You fav light weight apps

[halfvolle melk]

Hi,

If any, what are your favourite light weight apps and why? Anything goes.

Today I installed FluxBox and Dillo. This takes getting used to, because they're way faster that I am. Dillo is ... nice to play around with, doesn't really render pages to be very pretty so I'll stick with Epiphany and Firefox.

Any recommendations?

[Brunellus]

Sylpheed for e-mail.

[Master Shake]

Tali

Damn good Yahtzee game!

[GeneralZod]

Dillo is not massively useful, but is absolutely adorable :)

As a KDE user, this is about the only lightweight app I come into contact with ;)

[halfvolle melk]

Dillo is not massively useful, but is absolutely adorable :)

As a KDE user, this is about the only lightweight app I come into contact with ;)
Hehe, yes it's totally cool because it's very good at what it's trying to be. By the way, after installing FluxBox and saw the w3m browser. YIKES! Then I pressed some buttons to no avail and decided to look into it some other time ;)

[bjweeks]

Windows XP

[kaamos]

links2 -g
Not that useful either, but sure is fast. :)

[majikstreet]

fluxbox!!

[halfvolle melk]

Windows XP
I'd be stuck with XP right now if I didn't have such pooped up hardware. But now I'm hooked. Thumbs up for crappy hardware.

[Kernel Sanders]

Webroot Desktop Firewall 1.3 :cool:

[midwinter]

I try to go lightweight/config file configurable if possible, right now I use;

irssi - irc
urxvt - terminal
vim - editor
mutt - mail
screen - great app..
links, occasionally

[followme]

abiword - wordprocessor
opera - not my favorite, heavier than Dillo, but faster than ff 1.5.x for full features, but I stick with ff
fluxbox -
sylpheed - email

that's the most common that I use

[Lord Illidan]

Let's see. Open Office, Firefox 1.5, GNOME, and GIMP?

[dada1958]

Window Maker

[benplaut]

Abiword
Fluxbox 4.3 (dapper) is totally awesome
E17 from latest CVS is totally awesomer than xfce

[bonzodog]

I am using Xubuntu with thunar, which appears to be very lightweight, and at flight 5/RC1, will do a clean root install to server level, and just get the xubuntu-desktop. That will be very lightweight.

[Bandit]

Everything is lightweight on my system.
Guess if I had to choose the litest and most used would be GNU Nano.
Cheers,
Joey

[Qrk]

I use thunar in Gnome... its lightweight, has a good ui and I haven't had any stability problems yet.

Can't wait till its released.

[super]

nano + aterm = two apps i find absolutely vital (i think every linux user should know how to work a terminal and a console editor)

e17 - currently my wm of choice. say what you want about compiz and the like. e17 lookes pretty and it moves like greased lightning

[Jucato]

I guess the lightest app in my system would be KTorrent :D For something that almost has all the features of Azureus, it's still lighter than bittorrent/bittornado (considering the number of things I'm seeding)

I tried E17 on the live CD, and I'd say it's fantastic! I just can't figure out how I can use it as the window manager over KDE... :(

[beercz]

xfmedia - for playing music - simple, easy to use and 'does exactly what it says on the tin'

[majikstreet]

..more..
vi/vim
nano
galeon
epiphany
xmms
xterm
abiword

[ComplexNumber]

i much prefer lightweight apps to heavyweight bloated monsters such as emacs, vim, k3b, amarok, evolution, and most KDE apps.
examples that i use and like include gtick(metronome), gtodo(todo list), notecase(notes), alsaplayer(cd player), gthumb(image viewer).

[Luggy]

I'm getting confused here, what counts as a lightweight apps and which is a heavyweight app?

[K.Mandla]

links2 -g
Not that useful either, but sure is fast. :)
:) The forums look funny with that one. But it works. ...

[gord]

if it takes more than a second to load, its a heavyweight app ;)

nano and nethack for me, can't live without them

[IYY]

dillo
xmms
xcalc
xpdf
xchat

[bored2k]

BitTorrent 4.X official

[bored2k]

I'm getting confused here, what counts as a lightweight apps and which is a heavyweight app?
Lightweight should be a program that compared to others programs that do the same thing, feel lighter. As an example, Bittorrent may not be so light, but when compared to azureus and/or bittornado, it sure is.

