Member Avatar for kandir

I'm using Redhat 9.0 in Vmware on an XP host, and have dedicated 92 Megs of RAM for the linux to run on. THis works just fine in text mode, but when I load the gui desktop it runs out of memory and starts paging like mad. Now I understand why the installer recommended 192 Megs RAM! Isnt there a lighter GUI which is less of a memory hog? M winnt server guest does better!

My needs for a gui are simple:
* Run Mozilla
* Gui emacs
* Perhaps the redhat updater (im still trying to decide if its worth it)
* Taskbar which allows multiple instances of above apps (so i can view several webpages at once)

Thats it! Anyone have experience with this topic?

Oh, I'm a bit of a Linux newbie (though comfortable with the basics), so be gentle ;)

/Kandir

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Dani AI

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Short, practical answer for 's setup (Red Hat 9 in a VM with ~92 MB): full desktops (KDE/GNOME) start many background services and will force heavy swapping. For the three things you want — a GUI browser, GUI Emacs and a tiny taskbar — the most reliable approach is a minimal X session that runs only a very small window manager + a lightweight panel and your apps. That keeps resident memory low and avoids loading a whole desktop stack.

Example ~/.xinitrc (start X with startx):

# ~/.xinitrc - minimal session
openbox &
fbpanel &
sleep 1 && mozilla &
emacs &
exec xterm

Replace openbox/fbpanel/mozilla with whatever small WM, panel and browser are installed. The final exec xterm keeps X alive until you exit that terminal.

If you cannot increase the VM's RAM, add swap inside the guest (slower but prevents immediate OOM):

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swapfile bs=1M count=256
chmod 600 /swapfile
mkswap /swapfile
swapon /swapfile

Add an /etc/fstab entry to make it permanent.

Extra tips: use top/ps to find services to turn off, and disable unnecessary runlevel 5 services with chkconfig (or the equivalent). Tabs in a modern browser reduce the need for multiple windows. If you prefer not to run any desktop in the VM, ’s idea of running only X apps on the host (via an X server) is an effective alternative. Finally, if you can increase the VM memory, you’ll have a much smoother GUI experience.

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Member Avatar for Z28James

use fluxbox or xfce4.

Member Avatar for Dani

Gnome and KDE are desktop environments, meaning that they're not just window managers. They also add a whole bunch of their own extras (tools, file managers, tidbits, etc etc etc) to XWindows. Perhaps what you're looking for is something like FVWM or LiteStep (check out fvwm.org or litestep.org, although both should be available on the RedHat install CD).

Member Avatar for Tekmaven

I like blackbox, but I don't think it supports grouping (or even a task manager)

Member Avatar for kandir

Well ok, thanks for the info. I'll check up on your suggestions. Perhaps there's hope yet.

Cheers,
Kandir

Member Avatar for deanpence

My personal recommendation is how I do it:

I run a fairly text-only Linux box, but I install X commands. Then I run X-Win32 (an X server for Windows) on my Windows box. I’m always SSHed into the Linux box, and I have SSH configured to forward X connections, so when I want to run any X app, I just type the command in SSH, and voila, it runs in Windows. Not running the entire KDE or Gnome desktop significantly reduces the amount of memory and other resources the Linux box needs to use to run an X app. It’s probably even better than running a smaller window manager.

I’d be glad to offer details on how to do this if anyone’s interested.

Member Avatar for kandir

Eeeeek! Using x-windows to connect to a linux box running on vmware might be a bit too much for my brain deficiency. I have a hard time figuring out whats up and down as it is...

Interesting approach though.

Member Avatar for deanpence

Well, as I said, I don’t use VMWare. I have a separate machine running Linux.

Member Avatar for Dani

Can this be done with PuTTY? I know this program supports forwarding of X? Doesn't it?

Member Avatar for deanpence

Can this be done with PuTTY? I know this program supports forwarding of X? Doesn't it?

Yes, that’s exactly what I use (when I need to forward X over SSH), actually. You don’t have to forward X connections over SSH, really, but you can. I would definitely do it if forwarding X connections over a high-speed but insecure network. But on your own firewalled LAN, there’s really no reason to use the SSH method. (I know I said that’s what I do, but now that I think of it, I don’t bother to forward connections over SSH. An X-Windows server is all that’s necessary.)

Member Avatar for Dani

Can I just use that redhat-supported X server for windows ... gee what's it called again, I forgot ...cygwin!

Member Avatar for deanpence

Can I just use that redhat-supported X server for windows ... gee what's it called again, I forgot ...cygwin!

I’m sure you can.

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