recommendations for lightweight window managers for an old netbook

Linux@lemmy.ml – 54 points – 12 months ago

Hi, I've got an old netbook from Samsung that has an old Intel Atom CPU (Intel Atom N455 1.66 GHz). I installed Arch on it and am now thinking of a suitable window manager. I tried Hyprland (kinda expecting it to not work really) whick didn't start at all. Before I had Debian with Gnome, which technically worked, but everything was extremely slow.

I've used Gnome for a long time, but I know that there are a lot of other window managers out there. I would like to have one that avoids graphical gimmickry in order to be fast. (I like some nice little graphical details, but only if it's still running buttery smooth).

If you have some tips that would be very nice!

EDIT: thank you for all the recommendations I'll try out a few!

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dwm (or dwm-flexipatch if you dislike patching manually)

This or any tiling window manager, because small screen. If dwm is hard for you, try with bellow options.
i3wm was my first, but now I'm happy with my actual dwm config.
Awesomewm starts as a dwm fork, but with all included and easier for beginners.
There are a lot more, but I start with this.

You get better screen use space and smaller memory requirements.

But your real big problem, is going to be web browser, all of them consume insane amount of RAM because of web bloat, and always is going to be a problem. Just 1 tab open and a lot of patience.

My old netbook had just 1GB ram, later I did an upgrade to 2GB and was the maximum possible.

i guess the best you could go for web browser lightweightness would be qutebrowser, or maybe emacs' eww?

Maybe netsurf, Dillo or w3m/links, if you don't need JavaScript, if you do, you need at least 4GB RAM to have a better web experience.

Today's web is very RAM hungry (bloat).