:: Re: [DNG] What I learned at Distrow…
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Author: Didier Kryn
Date:  
To: dng@lists.dyne.org
Subject: Re: [DNG] What I learned at Distrowatch
Le 11/12/2020 à 04:31, Mason Loring Bliss a écrit :
>> Wait a minute. When you say "without GUI", do you mean no X installed,
>> or do you mean it lacks the display manager to boot directly into X?
>> The former precludes desktop use; the latter is how I use my computer
>> every day, because startx and .xinitrc are my friends.
> Don't forget xdm, which ends up being what I use. I've never been keen on
> leaving a console sitting there logged in but largely forgotten just for
> startx, as someone could change to it and take advantage of it being
> somewhat vulnerable. But there are practical reasons to consider xdm.
>
> In terms of weight, compare:
>
> $ ps -uq 3944
> USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
> root      3944  0.0  0.0  16396  2016 ?        Ss   Dec09   0:00 /usr/bin/xdm
> $ ps -uq 6181
> USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
> mason     6181  0.0  0.0   7916  4140 pts/9    Ss+  Dec09   0:00 -bash

>
> xdm is taking less than half the resident memory of a bash shell, so if you
> have to pick one of them to sit in the background doing nothing once it's
> facilitated, xdm consumes fewer resources.


    I guess in Bash you could just issue 'exec startx', in which case
bash would go away, returning memory and leaving no place for intrusion.

    I don't make it an argument against xdm. Just cheating about your
own arguments (~:

--   Didier