Where to go from end of Beginners Guide

masterxellos · 2009-03-04 07:41:30

Good Evening Gents,

I just finished my first Arch install yesterday. I have everything set up all the way to the x server, all that needs to be done now is choose a WM/DM and set it up... and therein lies the problem. I was following the install guide and while it does give instructions on how to install them, there's not much else to go on there. As this is my first time putting together a linux distro like this (been on Ubuntu for a while, so this is a pretty adventurous undertaking), I'm hesitant to move onward lest I blow the thing up! So I was wondering if anyone here could help me with two things: 1. Recommend a good, clean WM with room for customization. and 2. Point me in the right direction for learning how to set it up with applications and customize it. The computer all this is going in is an Inspiron 1525. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

-M

P.S. If anyone could recommend a good tool for managing WiFi, that would be great too. While I can configure it via CLI, I'm usually switching between several different ones... so I need something to handle that faster.

Spoonybard · 2009-03-04 07:58:20

I am new to this too and for WM I am not sure what to suggest as I have little experience there. For Wifi connection management though there is a good article here http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wir … nt_methods I myself was using netcfg and profiles I had previously made sudo netcfg nameofnetwork but then I found wicd which sits in the taskbar and lists all available networks and is just as simple as a windows type config. More info on wicd here http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wicd

masterxellos · 2009-03-04 08:33:52

Oh hey, thanks for that. This is exactly what I was looking for in terms of the wireless solution. Thanks a bunch! Now all I need is the WM to go along with it, hehe.

-M

SanskritFritz · 2009-03-04 08:45:12

masterxellos wrote:

1. Recommend a good, clean WM with room for customization. and 2. Point me in the right direction for learning how to set it up with applications and customize it. The computer all this is going in is an Inspiron 1525. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Many Archers use and love OpenBox. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Openbox

jt512 · 2009-03-04 09:32:15

masterxellos wrote:

P.S. If anyone could recommend a good tool for managing WiFi, that would be great too. While I can configure it via CLI, I'm usually switching between several different ones... so I need something to handle that faster.

I second the recommendation for wicd. I had previously used NetworkManager on Fedora 8, and it was slow and buggy. Wicd has been completely trouble free, and fast—I'm almost always connect to a network before I've logged in.

masterxellos · 2009-03-04 11:57:09

Thanks for the secondary recommend. I'll be sure to give Wicd a go then. I'm pretty sure NetworkManager is the standard for Ubuntu so I can understand what you mean when you say it takes that thing forever to establish a connection. Still open to suggestions on the WM issue. I've currently narrowed it down to either Fluxbox, OpenBox, or Awesome. Then after that I'm unsure of how to add all the cool little features I see in the other setups people have. Like the weather monitor and operating statistics of the machine.

Spoonybard · 2009-03-04 12:07:51

I think the operating staistics are from conky that you see on a lot of desktops. This site http://conky.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html shows some configurations and will also give you the scripts that you can edit to suit your own personal needs. http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Conky is all the install information you will probably need. I managed to get conky installed and setup fine its pretty easy especially once you find a configuration you like. Sorry I cant advise on a WM to use. DM and WM is all still confusing to me right now but I will get around to it once I get fed up with Xfce4 and its looks.

Army · 2009-03-04 12:35:25

+1 for Wicd. I will always have an eye on netcfg, because I really love it, but Wicd is better, when it comes to switching between ethernet and wlan, which I always do.

The most important thing about the desktop is to be patient! Go through the threads here in the forum, e.g. http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=39906 and http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=45692 and try to learn, how conky works and get some inspiration for the view of your window manager. I personally use openbox as well and openbox has become a lot easier to handle for beginners, since there is a tool called obkey (http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=23822). This in combination with obconf and other nice tools (simply search for them with pacman -Ss) makes openbox really easy to configure But I must say, I never used fluxbox, icewm or one of these tiling window managers, maybe they are nice as well. You have to take some time and simply try it out!

Surgat_ · 2009-03-04 12:36:26

I would try LXDE before Openbox or Fluxbox if it's your first time. LXDE si a full DE that uses Openbox as its WM, but also has a file manager (PCManFM), panel (LXPanel), image viewer (GPicView), etc. From there you can change the apps you installed to the ones you prefer, but having some that already work. Read this for further information: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LXDE

Cheers!

