Re: Debian on Slow laptops. What setup is best?
On Thu, 23 Jun 2005 14:57:01 +0300
Micha Feigin <michf@post.tau.ac.il> wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 13:01:31 +0200
> Benedek Frank <linux@celifornia.com> wrote:
>
> > On Wednesday 22 June 2005 11:36, you wrote:
> > > On Wed, 22 Jun 2005, Benedek Frank wrote:
> > > > Hi. Can you check to see if I use something really that I shouldnt use at
> > > > all?
> [...]
> >
> > I have realized that. I blew it away already. I will set up Sonypid which can
> > enable Volume controlls to speial keys, so I dont need kmix anymore. (I guess
> > this is how a newbie learns).
> >
>
> The volume keys on my laptop just produce regular key presses (depends on
> whether they are acpi buttons or not), sonypi doesn't find anything on this
> machine. What I did was to find the key-press symcodes using xev and then I
> setup Xmodmap to map them to keysyms which I later map in the fvwm setup file
> to use amixer and xosd to show the output
There is a software called sonypid, and that is run as a daemon, and can listen to all special keys, that otherwise will not be listened to, unless using sonypid, at least with my PCG-C1VRX/K. FOr me, also I need the sonypid, so that I can use the "capture" button, to start camera, or to start whatever I set it to start. Camera is pretty cool and useless. (lol). I use it btw to start bluetooth, and so it wont have to run all the time, just when I need it, so it wont use memory. Very handy, specially I play with Nokia Series 60 phones all the time, they have bluetooth support.
>
> I have in ~/.Xmodmap:
> keycode 223 = XF86Standby
> keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute
> keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume
> keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
>
> And in my fvwm file (a bit complicated but not that much)
>
> Key XF86AudioRaiseVolume A A Exec killall -9 osd_cat; amixer
> set PCM 100 unmute ; /usr/bin/amixer set Master 5%+ unmute | sed -n "s/Front
> \(Left\|Right\): Playback .* \[\(.*\)\] \[.*\]/\1 \2/p" | osd_cat -d 2 -p
> middle -A center -l2 -i -30 -s 2 -S darkgreen -f "-*-arial-bold-r-*-*-80-*-*-*-
> *-*-*-*" -c lightgreen
>
> Key XF86AudioLowerVolume A A Exec killall -9 osd_cat; amixer set PCM 100
> unmute ; /usr/bin/amixer set Master 5%- unmute | sed -n "s/Front \(Left\|Right
> \): Playback .* \[\(.*\)\] \[.*\]/\1 \2/ p" | osd_cat -d 2 -p middle -A center -
> l2 -i -30 -s 2 -S darkgreen -f "-*- arial- bold-r-*-*-80-*-*-*-*-*-*-*" -c
> lightgreen
>
> Key XF86AudioMute A A Exec killall -9 osd_cat; amixer set PCM 100 unmute ; if
> (amixer set Master toggle | grep -q '\[on\]'); then echo Un- Mute; else echo
> Mute; fi | osd_cat -d 2 -p middle -A center -l1 -s 2 -S gray10 - f "-*-arial-
> bold-r-*- *-100- *-*-*-*-*-*-*" -c lightgreen
>
> Key XF86Standby A A Exec /usr/bin/eject
>
Thanks for describing, I may use it. At least I can use the commnads to increase or decrease volume, and plug them into my script I have sonypid run when a button is presses.
> > >
> > > Use xterm instead of gnome-terminal:
> > >
> > > 1410 tconnors 15 0 4060 4060 2192 S 0.0 0.4 0:44 xterm
> > >
> > > Yes, a terminal emulator doesn't *need* 30m just to freaking run. Yikes!
> > Good call, I will look into getting a smaller terminal.
>
> I use rxvt-unicode-lite since I want unicode but without the bells and wisles
> of the full compile. In my case I just use screen embeded in the terminal for
> multiple instances since the fvwm tabs extention was too heavy for me (it uses
> perl) and I didn't want to use kterm or gnome-whatever. Another option if you
> want several terminal windows and not just instances is to run the rxvt server
> on startup and then just startup clients, reduces the memory considerably for
> multiple terminals.
I use usually one, or maximum 2, rarely 3, for chekking real time logs. One problem with xterm I realized, that I cannot copy and past from it to the email. It is hard to troubleshoot like that. Konsole and gnome-terminal allowed me to do so. But the memory is a bigger problem, so I am very happy after all.
>
> > >
> > > As much as I hate pine (I'd hate kmail worse), it only needs:
> > > 5065 tconnors 15 0 3736 3736 2272 S 0.2 0.4 0:00 pine
> > >
> > > All those other k* programs are just useless helper apps to kde. Blow kde
> > > away, and that'll free up a bit.
