recommendations for lightweight window managers for an old netbook

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!

callyral,
@callyral@pawb.social avatar

for lightweight, i would recommend LXQt (qt) or LXDE (gtk). XFCE also seems pretty nice.

also, you could check out i3 and bspwm if you a tiling window manager.

i would’ve recommended sway, but it sounds like you didn’t have a very nice experience with hyprland, and that could be because it uses wayland.

Titou,
@Titou@feddit.de avatar

why not Dwm ?

Pantherina,
@Pantherina@feddit.de avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    sugartits,

    Reading is hard.

    fernandu00,

    I have the exact same netbook and specs and I installed fedora lxde a couple months ago just to see how it would go and…it’s pretty decent performance if you use it just to browse the web or text editing… Installed vscodium and it got laggy as hell though … Had to use geany instead

    rustydrd,
    @rustydrd@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Used to have an Eee PC running CrunchBang (Debian + Openbox). Really lightweight and simple (some potential for customization), and it was enough to carry me all the way through university.

    harsh3466,

    I loved CrunchBang. Wish it was still around.

    frogfroggy,

    There is crunchbangplusplus. Check it out and relive it.

    harsh3466,

    Oh dang. I’m going to have to give that a spin.

    halm,

    There is BunsenLabs, I think that’s its most immediate successor. bunsenlabs.org

    RootBeerGuy,
    @RootBeerGuy@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

    On my old asus eeepc I used to have arch with i3 as a tilling window manager for a while. It was taking a bit to get used to but once I worked it out and configured it how I liked it, it was fantastic. Used it for several years until I had to write my thesis and needed something stable for my operating system.

    Pacmanlives,

    I am old school and still use Fluxbox for that kind of work load. Wish they had Wayland support!

    bbbhltz,
    @bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

    Just a window manager? Not a DE?

    Under X11 there is Openbox, bspwm, herbstluftwm, dwm, i3, Awesome, Ratpoison, spectrwm, Qtile, …

    Under Wayland: Weston, LabWC, Wayfire, Sway, River, Cagebreak, dwl, …

    I keep things pretty dull and use Openbox + LXQt. It is a stacking WM that is stable, and LXQt is snappy.

    If you are looking for a light DE LXQt is very light, Plasma is lighter than it used to be, but it also has loads of features. Xfce has more options for configuration than LXQt and I think it isn’t quite ready for Wayland.

    Maybe Sway would be up your alley?

    (Note to self: check arewewaylandyet.com)

    juipeltje,
    @juipeltje@lemmy.world avatar

    Is you specifically want a wayland compositor like hyprland, you can try sway or qtile. I’ve also heard good things about river but never used it myself.

    Aatube,
    @Aatube@kbin.social avatar

    Probably LXQt or MATE

    bruhduh,
    @bruhduh@lemmy.world avatar

    Icewm, antix linux uses it and whole system on startup uses ~200mb ram

    fraksken,

    i3wm is pretty light on resources

    ikidd,
    @ikidd@lemmy.world avatar

    Lxqt

    S410,
    @S410@kbin.social avatar

    Almost everything that's not Gnome can be considered lightweight, to be honest.

    Cwilliams,

    Maybe except KDE

    clmbmb,

    No. S/He’s right. Anything (including KDE) is better than gnome.

    iloverocks,

    Maybe dwm or dwl. I’m a hyprland user but this would be the minimum you should go for

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