SanskritFritz · 2009-03-04 12:37:07

Conky is even able to show you nice weather info: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=869328

Kilz · 2009-03-04 12:53:12

I am an ex Ubuntu die hard. I have over 6k posts to their forum. If this is your first time, stick to what you know and have been using. If you used Ubuntu, Gnome a good choice. If you used Kubuntu kde is good. At least this way you will have some idea and will not be totally lost. You can always add others and remove whatever you like. I learned this lesson the hard way. I tried installing xfce the first time and failed miserably.

SanskritFritz · 2009-03-04 13:58:49

Kilz wrote:

At least this way you will have some idea and will not be totally lost. You can always add others and remove whatever you like. I learned this lesson the hard way. I tried installing xfce the first time and failed miserably.

Why not trying until you succeed? Sticking to old stuff hinders sometimes. The goal is to learn, especially in Arch.

Kilz · 2009-03-04 14:54:25

SanskritFritz wrote:

Kilz wrote:
At least this way you will have some idea and will not be totally lost. You can always add others and remove whatever you like. I learned this lesson the hard way. I tried installing xfce the first time and failed miserably.
Why not trying until you succeed? Sticking to old stuff hinders sometimes. The goal is to learn, especially in Arch.

As I said above, you can install mutiple desktops. While learning is great, failure sometimes ends learning. While it might not be true of all Ubuntu users, I found this happens a lot with Ubuntu users.
I just think its better to stick with what you know the first time. There will still be a great deal of learning involved. After all Ubuntu pretty much does everything for you. I also saw that after installing Gnome, its not the same animal it is running on Ubuntu. Gnome on Arch is as fast, or faster than even a light desktop on Ubuntu.

masterxellos · 2009-03-05 03:44:57

From what I understand, Ubuntu is shipped with a large number of extra apps, which is why Gnome is probably slower on it. I heard similar things about XFCE on Ubuntu as well, that it is not nearly as fast as a manual XFCE installation. Anyway, I have no trouble putting in the time to learn and put together an Openbox desktop. I do have a question about Xorg though. I'm currently in the process of just testing multiple WMs and as such I shut down and start X back up with another WM selected. Between sessions, I notice a few error messages in the console. It doesn't seem like they are affecting anything, but I was curious if this is normal Xorg usage or if there is something I need to fix? Error messages from a barebones xterm run posted below:

Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on displau ":0.0".
Xlib: extension "Generic Event Extension" missing on displau ":0.0".
X10: fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) on X server ":0.0"
        after 12923 requests (12923 known processed) with 0 events remaining.
xterm: fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) or KillClient on X server "0.0"
xterm: fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) or KillClient on X server "0.0"
login:   fatal IO error 11 (Resource temporarily unavailable) or KillClient on X server "0.0"
xinit: connection to X server lost.

waiting for X server to shut down .error setting MTRR (base = 0xe0000000, size = 0x10000000, type = 1) Invalid argument (22)

Anyone have any idea if that's normal or if I should get to fixin'?

Last edited by masterxellos (2009-03-05 03:45:43)

ssl6 · 2009-03-05 04:18:06

not sure if thats normal. but ill second trying out LXDE to start with for a desktop manager. it does use openbox, its light weight, and it gives you a starting point, you could always customize the components like panels, etc, later on if you want ot switch to something like pypanel

LeoSolaris · 2009-03-05 12:39:08

The Xlib "Generic Extension" error is currently a bug in Xorg, and from what I have seen so far, has been cleaned up in the new one (from testing)

The rest of that error is over my paygrade, and as such, you may want to open a thread dedicated to just that so a Dev can notice it, or at least someone with a good deal of Xorg debugging experience.

As for the WM I will definitely back the Openbox team. Openbox with Obconf, Obmenu, and Obkey make setting it up and managing it really easy. Before reading this thread I had missed Obkey, and had to rely on hand configuring the xml files Openbox uses. That's actually not nearly as bad as it sounds. XML is pretty straight forward and the Openbox documentation, both on the Arch Wiki and on Openbox's website, offers a pretty much everything as far as customization goes. If you really want to learn if before learning to rely on GUI crutches, try Openbox without any of them and learn the xml configs. There are a lot of things that the configs can customize that the GUI parts can't touch. For instance, making per application rules for borders is outside of the realm of the GUI.

For the Network manager, I use wicd, but then again, I used wicd in Ubuntu as well.

caustic386 · 2009-03-06 03:11:02

I think it's interesting that nobody has mentioned KDEmod? Are Openbox, XFCE, etc. the preferred choice because they're even more lightweight?

JawsThemeSwimming428 · 2009-03-06 03:42:23

caustic386 wrote:

I think it's interesting that nobody has mentioned KDEmod? Are Openbox, XFCE, etc. the preferred choice because they're even more lightweight?

