Installing a desktop environment just for gaming.

I have dabbled in linux since fedora core 4 but mostly for running webservers. I recently switched to linux mint full time "mostly" and learning a different side of linux has been fun.

I'm used to running light weight desktop environments and mostly using the terminal, But have really enjoyed mint 17 cinnamon. But I have noticed a lot of cpu usage just at system idle in cinnamon and other systems with lower specs idle at 0% under lubuntu (lxde).

So would installing a lightweight desktop environment to log into along side cinnamon and switching at login, release system resources for needed for gaming?

If so what would be the best option to install along side cinnamon? XFCE, LXDE, ext?

What about window managers like openbox? Would that be a easier option, or even an option at all? I don't understand window managers to well.

Thanks

A window manager is the program that manages windows as implied by the name. This includes the window decorators (borders around windows, close, maximize and minimize buttons), window positioning, window focus and all of that. Without a window manager, it would be very difficult to resize, move and switch between running programs.

A desktop environment is just a collection of programs (including window manager) to create a complete desktop experience. When you run with just a window manager you will not have all the other usual desktop programs running which will free up a few system resources. Most stand-alone window managers also tend to be very light on resources.

If you are familiar and comfortable working with the terminal, then a stand-alone window manager (like openbox) might be a very good alternative to have installed alongside cinnamon.

Openbox seems to be working great. Aside from the extra resources gained. The window manager boots up really fast compared to waiting for all of cinnamon to load. Gets you into the games faster. I think with my next install I'm going to try mint xfce.
I grabbed a screen cap of playonlinux loaded in openbox.

Yes! I get into the games faster! And I have been having fun playing with the menu. I like that it's xml.
I have made some Cinnamon specific commands for the open box menu.

like changing gnome-terminal to start with a preset profile. One I made just for openbox.

Opening nemo with the no desktop option so it doesn't effect your background or add icons to it.
Changing the background with imagemagick from the menu.
This allowed openbox to play nice with cinnamons default apps.

One thing I did add though was conky. Setting it up was fun to I got it to list a lot of important info to a gaming setup. Network ip, gpu/cpu temps and freqs, core usage ext. And I added some code to the openbox menu to start and stop conky.

I don't know if this kinda stuff is considered common knowledge or not. But if not then I can post the exact code edits I made to the openbox's menu.xml and to conky's .conkycr

Thanks for the suggestions

Nice setup there Thunder, very visually appealing. My i3 setup is nowhere near as nice visually, I also have slightly different preferences. I am not using conky, instead I decided to go for several terminal windows running htop as well as some custom scripts.


The bottom left terminal is simply displaying the raw output from lm_sensors updated every 15 seconds. I've been planning on parsing it a bit, and also including GPU temperature, I just have not gotten around to that yet.

Pretty much all the cpu and memory usage comes from mysql (mariadb), firefox, dropbox and steam. So like Xmonad, i3 is very lightweight.

I like the tabbed views that i3 offer, and I use it quite a lot on my workspaces.



If you turn out to prefer running just a window manager instead of a full desktop environment, then I will do like Thunder and suggest that you give tiling window managers a try. There are of course more than the few we have mentioned here. But if you are finding Openbox to your liking and perfect for your needs, then I suggest sticking with it for now.

This is my openbox menu.xml so far.

Code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<openbox_menu xmlns="http://openbox.org/"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="http://openbox.org/
                file:///usr/share/openbox/menu.xsd">

<menu id="root-menu" label="Openbox 3">
  <item label="Terminal emulator">
    <action name="Execute"><execute>gnome-terminal --window-with-profile=openbox</execute></action>
  </item>
  <item label="Web browser">
    <action name="Execute"><execute>firefox mypitbullpro.com</execute></action>
  </item>
  <item label="File manager">
    <action name="Execute"><execute>nemo --no-desktop</execute></action>
  </item>
  <item label="Text editor">
    <action name="Execute"><execute>gedit</execute></action>
  </item>
  <item label="Image viewer">
    <action name="Execute"><execute>eog</execute></action>
  </item>
  <item label="Media player">
    <action name="Execute"><execute>vlc</execute></action>
  </item>
<separator />
        <menu id="games-menu" label="Games">

                  <item label="Playonlinux">

                    <action name="Execute"><command>playonlinux</command></action>

                  </item>

                  <item label="Steam">

                    <action name="Execute"><command>steam</command></action>

                  </item>

        </menu>
  <!-- Start and stop conky -->
<separator />
        <menu id="conky-menu" label="Conky">

                  <item label="Turn on">

                    <action name="Execute"><command>conky</command></action>

                  </item>

                  <item label="Turn off">

                    <action name="Execute"><command>killall conky</command></action>

                  </item>

        </menu>
  <!-- Set the background in openbox the images must be present to work -->
<separator />
        <menu id="background-menu" label="Set background">

                  <item label="Option 1">

                    <action name="Execute"><command>display -dispose background -window root /usr/share/backgrounds/linuxmint/linuxmint.jpg</command></action>

                  </item>

                  <item label="Option 2">

                    <action name="Execute"><command>display -dispose background -window root ~/Pictures/openboxbg2.jpg</command></action>

                  </item>

                  <item label="Option 3">

                    <action name="Execute"><command>display -dispose background -window root ~/Pictures/openboxbg3.jpg</command></action>

                  </item>
                  <item label="Turn off">

                    <action name="Execute"><command>xsetroot -solid "#303030"</command></action>

                  </item>

        </menu>
  <!-- This requires the presence of the 'menu' package to work -->
  <menu id="/Debian" />
  <separator />
  <menu id="client-list-menu" />
  <separator />
  <item label="ObConf">
    <action name="Execute"><execute>obconf</execute></action>
  </item>
  <item label="Reconfigure">
    <action name="Reconfigure" />
  </item>
  <item label="Restart">
    <action name="Restart" />
  </item>
  <separator />
  <item label="Exit">
    <action name="Exit" />
  </item>
</menu>

</openbox_menu>

I'm no expert, I'm just trying things and seeing if they work.
I would like criticism plz.
Thanks.

Xfce uses a bit more resources than Openbox but not much. If you have all the extra stuff with openbox like tint2 panel and such the difference isn't much at all.

I've been using KDE Plasma 5 for some time now, but it looks like I will be going back to Xfce on my desktop.

I used Xfce for a couple of years, and I would personally call it a very feature complete desktop environment. There is a menu, settings, pretty much all the things you would expect in a desktop environment. It is just not as "fleshed out" as the big DE's.

Most people I know of use Openbox with tint2, conky etc. Openbox with extra features that makes it more like the DE doesn't take that much less resources than Xfce.

Unless you really want to use Openbox you might as well use Xfce for a minimal desktop that doesn't interfere with gaming and other heavier tasks.