Lightweight system without (too) bloated software

Khylsdrak · 2025-04-20 13:23:14

Hi,
I like CLI programs and I'm using Devuan + dwm + dmenu. I have no problem using graphics programs if necessary. Some programs have less dependencies, some have a lot of tools like imagemagick. I want to keep my system fully functional. Here are my everyday tools :

File manager : lf / mc / doublecmd
Ftp client : filezilla
Web browser : brave browser / firefox
Music player & video player : ffplay / vlc / moc + moc-ffmpeg-plugin +dmenu_mocp
Adress book : abook
Spreadsheets : sc-im / gnumeric
Emails : neomutt
Text editor : neovim
Word processor : abiword
Personal organizer : calcurse
Image viewer : nsxiv and display (imageMagick) / feh / mirage
Image editing : imagemagick
Screenshots : import (imagemagick) / scrot
System monitor : htop
Screenshot information : screenfetch
Hardware information : util-linux(dmesg, lsblk)
Video editing : ffmpeg
Calculations : calc qcalc

Some good links :
Thanks to Mayfrost : https://github.com/mayfrost/guides/blob … NATIVES.md
Cat -v : https://harmful.cat-v.org/software/

Do you have any other recommendations? (I will mention them in darkblue)

Last edited by Khylsdrak (2025-05-05 08:40:22)

Camtaf · 2025-04-20 13:52:48

As you have installed Abiword, I'd install gnumeric as well, much easier than sc-im, (which I quite liked myself as a CLI program).

Also, might want to check out feh for images - https://feh.finalrewind.org/

greenjeans · 2025-04-20 13:59:26

I do love me some Imagemagick, but I use Scrot for screenshots, super lightweight yet very configurable.

Khylsdrak · 2025-04-20 18:12:30

@Camtaf : gnumeric is very useful to read .ods documents, you're right. Following your recommendation, I tried feh and I think it will be a perfect program to use within shell scripts.
@greenjeans : Scrot was my older screenshot program, I liked it a lot but import is doing the job and is sufficient for my personal use. Scrot is still installed on my computer

Thanks for your help !

delgado · 2025-04-20 19:33:53

Dual-windowed file manger: mc / doublecmd
Image Viewer: This is a difficult one. Sometimes viewnior or nomacs (excalibur)
Screenshots: flameshot

thym · 2025-04-20 21:21:04

mirage as image viewer (feh is already menthioned), moc as music player, ffmpeg for video editing, qalc for simple calculations

Khylsdrak · 2025-04-21 09:41:47

@delgado : mc for Midnight Commander is interesting, very light. I don't know if it's highly configurable or not, I just try it out of the box.
doublecmd is very clean, I do like this graphic tool. Flameshot doesn't fit well with dwm, the icon doesn't appear on the screen to take a screenshot.
@thym : Mirage is very light and good, able to take screenshots as well. Moc is great, especially with moc-ffmpeg-plugin and dmenu_mocp (https://github.com/pscha/dmenu_mocp?tab=readme-ov-file), ffmpeg as well. Oh yeah ! Qalc is oerfect for simple calculation

Thanks !

igorzwx · 2025-04-22 15:46:20

Khylsdrak wrote:

Mirage is very light and good

$ apt show mirage
Package: mirage
Version: 0.11.1-1+b6

The version number is telling.

$ mirage

(mirage:13910): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 17:26:25.051: gtk_buildable_add_child: assertion 'iface->add_child != NULL' failed

(mirage:13910): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 17:26:25.085: gtk_buildable_add_child: assertion 'iface->add_child != NULL' failed

greenjeans · 2025-04-22 16:20:26

I use gpicview for images, it's very light and fast but still has some nice features.

I've been trying out the Ranger CLI file-manager since fsmithred recommended it, I like it a LOT better than MC. It supports image and video previews and a lot more.

Imagemagick is great for a backend, I have some scripts using it and yad to do simple image-resizing and rotating that work great and fast as right-click context menu options in a file-manager.

