I know I’ve already mentioned e3 as an editor; I feel like I have to mention it again after noticing it in another spitout from that nifty python script that peeks at memory usage. To wit:
Private + Shared = RAM used Program 0.0 KiB + 2.5 KiB = 2.5 KiB e3vi
I can’t remember the last time I saw a functional program take up so little space — unless I reach back about 20 years and take into account some rather fantastic examples of lean programming on 8-bit machines.
Between this, Musca and running rxvt-unicode as a daemon, I’m finding it easier to duck in under the practical limit on this Pentium. Maybe it pays to watch for programs intentionally written to be lightweight. 
So, does that mean you’re still running X, instead of dropping it altogether?
It depends. On the Pentium, I use X because the framebuffer isn’t there as an alternative. If I need to do something quickly I’ll start screen and just use the console. If I have time to spare, I’ll start X and wait patiently.
On the Thinkpad though, it’s X-less and all the better for it. 🙂
Just because the hardware can’t handle VESA 2.0, doesn’t mean it can’t handle the higher VGA modes, right? I’ve seen some hardware that lists a 137xsomething display mode when I’ve passed an invalid vga= line to the kernel.
Yes and no. Some of them work acceptably, but occasionally some of the modes actually stretch beyond the screen bounds, making them impractical. I will have to double-check which ones work well, the only problem being that it’s a little time-consuming to test them all.
Haha, I love it! I also love it that my netbook boots to 32 MB of RAM used (1GB installed), and that’s with X, hal, dbus, fam, dwm, wbar plus a couple of scripts running (which display memory usage, battery, ram, date and time on a statusbar). And my ex-wife, who just bought a new laptop of her own, wonders why her machine needs 4GB of RAM… with Vista.
And she can’t be convinced that my small and supposedly slow netbook is faster in pretty much everything than her full-blown memory hog of a system.
In everyday usage I rarely see it using over 25% of RAM, so even though there’s a swap I’ve never seen it being used, actually. That’s on a machine with a 7 day uptime.
BTW, taking into account you’ve dropped Kazehakase due to their unfortunate lack of updates, you should take a new look at uzbl. I know you’ve mentioned it before here, but the development has been fantastic, what with the work that has been done with community provided scripts. Its modular approach lets you make it whatever you want in a browser. Statusbar, tabs, caching daemons, mouse middle-clicks to open links in new tabs (not that you’d need the keyboard, anyway), a script that pans webpages when needed, you name it.
Kazehakase still updates, they’re just at http://sourceforge.jp/projects/kazehakase/ now. (Thanks to Luca for mentioning that in a comment on an earlier blog entry here!)
just a little tip: remove/comment out lines 66-68 of the python script if you’d like to remove the *requirement* to run it as root.
it certainly will only show stats belonging to ‘your’ programs (numbers seem a *little bit* off; dunno, have to think and test and check a bit further…) but you can still run it as root and it behaves like before.
almost good enough for almost no work =)
Cool, thanks. I have been wanting to run that without the root user requirements. Cheers. 🙂
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