Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

destructo123 · 2009-09-06 17:52:36

I need some help deciding what to go with for a few different things. I'm trying to stay as far away from GUIs as a I can.

WM: I'm looking into a good tiling windows manager that supports dual screens.

Password Management: I have very complex passwords, that I cannot remember and have been using Keepass for Windows. I know about KeepassX but if there is a cli program, I would prefer it.

Panel: Something lightweight and doesn't have many icons or any at all.

Video Player: Need support for Xvid/x264 and that's about it

Music Player: Looking for a CLI Version of songbird or something with good library management

Browser: I love firefox, but I'm open to anything as long as it has good documentation.

Multiprotocol IM CLI based with MSN and AIM support

I want something based around these concept

http://omploader.org/vMjlxcA

http://omploader.org/vMjlnMg

Last edited by destructo123 (2009-09-06 17:55:14)

10wattmindtrip · 2009-09-06 18:16:46

WM: I would say Awesome or xMonad, though I'm not 100% sure they're able to run dual screens.
Panel: pypanel works great.
Video Player: VLC, I believe also has cli capabilities or you can run mplayer.
Music Player: What I do is use MPD. You can also use XMMS2, both have no gui (but you can get clients for them, such as Sonata, gxmms2)
Browser: Firefox is great and even give the new Chromium builds a whirl; super fast, light weight and very nice.
IM: I use Pidgin with their CLI interface -> finch

As for password management, I have no suggestions.

hw-tph · 2009-09-06 18:17:01

WM: There are tons of them, or at least so it seems. Everybody seems to swear by what they use on their own computers and claim it as superior to others. Give a few a try and build your own opinion - with Arch it's as easy as pacman -S or pacman -R if you want to get rid of it. You can check out the screenshots threads in the Artwork and Screenshots forum section here for ideas and inspiration.

Password Management: I don't know about CLI password management programs but there is Seahorse for GTK environments.

Panel: tint2 (get the trunk from Google Code as it has systray support), pypanel, etc... Again, check out the screenshot threads!

Video Player: mplayer is there to rule them all!

Music Player: Something like mpd, with a client of your choice. There are several different nice curses clients, like pms and ncmpc++.

Browser: Firefox, midori, or why not uzbl since you're going the HUE (harsh user environment) route anyhow?

IM: Pidgin, or ask the terminal-apps-only geeks around here for a good CLI/curses client.

destructo123 · 2009-09-06 18:21:58

What's so great about uzbl? I'm coming from a firefox build with a decent amount of addons, none of which are bloat but functionality

Username · 2009-09-06 18:34:03

password manager: use a password you can actually remember

destructo123 · 2009-09-06 18:49:46

Username wrote:

password manager: use a password you can actually remember

That's insecure and means someone reuses passwords too much.

Barrucadu · 2009-09-06 19:11:41

I (foolishly) use the same few passwords everywhere. But you could use a GPG-encrypted text file.

loafer · 2009-09-06 19:25:17

How many users do you have that reuse of passwords is such an issue?

bernarcher · 2009-09-06 19:33:48

Password manager: How about pwsafe from community.

LeoSolaris · 2009-09-06 21:42:44

WM: I'm looking into a good tiling windows manager that supports dual screens.

Xmonad Awesome ... there are several options, I suggest trying a few of them to see which has a style you like, as well as which of them support duel screens.

Also take a look at screen. It splits your console up into sections, and when combined with dvtm, it makes a good "tiling WM" without needing X. I am not sure how well it handles multi-monitor set ups though, as I have never had the inclination to try it out.

Password Management: I have very complex passwords, that I cannot remember and have been using Keepass for Windows. I know about KeepassX but if there is a cli program, I would prefer it.

it looks like, based on a couple of searches of the AUR and the repos, that pwsafe is the only cli-specific password manager. There are others though that do not specify if they are cli or gui based.

Panel: Something lightweight and doesn't have many icons or any at all.

