Luke -Jr wrote:
Neither KDE nor GNOME are window managers at all. GNOME doesn't even INCLUDE a window manager, last I checked. And KWin is quite light, in part because it doesn't *need* the features most standalone window managers do.
Metacity is a part of the GNOME project, and is the default window manager for a GNOME install. Yes, you can change it, but then you wouldn't be running a "pure" GNOME install.
I used to prefer fluxbox, because it really was (is) lighter and faster in practice, even with all of my apps loaded. KDE and GNOME both by default run a bunch of extra stuff that you "might" need, but you usually don't. Granted, it's trivial to turn these things off if you don't want them, but by default your system will run slow(er).
s/"might"/probably/
Yeah, sure, my wife will "probably" need Subversion modules or the Write Daemon, among other items loaded by default on a KDE install... just like she needed all those little system tray apps that loaded on her old Windows machine?
I happily use KDE and GNOME, so I'm not complaining about either. But anyone who argues that a person running KWin (+ the rest of KDE) is going to have a lower resource usage than a person running Fluxbox (+ all of their apps) is just plain nuts.
~Bradley