How many of you have older hardware? I know I’ve got a few machines that I can’t take myself to throw away. It’s ok though because we all run Linux which is very kind to old hardware (Don’t throw away good hardware, use Ubuntu!) For those of us with even older hardware we might need to tone things down just a bit. How do we do that? We’ve got a few options, let me go over a few:

First, if we’re using GNOME (which is the default desktop manager) we can tell it to tone things down a bit using gconf-editor. Try the following and see how much difference it makes in your responsiveness:

ALT-F2 : gconf-editor
set "/apps/metacity/general/reduced_resources" to true

Or, if you’re using KDE you’ve got a few options as well. note: in my experience KDE is the least hardware friendly (as far as responsiveness and memory requirements). You can try running (or installing if it isn’t included) a program that will allow you to reduce the eye-candy level of KDE:

kpersonalizer

Now for those of you that have hardware that served back in the war, or want to venture into some new desktop manager options you can install any of the following:

Xfce - sudo aptitude install xubuntu-desktop
Fluxbox - sudo aptitude install fluxbox
Enlightenment - sudo aptitude install enlightenment
Blackbox - sudo aptitude install blackbox
Openbox - sudo aptitude install openbox
Afterstep - sudo aptitude install afterstep
FVWM - sudo aptitude install fvwm
WindowMaker - sudo aptitude install wmaker

note: you’ll also want to install a menu application that keeps the different Desktop Manager menus separate. Install the package menu using your preferred method (command line or Synaptic Package Manager) and, after installation run:

sudo update-menus

Now you might be wondering how to switch between these new desktop managers. It’s really simple and you can very easily have any / all of these installed at any time and switch between them all.

  1. Logout of your current desktop manager
  2. On the Login screen find the “Options” button
  3. Select “Sessions” and select your newly installed desktop manager

It will ask you if you’d like to switch to that manager just this time or if you’d like to make it the default. That is, of course, up to you. If you’d like like to give things a test-drive just use it for this session. You can easily switch between any desktop manager using the same method. So what are you waiting for? Check out some of the other available Desktop Managers and make your desktop completely unique to you! Ooh and, of course, many of these alternates are MUCH more lightweight and work GREAT on older hardware!

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Comments

8 Responses to “Alternate Desktop Manager - Xfce / Fluxbox / Enlightenment / Blackbox / Openbox / Afterstep / FVWM / WindowMaker : Ubuntu (6.06.1 / 6.10)”

  1. Pepino on December 19th, 2006 3:14 am

    Hi,

    which one would you suggest, if the computer only has 128MB RAM?

    TIA
    Pepino

  2. Alternate Desktop Manager - Xfce / Fluxbox / Enlightenment / Blackbox / Ope « randomthings on December 19th, 2006 4:40 am

    [...] read more | digg story Explore posts in the same categories: [...]

  3. Ubuntu Tutorials on December 19th, 2006 1:09 pm

    Pepino - if the machine only has 128M I would definitely suggest something like Xfce or Fluxbox. Those two are really lightweight.

    Gnome or KDE won’t work very well with those resources. Give those other two a try.. some trial and error ;)

  4. Heathen Dan on December 19th, 2006 9:45 pm

    I second Xfce/Xubuntu. I’ve been using it since Dapper and it’s pretty light and tight. I suggest downloading and installing the Xubuntu CD instead of the apt-get route. Less clutter that way.

  5. » Top Ten Ubuntu Tutorials : User Voted Ubuntu Tutorials : Breezy - Dapper - Edgy - Feisty on December 31st, 2006 2:12 pm

    [...] Well its the end of another year and this blog has been through some ups and downs. I wanted to put together a quick post outlining the top ten most popular tutorials of late. Many of you have showed your support by submitting tutorials to Digg and leaving comments. I thank you for your support in helping get this information to as many people as possible. Education is going to be the key for Ubuntu to continue to rise. If you’ve missed any of these previous posts take a minute to catch up. As always, if you enjoyed the post consider giving it your vote on Digg or share it on del.icio.us! 10. How to Install Flock Web Browser on Ubuntu - Digg’d with 15 Votes 9. Google Toolbar Fix Instructions For Firefox 2 - Digg’d with 14 Votes 8. Setting up gaim for use with gmail chat (Jabber) - Digg’d with 17 Votes 7. Alternate Desktop Managers - Xfce / Fluxbox / Enlightenment / Blackbox / Openbox / Afterstep / FVWM / WindowMaker - Digg’d with 18 Votes 6. DOS Emulation with DOSBox - Digg’d with 22 Votes 5. How to clone an Ubuntu installation - Digg’d with 28 Votes 4. XGL on Dapper (nVidia) - Digg’d with 32 Votes 3. How to install & Play World of Warcraft - Digg’d with 45 Votes 2. How to Enable DVD Playback - Digg’d with 852 Votes 1. Ubuntu Tutorials - Digg’d with 979 Votes [...]

  6. Kenneth on March 1st, 2007 11:58 am

    Xfce looks nice. But, on older/under powered hardware, WinowMaker uses MUCH less memory and really makes the gui snappier. Especially when running Firefox 2.0, OpenOffice, the GIMP, or other largish applications. YMMV, but that has been my experience.

  7. Actualize Your Potential » links for 2007-10-14 on October 13th, 2007 10:24 pm

    [...] Alternate Desktop Manager - Xfce / Fluxbox / Enlightenment / Blackbox / Openbox / Afterstep / FVWM /… (tags: linux desktop) [...]

  8. r5d on June 24th, 2008 3:36 pm

    You’re adressing people used to clicking things, right? The typical ubuntu-user?

    I seriously doubt that recommending WMs (yes, it’s called a “window manager”, the definition of the term “desktop” varies) like fvwm will have any effect other that an angry ‘apt-get remove $WM’ after some minutes

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