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Window Managers Memory Usage

How much memory does your window manager use? You can check yourself with the command ps -ao comm,size,rss,vsize. I have tried to note where the window manager has other applications it runs. Memory management in Linux is quite complex, and I don't feel competent to explain the exact nature of "size," "rss," and "vsize." Suffice to say that some of them include not only all the memory used by the app, but also memory used by all libraries used by the app - which means that if the WM has subordinate apps, a library that's loaded once may be counted several times. Read up on it. You can also check how many libraries your WM uses with ldd $WMexecutable.

Click on the column header to sort the table by the data in that column.

5892

Window Manager	Version	Executable(s)	size 32-bit	rss 32-bit	vsize 32-bit	size 64-bit	rss 64-bit	vsize 64-bit	Number of Libraries	Notes
9wm	1.2-8	9wm	244	1112	2852	0	0	0	8
aewm	1.3.12-2	aewm	380	2780	6468	0	0	0	15
aewm++	1.1.2-4.1	aewm++	272	1668	4028	0	0	0	11
Blackbox	0.70.1	blackbox	540	3756	6464	0	0	0	19	Blackbox makes little sense without bbkeys for keybindings: it has similar memory usage measures.
clfswm	2007-03-02	clisp	5588	6244	11412	0	0	0	3	The library count is on clisp, the interpreter, because the WM is a script. This probably doesn't count the required libraries properly.
dwm	4.7-3	dwm	244	1356	4072	0	0	0	7
Enlightenment	1:0.16.7.2-5	enlightenment	1592	4500	8776	0	0	0	18
firebox	0.3	firebox	412	3372	6268	0	0	0	19
Fluxbox	1.0.0+deb1-5	fluxbox	1220	4792	8588	0	0	0	23
Fluxbox	1.0.0+deb1-7	fluxbox	0	0	0	1672	6124	60224	24
flwm	1.02	flwm	424	3352	6112	0	0	0	20
Icewm	1.2.30	icewm	644	3980	6788	0	0	0	26
Ion 2	20040729-2.1	ion2	656	2304	3732	0	0	0	13
JWM	1.5	jwm	416	2656	4736	0	0	0	19
Karmen	0.11	karmen	256	1200	2812	0	0	0	9
LarsWM	7.5.3	larswm	260	1184	2784	0	0	0	8
lwm	1.2.1	lwm	388	1360	3308	0	0	0	10
Matchbox	1.1	matchbox-window-manager	644	3040	5652	0	0	0	22	A Matchbox session runs not only "matchbox-window-manager" (numbers shown here), but also matchbox-panel (660, 2928, 5528), mb-applet-menu-launcher (588, 2844, 5460), mb-applet-clock (536, 2736, 5400), and the largest, matchbox-desktop (6212, 8572, 11136). Matchbox is intended for low resource environments. What am I missing?
olwm	3.2p1.4-21.1	olwm	392	1684	4504	0	0	0	9	olwm runs olwmslave, which has slightly greater memory requirements than olwm itself - including 11 libraries.
OpenBox	3.4.2	openbox	3312	7780	11676	0	0	0	31
PWM	1.0.20010309	pwm	384	1276	3016	0	0	0	8
PWM2 (Ion2)	2-20040729	pwm2	780	2376	3808	0	0	0	13
quark	101 20061208-1	quark	252	1220	2700	0	0	0	7
QVWM	1.1.12	qvwm	544	2616		0	0	0	22	Runs xbiff, xeyes, and xload on start, each of which is approximately 270, 1700, 3800.
ratpoison	1.4.1	ratpoison	260	1500	3132	0	0	0	12
Rio	1.0	rio	260	1264	2968	0	0	0	11
SithWM	1.2b1	sithwm	248	940	2564	0	0	0	7
TinyWM	1.3	tinywm	252	752	2552	0	0	0	7
TreeWM	0.4.4	treewm	408	1880	4272	0	0	0	12
Twindy	0.45-beta	twindy	10136	3884	16136	0	0	0	15
twm	1:1.0.4-1	twm	944	2296	5436	0	0	0	12
UDE	0.2.9b-2.2	uwm	404	1716	3960	0	0	0	14
WeeWM	0.0.2	weewm	252	1164	2672	0	0	0	7
WindowLab	1.33	windowlab	404	2400	4316	0	0	0	15
WindowMaker	0.92.0-6.1	WindowMaker	1108	4588	6940	0	0	0	23	Runs two copies of the process: the one not shown consumes about 20% less memory.
wmii	3.5.1	wmiiwm	4856	6180	8068	0	0	0	8
wmii	3.6+debian-4	wmii	416	1748	4788	556	2036	32824	9
WMX	6	wmx	404	1892	4108	0	0	0	12
XFCE	4.4.0	xfwm4	1332	7508	13720	0	0	0	40	The stats here are for xfwm4, XFCE's window manager. XFCE also runs several other processes: xfce4-session (440, 4652, 11908), xfce4-panel (1848, 8636, 22248), Thunar (416, 4392, 12072), thunar-tpa (772, 5576, 20580), xfce4-menu-plugin (2496, 10868, 25012), and the largest, xfdesktop (34508, 9604, 56540 - and it has 51 libraries).
xmonad	0.2	xmonad	1432	2656	5608	0	0	0	4	Written in Haskell. Usually runs dzen2 as well.
xmonad	0.3	xmonad	1288	2576	5632	0	0	0	12
xmonad	0.4	xmonad	1424	3092	5892	0	0	0	12
xterm	234-1	xterm	3008	5200	9268	0	0	0	22	xterm can act as a WM (although not very well). But it's mostly here for comparison.