluxbox > Window Maker

If E17 is truly that fast I am going to install it tonight. The claim is that Gnome and KDE apps can be fully integrated. That would be sweet.

[bored2k]

If E17 is truly that fast I am going to install it tonight. The claim is that Gnome and KDE apps can be fully integrated. That would be sweet.
I personally don't think this is true. He was using extremly old versions of teh DM's, so I don't really believe in those benchmarks. He used old DMs with the new E.

[asimon]

I don't really believe in those benchmarks.
"Believe"?
He made the source of his benchmark public. If you don't believe why not run it yourself?

[gil-galad]

And keep in mind he was testing specific benchmarks of window managers. He is not testing the perceived speed of moving windows around. XFCE uses less memory than gnome, but that doesn't mean that xfwm can open windows faster than metacity.