X server question (again)

[qb-758]

Linux experts were probably asleep when I tried to ask this some time ago, so I'm posting this question again.

The problem is that Xfree86 4.0.1 is reserving a lot of memory (previously it took about 200 megs, but when I disabled background picture and started using xterms instead of eterms, it is now using "only" about 100 megs. This is still quite a lot because I have only 128mb ram).
This is strange, because other unix systems are behaving much better. E.g. I tried QNX, and it used only about 20mb memory, when I had X server and all common desktop applications running.

So, is there anything to do to optimize the memory consumption on xfree86, so that ram would be available for applications, not the X server system?

[pbharris]

hello,
what window manager are you using? I use fvwm2 and use xv to set a background picture and use ~32 MB. supposedly blackbox has a small memory footprint to. both KDE and gnome can be piggy with memory.

[qb-758]

thanks a lot...
I was running gnome. I switched it to blackbox, and managed to reduce X size to 66 megs. Bbox seems to work well with matrox dualhead.

[Pierre Lambion]

Still, 66 megs are a lot ...


Here are some GUESSES on what could take much memory:
- I think number of installed fonts can impact on memory.
- Virtual desktops could take up some memory (especially if they have different backgrounds)
- using applications with different graphic libaries(eg. motif, Qt, gtk, Netscape, ...)

P.

[Windows rules!]

The best way to get rid of X Windows problems forever: use MS Windows!!!

Hey you Linux guys, one serious question: what's with this rating thingy? Pierre Lambion had 3 stars (1 vote) and i rated him 5. They've taught me at school: (3+5)/2=4? Why does Pierre still have 3 stars? Do you Linsux users have some kind of a different math than others or don't you count Windows users' ratings at all???

[qb-758]

Originally posted by Windows rules!:
The best way to get rid of X Windows problems forever: use MS Windows!!!


In win2k, it is not possible to use 2 or more monitors with different screen resolutions or refresh rates. With xfree86 this is possible, and it is also possible to use very large virtual resolutions. Of course this costs some memory, but I think it is worth it.


Hey you Linux guys, one serious question: what's with this rating thingy? Pierre Lambion had 3 stars (1 vote) and i rated him 5. They've taught me at school: (3+5)/2=4? Why does Pierre still have 3 stars? Do you Linsux users have some kind of a different math than others or don't you count Windows users' ratings at all???

To compute a mean value of x and y, you need to use this kind of formula: (x*a + y*b)/(a + b), where a and b are weights of x and y...