Help me build a "minimalist" and wonderful desktop! :)

xd-0 · 2007-11-18 10:52:51

WM; Openbox
Panel: Pypanel
System info: Conky
Music: Quod Libet
Movie: Mplayer, sometimes with smplayer frontend. And miro for looking at broadcast (youtube etc)
Editor: Geany
Pictures: Nitrogen for wallpaper, mirage and feh for viewing, gimp for editing
News: Liferea
Office: Abiword, xpdf, gnumeric
Torrent: Deluge
Chat: Gajim
Browser: Firefox
Filemanager: To some extent thunar, but I haven't found one I really like.

abhidg · 2007-11-18 15:27:02

WM: openbox
Panel: lxpanel
Sysinfo: conky
Music: MPD/Sonata
Movies: Totem
Editor: nano/emacs/geany/vim/gobby/leafpad
Pictures: feh/mirage, gimp
Office: ooo
Torrent: Transmission
Chat: Pidgin
Browser: Firefox
Filemanager: Thunar
Mail: mutt/fdm/msmtp

to see processes: htop

Also I've alunn for system update notifications.

geek.arnuld · 2007-11-18 15:51:43

celsofaf wrote:

Hello all!
What do I need now? I need suggestions. Basicaly, I need:
- A window manager; probably OpenBox?

http://www.suckless.org/wiki/wmii, because it sucks less.

celsofaf wrote:

- A music player and, perhaps, a video player. Amarok, Kaffeine and other KDE apps are out!

Music Player: MPD (or if you like GUI: bmp or audacious)
Video PLayer: xine (xine-ui)

celsofaf wrote:

- An instant messenger supporting at least Jabber, MSN and Yahoo.

PIDGIN

celsofaf wrote:

- A bittorrent client. Yes, I do use Transmission but... Is there any even lighter one?

sure, get "Deluge"

celsofaf wrote:

I'd like to build my desktop as simple as possible, simple in the sense of avoiding "garbage" dependencies. In fact, I don't realy know how to explain what I want but, just to put it simply, I want to be as efficient as I can and to use the least of my CPU and RAM.
Suggestions? I'm open.

well, the only thing that fits your description and comes to my mind are Tiled WMs: Ratpoison, wmii, StumpWM and Xmonad. They eat less memory, light on Processor and run damn fine and will also increase your productivity to 50%. If you like to kill some time, see my article on this: http://lispmachine.wordpress.com/2007/1 … top-thing/
http://lispmachine.wordpress.com/2007/0 … s-removed/

Personally, I like wmii because it works very well for me for all kinds of GUIs and apps.

Ratpoison: Pure Tiled-WM. written in C. runs fast but you will face problems running xine, bmp,xmms, GIMP because they were not designed for Tiled WMs.

StumpWM: rewrite of Ratpoison in Common-Lisp. I rewrote whole conf file myself ;-)

Xmonad: Dynamic Window management. written in Haskell.

wmii: Dynamic Window Management, Floating point layer to manage xine, bmp, GIMP etc. written in C . Most better WM as per my view. do NOT install it from pacman (the package is quite outdated) , use the latest snap directly from the suckless.

Last edited by geek.arnuld (2007-11-18 15:54:30)

rson451 · 2007-11-18 16:25:09

wm: flux(if you must, else - dwm)
pager: tangent
systray: trayer
Sysinfo: conky
Music: audacious
Movies: vlc
Editor: vim
Pictures: feh
Office: OOo
Chat: Pidgin
Browser: Firefox
Filemanager: Thunar

lilsirecho · 2007-11-18 17:30:33

The best use of cpu and ram is use it all......that is the most efficient..

To build a minimalist system use no hdd's just USB flash drives. Provide the data storage in USB flash.

Minimalist installs via USB flash include DSL, PuppyLinux and others. Larger installs include PCLinuxOS and FaunOS (archlinux based).

FaunOS requires 512MB of ram or more. It has 500 packages which load via USB flash into ram as sqfs~450mb.

The system runs in ram at surprising speed.

When booted to root, the system loads as archlinux with a minimal display of icons and the same Kde menu is available.

Many different "live" flash drive systems exist for this minimalist arrangement.

"Live" systems are inherently safe from the security standpoint...simply reboot.

Don't limit yourself to one set of values...there's more out there.

While running a given program, regardless of how many are available, there are lots of programs not being used in any system, minimalistic or not. Does it matter that they are "bloat" or not?

My system has no HDD, core2duo,2GB ram,2.8ghz cpu and boots from flash drives, stores on flash drives, and swaps on flash drives. It uses an LCD display and I consider it to be a minimalist system (bloat or no bloat). I can load many systems of varying capabilities and stay abreast of all of them.

