A Memory Comparison of Light Linux Desktops

After I install a new version of Linux, I usually take a good look at the screen. Does it have a task bar? Can you find your window after it was minimized? Lately, some developers have been struck by some sort of amnesia brought on by the stress created by the mobile sector offerings.

Fortunately, in Linux we do have plenty of other choices. I will describe some of them in this article, and I’ll attempt to measure the RAM memory requirements. I use free command in an xterm before and after the graphic environment is started on a separate X server (Xephyr). The computer is an older 64-bit machine, running Ubuntu 12.04 with LXDE as desktop environment.

Note: the tool I use to set it all up is virtenv. It sets up a Xephyr xserver running Joe’s Window Manager in a Linux kernel container (LXC). I only have to shut down JWM, apt-get install the new window manager, and run it. The beauty is the container works in a separate filesystem, and it will not overwrite the real filesystem on my computer.

Joe’s Window Manager

JWM is a light-weight window manager for the X11 Window System. A small memory footprint makes it a good choice for older computers and less powerful systems. Barry Kauler’s excellent Puppy Linux is based on JWM.

You install it as sudo apt-get install jwm on Ubuntu, or as yum install jwm on Fedora. I takes about 3MB of memory to run.

JWM window manager

*box

This is a series of three window managers. BlackBox is the original, Openbox and Fluxbox are forks.

BlackBox is comparable to JWM, and loads in about 3MB of memory.

Openbox is rarely used stand-alone, it is however the window manager of choice in a number of other desktop environments such as Gnome, KDE and LXDE. It runs in about 7MB of memory. CrunchBang is and example of distribution based on Openbox.

Fluxbox is popular in many Live CDs such as Knoppix STD and GParted. It is currently the default window manager of PCFluxboxOS, Linux Mint Fluxbox CE and Salix OS Fluxbox. It runs in 16MB of memory.

Install them on Ubuntu as sudo apt-get install blackbox openbox fluxbox, or yum install blackbox openbox fluxbox on Fedora.

Fluxbox window manager

Dynamic Window Managers

A dynamic/tiling window manager adjusts the size and position of the windows so there is no overlapping and no space lost between them. This is in sharp contrast with the normal window managers which float and overlap windows. The distinction is not as strict today as it used to be, most modern tiling window managers can easily float windows. Some examples are dwm (1MB RAM), i3 (3MB) and awesome (9MB).

Install them as sudo apt-get install awesome i3 dwm on Ubuntu, and as yum install awesome i3 dwm on Fedora.

awesome Window Manager

E17

This is a beautiful desktop environment, the graphics just surpass everything else in this article. It is highly configurable and very fast. It runs in 35MB of memory in my tests.

Install it as sudo apt-get install e17 on Ubuntu, or as yum install e17 on Fedora.

E17 Desktop Environment

LXDE

The Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment was specially designed for computers with low hardware specifications, such as netbooks, mobile devices (e.g. MIDs) or older computers. In my opinion this is the DE that had the most to gain from Gnome 3 debacle. You can get today full major distros based on LXDE, such as Lubuntu and Fedora LXDE Spin. Usable and slim, LXDE runs on my computer in 36MB of memory.

Install it on Ubuntu as sudo apt-get install lxde, or yum install lxde on Fedora.

LXDE Desktop Environment

Xfce

Xfce is a desktop environment based on GTK+ 2 toolkit. It aims to be fast and lightweight, while still being visually appealing and easy to use. Xubuntu and Fedora Xfce Spin are two of the distros featuring Xfce.

It runs in about 70MB of memory, which is a lot more than LXDE. Install it as sudo apt-get install xfce4 on Ubuntu, and yum groupinstall xfce on Fedora.

XFCE Desktop Environment

Conclusion

People use computers in different ways for different tasks. Window Managers and light Desktop Environments are sometime the only choice for less powerful systems or for places where every bit of memory counts (gamers, programmers etc.).

WM/DE Memory (MB)

Links: wm2, dwm, Ratpoison, JWM, i3, Blackbox, IceWM, Openbox, Window Maker, awesome, FVWM, Fluxbox, E17, LXDE, MATE, Trinity, XFCE, Cinnamon, Razor-qt, Gnome 3, Unity, KDE

Related Posts

A Memory Comparison of Light Linux Desktops – Part 2

Lightweight openSUSE: LXDE Desktop From Scratch

Lightweight Debian: LXDE Desktop From Scratch

ezchroot

ezchroot is a small script to chroot into OpenVZ containers. Once inside, you can update or modify the container software. The operation is similar to ezlxc.