[andlinux21]

Fluxbox, Conky, X-chat, eterm<< not sure if that counts but i like Eterm transparency:D

[fuscia]

fluxbox (used openbox for quite a while)

dillo (i do most of my browsing with it and opt for firefox when i have to. i love firefox, but it's too slow.)

sylpheed-claws (thunderbird, like firefox, is nice, but in the time it takes to open, i could probably go and visit the people who send me e-mails.)

xmms (except for not playing the whole cd, it's great.)

feh (great image viewer, very flexible)

mousepad (does more than i know how to)

rxvt (opens fast and looks clean)

i use rxvt, feh and mousepad to do whatever i need to manage my files, so i don't use a file manager.

[landotter]

Abiword
Mousepad
xmms, ogg123, mpg321
gaim (much lighter than a bunch of IM proggies + an IRC client)
Gqview
Streamtuner
Gnumeric

and the queen herself: Nano

I don't mind editing a text in a console now and again, but I don't think one should have to learn esoteric commands to fix Xorg every couple of years. Nano fits the bill, and should be the default installed console text editor. Heck have vi as well, but you won't see me using it.

[briancurtin]

i like how for one person vi was the first application on their list, and for the post right behind it, the person called vi a "heavyweight bloated monster"

anyone else find that funny?

[landotter]

i like how for one person vi was the first application on their list, and for the post right behind it, the person called vi a "heavyweight bloated monster"

anyone else find that funny?

"bloated" is such a loaded word, but vi, for a joe user, certainly is overly complex. ;)

[midwinter]

vim is not exactly my idea of a heavyweight app.. it is great though. :)

[psychicdragon]

i like how for one person vi was the first application on their list, and for the post right behind it, the person called vi a "heavyweight bloated monster"

anyone else find that funny?
Funnier still that gthumb is on the second list.

Seriously, Vim is awesome if you've gotten used to the commands. It's not like the features you don't know about will ever get in your way, but they're available if you need them. It runs in your terminal, and starts instantly. Sounds pretty lightweight to me.

Nano, probably wins though. It's lightweight in terms of resources and features. The perfect tool for editing config files.

[ComplexNumber]

maybe a definiton of heavyweight and lightweight is required. i would call any application heavyweight if it has any of the following criteria:

-does more than what a minimal or typical example in its class(eg an editor, word processor, image viewer, etc) is intended to do
-if it has multiple uses(eg amarok is used as a cd ripper and a cd player amongst other things. therefore, its a heavyweight)

for example, leafpad is lightweight whereas vi/vim, kate, and open office write are heavyweights. gedit is bordering on heavyweight and lighweight because it seems to be trying to be a programmers editor/IDE in addition to being a simple file editor.
a typical lightweight application does only what its supposed to do in a minimal or typical way rather than being single-purpose but full featured(eg OO write as a word processor), or a jack of all trades(eg amarok as a cd player/ripper/whatever).



Funnier still that gthumb is on the second list. i would still call gthumb lightweigh because of my definition above.

[halfvolle melk]

I use vi for editing config files from the command line. Never used vim though.

Lot's of cool suggestions. I have a P0 75MHz lying around. See if I can make a useable desktop out of it with all these tips :mrgreen:

[plewisfdx]

I use vi for editing config files from the command line. Never used vim though.

I think you may be using vim and not know it.



phil@laptop:~$ ll /usr/bin/vi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 20 2006-03-10 06:43 /usr/bin/vi -> /etc/alternatives/vi
phil@laptop:~$ ll /etc/alternatives/vi
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 12 2005-08-08 14:26 /etc/alternatives/vi -> /usr/bin/vim
phil@laptop:~$


Those "->" denote symlinks, so the "vi" command takes a roundabout route to open vim on my system.

My lightweight faves:
openbox - no gnome
fbpanel - took me a while to figure this out, but great
opera - lightER than FF, not lightweight
mousepad
abiword
rox-filer - lightweight, fast, but I prefer consoles
sylpheed - ssl problems with the current version, but claws works (gtk1 :( )

I think lightweight apps for me becomes an obsession, I don't like to wait to open a text editor, or console. I want a fast console that will let me cut and paste. The fastest one that I can find that does this is xterminal (xfce's term.)

[fuscia]

adios mousepad, hello nano!

