[mythtv-users] desktop environment efficiencies.

Michael T. Dean mtdean at thirdcontact.com
Sat Nov 14 21:00:50 UTC 2009


On 11/14/2009 03:33 PM, Richard Morton wrote:
> 2009/11/12 Michael T. Dean
>   
>> It might be RAM-efficient, but it would likely be far less CPU-efficient.
>>  TTBOMK, xfce is a relatively lightweight desktop environment; whereas KDE
>> is a heavyweight.
>>
>> What would be most efficient, however, would be to use something other than
>> a desktop environment--some lightweight window manager like Fluxbox or, even
>> better, RatPoison.  RatPoison has about a 300kiB incremental RAM cost.
>>  Fluxbox is around 1MiB.
> Thanks for this Mike; I have been reading this thread intently. I agree the
> devs need a reasonable baseline and if they say there is a requirement for a
> window manager for the system to get any sort of assistance... so be it and
> as you say 300kb is not exactly a hardship.
>
> I would be interested in a distribution that on boot defaulted to starting
> no desktop environment and starting myth-frontend unless an option was
> pressed (in which case it would start the desktop environment), or it was
> started from within Myth. Having a whole desktop environment running seems a
> little wasteful - I guess it just isn't a priority for many... anyway it not
> that it is a huge problem; just startup would look prettier and more
> appliance like.
>
> I am sure this would introduce other issues though; such as administering
> the system from an environment that is different from the one that
> mythfrontend normally runs - but I am hypothesising as I dont know the
> architecture.

I agree that a Desktop Environment is a waste.  And--though I'm guessing 
on this--I /think/ that with any of the major Myth distros, you can 
configure them to show the Desktop Manager (i.e. GDM or KDM) on bootup 
rather than automatically logging in, then you can select a Window 
Manager (FluxBox/RatPoison/twm/fcwm...) or Desktop Environment 
(GNOME/KDE/XFCE) for your X session--depending on how you plan to use 
the system during that session.

It's not exactly what you want--but it's not too far from it (and only 
requires logout/login to switch).

Mike



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