recommendations for lightweight window managers for an old netbook - eviltoast

Hi, I’ve got an old netbook from Samsung that has an old Intel Atom CPU (Intel Atom N455 1.66 GHz). I installed Arch on it and am now thinking of a suitable window manager. I tried Hyprland (kinda expecting it to not work really) whick didn’t start at all. Before I had Debian with Gnome, which technically worked, but everything was extremely slow.

I’ve used Gnome for a long time, but I know that there are a lot of other window managers out there. I would like to have one that avoids graphical gimmickry in order to be fast. (I like some nice little graphical details, but only if it’s still running buttery smooth).

If you have some tips that would be very nice!

EDIT: thank you for all the recommendations I’ll try out a few!

  • florge@feddit.uk
    15·
    1 year ago

    Could try openbox, its old but works. Highly customisable but still lightweight.

    • AlolanYoda@mander.xyz
      2·
      1 year ago

      I liked messing around with openbox but I’m very aesthetically challenged so I never managed to make it look good. Any tips?

    • Cwilliams@beehaw.org
      2·
      1 year ago

      Since Wayland is lighter than X.org, LabWC could be another option. It is not fully compatable with Openbox, but most Openbox configs work on LabWC

    • Handles@leminal.spaceEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      A bit late to the party, but especially for an older machine I’ll take Openbox any day. I still have some low range 2015 laptops running just fine where something like KDE would choke them up completely.