Fastest lightweight Window Manager?

[transmition]

I am considering building a system from scratch, and have to decide on a window manager. I want something light that will boot quickly, but doesn't need a lot of features. The system will run almost solely: A text editor, Firefox and SMplayer.

I have been looking at openbox, evilwm, and fvwm. However, this is what I want my system to have:

-Launchers / Icons on the Desktop
-A panel or dock of some sort to allow switching between virtual desktops (If an option) and programs
-Fast startup
-Acceptable appearance

Any recommendations?

[cariboo]

Have you had a look at xfce? It has all the features you are looking for.

[ugm6hr]

ROX can act as a complete desktop, if necessary.

It's based on ROX-filer. And I think it will do all that you require without additional components.

http://roscidus.com/desktop/

Otherwise, I'm sure IceWM or JWM with a desktop manager and panel will work.

[snowpine]

Check out LXDE. It's basically Openbox + a panel (lxpanel) + icons on the desktop (pcmanfm).

All of the lightweight WM's use far less resources than Firefox. Frankly, you would see more benefit from using a different web browser (I like midori personally) than from changing WM's.

[gjoellee]

I am considering building a system from scratch, and have to decide on a window manager. I want something light that will boot quickly, but doesn't need a lot of features. The system will run almost solely: A text editor, Firefox and SMplayer.

I have been looking at openbox, evilwm, and fvwm. However, this is what I want my system to have:

-Launchers / Icons on the Desktop
-A panel or dock of some sort to allow switching between virtual desktops (If an option) and programs
-Fast startup
-Acceptable appearance

Any recommendations?

Openbox is really fast, starts up in about 1 sec. To get the features you ask for, you just have to install some lightweight programs.

Panel: tint2 (my recommendation), pypanel, perlpanel, xfce4-panel......

Appearance: Openbox does only theme window borders as it is a window manager, but you can easily apply GTK themes by configuring the GTKRC file or getting a program like "lxappearance" (which is used in LXDE, which is based on Openbox). This is an example of how Openbox can look: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3623/3399700464_c9faa5e484_o.png

Get icons on desktop with: PCManFm, ROX or iDesk



Have you had a look at xfce? It has all the features you are looking for.

XFCE is now a windows manager, but a desktop environment. XFWM4 is a windows manager.

[transmition]

My goal is to produce a very light firefox and media system. I'm just trying to slim things down where I can ;)

I think I will go with lxde, or at least openbox and then build upon it to suit my needs. Thanks for the guidance :)

[cteam]

Sounds just like me

Here is my outline of what i did:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7567925#post7567925

I have a smokin fast machine now. I use linux for just about everything but gaming (xp for that)