In general Linux seems pretty snappy. I like evince, which is not particularly svelte (but it does color inverted rendering and reloads your PDFs when they change on the disk, so it is nice for writing at night).
He mentions Linux in the blog post. But then goes off on a tangent about cross-platform programs. I think he must be primarily a windows guy or something? In general cross platform programs suck, it is well known, so everyone avoids them.
I use a Linux desktop that is extremely snappier in comparison with how popular distributions like Ubuntu or Fedora feel, at least in their default configurations.
However, I have never analyzed which are the exact causes, because my configuration has a lot of differences and I am not sure which of them matter.
I suppose that it is important that I use neither Gnome nor KDE, but XFCE. Even so, some of the applications that I use are intended for KDE or Gnome, so they use the corresponding libraries, and I do not know if these have any reason to be more responsive under XFCE than under their native desktop environments.
I prefer to use a completely empty desktop, without icons or toolbars and having as background a neutral gray. I launch applications by right click on the desktop and I restore minimized windows from an auto-hidden taskbar.
I take care that there are no active services/daemons besides those that I really need. I do not use systemd or anything associated with it. I have stopped using swap memory two decades ago (but I equip all my computers with generous amounts of DRAM, to avoid out-of-memory situations; my oldest computers have at least 32 GB and nowadays I would not buy one with less than 64 GB).
I use only 4k monitors with 30-bit color, so using lower resolutions is not needed for a snappy GUI.
I use the proprietary NVIDIA drivers or the Intel drivers on computers with the integrated Intel GPU. I use a customized Linux kernel, but I doubt that this can have any influence on GUI responsiveness, even if it ensures fast boot times. I do not use Wayland and I doubt whether it is the right replacement for X Window, because its initial design was very flawed, even if some of the original defects have been corrected meanwhile.
For viewing PDFs or EPUBs, I use MuPDF, which is much faster (especially on startup, which is instantaneous) than the other viewers that I have tried. It has some limitations, so I also keep around other viewers, e.g. Okular, for the cases when I need a feature not provided by MuPDF. As file manager, I use Xfe.
While I haven't used a full DE in years, if you want snappy going with a lightweight WM wouldn't hurt. I use StumpWM but I haven't had any issues with responsiveness using i3, awesome, or XMonad.
In general Linux seems pretty snappy. I like evince, which is not particularly svelte (but it does color inverted rendering and reloads your PDFs when they change on the disk, so it is nice for writing at night).
He mentions Linux in the blog post. But then goes off on a tangent about cross-platform programs. I think he must be primarily a windows guy or something? In general cross platform programs suck, it is well known, so everyone avoids them.
Any reccs for a snappy linux desktop environment?
I use a Linux desktop that is extremely snappier in comparison with how popular distributions like Ubuntu or Fedora feel, at least in their default configurations.
However, I have never analyzed which are the exact causes, because my configuration has a lot of differences and I am not sure which of them matter.
I suppose that it is important that I use neither Gnome nor KDE, but XFCE. Even so, some of the applications that I use are intended for KDE or Gnome, so they use the corresponding libraries, and I do not know if these have any reason to be more responsive under XFCE than under their native desktop environments.
I prefer to use a completely empty desktop, without icons or toolbars and having as background a neutral gray. I launch applications by right click on the desktop and I restore minimized windows from an auto-hidden taskbar.
I take care that there are no active services/daemons besides those that I really need. I do not use systemd or anything associated with it. I have stopped using swap memory two decades ago (but I equip all my computers with generous amounts of DRAM, to avoid out-of-memory situations; my oldest computers have at least 32 GB and nowadays I would not buy one with less than 64 GB).
I use only 4k monitors with 30-bit color, so using lower resolutions is not needed for a snappy GUI.
I use the proprietary NVIDIA drivers or the Intel drivers on computers with the integrated Intel GPU. I use a customized Linux kernel, but I doubt that this can have any influence on GUI responsiveness, even if it ensures fast boot times. I do not use Wayland and I doubt whether it is the right replacement for X Window, because its initial design was very flawed, even if some of the original defects have been corrected meanwhile.
For viewing PDFs or EPUBs, I use MuPDF, which is much faster (especially on startup, which is instantaneous) than the other viewers that I have tried. It has some limitations, so I also keep around other viewers, e.g. Okular, for the cases when I need a feature not provided by MuPDF. As file manager, I use Xfe.
1 reply →
I’m boring, I just use i3 or sway, like the rest of the hipsters. So, no recommendation I guess, since it is just a window manager.
7 replies →
While I haven't used a full DE in years, if you want snappy going with a lightweight WM wouldn't hurt. I use StumpWM but I haven't had any issues with responsiveness using i3, awesome, or XMonad.
twm, or tvtwm if you've got microseconds to burn.
Sioyek is fast cross platform PDF viewer.