Minimalist in power drain, maintenence cost and best in performance!!!

smurnjiff · 2007-11-18 18:10:55

geek.arnuld wrote:

celsofaf wrote:
Hello all!
What do I need now? I need suggestions. Basicaly, I need:
- A window manager; probably OpenBox?
http://www.suckless.org/wiki/wmii, because it sucks less.
celsofaf wrote:
- A music player and, perhaps, a video player. Amarok, Kaffeine and other KDE apps are out!
Music Player: MPD (or if you like GUI: bmp or audacious)
Video PLayer: xine (xine-ui)
celsofaf wrote:
- An instant messenger supporting at least Jabber, MSN and Yahoo.
PIDGIN
celsofaf wrote:
- A bittorrent client. Yes, I do use Transmission but... Is there any even lighter one?
sure, get "Deluge"
celsofaf wrote:
I'd like to build my desktop as simple as possible, simple in the sense of avoiding "garbage" dependencies. In fact, I don't realy know how to explain what I want but, just to put it simply, I want to be as efficient as I can and to use the least of my CPU and RAM.
Suggestions? I'm open.
well, the only thing that fits your description and comes to my mind are Tiled WMs: Ratpoison, wmii, StumpWM and Xmonad. They eat less memory, light on Processor and run damn fine and will also increase your productivity to 50%. If you like to kill some time, see my article on this: http://lispmachine.wordpress.com/2007/1 … top-thing/
http://lispmachine.wordpress.com/2007/0 … s-removed/
Personally, I like wmii because it works very well for me for all kinds of GUIs and apps.
Ratpoison: Pure Tiled-WM. written in C. runs fast but you will face problems running xine, bmp,xmms, GIMP because they were not designed for Tiled WMs.
StumpWM: rewrite of Ratpoison in Common-Lisp. I rewrote whole conf file myself ;-)
Xmonad: Dynamic Window management. written in Haskell.
wmii: Dynamic Window Management, Floating point layer to manage xine, bmp, GIMP etc. written in C . Most better WM as per my view. do NOT install it from pacman (the package is quite outdated) , use the latest snap directly from the suckless.

I'm interested, let me know how to got wmii to work and how you managed to compile libixp. Did you use hg?

jinn · 2007-11-18 19:29:27

I dont think anything beats awesome right now.. Was skeptic of how good it would be but its just awesome . After 3 days I had it working just the way I needed it .

-- No compiling in awesome
-- superbly easy config file.. self explanatory
-- has all features you need (floating, tags etc etc..)
-- if you run the git version you can reload config settings with "Mod4+r" : no restart of X
-- remembers size, position of your floating tagged windows

This is my desktop:
awesome WM
stalonetray systray
mpd+ mpc + ncmpc
dwen

Screenshot:

geek.arnuld · 2007-11-19 16:52:50

smurnjiff wrote:

I'm interested, let me know how to got wmii to work and how you managed to compile libixp. Did you use hg?

well, I never used hg. simply download the latest stable snap from here: http://www.suckless.org/wiki/wmii. If you are interested in my way then do this:

1.) get plan9port from here and install it: http://swtch.com/plan9port/
2.) get dwm from suckless. compile and install it.
3.) now get latest stable snap of wmii and install it. You will get wmii+ixp bundled together

I had lots of problems while I tried to install wmii 3 months ago and then I found all problems were because of my own negligence. wmii is a new kind of WM and takes some time before some Desktop user even gets the installation straight. I did many corrupt installations ;-) but kept on coming back to wmii because of these:

http://www.suckless.org/wiki/wmii/docs/tagging
http://www.suckless.org/wiki/wmii/docs/ … management

and then my 6th installation went OK. Then again it took me some time to get used to the this keyboard-driven management but after a while I loved it. Now, am using wmii exclusively from last 3 months. I tried Ratpoison, StumpWM and Xmonad but trust me no other WM matches the the Dynamic Window Management and Floating-Layer abilities of wmii. Ratpoison and StumpWm are good but they are pure Tiled-WMs and hence offer no Dynamic Window Management and Floating Layer. Xmonad comes close but its Floating-Layer is not that good.

Last edited by geek.arnuld (2007-11-19 16:54:11)

barkat1407 · 2010-04-15 11:46:47

WM; awesome wm
Panel: awesome will take care of it
System info: awesome will take care of this too with wigets
Music: Quod Libet / bmp
Movie: Mplayer, with pymp
Editor: leafpad
Pictures: feh
Office: Abiword, xpdf, gnumeric
Torrent: rtorrent
Chat: pidgin
Browser: seamonkey will also take care of mail and editor
Filemanager: pcmanfm

Allan · 2010-04-15 12:34:34

Please read the Forum Etiquette in the wiki: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Forum_Etiquette . Particularly the section about posting in old topics.

Closing

Arch Linux

#51 2007-11-18 10:52:51

Re: Help me build a "minimalist" and wonderful desktop! :)

#52 2007-11-18 15:27:02

Re: Help me build a "minimalist" and wonderful desktop! :)

#53 2007-11-18 15:51:43

Re: Help me build a "minimalist" and wonderful desktop! :)

#54 2007-11-18 16:25:09

Re: Help me build a "minimalist" and wonderful desktop! :)

#55 2007-11-18 17:30:33

Re: Help me build a "minimalist" and wonderful desktop! :)

#56 2007-11-18 18:10:55

Re: Help me build a "minimalist" and wonderful desktop! :)

#57 2007-11-18 19:29:27

Re: Help me build a "minimalist" and wonderful desktop! :)

#58 2007-11-19 16:52:50

Re: Help me build a "minimalist" and wonderful desktop! :)

#59 2010-04-15 11:46:47

Re: Help me build a "minimalist" and wonderful desktop! :)

#60 2010-04-15 12:34:34

Re: Help me build a "minimalist" and wonderful desktop! :)

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