This is more of a generic question, based on trying out Window Managers like Awesome, Mate and others.
To me looks like that other Window Managers like Gnome3 and/or Unity are heavy and pointless.
I do understand that having all the composed UIs is more pleasant for the eye, but apart that, what are the other major benefits?
To make an example, when I run the game Heroes of Newerth (using nVidia drivers) under:
Unity : the FPS drops sharply
Gnome3 : FPS is ok, but X and other processes use 15~20% of CPU and quite some additional memory
Awesome : FPS is ok, and other processes use very little memory and CPU
Below some numbers regarding what I'm saying (please note my system is 64 bit, AMD Phenom II X4, 8 GB RAM, nd nVidia 470 GTX, SSD disk). All data is sorted by mem usage (watch -d -n 10 "ps -e -o pcpu,pmem,pid,user,cmd --sort=-pmem | head -20"); again note that CPU time of ./hon-x86_64 might be different due to the fact I can't take the snapshot of the system during exactly same time.
Awesome:
%CPU %MEM PID USER CMD
91.8 21.6 3579 ema ./hon-x86_64
2.4 0.9 3223 root /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch
1.6 0.4 2600 ema /usr/lib/erlang/erts-5.8.5/bin/beam.smp -Bd -K true -A 4 -- -root /usr/lib/erlang -progname erl -- -home /home/ema -- -noshell -noinp
0.3 0.2 3602 ema gnome-terminal
0.0 0.2 2698 ema /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/desktopcouch/desktopcouch-service
Gnome3:
%CPU %MEM PID USER CMD
82.7 21.0 5528 ema ./hon-x86_64
17.7 1.7 5315 ema /usr/bin/gnome-shell
5.8 1.2 5062 root /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch
1.0 0.4 5657 ema /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/ubuntuone-client/ubuntuone-syncdaemon
0.7 0.3 5331 ema nautilus -n
1.6 0.3 2600 ema /usr/lib/erlang/erts-5.8.5/bin/beam.smp -Bd -K true -A 4 -- -root /usr/lib/erlang -progname erl -- -home /home/ema -- -
0.9 0.2 5451 ema gnome-terminal
0.1 0.2 5400 ema /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/desktopcouch/desktopcouch-service
Unity 3D:
%CPU %MEM PID USER CMD
87.2 21.1 6554 ema ./hon-x86_64
10.7 2.6 6105 ema compiz
17.8 1.1 5842 root /usr/bin/X :0 -auth /var/run/lightdm/root/:0 -nolisten tcp vt7 -novtswitch
1.3 0.9 6672 root /usr/bin/python /usr/sbin/aptd
0.4 0.4 6606 ema /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/ubuntuone-client/ubuntuone-syncdaemon
0.5 0.3 6115 ema nautilus -n
1.5 0.3 2600 ema /usr/lib/erlang/erts-5.8.5/bin/beam.smp -Bd -K true -A 4 -- -root /usr/lib/erlang -progname erl -- -home /home/ema -- -noshell -noinput -sasl errl
0.3 0.2 6180 ema /usr/lib/unity/unity-panel-service
So my point is, what's the rationale behind going towards such heavy WMs/Composers?
