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Hello Everyone,
I've gotten a nice working lightweight setup going here with Arch and Pekwm (see screenshot:http://img837.imageshack.us/img837/9571 … enshot.png) and I felt like I should share the tools necessary for others to get a similar environment up and running quickly. The core of my "desktop" is Pekwm, LXPanel, Xcompmgr, and Nitrogen. I also have a set of common applications installed, choosing lighter alternatives based on my knowledge of what's light and what works.
This quick guide assumes a bit of knowledge and doesn't spell out every command, but should be plenty clear for intermediate Archers and likely many beginners. The guide will be based on a clean install, which assumes you already have Arch installed and are able to boot and login as root into the console. You should also make sure to run a pacman -Syu before beginning if you are working from a fresh install.
The majority of this will be a bunch of pacman commands to get everthing installed. I'm providing my confirguation files as a means of getting a system setup quickly. For more details of configuring certain components, I reccomend the Arch Wiki, which has very nice documentation on just about everything I'm suggesting for installation here.
Oh! and one more thing. I have NOT yet tested this exact guide on a fresh install, so it could likely contain typos, missing programs, etc. It is, however, derived from a text document that I use everytime I create a fresh install, so it should be pretty solid. There may also be some leftovers that are specific to my username, paths, etc. If you find these, please let me know and I'll update accordingly. I also plan on posting my openbox setup at somepoint, so any feedback here would be greatly appreciated.
And so it begins...
## GROUPS ##
Make sure you're user account is assigned to some useful groups. I have added my user to the following groups:
wheel, optical, storage, disk, power, and audio
## CORE GUI/AUDIO PACKAGES (for sound and video) ##
NOTE: I am using nvidia here, since I have an nvidia card...
pacman -S xorg mesa nvidia alsa-utils## GRAPHICAL LOGIN (if you don't already have one... I use slim) ##
pacman -S slim archlinux-themes-slim## MAIN DESKTOP PACKAGES ##
pacman -S pekwm nitrogen menumaker xcompmgr lxpanel lxappearance gcalctool mousepad terminal thunar thunar-volman xarchiver gpicview mtpaint exaile gnome-mplayer xfce4-mixer xfburn midori pidgin transmission-gtk abiword gnumeric orage epdfview gkrellm## CODECS/PLUGINS ##
pacman -S gstreamer0.10-bad-plugins gstreamer0.10-good-plugins gstreamer0.10-ugly-plugins libdvdcss libdvdread flashplugin openjdk6## THEMES/FONTS ##
pacman -S gtk2 xcursor-vanilla-dmz ubuntulooks gnome-icon-theme murrine-themes-collection ttf-ms-fonts ttf-dejavu ttf-bitstream-veraOk, so now we should be done installing stuff. Time for just a bit of hackery.
## RC.CONF ##
Add these to the DAEMONS in /etc/rc.conf: dbus hal fam slim alsa
## SLIM ##
Ignore this part if you are NOT starting from scratch and/or have another DM that you will be using (ie. GDM, KDM, XDM, etc).
Copy the provided slim.conf.save file to /etc/slim.conf
Copy the provided xinitrc file to ~/.xinitrc and make .xinitrc executable
## DESKTOP CONFIG ##
Copy the contents of the provided dot_pekwm folder to ~/.pekwm/
Copy the contents of the provided lxpanel folder to ~/.config/lxpanel/
Copy the provided NATURE-SouthwestSunset_1600x1200.jpg (from art.gnome.org) to wherever you keep your wallpaper and update the "nitrogen" line in ~/.pekwm/start to point to the correct path (currently, it's pointing to MY home directory). You can also comment out or modify the xcompmgr line to your likings. I just run it for transparency and no other effects.
For the Vanilla-DMZ mouse cursor to be the default (which is what I am using), create this file:
.icons/default/index.theme
And populate with this:
[Icon Theme]
Inherits=Vanilla-DMZRun lxappearance from the System menu and select MurrinaCandido (Human-Graphite also works well with this setup) for the GTK theme and GNOME for the icon theme. Again, this assumes you wish to copy my exact setup. Also, the theme I am running in Pekwm is Murrina334, which *should* be set by default if you use my config.
NOTE: The attached tarball also includes a folder called "Fonts". This came with one of the the Pekwm themes I downloaded, but I can't remember which one. So, just copy contents to /usr/share/fonts/ to be safe.
## ISSUES/CAVEATS WITH PACKAGES AND SUCH ##
1) If you want mangler (which is in my pekwm menu), you'll need to get that from the AUR.
2) If you want a version of Midori that doesn't crash when you click on the little history button in the address bar, you'll need to get the git version from the AUR.
3) For mounting of CD/DVD drives to work properly in thunar, you *may* need to modify /etc/dbus-1/system.d/hal.conf and add these lines:
<policy group="power">
<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.SystemPowerManagement"/>
<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.LaptopPanel"/>
</policy>
<policy group="storage">
<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume"/>
<allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.Crypto"/>
</policy>## INCLUDED FILES/FOLDERS ##
Download arch_pekwm.tgz from here: http://www.mediafire.com/?2nl6dr20wtrdome
slim.conf.save
xinitrc.save
dot_pekwm
lxpanel
NATURE-SouthwestSunset_1600x1200.jpg
## EXTERNAL INFO ##
Both art.gnome.org and box-look.org are great resources for themes and wallpapers.
Arch Wiki SliM: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/SLiM
Arch Wiki Pekwm: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PekWM
Arch Wiki Yaourt: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Yaourt (for getting the mangler and midori packages I mentioned)
Last edited by Mr. Swillis (2010-10-03 17:12:31)
And you ate the whole... wheel of cheese? How'd you do that? Heck, I'm not even mad; that's amazing.
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