Subject: FVWM: fvwm memory usage

From: Shao Zhang <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 15 Nov 2000 00:04:00 +1100

Hi,

I am a long time fvwm user, and recently I also tried out enlightenment.
Enlightenment cannot really satisfy my key binding need, so I am going
back to fvwm.

But I found that, enlightenment with a really light theme(the defaul for
sawfish) only uses 1.5-2.0MB on my system. This includes both the pager
running transparently and the icon box as well.

I remembered when I was running fvwm, fvwm, fvwm-buttons, fvwm-pager
altogether is well over 2MB. So am I wrong or misunderstanding the
definition of "light weight"?

BTW, I thought sawfish is "light weight" too, after trying out, the
sawfish process plus the list interpreter all add up to 4.5MB. How is
that light weight?

Please clarify with my understanding...

Thanks.

Shao.

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____________________________________________________________________________
Shao Zhang - Running Debian 2.1  ___ _               _____
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From: Dan Espen <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 09:01:33 -0500

> Please clarify with my understanding...

Each window manager attempts to balance memory usage, cpu consumption,
visual appearance, and features.

Pick the one that provides the balance you want.

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Dan Espen
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From: An Thi-Nguyen Le <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 11:33:53 -0600

Shao Zhang <[email-masked]> writes:
} > I remembered when I was running fvwm, fvwm, fvwm-buttons, fvwm-pager
} > altogether is well over 2MB. So am I wrong or misunderstanding the
} > definition of "light weight"?

You also have to account for shared memory (or rather, count that kind
of memory less), as well as the lightness of your fvwm config.  Using 
a lot of pixmaps isn't going to help, for example.

I'm running fvwm2 (2.3.21), and here's the memory usage from top (look 
at the top manpage for explanations of SIZE, RSS, and SHARE):

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT  LIB %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
 7780 viper      2   0  1172 1088   756 S       0  0.7  1.7   0:48 fvwm2
 8261 viper      0   0   540  512   372 S       0  0.0  0.8   0:02 FvwmPager
 8265 viper      0   0   376  288   184 S       0  0.0  0.4   0:00 FvwmIconMan
 8259 viper      0   0   396  264   180 S       0  0.0  0.4   0:00 FvwmButtons
 8260 viper      0   0   188  120    80 S       0  0.0  0.1   0:00 FvwmEvent

Even if you don't account for shared memory being, well, *shared*, 
fvwm2 + pager + buttons adds up to a whopping total of 2108 kilobytes 
of memory.  If you don't want Buttons (Enlightenment does not provide 
a Buttons, after all), you can thrive on less.  The extra bells and 
whistles for the iconmanager (which is *the* best icon manager I've 
ever seen, across several variants of TWM and a bunch of other window 
managers) and the event modules bring the total up to 2672 kB.

Notice I'm running extra bells and whistles, and it's still particularly 
light.  My setup is sparse and simple -- no icons except for mini icons 
in the pager and those in the Buttons, simple gradients on window titles 
and menus.   Have got a ton of key bindings though (I really hate mice).

} > BTW, I thought sawfish is "light weight" too, after trying out, the
} > sawfish process plus the list interpreter all add up to 4.5MB. How is
} > that light weight?

Sawfish is lightweight for a window manager that is extremely, extremely 
flexible (how more flexible can you get *without* an interpreter of some 
sort running around, after all?).

If you really want lightweight, go check out wm2 and wmx.  Both will 
give you key bindings (changeable only at compile time, and only a 
limited set), and will be particularly fast and very, very light.  Heck, 
there's also aewm, pwm, and larswm to consider, in the lightweight yet 
focusing on one particular feature (pwm puts multiple windows into one 
window frame.  larswm automatically tiles) category.

} > Please clarify with my understanding...

On Tue, Nov 14, 2000 at 09:01:33AM -0500, Dan Espen wrote:
} Each window manager attempts to balance memory usage, cpu consumption,
} visual appearance, and features.
} 
} Pick the one that provides the balance you want.

Dan said it best.  :-)  (For me, fvwm offers the best compromise between 
memory/cpu usage, visual clarity, and flexibility.  I've gone through over 
ten or so different window managers.  AfterStep, BlackBox, olwm, twm, ctwm, 
vtwm included... been there, done that, got the config files.)

-- 
An Thi-Nguyen Le
|Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to
|see it tried on him personally.
|		-- Abraham Lincoln
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