My vote is for tint2, because it supports transparency from xcompmgr(-dana) + transset-df. It supports system trays and a lack of icons for any iconified programs. (iconified means minimized in Window's terms, fyi)

Video Player: Need support for Xvid/x264 and that's about it

VLC or mplayer. mplayer I know works nicely in framebuffer. I use it that way myself when I just want to watch movies. (Arch boots faster than my DVD player...)

Music Player: Looking for a CLI Version of songbird or something with good library management

MPD. I would go with that one. There is not much to argue for it over xmms, but I liked it better personally.

Browser: I love Firefox, but I'm open to anything as long as it has good documentation.

uzbl is pretty good, but it is still alpha level... links-g & elinks are also pretty nice as cli-centric browsers. (You can always keep a copy of Firefox/Chromium for when you're in the GUI.

Multiprotocol IM CLI based with MSN and AIM support

Pidgin + Fitch. I have never actually used fitch, but I use pidgin a good bit.

Edit: Typos

Last edited by LeoSolaris (2009-09-06 21:44:40)

Acecero · 2009-09-06 21:51:36

Um... we already have threads like these, please refer to them.

torisuke · 2009-09-06 22:00:28

The almighty search function sort of makes this thread somewhat redundant, but whatever.

WM: Xmonad and Awesome are the two obvious choices, both of them support multihead IIRC. Musca is looking nice, but I don't think it has Multihead nor does play it well with panels from my brief foray with it.

Panel: Lxpanel is a nice simple and fairly configurable panel, but I remember that it wasn't entirely obvious how to get it to stick to one screen when I actually had a twinview setup oh so long ago.

Video: s/Mplayer both can play just about anything you can toss at them. Mplayer has a fairly nice framebuffer mode if that happens to be your cup of tea.

Music: MPD and XMMS2 are both great choices if your willing to tinker a while on them, especially due to the ability to use multiple interfaces. MOC is great for a fire-and-forget CLI music player if the daemon players aren't worth it, though.

Browser: Firefox, Midori, uzbl,and the links variants... I don't really think there's much more to really choose from excluding chromium, which isn't ready for primetime IMHO.

IM: Pidgin + finch works okay. There's also climm, but I've never used it.

Also, if your not acquainted with them, screen and tmux are terminal multiplexers that allow you to use multiple terminals in one including a rough sort of manual tiling which incredibly useful for terminals.

The important thing to remember is pacman -R is just one step away (Although, I'd have to say that it's a good idea to keep 2-3 programs for each category, just in case ).

dyscoria · 2009-09-06 22:05:30

bernarcher wrote:

Password manager: How about pwsafe from community.

Yeah I really like pwsafe, been using it basically ever since I discovered command line applications. Like Barracudu said you could quite easily use a GPG encrypted file instead, but there are insecurities (like the password being in the copy buffer, or accidentally leaving the file open).

securitybreach · 2009-09-07 04:36:15

What about centerim for messenger? Centerim supports irc, msn, yahoo, aim, icq, jabber, etc.

Centerim uses a ncurses interface and is extremely light and fast: http://www.centerim.org/index.php/Main_Page

The package is in pacman Extras and yaourt.

Thanks

destructo123 · 2009-09-07 17:44:45

securitybreach wrote:

What about centerim for messenger? Centerim supports irc, msn, yahoo, aim, icq, jabber, etc.
Centerim uses a ncurses interface and is extremely light and fast: http://www.centerim.org/index.php/Main_Page
The package is in pacman Extras and yaourt.
Thanks

Looks really good!

Arch Linux

#1 2009-09-06 17:52:36

Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#2 2009-09-06 18:16:46

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#3 2009-09-06 18:17:01

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#4 2009-09-06 18:21:58

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#5 2009-09-06 18:34:03

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#6 2009-09-06 18:49:46

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#7 2009-09-06 19:11:41

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#8 2009-09-06 19:25:17

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#9 2009-09-06 19:33:48

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#10 2009-09-06 21:42:44

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#11 2009-09-06 21:51:36

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#12 2009-09-06 22:00:28

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#13 2009-09-06 22:05:30

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#14 2009-09-07 04:36:15

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

#15 2009-09-07 17:44:45

Re: Recommendations for New Arch Convert (Please help)

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