Added a video on how I setup my IceWM for better performance

[Moderator BobC]

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Memory savings about 12-13 mb, 6 for the Rox desktop, 4 for conky, 2 for Volume control. Nowhere near what I thought. Those difference are based on ps_mem.py

All of these things are cumulative on slow machines. Turn off monitors, turn off conky, both save CPU, turning off volume control and desktop save memory, too.

But the big savings is launching everything from the toolbar, that saves a lot of time mousing around.

• This reply was modified 7 months, 4 weeks ago by BobC. Reason: correct memory differences

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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@BobC: I’m with you on the use of the toolbar. Ever since I started to use IceWM, (before it was the default window manager in antiX) I enjoyed using it because all of the menu entries and the toolbar could be modified with a very reasonable set of configuration files.

I spent much more time with the toolbar, putting the programs I use in single click action icons. The most important ones were always one click away and I kept it simple.

Any commands not on the toolbar I defined with single press accelerator keys. I still do it today but I haven’t configured IceEM much lately because I have been reinstalling and reconfiguring two of my computer systems; the toolbar is on my list though!

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator BobC]

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I still like my 50 icon dynamic toolbar idea, but its not very often I add a new program or need to decide which one I haven’t used.

So lack of a system to do that leaves us with trying to convince new users to sit there and add all the programs they use to the toolbar?

[Member ModdIt]

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Thanks BobC, agree.
Autohiding Toolbar wins every time. I setup manual way, open the icewm menu files in geany
and copy in the order I want shown in toolbar. Never need to move a window to reach a
desktop icon.

Pretty easy and on my setup about 20 minutes which includes creating starters for a couple
of extracted appimages with the control center tool, those starters are in personal menu.

Generaly setup once, save the ICEWM folder and move it across systems anytime. Means adding
screen background as needed. where applications are not installed ICEWM just ignores the entrys
so no spurious icons appear.

• This reply was modified 7 months, 4 weeks ago by ModdIt.

[Member PPC]

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@BobC – great and informative video! Congratulations!

Now… a “How to install and run FT10 on antiX” video would just be perfect 🙂

P.

[Member blur13]

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“But the big savings is launching everything from the toolbar, that saves a lot of time mousing around.”

It does. So do keybindings for commonly used applications. Granted, if I had 50 apps I probably would go with a toolbar. But I’ve got maybe 10 keybindings for the usual suspects: terminal, FM, browser, telegram, Alpine, cmus etc.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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blur13 wrote:

“But the big savings is launching everything from the toolbar, that saves a lot of time mousing around.”

It does. So do keybindings for commonly used applications. Granted, if I had 50 apps I probably would go with a toolbar. But I’ve got maybe 10 keybindings for the usual suspects: terminal, FM, browser, telegram, Alpine, cmus etc.

I’m with you; I use a few toolbar icons, rarely more than 5-6, 3-4 is common; same with key codes and accelerators.

I used to have a completely customized version of each; I have been using mostly alias commands lately because I can copy the scripts quickly. Once I get a nice IceWM toolbar and accelerator setup written I will be able to copy it and make small, occasional changes; getting my systems stable has recently been the priority; that’s nearly done so I can start building up my configuration library once again.

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator BobC]

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I rarely need to go to the menu. Here are 28 that I use a lot.

terminal
control centre
wallpaper
unplug USB
Keyboard help
toolbar icon mgr
app select
alsamixer volume
screenshot
calculator
firefox
brave
hexchat
libreoffice
live usb maker
zzzfm
virtualbox
package installer
synaptic
mtpaint
simplescreen recorder
youtube dl video
youtube dl audio only
aisleriot games
mahjongg game
2048 game
geany
meld

[Member marcelocripe]

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Another gem or positive for your video.
Thank you very much!

[Member banned]

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Hi Bob,
Great video – well done 🙂 You need to up the volume level a little 🙂

Think you need to spell out just what you mean by performance as when I was watching till 7:30 in, when you had finished tweaking the FM – I was thinking “that’s my boy” then you went downhill so fast I could not keep up – what on earth is he doing adding all that baggage. Then running out of space you add another panel to slow it down further and at the same time reduce the available screen (desktop) area.

Obviously not my cup of tea – but appreciate it suits you. So where is this better performance in your title header – you seem to use three times the resource as me even having the volume control on panel. See screenshot

If you take away the 22.6MiB ram used by the Task Manager we get to 146MiB RAM used on my old HP G60 laptop.

Are you using Antix-22 Full – do you have Gimp installed?
What video making-editing software did you use to make this top video?