I run KDEmod and I would recommend it to anyone that wants a full DE. Definitely not for the lightweight system though.

masterxellos · 2009-03-06 03:54:56

I'm definitely going with Openbox. I like the prospect of putting the desktop together myself. Can I get a few recommendations for things like a panel, and keybindings? Any other things anyone has found invaluable would be great. Again, thanks for all the suggestions guys it's really appreciated.

Fingel · 2009-03-06 04:24:56

I would go with Awesome, at first its a little intimidating (no window borders and such) and its not the greatest if you don't like using console apps. I started using it and its made me want to use more console apps, because I've realized they are way more effecient. I have my music player, mail, irc and file browser all on one workspace with extra screen real estate left over. Never could do that with GUI apps.
You will like openbox, though. Its very lean and customizeable. As for panels, the only one I've ever used is pypanel (available from the repos) and its very customizeable ang good looking. There is an openbox screen shot thread somewhere on this forum that will set you up with some nice configs, too.
Welcome to Arch! Its a better way!

masterxellos · 2009-03-06 06:41:18

How do you handle all of that just straight via console? Seems like it would be a pain.

caustic386 · 2009-03-06 14:22:36

Fingel wrote:

I would go with Awesome, at first its a little intimidating (no window borders and such) and its not the greatest if you don't like using console apps. I started using it and its made me want to use more console apps, because I've realized they are way more effecient. I have my music player, mail, irc and file browser all on one workspace with extra screen real estate left over. Never could do that with GUI apps.
You will like openbox, though. Its very lean and customizeable. As for panels, the only one I've ever used is pypanel (available from the repos) and its very customizeable ang good looking. There is an openbox screen shot thread somewhere on this forum that will set you up with some nice configs, too.
Welcome to Arch! Its a better way!

I have to ask the same thing, especially as a new user to Arch... Possible to get a screenshot?

LeoSolaris · 2009-03-06 15:28:32

For a panel I use tint2, a straight panel, no systray on it natively... yet. I also use Openbox's menu type 'tray'. It's middle mouse click on the desk top by default. (Or on a laptop it's both right and left buttons at once.) I use tint2 because it is transparent and very easy to use/configure. (Edit: It does require my tip at the end)

For the systray, I use stalonetray + Openbox's ability to hide it in the upper right hand corner.

For key combos mine are really simple, because otherwise I would start forgetting them.

I mapped the super key and right/left arrows (W-Left desktop 1 W-Right desktop 2) to switch the desktops back and forth. (Right now, all I have are the two desktops beside each other, but Openbox can support much more than that. If you have more, just modify the default key (C-A-Up/Right/Down/Left) to what feels more comfortable.)

I mapped Ctrl + m to my main menu (root-menu) and Ctrl+z to my panel menu (client-list-combined-menu)

I have Crtl+f (C-f) to launch firefox, and Ctrl+k (C-k) to launch Kazehakase. (I use Firefox on AC and Kaze on battery, I've found it adds a little bit to the life of the battery for some reason. It's not much, but it's a little.)

If you like the E17 style of menus with the main menu and a favorites menu on two different mouse clicks on the desktop, just make a secondary menu and bind it to the other mouse button. Making the second menu should be easy enough with obmenu but you will have to edit the rc.xml file to add the mouse bindings. (Tip if you make the ID and the name of the menu the same in obmenu, it's easier to map in the rc.xml)

As a handy tip: If you want transparency, pacman xcompmgr and transset-df (must be the df version) and set xcompmgr in your autostart. Then you can do things like make urxvt's background transparent, and have shadows behind your windows and menus (which I hate personally because it interferes with conky.)

Last edited by LeoSolaris (2009-03-06 15:28:53)

DREMA · 2009-03-09 19:49:07

LeoSolaris wrote:

For a panel I use tint2, a straight panel, no systray on it natively... yet.

The SVN version of tint2 has systray support now, I suggest you give it a try.

MazurMe · 2009-03-09 20:17:20

DREMA wrote:

LeoSolaris wrote:
For a panel I use tint2, a straight panel, no systray on it natively... yet.
The SVN version of tint2 has systray support now, I suggest you give it a try.

Wow, I didn't know! Thanks, maybe now I will give openbox a try .

Arch Linux

#1 2009-03-04 07:41:30

Where to go from end of Beginners Guide

#2 2009-03-04 07:58:20

Re: Where to go from end of Beginners Guide

#3 2009-03-04 08:33:52

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#6 2009-03-04 11:57:09

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