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  • From: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • To: baslinux AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [BL] Using X
  • Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2007 17:52:06 +1300

> There are window managers that are less than 10KB
> in size (failsafewm is one).

The window manager in BL3 (swm) is just 19kb, which
makes it one of the smallest. However, it requires
libXpm (the barebones libXpm in BL3 is 48kb). There
is a non-libXpm option for swm, but IMO it's ugly.

The BL3 wm also has a menu program (12kb) grafted onto
it and some background pixmaps (21kb). All together,
that's around 100kb for the wm stuff, which is still
considerably less than icewm and other popular window
managers.

I will be taking a different approach for next version
of BasicLinux. Instead of taking a minimalistic wm
and grafting on bits to make it more useful and more
attractive, I will be using a much nicer wm that is
bigger than swm, but smaller than swm + libXpm + menu
+ pixmaps.

This will give us a significantly better wm in less
space than the old swm hodgepodge. The same applies
to links: BasicLinux 3.5 will have a better, smaller
links. And the new busybox will save us some space
too. Overall, BasicLinux will shrink by more than
100kb. That will give us room for some extras like
an additional module or two.

I am still hoping to add the 3Com PCMCIA network
module to BL3, but I won't be able to do that until
I find an old 3Com card to experiment on. I keep
looking for one, but so far no luck. PCnet cards
are pretty easy to find (I've got four of them now),
but working 3Com PCMCIA network cards (with dongle)
are not so common here.

Cheers,
Steven









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