Need to slim down my Manjaro XFCE install

Support
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Hello. I need to slim down my Manjaro XFCE install which I just installed yesterday. I don’t have a powerful computer which is why I’m asking for your help. I need help in picking out programs that are safe to uninstall and won’t break the system. I have an HP 15s-du2004tu with a 1 terabyte 5200rpm hard drive, Intel i3-1005G1 CPU, and only 4 gigs of ram.

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Uninstalling packages won’t necessarily help, it depends what you want to run at concurrently. What are you mainly using the computer for?

There is, although, unmaintained, Manjaro architect which lets you choose everything.

https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Installation_with_Manjaro_Architect

OpenBox is probably lighter than XFCE, see https://maboxlinux.org/

Also, Puppy Linux is designed to be lightweight. I used it before switching to Manjaro (as I got better hardware). https://puppylinux.com/

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Uninstalling applications won’t help - applications generally only takes space - and Manjaro only enables a minimum of needed services.

The only thing I can think of is modemmanager - a package for using WWAN devices.

With a 4GB system you should look into settings like your swapfile, swappiness, cache pressure when trying to get the system as responsive as possible.

Ideas:

  • You could replace the browser.
    • List of Web Browsers 1
  • You could replace NetworkManager and use netctl and wicd to manage profiles.
    • Configuration of systemd-networkd 2
    • List of Network management software 3
  • Disable bluetooth

An entirely different approach already mentioned by @darkcity is to use a window manager based approach.

Manjaro editions based on Openbox

  • Manjaro LXDE - a desktop like system based on GTK
  • Manjaro LXQt - a desktop like system based on Qt
  • Manjaro Openbox
dist server https://iso.uex.dk/
build server https://uex.dk/iso/
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https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Improving_performance

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Thank you all but there’s no need. I switched to GNOME as i couldn’t tolerate it anymore. Sorry for wasting your time!

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And Gnome is running leaner on your system than xfce?

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Let me rephrase my reply. What I meant was that the UI of XFCE was not my type. So I switched to GNOME. And by no means is GNOME leaner on my system. Lowest I could get was 950 MB RAM usage.

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OP changed desktops from XFCE to Gnome. Closing topic administratively.