The Road to Arch

celettu · 2007-12-01 13:09:36

Due to a traffic accident, I'm on sick-leave, with a lot of time on my hands. I decided to try and install Arch again.

To start, I must say I've run and enjoyed Ubuntu for quite some time now, and I still think it's an excellent and easy-to-use distribution. I have been looking though for something more lightweight, and configurable. I've tried to install Arch before, but got stuck at editing the configuration files. I must honestly say I didn't try too hard at the time.

This time I struggled through, and it was actually not that difficult. Sure, I got some things wrong in rc.conf (forgot to add eth0=dhcp, didn't add my user to all the groups I should have, forgot some daemons...), but after some visits to the wiki and the forums I managed to solve all of those problems. I was very, very glad when I rebooted and was greeted by the prompt. Installing xorg and gnome after that was actually pretty easy. It was pretty bare, but installing apps with the command line is something I'm used to, since I use aptitude most of the time.

Having come this far, I felt pretty l33t So why not add conky to my desktop, something else I failed to do before. Some hours later I had a working .conkyrc, which told me that the app using the most CPU was...conky. Something funny about that. To be fair, I was only running terminals and nautilus at that time

To be fair though, default Gnome is ugly, and I mean really ugly. The fonts too, were nowhere near the quality of those in Ubuntu, so I installed the *-lcd packages, and searched the wiki again. It's still not as good as Ubuntu's fonts (bold firefox fonts sometimes look fuzzy), but it's close.
Still, I didn't care much for Gnome's default look. Clearlooks is okay, but the default icons are, in my opinion, drab. Some hours later I had tried every theme and all the icons on gnome-look, and I still wasn't satisfied. So I thought, well, if I love the default look of Ubuntu so much, why not install the Human theme? Not that easy. Maybe there's a simpler way, but in the end I looked at the source packages of the icons, the cursor theme, and the engine, and checked where all the files were supposed to go. Presto. It looks like Ubuntu, but it's as fast as Arch. Why anybody would want this is probably a mystery for anyone except me, but I like it a lot.

Still some small niggly bits...I don't like the color scheme of the terminal, which is perfect for a black background (tty), but looks absolutely rubbish in a normal terminal with a white background, and I can't play mms-streams in rhythmbox. It's a rhythmbox problem, because they play just fine in totem.

I like it. With most distro's I install I hit a snag almost immediately, but so far Arch proves to be a winner. Might well become my default linux distribution.

San

PS: Screenshot:

Last edited by celettu (2007-12-01 13:10:11)

Allan · 2007-12-01 13:33:47

Welcome (back) to Arch. I hope you continue to find that the extra effort in setting it up is all worth it.

murffatksig · 2007-12-06 05:38:40

celettu wrote:

Presto. It looks like Ubuntu

I've played around with Ubuntu to see what the fuss is about. It's not bad. But its funny, I've definitely heard more people complain they don't like the default look of Ubuntu. In any case, I'm glad you spent a few moments to learn to edit the config files. Using Arch is quite a rewarding Linux experience.

Might well become my default linux distribution.

Let's hope so!:D

jacko · 2007-12-06 06:58:41

Having come this far, I felt pretty l33t wink So why not add conky to my desktop, something else I failed to do before. Some hours later I had a working .conkyrc, which told me that the app using the most CPU was...conky. Something funny about that. To be fair, I was only running terminals and nautilus at that time smile

post your conkyrc file, i'd like to see how u got gnome/nautilis to work with conky. I had to switch DE's just to get conky to work, but in the end I am glad I did. My xfce setup looks exactly like gnome desktop, but more streamlined and with a better menu. Plus u have the right click > menu option on the desktop.

Plus skype autostarts like it should in xfce, where in gnome its broken.

celettu · 2007-12-07 08:50:27

jacko wrote:

post your conkyrc file, i'd like to see how u got gnome/nautilis to work with conky. I had to switch DE's just to get conky to work, but in the end I am glad I did. My xfce setup looks exactly like gnome desktop, but more streamlined and with a better menu. Plus u have the right click > menu option on the desktop.
Plus skype autostarts like it should in xfce, where in gnome its broken.

