Anything like the windows taskbar?

[Ulysses_]

Missing the taskbar that I was used to from other distros, the one where running applications appear as rectangular buttons at the bottom, especially useful for minimized windows.

Is there anything like the taskbar for TC?  Ideally while still using FLWM?  Would rather not install anything full-blown like KDE or GNOME or XFCE, because then there would be no reason to stay in TC.

[bmarkus]

You can try LXDE as a lite DE.

[Lee]

Would rather not install anything full-blown like KDE or GNOME or XFCE, because then there would be no reason to stay in TC.

jwm.tcz is only slightly heavier than flwm and gives you a configurable taskbar (the "tray").  jwm-snapshot gives you rounded corners on your windows, but its ten times as big.  Either can be configured using ~/.jwmrc* files.  I use the regular jwm all the time.  The default task bar config doesn't look all that great, but much can be done with it.

flwm / flwm weigh in at  0.03 MB
jwm                               0.07
jwm-snapshot               0.72
kdebase                     90.2

I don't even know what extension to look at for gnome, since I don't see anything called "gnomebase".

[Ulysses_]

JWM seems the most promising.  What configuration do you use it with?  Can you just attach your .jwm* files?

[gerald_clark]

I use icewm.

[Ulysses_]

What's a proper way to find out how much memory is used by each of these window managers?  Because for me it is not disk usage or download size that matters but the crucial factor is memory and number two is cpu usage.

I'm typing "free" but I do not really understand the values displayed.  Should caches be considered used memory?  Are they decided by the wm or X?

[gerald_clark]

cache-clear ; free

[Lee]

I started with the default .jwmrc* files, of course, and then made only a minor change to .jwmrc - increased the number of desktops to 8.  However I hacked the daylights out of .jwmrc-tray (attached) to add a "Micro Core" button a la the Windows "Start" button but with a much more static menu associated with it.  I also limited the width of each task's "button" on the task bar.

The Micro Core button menu provides quick acces to some functions of extensions that don't have icons, rdesktop, for example, and an easy way to load certain extensions that I didn't want loaded onboot and easy editor access to certain system files and the backup function.  This setup predates both "ondemand" and my knowledge of "cliorx", so "yes,  I know there are easier ways to do some of this stuff now".

My actual working .jwmrc-tray file has some passwords embedded in it which I pruned out for this extract.  If I broke the file, l et me know and I'll straighten it out.  Also, the menu in .jwmrc-tray is littered with calls to "exile" and/or "sudo exile"... exile is a wrapper for the "zile" text editor (*) that functions much like cliorx but also decides whether or not to use sudo, so I never have to worry about not being able to save an edited file because of permissions.  (The sudo-ing capability of exile is a recent mod, so any explicit "sudo exile..." is now redundant but harmless.)  Unless your a zile-o-phile, use "editor" (or whatever) instead.

(*) the idea in the name "exile" is that xzile is to zile as xemacs is to emacs, even though  there's not nearly that much to it.  "exile" seemed cuter than "xzile"

[curaga]

Specific ram use of any process? procps.tcz, and "pmap -d $(pidof jwm)", it's the private total number at the bottom center.

[Ulysses_]

Jwm looks alright, and even better at the bottom using valign="bottom" in .jwmrc-tray, whereas the wbar is just as happy as a vertical wbar on the left.

The last thing is the font size, can it be larger?  We already have a script for rebuilding flwm with a larger font, courtesy of maro here.  Does a larger jwm font size require a rebuild? If yes where are the proper sources, can't find them at the same place as flwm sources?

[curaga]

No, you can configure a font in .jwmrc-theme, for each section. Helvetica-r12 is a short alias, and we don't have other such aliases by default, so you'd need the full name, for example "*helvetica*medium-r*18*". See xlsfonts for available bitmap fonts.

jwm-snapshot is xft enabled IIRC, in it you can use truetype fonts ("Monospace 12") too.

[vinnie]

tint2 is in the repository, but I think fbpanel is even lighter, but I can't compile with success

[Ulysses_]

Just finished trying all the recommendations given, here are the results of "pmap -d" and "free" while having a browser window open:



For the purposes of TC ram use there is a clear winner, and that is jwm-snapshot with -dpi 120 which automatically chooses all the best and smooth fonts of the right size throughout while being almost identical in ram use to the TC default, flwm_topside!

Summary:
- add the -dpi 120 option at the Xvesa or Xorg command in .xsession
- Lee's customizations above
- valign="bottom" in .jwmrc-tray
- move the _ and $ buttons to the left by moving associated lines to just after Lee's root line in .jwmrc-tray
- put the wbar to the left

[roberts]

jwm-snapshot has dependencies. You should count the memory and processes that they use.

jwm-snapshot.tcz
   Xorg-7.5-lib.tcz
   libxft.tcz
      fontconfig.tcz
         expat2.tcz

[Ulysses_]

Doesn't the last column reflect this, taking all memory into account?  This column is from the output of "free", the number in bold:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        335420     323180      12240          0       6532     130604
-/+ buffers/cache:     186044     149376
Swap:      1044184      64196     979988