#!/bin/bash

if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then
	echo
else
	echo "Usage: ezchroot directory"
	exit 1
fi

cp -L /etc/resolv.conf $1/etc/.
mount -t proc none $1/proc
mount --rbind /dev $1/dev
mount --rbind /sys $1/sys

echo "entering chroot directory"
env NAME=chroot chroot $1 /bin/bash
umount $1/proc
umount $1/dev
umount $1/sys
echo "chroot exited"

Easy LXC: Running OpenVZ containers in LXC

ezlxc (Easy LXC) is a small Bash script for running virtual machines (VM) using Linux Containers (LXC). The VM containers are based on the templates provided by OpenVZ project.

In an LXC environment, a single Linux kernel is shared between the host and the virtual machines. Only the essential needed services are run in VMs. The VM is basically a chroot-based environment with the added network/process separation provided by LXC virtualization. Memory requirements for this type of setup is very low – my old dual-core AMD computer with 1GB of RAM memory runs easily 10 VMs.

ezlxc is based on ssh-template script developed and distributed with LXC. I have tested it on a Fedora 17 x86_64 computer and it will probably work without modifications on any recent Linux distribution. Copy the script below in a text editor and save it as ezlxc. Make the file executable (chmod +x ezlxc) and copy it in /usr/local/bin/directory. The copying is performed as root, in fact all the operations below can only be performed as root.

#!/bin/bash

echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
brctl addbr br0
ifconfig br0 up
brctl addbr br1
ifconfig br1 up

generate_rclocal() {

cat <<EOF > etc/rc.local
echo "rc.local running..."
mount proc /proc -t proc
mount tmpfs /dev/shm -t tmpfs -o size=16m
mount devpts /dev/pts -t devpts
mount -t sysfs sys sys/

#****************************************
# initialize the rest of the system here
#****************************************

#/bin/echo "*   default gateway..."
#/sbin/route add default gw 10.0.0.1

echo "*   starting  crond..."
/usr/sbin/crond -n &

echo "*   starting  rsyslog..."
/sbin/rsyslogd -c 5

echo "*   starting sshd..."
/usr/sbin/sshd

echo "*   starting control session..."
/bin/bash
echo "control session exited, VM shutting down..."

#****************************************
# shutdown all processes here
#****************************************
pkill crond
pkill rsyslogd
pkill sshd
umount /sys
umount /dev/shm
umount /dev/pts
umount /proc

EOF

}

create_fs() {
	if [ ! -f etc/rc.local ]
	then
		echo "creating a default /etc/rc.local, please modify it!"
		generate_rclocal
		chmod +x etc/rc.local
	fi
	
	if [ ! -f etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key ]
	then
		echo "configuring sshd"
		ssh-keygen -t rsa -f etc/ssh/ssh_host_rsa_key -N ""
		ssh-keygen -t dsa -f etc/ssh/ssh_host_dsa_key -N ""
	fi
	
	
	echo "populating dev directory"
	mknod -m 666 dev/null c 1 3
	mknod -m 666 dev/zero c 1 5
	mknod -m 666 dev/random c 1 8
	mknod -m 666 dev/urandom c 1 9
	mkdir -m 755 dev/pts
	mkdir -m 1777 dev/shm
	mknod -m 666 dev/tty c 5 0
	mknod -m 600 dev/console c 5 1
	mknod -m 666 dev/tty0 c 4 0
	mknod -m 666 dev/full c 1 7
	mknod -m 600 dev/initctl p
	mknod -m 666 dev/ptmx c 5 2
}

do_exec() {
	echo "chrooting to $1"
	chroot $1 /bin/bash -i /etc/rc.local
	sleep 2
	
	echo "VM exited"
}




if [ $# -gt 0 ]; then
	echo
else
	echo "Usage: ezlxc name"
	echo "where"
	echo "	name: virtual machine directory"
	exit 1
fi

case "$1" in
lxc-exec)
	do_exec $2
	;;
	
*)
	# directory setup
	DIRNAME=`dirname $1`
	VMNAME=`basename $1`
	echo "switching to $1 directory"
	cd $1
	create_fs
	cd -
	
	# create/start/destroy virtual machine
	echo "creating virtual machine"
	lxc-create -n $VMNAME
	echo "starting virtual machine"
	lxc-execute -n $VMNAME -f $1/lxc.conf $0 lxc-exec $1
	echo "destroying virtual machine"
	lxc-destroy -n $VMNAME
	mount -t proc proc /proc
	;;
esac

The steps involved in building and running a container are described below.