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-04-22 16:23:22)

EDX-0 · 2025-04-22 19:47:14

for image viewing i use nsxiv, may be biased in that i sometimes contribute to the repo and have helped cobble some scripts to extend the functionality tho

for a fetch program i use neofetch which i've been tempted to take maintenance of for a while but have not (i mean i've been maintaining a fork of pywal since 2021)

for screenshotting i like flameshot since it already packs everything i need to do the light editing of screenshots, but is not like i could not use maim with imagemagick like i was doing before.

for clipboard manager i have found nothing better than copyq, it just works, supports images and has vi-like bindings by default

for window management i personally like awesome tho i'm not the biggest fan of lua tho i did re-write my neovim config in lua a while ago...

for file management i use both thunar and vifm, most stuff i do in vifm but having thunar as the default is my preference for when the browser opens a file dir

i use webmail but lately i've been thinking of installing thunderbird, used neomutt for a while but it wasn't doing it for me tho, even using luke smith's muttwizard script to set up neomutt it didn't feel "complete" enough so i went back to using webmail

Khylsdrak · 2025-04-22 21:35:29

@igorzwx : I installed this https://mirageiv.sourceforge.net/download.html. You're right, the devuan package needs something to work clean.
@greenjeans : I'm using LF (https://github.com/gokcehan/lf), and I recommend it instead of ranger. Ranger is too slow. I've just installed gpicview and it's very fast, I love it !

@EDX-0 : nsxiv is my current image viewer. Neofetch was my old tool, screenfetch seems smaller and faster but it's played out with the thickness of a line, both are very good.
You made me discover copyq ! thanks a lot, a great tool ! Thank you for sharing.

One of my friends send me a link, a great job made by Mayfrost : https://github.com/mayfrost/guides/blob … NATIVES.md
The web page is very old and deserves to be refreshed but it is exactly what I wanted to know. I would like to do same page with current programs

Last edited by Khylsdrak (2025-04-22 21:49:30)

igorzwx · 2025-04-24 23:40:53

@Khylsdrak

CopyQ might be useful, although its manual (man copyq) seems misleading
_https://github.com/hluk/CopyQ/issues/225#issuecomment-1925401588

$ cat ~/.config/autostart/copyq-autostart.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Exec=/usr/bin/copyq --start-server
Hidden=false
Name[en_US]=CopyQ autostart
Name=CopyQ
Comment[en_US]=Advanced clipboard manager
Comment=Advanced clipboard manager
# Workaround / fix for issue #1526 that prevents a proper autostart of the tray icon in GNOME
X-MATE-Autostart-Delay=3

cat /usr/share/applications/com.github.hluk.copyq.desktop | grep Desktop -A15

EDIT:

Workaround for MATE Desktop: Start CopyQ in the tray

Create a new Desktop launcher for CopyQ with a text editor (nano or mousepad):

nano ~/.local/share/applications/copyq.desktop

mousepad ~/.local/share/applications/copyq.desktop

$ cat ~/.local/share/applications/copyq.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=CopyQ
# Start CopyQ in the tray  / Workaround for MATE Desktop
Exec=bash -c 'copyq && copyq exit && copyq --start-server' 2>/dev/null
# Exec=copyq --start-server show
Icon=copyq
GenericName=Clipboard Manager
# Workaround / fix for issue #1526 that prevents a proper autostart of the tray icon in GNOME
X-GNOME-Autostart-Delay=3
# The rest is taken from Klipper application.
Type=Application
Terminal=false
X-KDE-autostart-after=panel
X-KDE-StartupNotify=false
X-KDE-UniqueApplet=true
Categories=Qt;KDE;Utility;
Comment=A cut & paste history utility
Name[en_US]=CopyQ-fixed

Last edited by igorzwx (2025-04-25 12:48:00)

greenjeans · 2025-04-25 17:13:31

No love for Parcellite? I have used it for years, works fine for my needs. Bonus: i've never had to configure it, drops into Mate panel automatically no config issues. Works great in Tint2 as well, just need to add it to Openbox autostart file.

delgado · 2025-04-25 22:00:44

At what point would I need a "clipboard manager"?

copy-on-mark and paste-on-middle-mouse-button just works.

RedGreen925 · 2025-04-25 22:33:40

At what point would I need a "clipboard manager"?

When you want to access previous items that have been in the clipboard using a history function to not be limited to the last entry in the paste buffer or as some of them offer it have preexisting entries that will paste when wanted as they are selected for use. I will add my vote for CopyQ a lovely program that works without problems for me for many years now.

greenjeans · 2025-04-25 23:47:00

I agree with the above, the clipboard manager is indispensable in what I do, I use it every day many times a day.

