Installing Ach on a Pentium III, what desktop should I use?

[Pogeymanz]

Pentium III @ 1Ghz;
512MB RAM @ 133Mhz.

I know that I meet the RAM requirements for any DE, but the processor and the RAM's speed aren't top of the line and I like my DE to be very snappy.

I really like XFCE, Gnome, and KDE almost equally, so it's very hard for me to decide. Plus I haven't seen or used KDEmod, which sounds pretty cool.

Also, unrelated: What other things should I do in Arch to speed up this computer?

[MONODA]

I would use xfce I use it for arch too even though my pc can easily handle gnome or kde.
EDIT: I just checked out KDEmod, it seems cool, maybe you should try that out instead.

[kerry_s]

Pentium III @ 1Ghz;
512MB RAM @ 133Mhz.

I know that I meet the RAM requirements for any DE, but the processor and the RAM's speed aren't top of the line and I like my DE to be very snappy.

I really like XFCE, Gnome, and KDE almost equally, so it's very hard for me to decide. Plus I haven't seen or used KDEmod, which sounds pretty cool.

Also, unrelated: What other things should I do in Arch to speed up this computer?

yeah right, i wish i had those spec's. mines a measly 450mhz 256mb ram.

you can use 1 of the *box's, me i use jwm on debian etch/lenny custom install.
stick with gtk2 app's, programs that don't have much dependency's.

me, i use web app's where i can, cause my browser's pretty fast.
example: google for the office stuff, meebo.com for im.

my startup ram use is only 22mb, i rarely dip into swap, i have to do alot for it to use swap. rox is my file manager, leafpad for text or xedit comes with xorg, vlc for music and vids, mtpaint to mess with images, calculator i use xcalc since it comes with xorg, xterm comes with xorg, mc for console work.
pic

[Sunflower1970]

I'm using XFCE on my Arch partition. It's a PII 400 Mhz 384MB Ram. Runs quite smoothly. (Even have either desktop effects or Compiz running quite smoothly too.)

[Pogeymanz]

I'm guessing I'll do XFCE, as I usually do. :)

I don't need it to be super-minimal light-speed. I just want to make sure it's as fast as it was when I did a fresh install of Win98, back when it was relatively new and had only 128MB RAM.

[Rumor]

I have a machine similar to that spec . . . P3/700 with 512 ram. It will run Gnome just fine, but Fluxbox is very, VERY snappy.

[finferflu]

One suggestion is to use even big DEs such as Gnome or KDE, but avoid using things like conky and other such apps that are quite resource-demanding, crawling in the background (and useless! but that's just my point of view :P).

[kerry_s]

One suggestion is to use even big DEs such as Gnome or KDE, but avoid using things like conky and other such apps that are quite resource-demanding, crawling in the background (and useless! but that's just my point of view :P).

conky is low resource 0.92mem & 0.40cpu(on mine), yet gives alot of info, mine's set to run every 2.5sec's in the conkyrc.

[mips]

You have got 512MB of ram, go KDEmod and only install what you need. You will be pleasantly suprised is all I can say.

[finferflu]

Yeah, perhaps I was too imprecise. I meant that running those background scripts to check system info is very resource-hungry. That of course doesn't apply to the conky built-in commands. Shell scripts and things of this sort can be a huge hog. Back when I was on Xmonad, I used to run a Shell script to monitor my volume, running every 1 or 2 seconds: the system felt a lot heavier.

[kerry_s]

Yeah, perhaps I was too imprecise. I meant that running those background scripts to check system info is very resource-hungry. That of course doesn't apply to the conky built-in commands. Shell scripts and things of this sort can be a huge hog. Back when I was on Xmonad, I used to run a Shell script to monitor my volume, running every 1 or 2 seconds: the system felt a lot heavier.

yeah, i got that, just depends on how you use it, what you want to keep track of. i find it easy to see what's happing at a glance, instead of opening a terminal and running the various commands.
most people don't actually need to keep a watch on things anyway, 90% of the time it's covered by programs anyhow. :lolflag:

it's also the only thing i run to break up the black, i don't use a background i prefer to use that extra 8mb of ram for programs instead of drawing a background.

[K.Mandla]

Welcome to the party.

http://kmandla.wordpress.com/hardware#Inspiron

Runs Arch almost 24-7, although I have been known to float beyond Arch into other distros with it. :D

[MisfitI38]

I have a Thinkpad with identical specs. It runs KDE, GNOME, and Xfce very, very well. Slight edge goes to Xfce in responsiveness. Fluxbox, of course, is even snappier.

[Pogeymanz]

K.Mandla: What DE do you use on that Inpsiron?

I still can't decide...

I guess I'm struggling between XFCE and KDEmod. Gnome isn't different enough from XFCE to warrant running it on an older machine, IMO.

I'm wondering: Is there anyway to install KDEmod and then remove EVERYTHING that came with it if I don't like it? As far as I know, there isn't; I'd still have Kate and Kopete, etc. I don't want to have to find every app that came with it and remove it manually. That's the only reason I wont just install both and see which one I like best.

[mips]

pacman -Rcs kdemod-complete kdemod-kde-l10n-$YOUR_LOCALIZATION

might do it, not to sure though

[MisfitI38]

From KDEMod faq:

Q: How can i uninstall/remove KDEmod?

A: All our packages are prefixed with kdemod-, so just do pacman -Q | grep kdemod and remove all results with pacman -Rd package. Then remove qt3-enhanced and KDEmod should be removed completely... Another way to remove it is to run pacman -Rd kdemod-complete

[RedSquirrel]

You might want to look at Openbox as well. It's my current favourite.

You can use it on its own or as the window manager for Xfce.

[desper]

Openbox is a real light one, and also a powerful one.
The keybinding and menu is enough for me to do any daily taks, more speed and more efficiency. Actually I am so glad that I could get t rid of mouse, panel, desktop icon, all these things and their time-consuming problems. The only cost is that I spent an afternoon learning openbox wiki and tweaking the conf file.
Best desktop is no desktop at all.

[aeto]

I used to run KDE/GNOME and Compiz perfectly fine on the following:

Pentium 866
256MB
FX5200

It seems people have forgotten how sturdy good old hardware were, taking the crap quality of today's manufacturing as the epitome of good performance.

[canistra]

Just use openbox!

[cardinals_fan]

Xfce is awesome, but nothing beats the *boxes for speed.

[K.Mandla]

Just use openbox!
Xfce is awesome, but nothing beats the *boxes for speed.
+1x2!

[LookTJ]

For a good start out, I suggest OpenBox as the window manager and your choice of DE(I recommend XFCE, though I use GNOME)

[Pogeymanz]

I've pretty much decided on XFCE, but is openbox really so good that I should use it with XFCE? It seems like all Arch users are using openbox! I have to at least try it out on my laptop later.

[MisfitI38]

I've pretty much decided on XFCE, but is openbox really so good that I should use it with XFCE? It seems like all Arch users are using openbox! I have to at least try it out on my laptop later.

Openbox is nice and light. It requires a lot of configuration, but is customizable down to the very last detail.
It is not for everyone, though.
ROX works well as a file manager for it, and adds icons, drag and drop, etc.
I recently added a brief howto to the openbox wiki page, for using openbox as the wm for Xfce4, if you're interested in that.
You can also run openbox as your wm, and simply start xfce4-panel afterward, for a more hybrid-approach.
Like I said, the customization and combinations are endless... ;)

[LookTJ]

For a good start out, I suggest OpenBox as the window manager and your choice of DE(I recommend XFCE, though I use GNOME)I forgot to mention, to edit openbox, install obconf(gui)