1. Download fedora-17-x86_64 template from OpenVZ OS template page.

2. Create a new directory for the container and unpack the template.

# cd ~
# mkdir vm1
# cd vm1
# tar -xzvj fedora-17-x86_64.tar.gz

3. In vm1 directory, create a lxc.conf file with the following content:

lxc.utsname = vm1
lxc.network.type = veth
lxc.network.flags = up
lxc.network.link = br0
lxc.network.hwaddr = 4a:49:43:49:a0:11
lxc.network.ipv4 = 10.0.0.10/24

This is the configuration file for the container.

• vm1 is the name of the container;
• the container has a network interface with the specified MAC and IP addresses;
• the network interface is connected to a bridge interface br0 on the host.

4. Start the container:

# cd ~
# ezlxc vm1
switching to vm1 directory
creating a default /etc/rc.local, please modify it!
populating dev directory
creating virtual machine
‘vm1' created
starting virtual machine
chrooting to vm1
rc.local running...
*   starting  crond...
*   starting  rsyslog...
*   starting sshd...
*   starting control session...
[root@vm1 /]#

In this moment, the current terminal is logged into the new virtual machine. This is the controlling terminal. As long as this terminal is active, the virtual machine is running. To stop it, just type exit or close the terminal window.

By default, the virtual machine runs three processes: crnod (UNIX job scheduler), rsyslog (system logger) and sshd (OpenSSH server). The processes are started from /etc/rc.local file inside the container (~/vm1/etc/rc.local).

# ps aux
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root         1  0.0  0.0  14788   572 pts/0    S    23:23   0:00 /usr/lib64/lxc/lxc-init --
root         2  0.0  0.1 112092  1248 pts/0    S    23:23   0:00 /bin/bash /usr/local/bin/ezlxc
root         7  0.0  0.2 114288  1804 pts/0    S    23:23   0:00 /bin/bash -i /etc/rc.local
root        20  0.0  0.1 118392  1400 pts/0    S    23:23   0:00 /usr/sbin/crond -n
root        22  0.0  0.3 177796  3432 ?        Sl   23:23   0:00 /sbin/rsyslogd -c 5
root        26  0.0  0.1  77604  1244 ?        Ss   23:23   0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
root        27  0.0  0.2 114292  1960 pts/0    S    23:23   0:00 /bin/bash
root        38  0.0  0.1 115728  1164 pts/0    R+   23:28   0:00 ps aux

You can open and modify /etc/rc.local and start more processes. Also, in this file you can set various other parameters such as the default gateway. A typical rc.local file generated by ezlxc looks like this:

echo “rc.local running..."
mount proc /proc -t proc
mount tmpfs /dev/shm -t tmpfs -o size=16m
mount devpts /dev/pts -t devpts

#****************************************
# initialize the rest of the system here
#****************************************

#/bin/echo “*   default gateway..."
#/sbin/route add default gw 10.0.0.1

echo “*   starting  crond..."
/usr/sbin/crond -n &

echo “*   starting  rsyslog..."
/sbin/rsyslogd -c 5

echo “*   starting sshd..."
/usr/sbin/sshd

echo “*   starting control session..."
/bin/bash
echo “control session exited, VM shutting down...”

#****************************************
# shutdown all processes here
#****************************************
pkill crond
pkill rsyslogd
pkill sshd
umount /dev/shm
umount /dev/pts
umount /proc

More servers and applications can be installed in VM (yum install …) and started in rc.local.

5. The IP address of the VM was set to 10.0.0.10. We need to set an IP address on bridge br0 on the host also. Open a new terminal and configure br0 interface:

# ifconfig br0 10.0.0.1

In this moment we can ping the virtual machine from the host

# ping 10.0.0.10
PING 10.0.0.10 (10.0.0.10) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.0.0.10: icmp_req=1 ttl=64 time=0.196 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.10: icmp_req=2 ttl=64 time=0.113 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.10: icmp_req=3 ttl=64 time=0.115 ms
^C
--- 10.0.0.10 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 1999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.113/0.141/0.196/0.039 ms

6. Back in the controlling terminal, we set a root password. This allows us to access the VM using SSH:

[root@vm1 /]# passwd root
Changing password for user root.
New password: 
Retype new password: 
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully.
[root@vm1 /]#

From the previous host terminal we can SSH into the VM:

# ssh root@10.0.0.10
root@10.0.0.10‘s password: 
Last login: Wed Oct 24 23:44:57 2012 from 10.0.0.1
[root@vm1 ~]#

7. To stop the VM type exit in the controlling terminal:

[root@vm1 /]# exit
exit
control session exited, VM shutting down...
VM exited
destroying virtual machine