spankers
10-26-2004, 11:24 AM
GTK+-2, otherwise known as GTK2, is the Gimp ToolKit, the GUI/widget library that the GNOME desktop (http://www.gnome.org/) is based on as well as other desktop environments such as Xfce (http://www.xfce.org/).
Over the last three years or so I've seen what were once fairly fast and lightweight applications turn into bloated heifers. I've made an attempt to replace as many as possible with alternative programs that are faster and lighter, preferably apps that only depend on GTK2 instead of GTK2 plus the GNOME libraries (pork). The hit list:
1. gedit. This is the GNOME text editor. Over time it has gotten WAY too porky. It takes over four seconds to load and weighs in at 13.7MB RAM used. Badness. I've replaced gedit with two separate editors, Leafpad and SciTE. Leafpad is a no-frills GTK2 text editor, and SciTE is a source code editor that can be built against GTK+ or GTK2.
http://tarot.freeshell.org/leafpad/
http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html
2. Evolution. Evolution is a great "groupware" client but if you only need email functionality it is way too heavy. Balsa, an alternative GNOME email client, is decent but it did not support internal address book functionality and the PGP support was poor when I was using it. I am currently using Sylpheed Claws (GTK2) and am quite happy.
http://sylpheed-claws.sourceforge.net/
3. Nautilus - The GNOME file manager. For a file manager, Nautilus is a real porker. Adding in the components, including the dreaded gconf daemon common to most GNOME applications (why oh why must we have a Windows Registry analogue on a Linux system???), Nautilus appears to use approximately 30MB of RAM and it takes seven seconds to load on my system. Yuck. I'm using Xffm (Xfce file manager)... loads in three seconds and uses 10MB (subsequent xffm launches are faster; true of most apps... due to caching).
http://xffm.sourceforge.net/
4. GNOME terminal. Aside from tabs and ease of configuration, I don't see any reason to use gnome-terminal. Bacon. Xterm all the way.
5. gthumb. The GNOME image browser. This application, in my opinion, is not irritatingly bloated... but there is a better image/media browser out there. GImageView (or gimv) is awesome! It supports tabbed image (picture) thumbnail indexes, video playback and thumbnailing, recursive indexes (loading multiple subdirectories into one thumbnail index), opening images in external programs with a simple right click on the thumbnail.... the list goes on.
http://gtkmmviewer.sourceforge.net/index.html.en
(The screenshots are for old GTK1 version)
6. Rhythmbox. A GNOME music player in the spirit of Apple iTunes. I like Rhythmbox but it's too heavy for my taste. It tries to do too much. For an iTunes styled interface I use Jamboree but for the most part I use the Beep Media Player (a GTK2 port of XMMS).
http://www.imendio.com/projects/jamboree/
http://www.sosdg.org/~larne/w/BMP_Homepage
Unfortunately, one of the largest applications out there does not have a good replacement. Openoffice. I think that Openoffice is one of the greatest thinks to happen for Linux in years but it is BIG. Gnumeric and Abiword are good programs but they do not offer the same level of interoperability and platform independence that Openoffice Calc and Writer provide. Openoffice Impress has no counterpart and is the only open source program that I know of that is compatible with Microsoft Powerpoint.
Does anyone else know of good alternative lightweight applications?
Over the last three years or so I've seen what were once fairly fast and lightweight applications turn into bloated heifers. I've made an attempt to replace as many as possible with alternative programs that are faster and lighter, preferably apps that only depend on GTK2 instead of GTK2 plus the GNOME libraries (pork). The hit list:
1. gedit. This is the GNOME text editor. Over time it has gotten WAY too porky. It takes over four seconds to load and weighs in at 13.7MB RAM used. Badness. I've replaced gedit with two separate editors, Leafpad and SciTE. Leafpad is a no-frills GTK2 text editor, and SciTE is a source code editor that can be built against GTK+ or GTK2.
http://tarot.freeshell.org/leafpad/
http://www.scintilla.org/SciTE.html
2. Evolution. Evolution is a great "groupware" client but if you only need email functionality it is way too heavy. Balsa, an alternative GNOME email client, is decent but it did not support internal address book functionality and the PGP support was poor when I was using it. I am currently using Sylpheed Claws (GTK2) and am quite happy.
http://sylpheed-claws.sourceforge.net/
3. Nautilus - The GNOME file manager. For a file manager, Nautilus is a real porker. Adding in the components, including the dreaded gconf daemon common to most GNOME applications (why oh why must we have a Windows Registry analogue on a Linux system???), Nautilus appears to use approximately 30MB of RAM and it takes seven seconds to load on my system. Yuck. I'm using Xffm (Xfce file manager)... loads in three seconds and uses 10MB (subsequent xffm launches are faster; true of most apps... due to caching).
http://xffm.sourceforge.net/
4. GNOME terminal. Aside from tabs and ease of configuration, I don't see any reason to use gnome-terminal. Bacon. Xterm all the way.
5. gthumb. The GNOME image browser. This application, in my opinion, is not irritatingly bloated... but there is a better image/media browser out there. GImageView (or gimv) is awesome! It supports tabbed image (picture) thumbnail indexes, video playback and thumbnailing, recursive indexes (loading multiple subdirectories into one thumbnail index), opening images in external programs with a simple right click on the thumbnail.... the list goes on.
http://gtkmmviewer.sourceforge.net/index.html.en
(The screenshots are for old GTK1 version)
6. Rhythmbox. A GNOME music player in the spirit of Apple iTunes. I like Rhythmbox but it's too heavy for my taste. It tries to do too much. For an iTunes styled interface I use Jamboree but for the most part I use the Beep Media Player (a GTK2 port of XMMS).
http://www.imendio.com/projects/jamboree/
http://www.sosdg.org/~larne/w/BMP_Homepage
Unfortunately, one of the largest applications out there does not have a good replacement. Openoffice. I think that Openoffice is one of the greatest thinks to happen for Linux in years but it is BIG. Gnumeric and Abiword are good programs but they do not offer the same level of interoperability and platform independence that Openoffice Calc and Writer provide. Openoffice Impress has no counterpart and is the only open source program that I know of that is compatible with Microsoft Powerpoint.
Does anyone else know of good alternative lightweight applications?