Want a Lean and Fast Linux Desktop?

At work I used to have an AMD desktop with an Athlon 4450B dual-core processor and 3G mem. Not the most recent config, but should not be bad either.

Software being run:

• Ubuntu Unity as desktop
• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• occasionally a terminal

The system was still dead slow, even with regular Firefox restarts (FF being the main memory hog).

The Change

I wanted change, and after trying and reading about LXDE and XFCE, I settled with WindowMaker as the least resource hungry desktop. I remember having used it - conveniently - on a 300MHz Pentium in the 90's (an old Linux intro I wrote in Hungarian is still available online and shows my old desktop). Why not give it a try again? Guess what, it works like a charm, it's fast, easy-to-use and to configure:

The Details

- use Google Chrome instead of Firefox
- PCManFM (part of LXDE)
- install WM
- in ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/autostart add:

xset m 20/10 4
wmsetbg -u YOUR_BEAUTIFUL_BACKGROUND.png &
xscreensaver -nosplash&
sleep 0.2;
gnome-settings-daemon &