> >
> > I have realized that. Actually, having the machine rebootet, with KDM and KDE
> > taken out of auto-start, I got a much prettier picture, and a responsive
> > system. ALready half-success. When I dont start this kmail prog, I have 140MB
> > free mem. Yes, more than half of what I have. Firefox eats up 20 or so. I
> > still have 120 left. At that point, I start Kmail, and slowly, about one
> > minute it starts, and I will have 20 MB left. So it eats 100MB or RAM. That
> > is weird. One weird program. It starts all these programs with it
> >
> > kmail 30MB
> > knotify 14MB
> > kded 11MB
> > kio_pop3 (as many times as many POP3 accounts I have-each uses 10MB)
> > klauncher 10MB
> > kdeinit 9.5MB
> >
> > This is unacceptable. I am looking for a NEW email client. I like a GUI email
> > client, that has features such as putting emails to the folders I want them
> > to go (filtering) and has support for more than one POP account. Any takers
> > on this? Will pine do this for me? Can it use the maildir format?
>
> I am using sylpheed-claws-gtk2 since I want the RTL support for hebrew (gtk has
> unicode support properly built in). It has a few quirks but was the best I
> found for my tastes. If you don't need RTL sylpheed-claws seems more stable and
> faster and has better support for maildir (actually sylpheed-claws-gtk2 doesn't
> have any support for maildir but depending on version mismatches it sometimes
> works with the sylpheed-claws maildir pluging).
Yes, I have slypheed now myself too, but I didnt go for the -claws version, as "apt-cache search sylpheed" showed the -clwas version as the "bleeding edge email client", so I went for the regular "sylpheed". It seems a bit old school, but I like it already more than kmail, first it starts fast, second VERY IMPORTANT for me, it allows me to set the amount of days it will delete the messages from the server after it was received. So I am inlove with sylpheed, and I finished looking for email clients. Of course I had a rough half-day of converting maildir to mbox, but I am done with it now, and I imported it successfuly. It is quite good now.
>
> If you are happy with the console mutt is great (the only two reasons I left it
> is that it didn't have a folder view to see how many emails are in each folder
> and switching to a specific folder can be a bit cumbersome, on the other hand
> it is very good at switching to the next folder with unread mail. The other
> reason is hebrew support, but that depends on the terminal or reader)
>
I only need japanese and hungarian support, and sylpheed does a fairly good job in that case also, so I am happy again.
> > >
> > >
> > > Seriously, get rid of the kde and gnome crap. You don't need it. It
> > > won't make your life any happier. And then you will look at the dribbling
> > > fools who keep on drooling over the eye-candy, and laugh at their constant
> > > need to upgrade to the latest hardware that only makes their room hotter
> > > (and fucks up the environment for the rest of us). And you won't need to
> > > upgrade your computer, because when it is not running crufty bloated
> > > crapware, it's plenty fast enough.
> > >
> > How can I get rid of KDE and Gnome? apt-get uninstall kde gnome ??
> >
>
> Don't run KDE and GNOME programs. Note the clean gtk2 programs are ok, they
> don't bring in all the crap only gnome programs that depend on the gnome
> libraries (you can see from the dependencies).
> >
> > > Oh, and encourage your favourite hacker to emphasise code quality and
> > > optimisation before useless feaping creaturism.
> >
>
> Other points that the OP mensioned:
>
> Its a bit tricky to setup, but if you like nice gui login but want something
> lighter then kdm you can use qingy (qingy.sf.net) which uses the frame buffer.
> I'm afraid that there is no debian package though.
> Personally I use wdm at the moment, when I have some time I am planning to
> setup qingy.
>
> As a window manager I use fvwm, but its a taste issue. Its a bit harder to
> setup but is very flexible.
I am happy now with xfce, but I want to try even smaller ones, so I will give it a shot.
>
> For text I use lyx to produce latex documents, but I write math so office suits
> are mostly irrelevant anyway (and tex is what all journals in my field take
> anyway, some will also accept word, but they are a few a far between (thank
> god ;-) ).
>
> For a browser I settled on opera which is fast, light and a but more complient
> with IE only sites then mozilla. The three main downsides with it are that it
> not free (you either accept an advertisement bar or you pay to get a serial),
> it doesn't change proxy server setups on the fly for some reason, and it
> uses the mozilla plugin for loading pdf files which has a memory leak, reaches
> over a Gig on occasion, on the other hand it has an options to load previous
> session on startup so you can just close/kill it and reopen to solve the
> problem. It also has a debian package (on their site, not the repository) so
> its easy to install.
I will try opera. Until this point I still used Firefox. Opera can display java and flash, macromedia, other stuff like that.? I ocassionally need them. Or I can just keep firefox for those times,,....>
> For the record, my machine comes up with a bit
> under 30M ram usage running wdm, X, rxvt terminal with a screen session running
> in it.
>
Wow, that is outstanding. I am using 70MB after boot, with all what I have, one xterm session, and the sylpheed open, with X and XFce. That is way better than about 10MB free (now 190MB free) when I used KDE and KDM and all the K***crap. I am happy I started this thread, and I want to thank you all for helping. Of course I still keep looking for good ideas. At the end, I will make a website from what I learnd.
Bence
> >
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