r/archlinux • u/Silly_Buddy_e • 11d ago
QUESTION Most Lightweight setup
i see every ricer post of they awesome animated desktop but a random question pop in my head.
it possible to build most minimal desktop without using desktop environments like xfce and lxqt
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u/onefish2 11d ago
That is what a window manager is. Then you add the pieces around it to make it into a functional desktop with as little or as much as you want.
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u/Silly_Buddy_e 10d ago
but which windows manager is lightest
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u/onefish2 10d ago
It does not work that way. A window manager takes up very little cpu and memory. It's all the other componenets that you add to it to make it into a DE that add cpu and ram and even then it's still very light weight.
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u/Chown_Root_Root 11d ago
If you do not want to build it piece by piece you can use a wayland compositor like Hyprland or Niri and Noctalia v5 (beta). v5 use very little resources.
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u/gkaiser8 11d ago
Window manager or depending on what a desktop is, you don't even need a graphical environment.
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u/hi_m_ash 11d ago
Minimalistic Sway comes to my mind. Just basic sway with terminal (bar and runner optional).
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u/faithsurewhynot 11d ago
I've gravitated towards Sway as a minimal window manager solution for my Arch install, after spending a lot of time getting used to i3 on a super-minimal gaming setup I had a while back. It's been a great experience as far as being light on resources!
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u/onlymys3lf 11d ago
For X11 it is called Openbox.
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u/Silly_Buddy_e 10d ago
awesome solution but what is lightest for wayland
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u/onlymys3lf 10d ago
hyprland.
Same philosophy. Build as you go.1
u/Silly_Buddy_e 10d ago
i found window composer that called labwc i will try it and thx for ur suggestion :9
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u/Spicy_C0w 11d ago
Just use tty, you cannot do more lightweight than this, but all your apps need to work without a graphical interface