Minimal Desktop to Centos 7

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I am running a very low RAM (1 GB) system and I have the minimal centos 7 installed on it. Now I need to use a window manager and I cant find the lightest. GNOME, KDE... are too heavy. I just want to be able to manage windows (drag, minimize and maximize) and nothing else.

GNOME comes with many useless things to me that will use my precious little RAM. So what would you recommend to me install on this server?

Mariana

Posted 2015-09-03T14:06:13.397

Reputation: 59

Question was closed 2015-09-04T11:50:07.403

icewm should be available in EPEL. – thrig – 2015-09-03T14:15:13.970

2LXDE and Xfce are quite lightweight and should run fine with 1GB of RAM while still acting like typical (GNOME/KDE) desktop environments. If you want something even lighter, fluxbox would work too. End of the day, it's down to personal preference - try some and figure out what you like. – Bob – 2015-09-03T14:17:51.050

Answers

2

Even if this is more matter of personal preference you can give a look to:

  1. LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment).
    A fast-performing and energy-saving desktop environment. LXDE

  2. LXQT the official Qt port right now from the LXDE project.
    LXQT developers defined it as “The next generation of the Lightweight Desktop Environment“, it is very customizable as it was written in the Qt library, but it still (2015) under heavy development.* enter image description here

  3. Xfce
    A free & open source desktop environment for Unix-like platforms, unlike LXDE, Xfce is not a “very very lightweight” GUI, but it focuses on being as much lightweight as possible plus keeping the nice visual appearance... enter image description here

  4. MATE
    MATE is a fork of the now unmaintained GNOME 2. MATE provides an intuitive and attractive desktop environment using traditional metaphors for Linux and other Unix-like operating systems. enter image description here

  5. Fluxbox
    Fluxbox is a windowmanager for X that was based on the Blackbox 0.61.1 code. It is very light on resources and easy to handle but yet full of features to make an easy, and extremely fast, desktop experience. It is built using C++ and licensed under the MIT-License. enter image description here

References

Hastur

Posted 2015-09-03T14:06:13.397

Reputation: 15 043

We should always search for updated sources but one can start [from] (http://mylinuxexplore.blogspot.ru/2013/12/best-kde-distro-of-2013-comparison-of.html), and here and here too. Nice Comparison for memory here...

– Hastur – 2015-09-10T07:54:49.510

LXQT looks great, but there seems to be no instructions on how to install and run it in Centos7 (no yum groupinstall option, how-to start it on login, etc). – JosephK – 2018-04-01T07:57:32.817

Asked: 2015-09-03T14:06:13.397

Viewed: 10 084 times

Active: 2015-09-03T15:04:03.730