Hello everyone.
Some reading on the gentoo forums discovered a small…well, actually a HUGE thread about FVWM. The introduction was quite interesting to me at least…an WM capable of “replicating” any other with some tweaking? Tons of features? Well…I should give THAT a try.
I think it was one year ago, trying to find something to fit my needs, the first time I tried FVWM. It was quite an unappealing vision to me, so I gave up and tried something else (ended up with IceWM). But, lately, I got another “WM crisis” that ended with me using flux with an extra XFCE toolbar (amusing at least).
Now, giving it some tries (and making things easier using the themes package, I have no time to deal with a good setup working 7 days per week!), I am starting to get this working decently (although I need to install the perl tk requisites of the fvwmtabs module at home), and so far I am liking it…however…
I always heard this one was a light WM, but the memory usage of every fvwm or module is quite big (reported 3-7% with 768MB of RAM). Is it something wrong with my compiling? Or maybe this is normal? I am just curious about this.
Thanks in advance.
Well, can you post some figures using ps(1) for us to see? Generally the memory usage is low – and if you run it with NO fvwm modules at all, then it truely is fast. Granted, the memory increases depending on which fvwm modules you decide to load, and how many instances of them too (where permitted).
Perhaps the biggest memory eater of FVWM is the over-use of colorsets and transparency – to which you don’t say whether you use it or not.
– Thomas Adam
I measured with the default configuration.
There’s the taskbar, the desktop manager at the top left and the button thingy at the lower right. With the XP-like theme (using fvwm-themes) the usage is the same (roughly).
I am afraid I won’t be able to post ps output until Wednesday or Saturday…
And no, no transparency or anything (yet).
It DID run OK though, but I am still concerned on why such a RAM usage.
EDIT: Wrong, I have to work tomorrow too…34 days withour rest, argh…Ahem, well, I can post ps’s output tomorrow.
Well, that might be a little high. As a comparison, here’s mine:
[code]
[n6tadam@station ~]$ ps faxv | grep [Ff]vwm
PID TTY STAT TIME MAJFL TRS DRS RSS %MEM COMMAND
6617 ? S 1:23 48381 686 4601 3084 0.5 _ fvwm -f /home/n6tadam/.fvwm2rc
6727 ? Ss 0:00 4 57 2926 476 0.0 _ ssh-agent fvwm -f /home/n6tadam/.fvwm/fvwm2rc
28345 ? S 0:00 403 249 4050 1692 0.3 _ /usr/lib/fvwm/2.5.10/FvwmButtons 7 4 none 0 8 FvwmButtonsBottom
28346 ? S 0:00 150 15 2540 576 0.1 _ /usr/lib/fvwm/2.5.10/FvwmEvent 9 4 none 0 8 FvwmEvent-decrxvt
28347 ? S 0:00 88 15 1464 356 0.0 _ /usr/lib/fvwm/2.5.10/FvwmCommandS 11 4 none 0 8
28348 ? S 0:00 232 125 2998 904 0.1 _ /usr/lib/fvwm/2.5.10/FvwmAnimate 13 4 none 0 8
28349 ? S 0:00 329 173 3882 1368 0.2 _ /usr/lib/fvwm/2.5.10/FvwmProxy 15 4 none 0 8
28350 ? S 0:00 381 222 4025 1688 0.3 _ /usr/lib/fvwm/2.5.10/FvwmPager 17 4 none 0 8 FvwmPager 0 0
28356 ? S 0:00 375 241 3822 1672 0.3 _ /usr/lib/fvwm/2.5.10/FvwmIconMan 19 4 none 0 8
28358 ? S 0:00 381 222 4025 1680 0.3 _ /usr/lib/fvwm/2.5.10/FvwmPager 21 4 none 0 8 FvwmPager 0 0
28359 ? S 0:00 399 311 4196 1876 0.3 _ /usr/lib/fvwm/2.5.10/FvwmScript 23 4 none 0 8 FvwmScript-Date
28360 ? S 0:00 397 311 4184 1856 0.3 _ /usr/lib/fvwm/2.5.10/FvwmScript 25 4 none 0 8 FvwmApplet-DigitalClock
28397 ? S 0:00 364 249 3882 1504 0.2 _ /usr/lib/fvwm/2.5.10/FvwmButtons 29 4 none 0 8 FvwmBar -g 1273x16+0+0
28398 ? S 0:00 377 241 3822 1680 0.3 _ /usr/lib/fvwm/2.5.10/FvwmIconMan 31 4 none 0 8 FvwmIconMans
7816 pts/31 S+ 0:00 301 96 1743 384 0.0 | _ less ./Fvwm.py[/code]
– Thomas Adam
I see.
I compiled from source with quite simple CFLAGS (-Os), lastest official release (2.5.12), compiled with gcc 3.3.x in a gentoo system (fairly updated).
Is there any other relevant data I can provide?
Well, a full ps output would be interesting. But other than that, I wouldn’t like to draw any conclusions…
– Thomas Adam
Alright. I’ll post it tomorrow. Anything else? I won’t be able to bring my computer here.
Umm, that should do it – if you want to detail any other applications you have running, as well as your XFree86/Xorg versions, then do so. You might want to look over your XFree86.0.log file or X11.org log file in /var/log – just in case this memory usage issue is a part of X11.
Similarly, you might want to see if there’s anything in ~/.xsession-errors that fvwm has shown – although I doubt that there would be.
– Thomas Adam
Okay, thanks for your help.
Good grief, I didn’t know there WERE that many FVWM modules! 
All I get is:
:~ $ ps faxv | grep fvwm
28892 ? S 0:03 0 705 5118 4092 0.7 \_ fvwm2
28894 ? S 0:00 0 224 3919 1668 0.3 \_ /usr/lib/fvwm/2.5.12/FvwmPager 7 4 none 0 8 0 0
That’s 1% of my 512MB memory…
There’s quite a few, yes.
Which is about right…
– Thomas Adam
Now this is strange.
After my last post I went home and installed that nifty theme by Gulivert, OSX-Milky. When I checked htop the RAM usage was lower than 2% per module. Like 1.4% or even less.
Sorry for the inconvenience.