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Available now: Moksha Window Manager and Desktop environment

The Moksha Window Manager and Desktop environment can now be used on Artix.

Moksha is a fork of Enlightenment release E17, and focuses on stability and low resource usage. It is developed for Bodhi Linux, but can also be used on other distributions.

In 2010 the Moksa fork was created to get more focus on quality and stability. Also the resulting Window Manager and Desktop Environment were integrated with a Ubuntu distribution. This became the Moksha Desktop Environment on Bodhi Linux

Moksha is known as a Window Manager but provides most of the functionality found in much more resource-hungry Desktop Environments. You could say that it straddles the line between a Window Manager and a Desktop Environment.

Moksha is written using the Enlightenment Foundation Libraries (EFL), and remains in active development to this day.

Two ideals and qualities of Moksha are:

  • Minimalism: A default install of Moksha will run in less than 100 MB of RAM. That is FAR less than most modern Windows Managers, not to mention complete Desktop Environments. But it doesn't come at the expense of great looks or functionality. Moksha is one of the most elegant Window Managers available and is highly extensible through the use of Modules.
  • User Choice: Moksha is likely the most highly configurable Window Manager in existence, so you can make your system look and work the way you want.

Moksha has now been built completely from source, on and for Artix Linux.

A sample screenshot of a - quite clogged - Moksha Desktop on Artix linux:


For information on installing and using Moksha on Artix Linux check: http://omniverse.artixlinux.org/x86_64/moksha/

Note that Moksha is not one of the supported desktops on Artix.

Some personal observations and opinions on Moksha:
- it is different from other WM/DE's and takes some getting used to
- it is very flexible and appealing
- it is very light and extremely fast
- it is very stable

artist

Re: Available now: Moksha Window Manager and Desktop environment

Reply #1 –
Quote from: Artist – on
Minimalism: A default install of Moksha will run in less than 100 MB of RAM. That is FAR less than most modern Windows Managers,
I think that most users would like to see a comparison between other window managers which contend for the title of "lightweight" and Moksha. For example, dwm on my system uses ~32MB VSZ and ~11MB RSS:
Code: [Select]
$  ps aux | grep -E '(^USER|dwm)' | grep -v grep
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
strajder  1029  0.0  0.2  31548 11264 tty1     S    19:48   0:03 dwm

Re: Available now: Moksha Window Manager and Desktop environment

Reply #2 –
Please feel free to make a separate thread about comparing wm's and de's.
This one is about Moksha, explaining its qualities so any user can decide to give it a closer look or try, or not

Re: Available now: Moksha Window Manager and Desktop environment

Reply #3 –
Quote from: Artist – on
This one is about Moksha, explaining its qualities so any user can decide to give it a closer look or try, or not
I just installed Moksha-git in addition to XFCE (sddm, conman and alsa only).
Well I must say that the configuration possibilities are impressive for such a light desktop!  8)

Re: Available now: Moksha Window Manager and Desktop environment

Reply #4 –
Overhaul of Moksha for Artix packages and repository

Since Moksha for Artix was released, more experience was gained about building and using it. With this, the Moksha packages were rebuild and its repository overhauled.

As a result:
  • the '-git' and some obsolete packages were removed from the repository
  • the 70 remaining packages have been build from scratch
  • from the latest sources
  • with a minimum of dependencies
  • and the current Moksha version numbers

Please note if currently using the '-git' packages these will have to be replaced when updating.
First make sure to have a backup, especially of directories ~/.e and ~/.elementary

For more information check http://omniverse.artixlinux.org/x86_64/moksha/#readme

Enjoy using Moksha on Artix

artist

Re: Available now: Moksha Window Manager and Desktop environment

Reply #5 –
This is an incredibly lightweight and fast DE. Once it's tested for a few weeks, it should be moved to [universe].

Re: Available now: Moksha Window Manager and Desktop environment

Reply #6 –
Just tried it out on my rather memory constrained Thinkpad T400. On it I usually use IceWM which has session+wm+desktop in ~30 MB RAM

Moksha also has a compositor and some desktop services, which makes it a full complete DE
It consumes about 50-60 MB RAM with some stuff turned off. I like it, it's very snappy, i think i will keep using it :)





On my Ryzen PC i still use IceWM but as a window manager for LXQt  :D That is 150-200 MB but for a Qt desktop with picom's experimental backends for gaussian blur, consuming still less than KDE3 used to back in the good old days.

Re: Available now: Moksha Window Manager and Desktop environment

Reply #7 –
Artist: compliments for the work! As I'll finished to battle with a couple of customer, I'll install a VM and test it. In the past I used Enlightment, for a while: nice but with some problems. This version look a lot more stable!

 

Re: Available now: Moksha Window Manager and Desktop environment

Reply #8 –
I have just tried out Moksha in a combination with dinit, and it is really amazing how quickly it boots. And shutdown is near instantaneous!

Thanks @artist for your great work on this.