OldPc: How to Make FVWM faster(reduce DesksWorspace Number)?
I have a 380 Mhz 64Mo Ram
I installed the fvwm but when Internet Pages via Opera …
It’s laggy… I guess RAM is the problem and all workspaecs are taking lot of RAM !!
As the famous creator, I would say genius, created and used this wonderful FVWM to replace his TWM for the purpose of a 33MHz Pc
Thank you for your ideas !
Best regards,
Patrick
Use a ‘DesktopSize 1x1’, if you want no virtual pages. Other things you can do if you think your computer is slow, is to also use no Fvwm* modules (such as FvwmButtons, FvwmPager).
Patience is also something you’ll probably want, as is the knowledge that Opera is a huge-bloated browser anyway. Use something else, such as dillo (if you can stomach it). 
– Thomas Adam
First of all you should identify where the true problem resides. I mean, is really fvwm which is bothering you or are they your application that are heavier than they should?
To start digging into that a good way would be to measure the memory usage when you just enter fvwm from a clean boot. You can track this with something like top or htop. Look the output and make a general idea on how much memory is used by fvwm.
As suggested above, you should not use virtual desktops or pages if you are low on memory, in such situation FvwmPager is pretty useless also, so, dont use it. Dont use transparencies (each transparent colorset wastes up a lot of memory). You should try to keep you colorset in only a few.
As I said above, with htop you can track the memory usage and identify what components of fvwm are using more memory. Also consider substituting some programs by smaller ones. For example, xterm is a memory hog (you did not expect it, did you? ). Use rxvt (non unicode version), it is much smaller. Use light programs.
The bad notice is that there is no full featured browser that is low on memory consumptions, since all of them are based in khtml or gecko. The first is only konqueror (afaik there is no other implementation of khtml in linux) and the second -gecko- are all based in mozilla, wich is huge in memory usage. So, in that matter you only have two options: suffer the pain of gecko or use something like dillo, which does not support java nor any other fancy feature, and does not have a good html compliance either. Well, there is also opera, but better stay away from it.
Anyway, here is this, from my bookmarks, some browsers for linux:
upsdell.com/BrowserNews/overview.htm
icewalkers.com/Linux/Softwar … ers/11670/
As 6thpink said, all the modern browser have a rather high memory consumption. I would like to add that together with dependencies they are all quite huge space wise too. Mozilla and firefox needs the gecko engine, konqueror needs qt and kdelibs and opera needs qt.
However I disagree in his opinion of opera. In my mind it’s the best there is.
I would suggest that you try different browser and feels which one is the best for you. It could well be that (given your modest hardware) you have to settle for an older browser.
br michael
The wrong thing with most browsers is a question of desing: being based in such huge renderers as the gecko one (this is the biggest of the three mentioned here). Gecko sucks up to 27-33 mb of memory, depending on which functionalities are you using. Of course, you have to add to that amount the weight of the browser itself. There are some light browsers (like for example Kazehakase), but that does not help if they have to load the whole gecko engine to do the work. I’m not saying it is not a good engine, but it is ancient and should be revised from the base. It is slow, a monolith, so all apps that want to use it need to load the whole monolith into memory. Not a smart desing policy, in my opinion.
If you are short in memory you should try Links with the -g option, it is a console text browser, but can operate in graphical mode under X of framebuffer. It is damn small and does not relly on any external renderer.
Regarding fully functional engines, I look afterwards for khtml. It has improved a lot as browsing engine in the last few months (dunno if the people from apple are doing so much work as they are said to, but the fact is that the engine is better now). It is fast, but I cant measure accurately the memory usage. It should be far lower than gecko, but, for now the only browser in linux that uses it is konqueror, and konqueror+kioslaves+khtml is another story (it is fast though, but sucks memory like hell, still, if you compare, gecko sucks even more having less functionality…).
About opera, I never succeeded to make it work in the way I want. It is true that the renderer is very good (it is hard to find a page that opera will not render ok), but damn slow (the actual khtml beats opera by far in rendering speed, at least in my case). The text sometimes makes strange noises when scrolling down the page (which is slow as well). My machine is not a top one, but I think that a 1600 mhz processor should be able to run a simple web browser without lags, shouldnt it? (im not a linux newcomer, I the machine is blazing fast with the rest of the software and all is configured for safety and performance with sane values).
That’s with Links2.
– Thomas Adam