Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Assembling a Linux Desktop Environment From Parts?
paxcoder writes "Gnome Shell ... is different. Very much so. The fallback was inadequate. I suspect that many people, like me, turned to the alternatives. My choice was LXDE, which worked ok, until (lx-)panel broke in the unstable branch of the distro that I use. Tired of using the terminal to run stuff, I replaced the standard panel with the one from Xfce. That made me realize that we really don't need a packaged desktop environment, there are pieces ready for assembly. If you customize your graphical environment, what elements do you use? Which window manager, file manager, panel(etc.) would you recommend? Do you have a panel with a hardware usage monitors, how do you switch between workspaces? Anything cool we might not know about?"
'Nuff said.
Please, no WAAA KDE IS BLOATED AND BROKEN AND INCOMPLETE AND THIS AND THAT AND THE OTHER arguments because they've been proven wrong time and again.
It's sad that I have to post AC to defend KDE, currently one of the best desktops (okay, the best desktop) for GNU/Linux.
Yeah, how dare he try to use software that he likes! What a fucking asshole. Everyone knows that you just take whatever piece of shit Microsoft shoves down your throat and then you say "Thank you sir, may I have another?"
Back up a few steps. He's asking for suggestions on apps and configurations... how is that an "everybody else is wrong" mentality? You, on the other hand, are immediately leaping to the conclusion that HE is wrong.
It also sounds like he is experimenting just for his own personal use, not for creating a distro. His own personal configuration would hardly affect public perception of Linux.
Years ago I was a BlackBox user. I've always preferred low-impact WindowManagers and never jumped on the Evolution bandwagon. These days I use BlackBox's primary fork, FluxBox, on both my primary desktop and my "Netbook." The menu format is easy to work with and the memory footprint is negligible.
I don't use a file manager, but I do build most things with GNOME support (if proper), so Nautilus is kinda/sorta there. I'm also not a big panel user - I don't like having tachometers, usage monitors, or any extra stuff filling up my workspace. (I take minimalism to new lows.) Others will have to help you in those respects.
I dti'r na ndall is ri' fear na leathshu'ile.
I use Awesome WM. It's a tiling window manager, and it lives up to it's name! I use it both on ArchLinux and OpenSuse, and the stock configuration needs very little configuration to be perfectly useable. The configuration is written in Lua, so it takes a little time to master, but the amount of customization you can do is unbeatable. Screenshots
for i in `facebook friends "=bday" 2>/dev/null | cut -d " " -f 3-`; do facebook wallpost $i "Happy birthday!"; done
I just started building my own a few months ago and I'm pretty happy with the following:
Arch linux - has my favourite package manager (pacman + yaourt)
Xmonad window manager - tiling wm that doesn't get in the way, with some minor configurations
Stalonetray - has a clock (trayclock), sound (pnmixer), battery indicator (qbat), dropbox, etc.
ranger - vi-like file browser which is simple to use, runs in a terminal (urxvt), and I keep a regular filebrowser (nautilus) around just in case something needs me to drag-and-drop something.
non-visual things:
udiskie - automount usb drives and things
It's a very simple setup, though there are more things than what is mentioned here, and I love it. :)
A list of programs which I am currently using and why is here: https://github.com/MattWoelk/configuration-files/blob/master/home/matt/programs.txt Enjoy!
So we have an aspie here who would admittedly and uncompromisingly rather use an unstable mess of cobbed-together parts(including the distro itself), because that's the way baby likes it and everybody else is wrong.
That mentality is everything that's wrong with fostering acceptance of the Linux desktop.
It's Linux, you can have it the way you want it. When he gets up tomorrow morning he will have a desktop that he likes. And you'll still be a flaming asshole.
Alright, well definitely felt the same sentiment.
I'm running debian wheezy (which used to be debian stable)
built from a net install. The only gnome stuff I've left is the
gnome games package, gdm3, and gvfs.
I have to admit I'm glad gnome 3 came around because I got to try something different,
as for my issues with the gui changes, I've switched to using a lot of cli apps (which ironically
I've had less trouble customizing things like color, I don't have to worry about #000 text on a #000 background
because I get to change the palette...)
Graphical Stuff
For the Window manager, awesome wm, frankly I don't care for LUA that much, but I've customized my rc.lua a bit,
because awesome is frankly just too awesome.
Browser: uzbl (with squid3 for cache, and privoxy for ad filtering and other goodies.)
Office stuff: duh LibreOffice
File Manager: Thunar
Music Player: Audacious or Deadbeef
Cli Stuff (yes I know some of these apps provide a graphical version too, take your pick)
Now for the fun stuff
Terminal Emulator
urxvt
Terminal Multiplexor
Gnu Screen
I love gnu screen, if you don't like it, I've heard tmux is great.
I cannot imagine using cli apps with out it now...
Elinks
Fantastic Web browser with a great text user interface, menus, and everything.
Writing this post within it (well actually pressing ctrl + t brings the editor I chose which is...)
Vim
Yes, I did switch to it (no more nano, gedit, or well there is another editor, but shhh shhh... Be quiet!)
Vim is fantastic, love the spell checker, great for working with multiple languages,
I use it more for writing than coding (usually simple bash stuff or messing with a stylesheet or something.)
Midnight Commander
Great file manager for cli
Mail
Alpine, yes I know... So damn easy to set up though.
IRC/Chat
Weechat and sometimes finch
News feeds
Newsbeuter
File downloads
wget, it has always worked well for me, and continues to do so.
CD ripping
abcde
Video
Mplayer and vlc
Music
mocp and weird stuff like adplay (for adlib stuff...)
Somethings I run at start up in my xsession are autocutsel (to make clipboard handling sane),
xinput for configuring my touchpad scroll,
and setxkbmap so I can toggle language layouts with a hotkey
I guess that's about it, running on a nearly 6 year old laptop, and it flies since this stuff is so light weight.
The advantage is I can have nearly the same setup on any sort of PC and it should run just fine. And no worries
for the license types, all these goodies are FOSS. Have fun, and use your system how you want to use it.