But Parcellite is light, fast, and simple, just a nice list of copies, I don't need all the extra functionality. Plus it's ten times smaller than copyq and doesn't drag in a mountain of QT depends like copyq does. Simple gtk2.

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-04-25 23:48:02)

igorzwx · 2025-04-26 18:08:49

CopyQ: persistent bugs

$ copyq --version
CopyQ Clipboard Manager 10.0.0
Qt: 5.15.8
KNotifications: 5.103.0
Compiler: GCC
Arch: x86_64-little_endian-lp64
OS: Devuan GNU/Linux 5 (daedalus)

$ copyq
Warning: [default] QtWarning: QSystemTrayIcon::setVisible: No Icon set
^C

$ copyq --start-server

$ dpkg -L copyq | grep desktop
/usr/share/applications/com.github.hluk.copyq.desktop

$ cat /usr/share/applications/com.github.hluk.copyq.desktop | grep Exec
Exec=copyq --start-server show

Workaround (start copyq in the tray):
Exec=bash -c 'killall copyq  -wq; copyq --start-server &' 

fsmithred · 2025-04-27 17:26:52

xfe - lightweight file manager that also includes xfw text editor. They each use about 9 MB RAM.

qlipper - simple clipboard similar to parcellite. Uses about 20 MB and works without dbus-bin or dbus-daemon installed.

links2 or dillo for graphical web browsers. Any of the big ones are too painful when you only have 2 GB RAM and 1.33 GHz Atom CPU. Sometimes lynx or w3m will suffice.

claws-mail - 49 MB compared to thunderbird's 307 MB.

greenjeans · 2025-04-27 17:38:57

Rule-of-thumb that's been helping me downsize over the years, is this:

Never look in the repo first for packages to solve your problem, when it might be solved using resources already onboard and a tiny shell-script.

Yad + dash = your friend!

greenjeans · 2025-04-27 17:44:49

Not familiar with qcalc, so I can't make a comparison, but I usually use galculator for years now, very small and fast and does what I need.

RedGreen925 · 2025-04-28 16:46:59

but I usually use galculator for years now, very small and fast and does what I need.

I use this in my .bash_functions file works well

# https://github.com/addyosmani/dotfiles/blob/master/.functions#L1-L17
# Simple calculator
function calc() {
        local result=""
        result="$(printf "scale=10;$*\n" | bc --mathlib | tr -d '\\\n')"
        #                       └─ default (when `--mathlib` is used) is 20
        #
        if [[ "$result" == *.* ]]; then
                # improve the output for decimal numbers
                printf "$result" |
                sed -e 's/^\./0./'        `# add "0" for cases like ".5"` \
                    -e 's/^-\./-0./'      `# add "0" for cases like "-.5"`\
                    -e 's/0*$//;s/\.$//'   # remove trailing zeros
        else
                printf "$result"
        fi
        printf "\n"
}

It is not too happy with negative results but I will live with it.

zeus@9600k:~$ calc 2^4
16
zeus@9600k:~$ calc 2*4
8
zeus@9600k:~$ calc 2/4
0.5
zeus@9600k:~$ calc 2-4
bash: printf: -2: invalid option
printf: usage: printf [-v var] format [arguments]

zeus@9600k:~$ calc 2+4
6

greenjeans · 2025-04-28 18:22:06

^^^As fsmithred pointed out to me today, most of us already have a calculator onboard that was brought in with xorg in the x11-apps package called xcalc.

Open a terminal and type xcalc, it's pretty nifty!

Also a tiny text-editor called xedit in that same suite of utilities.

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-04-28 18:24:36)

JWM-Kit · 2025-04-28 21:30:04

I always use xcalc since it's already installed. On new installs I create a .desktop file for xcalc so it will appear in my menus.

Khylsdrak · 2025-04-29 19:40:27

Well whenever it's possible I prefer a full cli software, very minimalist and operated at 100%, than another under X, because I can integrate them into scripts. They are often smaller and use less memory. I can use them without my mouse and so I can use my keyboard only, which is more relaxing than constantly moving the mouse, I can do things faster, it's more efficient and more relevant. Very often the programs are more ergonomic.
That's why I prefer dwm than gnome or kde or even mate. I like them all, they are great but I much prefer dwm for productivity

Last edited by Khylsdrak (2025-04-29 19:45:38)

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