# UBUNTU-CONKY
# A comprehensive conky script, configu#BA2828 for use on
# Ubuntu / Debian Gnome, without the need for any external scripts.
#
# Based on conky-jc and the default .conkyrc.
# INCLUDES:
# - netstat connections to your computer
#
# -- Pengo (conky@pengo.us)
#

# set to yes if you want Conky to be forked in the background
#background yes

# Create own window instead of using desktop (required in nautilus)
own_window true
own_window_type override
own_window_transparent true
own_window_hints undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager

# Use double buffering (reduces flicker, may not work for everyone)
double_buffer yes

# fiddle with window
use_spacer yes
use_xft no

# Update interval in seconds
update_interval 3.0

# This is the number of times Conky will update before quitting.
# Set to zero to run forever.
total_run_times 0

# Minimum size of text area
minimum_size 280 5

# Draw shades?
draw_shades no

# Text stuff
draw_outline no # amplifies text if yes
draw_borders no
font arial
uppercase no # set to yes if you want all text to be in uppercase

# Stippled borders?
stippled_borders 3

# border margins
border_margin 9

# border width
border_width 10

# Default colors and also border colors, grey90 == #e5e5e5
default_color black

# Text alignment, other possible values are commented
#alignment top_left
alignment top_right
#alignment bottom_left
#alignment bottom_right

# Gap between borders of screen and text
gap_x 10
gap_y 10

# Subtract file system buffers from used memory?
no_buffers yes

# stuff after 'TEXT' will be formatted on screen

TEXT
$color
${color #BA2828}SYSTEM ${hr 2}$color
$nodename $sysname $kernel on $machine

${color #BA2828}CPU ${hr 2}$color
Uptime: $uptime

${freq}MHz   Load: ${loadavg} 
$cpubar
${cpugraph 000000 ffffff}
NAME             PID       CPU%      MEM%
${top name 1} ${top pid 1}   ${top cpu 1}    ${top mem 1}
${top name 2} ${top pid 2}   ${top cpu 2}    ${top mem 2}
${top name 3} ${top pid 3}   ${top cpu 3}    ${top mem 3}
${top name 4} ${top pid 4}   ${top cpu 4}    ${top mem 4}

${color #BA2828}MEMORY / DISK ${hr 2}$color
RAM:   $memperc%   ${membar 6}$color
Swap:  $swapperc%   ${swapbar 6}$color

Root:  ${fs_free_perc /}%   ${fs_bar 6 /}$color 
shared:  ${fs_free_perc /home/san/shared}%   ${fs_bar 6 /home/san/shared}

${color #BA2828}NETWORK (${addr eth0}) ${hr 2}$color
Down: $color${downspeed eth0} k/s ${alignr}Up: ${upspeed eth0} k/s
${downspeedgraph eth0 25,140 000000 ff0000} ${alignr}${upspeedgraph eth0 
25,140 000000 00ff00}$color
Total: ${totaldown eth0} ${alignr}Total: ${totalup eth0}
Inbound: ${tcp_portmon 1 32767 count} Outbound: ${tcp_portmon 32768 
61000 count}${alignr}Total: ${tcp_portmon 1 65535 count}

${color #BA2828}WEATHER${hr 2}
$color${execi 300 /home/san/weather.sh "EUR|BE|BE006|BERINGEN"}

The last line depends on a weather script but I can't remember where I found it. Might even be here.
What I always have to do with gnome is write a script that waits a bit before it starts conky, otherwise gnome just draws the background on top of it.

#!/bin/sh

sleep 5 && conky

In KDE, I use Feh, as is explained here: http://briancarper.net/2006/08/25/trans … de-part-2/

Hope that helps.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-12-01 13:09:36

The Road to Arch

#2 2007-12-01 13:33:47

Re: The Road to Arch

#3 2007-12-06 05:38:40

Re: The Road to Arch

#4 2007-12-06 06:58:41

Re: The Road to Arch

#5 2007-12-07 08:50:27

Re: The Road to Arch

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