Way-Cooler Is Still Around As An i3-Inspired Wayland Compositor Written In Rust

[Zan Lynx]

I am after a minimal WM as DWM. I3 is too bloated and RAM hungry for just handling windows as it task! I fear that both Sway and Way-Cooler are too. As it is only natural to bloated system require too much RAM and time from end-users!

Any Wayland implementation is going to be "bloated" compared to old-school X configurations because every surface has a series of complete graphics buffers. Real old X configurations didn't have double buffering or compositors. There was ONE surface. Every program drew on it at the same time. The X server ignored draws to hidden window areas and told programs when parts of their windows had been damaged by others so they could update it.

It sure did use less memory. But on a 386 you could sit there and watch it draw lines and boxes.

[caligula]

What do you consider bloated? I'm using i3 and checking in htop it's only using 112M virtual, 12M resident, 10M shared.

Just my $0.02, but I don't think that as a end user it's that relevant to measure the consumption of each component in the desktop environment. When starting the desktop, the only thing that matters is how much free RAM you'll have after launching the desktop. After that, how much memory is consumed per app. One thing I also care about is the startup time. It really depends on what you're going to use the machine for. If it's a standard desktop PC, I'd compare the total memory consumption (which is easy to spot from free/top/htop) after launching few normal apps. That way you'll also witness the benefits of shared libraries. If it's an embedded system, your optimization target might be a bit different..

[oldgaro]

What do you consider bloated? I'm using i3 and checking in htop it's only using 112M virtual, 12M resident, 10M shared.

Oh sir, bloated in features. I just need monocle(stacked) and tiled. DWM is using right now 58MB.

[oldgaro]

If you have less than 4 GB of RAM, you are out of the modern cycle of the comfort zone for new and modern technologies for your computer (it can work but it's just going to be harder further on).

Are you fcking aware that programming requires a lot of RAM and that is exactly why programmers are literally pulled toward WMs?...

DWM(idle) uses 58MB of RAM but when I am coding and compiling it goes to 10GB of RAM usage EASILY!

Firefox alone uses 1GB...ridiculous!

I just want to do some duck search...

[oldgaro]

Any Wayland implementation is going to be "bloated" compared to old-school X configurations

Well it seems great having all-in-one solutions as systemd. If wayland goes the same way it is great. All that tweaking and install that xorg requires is rather burdensome.

[johanb]

Just my $0.02, but I don't think that as a end user it's that relevant to measure the consumption of each component in the desktop environment.

It's not an desktop environment, it's just a WM.
This is literally the only desktop process which will be running unless you start something more yourself.
So let's say your distro uses 60MB RAM upon startup when at the VT, that would make the total ram usage at 82MB max (12 res + 10 shared)

One thing I also care about is the startup time.

If something isn't broken or horribly unoptimized a plain WM should always start in less than 1 second, so why even care?

[Zan Lynx]

DWM(idle) uses 58MB of RAM but when I am coding and compiling it goes to 10GB of RAM usage EASILY!

Firefox alone uses 1GB...ridiculous!

I think that you must be looking at the virtual memory use of those things. My Firefox right now with 4 open tabs is using 550 MB. And gnome-shell (my window manager) is using 300 MB.

Their virtual memory use looks ridiculous. 3.5 GB for my Firefox and 4 GB for gnome-shell. But that's just virtually used not real. They both do tricks to reserve space they may need later.

Or if you mean 10 GB while compiling, used by the compiler, that's a different thing. I doubt you're hitting that much on real RSS memory, not virtual. It's vaguely possible to use 10 GB of real with some C++ compile options and deeply nested templates and constexpr but that would be ridiculous.

I know that my Ryzen server system with 32 GB of RAM can run out of RAM compiling the Linux kernel because I set it to use no overcommit and enforce a 32 GB RAM limit. It runs out when I build a kernel using "make -j78". "make -j75" works every time. I think being able to run 75 copies of GCC at the same time has to mean it only uses a maximum of 426 MB for each copy.

Also remember that one reason a lot of modern programs appear to use a lot of RAM is that they use a lot of pointers. In 64-bit mode those pointers are twice the size of old 32-bit programs. Comparing them to 32-bit program sizes is unfair.

[caligula]

It's not an desktop environment, it's just a WM.

I meant in general when you're comparing desktop #1 with desktop #2, let it start all services, including WM, desktop icon handlers, taskbar implementations and so forth. It doesn't make sense to compare only the WM as you'll probably also want to use some applications on top of that.

If something isn't broken or horribly unoptimized a plain WM should always start in less than 1 second, so why even care?

Unfortunately that's not the case. On some systems just initializing the GPU takes more than that. On top of that, larger desktop envs have a session manager and lots of background services (e.g. persistent file manager process). Launching KDE might take 50 times as long as openbox. Not a problem with modern PCs but on low end machines it's slow.

[oldgaro]

Their virtual memory use looks ridiculous. 3.5 GB for my Firefox and 4 GB for gnome-shell. But that's just virtually used not real. They both do tricks to reserve space they may need later.

Lastest firefox update (10 min ago) just used 7GB of "virtual memory" with one YT tab, reddit and feedly open ...and know what? frozen my laptop...haha

Cute virtual memory...

[Zan Lynx]

Lastest firefox update (10 min ago) just used 7GB of "virtual memory" with one YT tab, reddit and feedly open ...and know what? frozen my laptop...haha

Cute virtual memory...

Whatever froze your laptop it's your problem, not Firefox's. Mine doesn't do that even with 70+ tabs open (my comics bookmarks)