[DaMasta]

This is my desktop:
Openbox with pypanel
conky
vi (for editing, every now and then leafpad)
opera (not really lightweight, but for the features I want, it's by far the fastest)
xmms
aterm

[Hamman]

mplayer from console is both lightweight and full-featured(apart from DVD-menus). Just do
mplayer movie.avi and you get a movie window. There's keyboard shortcuts for just about everything, see
man mplayer

[rplantz]

maybe a definiton of heavyweight and lightweight is required. i would call any application heavyweight if it has any of the following criteria:

-does more than what a minimal or typical example in its class(eg an editor, word processor, image viewer, etc) is intended to do

Now you have to define "typical." The most common (typical?) word processor is Word. Almost anything is lightweight compared to that.

Where are the lawyers? :)

Seriously, this is an informative list. There are several things I plan to try.

[fuscia]

i'd define lightweight as an app that doesn't use a lot of resources. if an app can do a bunch of things and still not use a lot of resources, that's a positive, to me, if 'lightweight' is regarded as favorable.

[chris4585]

Let's see. Open Office, Firefox 1.5, GNOME, and GIMP?

umm none of these are very lightweight at all, all of these are actually the very oposite, let me fix it for you lol

abiword, links2, fluxbox and i havent found any lighweight alternatives to gimp yet that are very lightweight

[Onyros]

umm none of these are very lightweight at all, all of these are actually the very oposite, let me fix it for you lol

abiword, links2, fluxbox and i havent found any lighweight alternatives to gimp yet that are very lightweightmtpaint? :P

[chris4585]

mtpaint is good but i would still rather use gimp on a slower machine, just my preferences i actually miss mspaint... i was an expert with mspaint but mspaint cant do what gimp does... anyone know of a clone of mspaint?

[Darkhack]

anyone know of a clone of mspaint?

The only one I know of is KolourPaint (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KolourPaint), but that's a Qt application and might not be the best option if you're using GNOME or XFCE.

[chris4585]

The only one I know of is KolourPaint (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KolourPaint), but that's a Qt application and might not be the best option if you're using GNOME or XFCE.

i used kolourpaint before its pretty good, i actually like this for doing things that i use to do in mspaint

[Mary.Riley]

Openbox hands down no question!

[grte]

coreutils: You won't find lighter file-management. Or more powerful.
vim: The greatest. Period.
dwm: About as light as wms get.
mpd + clients (specifically ncmpc/mpc): Possibly not as light as moc or cmus. But if not, damned close, and a better music player.
urxvt(c|d) - urxvt in daemon/client mode? Yes, please.
irssi - The greatest irc client
rtorrent - Lightest torrent client I can think of that isn't feature-barren. Very light in it's own right, as well.
epdfview: Very light pdf reader
lftp: Command line ftp client. Best of them, in my view.
elinks: Text-mode browser. Some people complain about these being archaic, but if all you want is text, you'll find nothing faster, and it keeps you focused.
newsbeuter: textmode rss feed reader. Quite good, but honestly I'm waiting for nrss to get a bit more stable.
mutt: The least sucky email client.
midori: I don't use it regularily, but it looks promising. GTK web browser based on webkit. Extremely light, far as graphical web browsers go.
bitlbee: Allows you to access instant messaging services via your irc client. As I use irssi, this turns out to be quite light.
wodim: The lightest burning app.

[Shazaam]

iptraf- monitor connections (run it in terminal= sudo iptraf). It's in the gutsy repo's.

[Darkhack]

I'm too lazy (sorry) to go through all six pages and see if it has been suggested or not, but "feh" is an amazing image viewer. Lightning fast startup.

[koleoptero]

cmus - best command line music player imho.

[/home]

Fluxbox Forever!

[newnet]

cmus - best command line music player imho.

Can it run in the background like moc? Or must it occupy a terminal?

[graabein]

I installed Xubuntu 7.10 (Xfce 4.4) on an old box and it's okay with PCManFM and Quod Libet. Using Firefox atm but I should probably check out some lighter alternatives like Kazehakase (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazehakase).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_web_browsers_for_Unix/Linux

[koleoptero]

Can it run in the background like moc? Or must it occupy a terminal?

No it occupies a terminal.

[kernelCompile]

Vim. Simply the best text editor there is, and runs on many platforms. I use it in Linux, Solaris and Windows.