Cheers

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   AntiX-Mem-Used-08.jpg
   

[Moderator BobC]

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I like using ps_mem.py from a terminal to detail/analyze memory usage. For example the largest user on my machines before starting applications is always Xorg, but your method didn’t include it in the list or count of memory used. It needs to be run from a root terminal or via sudo.

Icons on the toolbar vs menus, the icons always win because it takes a bunch of time on slow machines to bring up branch after branch of menus to run an application, and there is no noticable memory overhead to running with a toolbar with many icons showing. I have an old Pentium II with only 768 mb of memory, and it really needs an efficient configuration to run reasonably.

Btw, I’m glad to see the interest in performance and memory usage because if there weren’t people focused on that, we’d need 32 gb and a Cray 1 just to say hello, if the folks at MS were making all the rules. antiX is efficient enough that it can run on the machines MS drove to the scrapyards 10 or 15 years ago, like my old P II.

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi BobC, inspiring work, nice video. big big thank you.
Was a bit quick at times, lot of subject matter to cover, not easy.

Let those who criticize show they can do better, and advise they stick to full facts not half
truths.

Couple of things users commonly asked about below.

In /home/your_username/.icewm/toolbar the order of icons shown can be any way you wish.
Left is top of list, every icon is added to the right. Just move entrys as wanted.
To add manualy copy from personal or menu applications.

If you have a faulty entry those following will be ignored by icewm.

after changing entrys, no need to logout, just use icewm –restart that is minus minus which the
forum software commonly mangles..

One lesser known tip, add a .papersize file in desktop, content a4 which is a per user setting.
replace or place a # in front of the as delivered letter entry in /etc/papersize for a global setting.
add a4 or other size as needed.

Extracted from the manual:
The format is extremely simple: whitespace and anything starting with ‘#’ is ignored,
and the name of the paper is the first string found.
The following names are commonly understood by programs: a3, a4, a5, b5, letter, legal,executive, note and 11×17.

Recommended reading, paperconf(1) – Linux man page

If your printer driver does not read the settings please complain to the manufacturer not here.

• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by ModdIt.
• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by ModdIt.
• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by ModdIt.

[Member argonaut459]

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Didn’t watchb the video yet.
Earlier you were talking about transcripts and translation for the video.
Translation have to be manually added by you.

I saw this video recently, and this FOSS transcript and translation tool should come in pretty handy.
See video here (a bit lengthy as he is testing it)
But it should do the trick

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ph6K_0ttsSc

[Member banned]

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Hey Bob,

Great to read that you too are interested in performance and memory usage rather than RAM hogging bloat 🙂

BobC wrote:

I like using ps_mem.py from a terminal to detail/analyze memory usage. For example the largest user on my machines before starting applications is always Xorg, but your method didn’t include it in the list or count of memory used. It needs to be run from a root terminal or via sudo.

You say you like ps_mem.py so please find my screenshot taken today – hope to see your dead ringer soon 🙂
I like to use task manager when LIVE results are needed, and the standard free -h or free -m plus date, when static after boot. Hope everyone spotted that your method does not show CPU usage – oooops 🙂
As I have obliged with your requests could you do me the honour of producing dead ringer screenshots of both or all methods? – thanks Bob 🙂 Could you as asked before spell out just what you mean by performance?

BobC wrote:

Icons on the toolbar vs menus, the icons always win because it takes a bunch of time on slow machines

I have a Pentium ll also but let us not confuse the issue – you are using a decent old laptop too, aimed at pro users according to Trusted Reviews. My old 2008 HP laptop aimed at the average punter is quite fast because I have removed panel items etc.

So for the fun of it shall we compare on a level playing field and see if we can improve the performance and memory usage of both our laptops? 🙂 🙂

ps – just ignore the snide remarks, unhelpful content and move on 🙂

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[Moderator BobC]

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I do still have that machine (Dell D620) but I don’t know if I saved the partition I was using the day I made the video. I will look when I get a chance. Most people doing videos don’t make them on their slower machines, but those are the machines where performance optimization really matters. CPU usage will be all over the map unless you are asking what it will be in an idling state. I’m not sure what monitoring method will least affect the results, there. Lxtask and conky put too much load on the system. IceWM has a monitor, not sure if LXDE does also. Maybe top or htop would be a good tool to use since those are almost always available.

I am not trying to prove any WM is better than any other. I just want my system to be as responsive as possible on whichever system I’m using at the time. On machines with slower CPU’s and low memory, it’s very important for the setup to be efficient for the tasks to be done, or it can be painfully slow to complete tasks.

The D620 is a single core, 2 gb machine, so something I want to try is to see if zram helps.

PS: I didn’t do that while making the video because that machine is at it’s limits doing the things being shown in the video, plus running Firefox, and the screen recording software, and so the numbers shown for memory or CPU would have been meaningless.

• This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by BobC.

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