Just as in the topic line, which WM is fastest (mainly for loading programs, so I guess the least amount of RAM or CPU necessary is what I'm asking).

If you are running another window manager, let me know and I'll add it to the poll. Please also post below what you think is faster about it than other window managers.

Out of the one's listed I choose matchbox...

But is prolly on the bottom of the list of best looking... neck and neck with rox...

KDE and Xfce takes the cake for best looking...

Late

I believe ratpoison has the least requirements on the Z. theres an old package for rc5 in the unstable feed. Im my experience windowmaker is faster than matchbox on the Z though. the windowmaker packages found in this forum are customized well for the pda environment.

OT: hows e17 speed wise? it runs acceptably on my 266MHz powerpc box. i would think it would be more than acceptable on the Z.

I'm curious about how e17 compares to rox as well. Is e17 another name for enlightenment?

Also where on the forum is windowmaker? (I ask this question previous to searching, maybe I will find it)

fastest has to be twm, well...net sure if u would actually use it or not...but you asked for the fastest, and twm wins.

but be a little more realistic, Windowsmaker beats everything else. thats if u r after the "fastest + prettiest + usable + customizable(windowsmaker is a monster when it comes to customization)"

Yes, e17 is enlightenment. Works pretty well, and quite fast. Enlightenment in general is still developing though and one of the biggest hassles I found is that editing configuration/menus etc is hard work. Plus not so stable as others.

As far as I know, rox doesn't have a window manager, does it? Just a file manager and desktop pinboard.

xfce gets my vote, because while it may not be the fastest in pure speed terms, it gets what I want done fastest

On desktops, ROX uses OroboROX as wm see OroboROX homepage
I only tried Openbox(the default one coming with PdaXrom along with matchbox desktop), xfce, and fvwm (Zumi's customized package in Zumi's feed). Fvwm was astonishly the fastest, apparently the problem is to compare not only the wm but also the desktop as was discussed here.
and here

What about WindowMaker? It's also very fast and good-looking. Loads desktop in 3 seconds only.

Right here: http://www.oesf.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=16370
Seems not working in Beta4, though.

the fastest would probelly be the one that comes with X, very basic and does nothing that most people need for it to be useful but you did ask for speed

with a program or two in the backgroud its usable, it depends on your needs

i like the rat posin idea, so much so that i use somthing simmilar full time (wmii). on a Z these are great as you can get the benifits of X without touching the screen alot, it does however help if the programs you are uisng have good keyboard support

firefox has a great extension that allows you to hit a button and have numbers and letters come up next to every link, you then type the number of the link you want to follow. its called somthing like hit-a-link or hit-a-hint

never use the touch screen again (says someone who just uses the terminal and screen )

I am trying out Window Maker on beta4, works great! Super fast, just what I was looking for, and the customization is awesome! Thanks.

Hehe. So you may have to add WindowMaker to the poll also.

You know what's funny? I don't even think I can edit the poll after the original post. If I click "edit" the original post, it only brings up that post, and there's no edit for the poll .

Fastest will be DWM (Dynamic Window Manager)

The developer says "dwm is only a single binary, it's source code is intended to never exceed 2000 SLOC"

Less than 2,000 lines of code!

http://wmii.de/dwm/

However, I personally use and love his 'bloated' (<10,000 SLOC) wmii windowmanager.

IceWM faster and small, but full functional

I'm running Icewm, but whenever I plug in a usb device or unplug one, the menu dissapears from the bottom, anyone have the same problem or a solution?

Agree. Two thumbs up!

I'm using icewm on beta3 and have never come across such a problem. Sorry, can't help.

-- cheers

Me neither. Things run just fine.
I am growing to love icewm + Rox desktop in Beta3.
Apps can run truly full screen. Panel can hide freely. With igorekk's configuration tools I can do a simple quick and dirty trick to get brightness setting (setfl +, setfl -) to work.
Using the builtin icewm and the Rox themes, the desktop looks gorgeous.
Though I still feel that windowmaker runs faster and allows for more customizations.

When I ran Windowmaker, something was wrong with the keymap. In beta4, I noticed that whenever I logged out of any window manager that the "a" key wouldn't work unless I pressed Fn + a. But in Windowmaker, it has the same problem.

With Icewm, it might be a problem with having matchbox + rox + icewm all at the same time. How did you setup your Icewm + rox combination?

No special tweaks are needed.
Just install the icewm pacakages from the feed.
Setting up Rox is nothing more than commenting out a line and add a new one, as described in loji's page http://www.thesounddesign.com/zaurus/beta3.htm or this page http://zaurus.spy.org/feeds/jedhead/static...ic050213-150726.
Reboot and voila!
Customize the themes to your liking. icewm already has some nice builtin (i particular like lnfadel2 Overloaded. For Rox you may want to check out http://zaurus.spy.org/feeds/jedhead/rox-themes/
igorekk's icewm configurations tools, which are found in a thread here, are very useful.
There are also a couple of other threads discussing icewm in the forum.
Good luck!