Small and Fast Desktop Enviroment

[ishaame]

Hi everybody,
I collect old PCs (from DX2-66 up) intending to send them to a third-world country and help people to learn using computers. Most of these computers have working M$ Window$ and M$ Office applications. For obvious reasons, I remove everything and install Linux. But my problem is that I cannot find a decent desktop enviroment which will be just similar to M$ Window$95 and use 16MB Ram, 500MB HDD, with office applications with the possibility of copy and paste between them. I will be very thankful if someone down there will give me hint.


Thanks

Ibrahim

[fancypiper]

I see xcfe mentioned quite often although I have never used it.

Perhaps just a wm would do such as fluxbox or blackbox.

[ishaame]

I love xfce, and it's my favorite and default Window Manager. But, AFAIK, it does not allow you to copy and paste as the big guys (KDE or Gnome apps) do!!

[abrotman]

I used to use BlackBox on my DX2/66 with 36MB ... it was still pretty snappy ... if you want it to look like win95 try icewm(i think) ... i dont know how it will run .. but it will give a somewhat familiar environment to those used to windows

[ishaame]

No, thanks! I don't want the look of Window$95!! What I want is the functionality with that little resources.

[Timothy L. Miller]

I'm hooked on fluxbox with gkrellm running. gkrellm give you easy 1 touch ability to mount your drives, and gives you monitors to tell you your current cpu usage, ram usage, swap usage, ethernet activity, etc., all with very little resources used for itself. fluxbox has tabbing windows, thus making multitasking much easier. It has an easy right-click menu, with workspaces handled through the 3rd mouse button (or simultaneous right+left if no 3rd button). Copy-Pasting works just fine for me, but then, I've never had a problem with copying pasting in any window manager. Of course, it's not always the same as windows, but then, who wants it like windows. Blackbox would be another good suggestion, if you don't really like the tabbed windows, since fluxbox is based off blackbox.

[Dun'kalis]

A. He's donating the PCs. He wants Linux on them, and a 95-ish window manager for the people who get them.

B. IceWM will work wonders for the donated PCs.

C. LarsWM for you.

[cwolf]

Check out http://www.windowmaker.org/features-performance.html
There is a comparison chart of several wm's

[ishaame]

Very interesting. Thanks very much.

Originally posted by cwolf
Check out http://www.windowmaker.org/features-performance.html
There is a comparison chart of several wm's

[sarah31]

waimea isn't bad either

[hop-frog]

My votes are for xFce and Icewm.

Most everything else would not be appropriate.

Blackbox and clones (waimia, fluxbox, openbox, hackedbox) are NOT newbie friendly. If the donee wants a desktop designed to look pretty, but give crappy usability, then let the donee install blackbox themselves.

[sarah31]

fluxbox not user friendly? Well if you want to do some fancy crap with it yes but i sure don't find it incredibly complex to right click for a menu and then selecting what app i want? Not to mention all the choice in the menus compared to some of the other WM and DE.

[hop-frog]

Originally posted by sarah31
fluxbox not user friendly?
To some people it is friendly.
To many individuals it is not.

Want a list of names?

[Timothy L. Miller]

Originally posted by hop-frog
My votes are for xFce and Icewm.

Most everything else would not be appropriate.

Blackbox and clones (waimia, fluxbox, openbox, hackedbox) are NOT newbie friendly. If the donee wants a desktop designed to look pretty, but give crappy usability, then let the donee install blackbox themselves.

I, personally, have found fluxbox to be quite a bit more friendly than iceWM or xFce. xFce was just plain and simple a pain in my @ss, and ice, while pretty easy, is UGLY!!

[ishaame]

Just tried Blackbox. Not really impressed. A while ago I had tried iceWM and was not impressed neither. I have downloaded a bunch of window managers and will try. But so far I see xfce being the only valid candidate....