Lightweight replacement for Gnome

Hello Lain. I've been using gnome for quite some time, and I kinda like it. But it feels slow on my old ThinkPad L420, and I want to find a replacement for it. There isn't really anything special about gnome that I like, and the functionality that I like about it could, theoretically, be reproduced with very little system ressources. I basically only use 2 features. The first one is the search shell, I use that a lot. Mainly for launching applications, less as a simple calculator and rarely to instantly copy a unicode character. I pretty much only use applications in fullscreen, or as full screen as it goes without removing the top bar that shows the time. It would be cool if the replacement had a feature where I could just press a button, type the first letters of the application name and then launch it. It would be nice if I could do all these other things in there as well, but it's not a priority. (I could just open up the calculator or character application like a normal person) The second feature is the quick settings menu at the top right. Basically only for connecting/disconnecting bluetooth. I could live with it if I had to go into the settings every time. I'm open to trying a tiling window manager. Do you have some suggestions for a DE/WM that fits my criteria, Lain?

>>75716 >press a button, type the first letters of the application name and then launch it This is exactly how dmenu works. Check it out. You can use it with any DE/WM. With some effort you probably could use it as a calculator and character menu also if you wanted to. >I'm open to trying a tiling window manager. Do you have some suggestions for a DE/WM that fits my criteria, Lain? Basically every DE/WM that is more lightweight than Gnome fits your criteria so idk. Personally I use dwm, which is an extremely lightweight tiling wm. I like it a lot. You have to compile it from source though, since configuration is done by editing the source code. This is much easier than it sounds and you can easily do it without knowing any C by just editing the default config file. (If you apply a lot of patches though then the configuration can be a pain in the ass.)

>>75716 >The second feature is the quick settings menu at the top right. Basically only for connecting/disconnecting bluetooth. I could live with it if I had to go into the settings every time. You could use some standalone bluetooth systray app for that or configure a hotkey to connect/disconnect bluetooth.

>Lightweight replacement for Gnome You could virtualize the whole of windows 10 runnon eclipse and dot net and a few games all at once and that'd probably still be more lightweight than gnom.

>>75726 Gnome runs using about a gig of ram. If you'd virtualize windows 10 that would take more ram. If you add all the other stuff you talked about that would take even more system resources, so your comment makes little sense.

Hi there. I recently found that for myself budgie is great replacement for gnome. There's dmenu-styled launcher built in, everything is simple and feture-rich -- but not bloated. Worked out of the box for me, i just changed several shortcuts and was ready to go. The quick settings thingie also exists, i use it to switch between my audio outputs, but i don't know about its bluetooth capabilities. You can use something like blueman-applet for this! So its kind of great normal person DE for me, i recommend you trying it.

>>75727 I was being hyperbolic, I meant to say that just about anything is a lightweight replacement for gnome. It's like saying "I want a pet that is smaller than an elephant"

>>75716 I think i3wm with rofi or dmenu would do the job for you. Definitely, a learning curve exists but it is worth it in my opinion Any video from YouTube about i3wm should be good enough. >The second feature is the quick settings menu at the top right. Basically only for connecting/disconnecting bluetooth. I could live with it if I had to go into the settings every time. >>75718 Same as what is said in this thread but I personally prefer the cli version of Bluetoothctl because then I can see what is happening and if the connection failed or not.

>>75716 try XFCE, it uses GTK and is very lightweight and easy to use >the search shell xfce4-appfinder pops up when I press Super+R >quick settings menu at the top right I don't have bluetooth on my laptop so I can't demonstrate it but I know you could configure it where I change battery settings and stuff, also in the top right

If you liked Gnome 2 (back before Gnome went bonkers), you'll like Mate, which is a fork of Gnome 2. If you want it as lightweight as possible, just install mate-core and add whatever you like.

>>76241 I second this. I use it on everything, including my high end desktop. Runs great, is customisable and compatible with Gnome software without visual inconsistency.

>>75716 Take a look at https://nwg-piotr.github.io/nwg-shell/ >>The first one is the search shell, I use that a lot. https://nwg-piotr.github.io/nwg-shell/nwg-drawer >>quick settings menu at the top right. https://nwg-piotr.github.io/nwg-shell/nwg-panel

>>75716 Xfce4 is good. Another option is Mate. Both of these are very similar. You need to experiment with different WMs and DEs to see which one you prefer. I personally use IceWM. It works like Windows 95, more or less, but it also has workspaces, optional basic support for tiling windows, and you can change default click-to-focus to sloppy focus, if you want to. I have bound WinLogo+r to a program launcher called Rofi: Just add key "Super+r" rofi -show run to your ~/.config/icewm/keys file. The other IceWM config files also follow a similar style. Rofi searches incrementally for the program as you type. IceWM is also lightweight but it comes with a taskbar and a clock. I recommend that you read this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/IceWM Use the default IceWM config as basis for your personal config. You can use xev for finding out names of modifier keys. You can use feh, xsetroot or icewmbg for setting the background (put it in the IceWM "startup" shell script). pic related is a screenshot with IceWM. >I pretty much only use applications in fullscreen, or as full screen as it goes without removing the top bar that shows the time. Ratpoison is very different from Gnome. It's a manually tiling WM where all programs are maximized by default. it's also very lightweight and easy to configure. There is also StumpWM and CageBreak that are clones of Ratpoison. StumpWM is both programmed and configured in Common Lisp. It has more features than Ratpoison. CageBreak is a Ratpoison clone for Wayland but it's not on par with features with Ratpoison. On Ratpoison and StumpWM, you can get a list of all keybindings (including custom ones!) by typing C-t ? (C = Ctrl)

>>76314 Here is a screenshot with IceWM: >>67756

>>75717 Pretty much what he said. I could not have said it better myself.

If you want lightweight DE that just works use Xfce. It has the dmenu type program as an optional package if you want it. I've tried gnome, kde, tiling wms, nscde and others but xfce has always been the most reliable and out of my way DE

>>75716 Depending on what exactly you mean by slow, it's possible that slowness is caused by Gnome stubbornly refusing to merge dynamic triple buffering, if you manually patch it in it gets a lot better on weaker hardware. source: did this myself on my thinkpad

>>76249 There's also Trinity Desktop Environment (TDE) if you enjoyed using KDE3 back in the day.