Distro Hopping

Bearded_Blunder · 2015-10-02 19:57:34

So, I thought, purely for recreation, I'd have a play with Gentoo on an ancient laptop, I recon I've got as far as a basic cmdline environment, and installed X..

Now I'm debating OpenBox & build it bit by bit.. or just grab the LXDE metapackage?

Hmmmmmmm

Opinions? Bearing in mind I'm a relative n00b playing at non-n00b distro..

Sector11 · 2015-10-02 20:10:33

OpenBox & build it bit by bit - better to 'learn' with. Talking OB here, not some binary code - just a text file or two.

Yea, it starts that way. "purely for recreation", they say!

Then it's once ever other day, then 2 every three days and finally you're out buying more equipment's to satisfy your addiction! ]:D ]:D

tknomanzr · 2015-10-02 20:17:46

LMAO. Two laptops, 3 desktops here all running some variant of openbox. Got a NAS recently. It runs some version of Linux or other. I have been toying with the idea of peeking at what it is running and seeing if I can get some version of Debian on it. OFC, it will void the warranty on it but the majority of the problems seem to be Western Digital's convoluted software setup.

zefram · 2015-10-02 21:16:21

by a newbie,

while waiting for BL, i'm playing with debian/openbox: great fun, great lessons, a lot of satisfaction

zefram · 2015-10-02 21:27:29

also tested LXDE with Debian Jessie on my old desktop celeron433, about 384MB ram.
I can run an updated desktop env in a over 16 years old machine. It works fine, but uses more ram than OB.

nobody0 · 2015-10-03 10:48:57

Bearded_Blunder wrote:

So, I thought, purely for recreation, I'd have a play with Gentoo on an ancient laptop, I recon I've got as far as a basic cmdline environment, and installed X..
Now I'm debating OpenBox & build it bit by bit...

I did the same thing, just to check, whether I'd be able to install Gentoo. Everything went well, even wifi. Only I can't get X to start. Xorg-server is installed, but when clicked startx, it doesn't start. Right now, Gentoo stays in a partition, until I find some free time to search and read how-tos. If you have any hints, I'd be glad to hear.

About the WM, try Openbox, not LXDE, as you'd be learning something, rather than getting a ready made DE. Good luck!

Bearded_Blunder · 2015-10-03 22:17:58

Oddly I had the same issue.. x won't start, working on it, lots of internet searches and reading..

PackRat · 2015-10-03 22:37:47

^ You probably have some additional configuration(s) to perform - have you visited the gentoo wiki?

Bearded_Blunder · 2015-10-03 22:54:14

I've been living on the Gentoo wiki, I think I have about 7 browser tabs open lol
I almost certainly have more config to do, and more research, and possibly a kernel reconfigure and recompile..

It's good fun, and you learn stuff.

PackRat · 2015-10-03 23:30:39

^ Excellent.

Gentoo a solid distro to work with - you can learn a lot if you're patient. I had a nice lean system going, but made my / partition too small so emerge kept filling up the disk space. Got to be too much of a hassle to administer the updates; when I reinstalled I went back to Slackware and Debian.

Fifas · 2015-10-09 19:18:26

It's possible, of course, to use Openbox WM on top of any distro. But you have to build everything (tint2, conky, menu, e.t.) from scratch. And there things could become very messy. That's what made Crunchbang (and makes BunsenLabs) so brilliant. Everything works out as it should be.

Last edited by Fifas (2015-10-09 19:19:02)

dummie789 · 2015-10-14 03:21:30

Fifas wrote:

It's possible, of course, to use Openbox WM on top of any distro. But you have to build everything (tint2, conky, menu, e.t.) from scratch. And there things could become very messy. That's what made Crunchbang (and makes BunsenLabs) so brilliant. Everything works out as it should be.

Yeh. I've used OB on Mint, Vector, PCLOS, and I can't remember how many others. There's absolutely no equal to Crunchbang/BunsenLabs. OB fits here like no other. It's like this distro was born for it, and vice-versa.

dolly · 2015-10-14 04:52:41

^ Amen to that! I have also tried OB on different bases and the conclusion is to stay a goooooood loooooong session here.

Snap · 2015-10-14 07:19:44

I've used OB on Mint, Vector, PCLOS, and I can't remember how many others.

The same for Fluxbox around here

Besides the OB popularity, Fluxbox is another excellent WM born from BlackBox. IMO, #! made OB hugely popular and widely known leaving FB as the poor ignored brother, but I never found any real reason to despise it other than that. It really shines on its own and it's as good as OB can be. The're a bit different and have different learning curves, obviously, but they both are excellent choices.

pvsage · 2015-10-14 07:46:40

^ Any WM worthy of a fork provides at least something different from the others. I've heard nothing but good things about Fluxbox.

hhh · 2015-10-14 15:08:57

@ ostrolek, nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh-no, we're not going to tangent to Gentoo troubleshooting for who-knows-how-many posts. Splitting this to it's own thread and I'll ask for the forum to be renamed "WM/DE/OS Talk". Thanks, gents.

Sector11 · 2015-10-14 15:27:12

dummie789 wrote:

Yeh. I've used OB on Mint, Vector, PCLOS, and I can't remember how many others. There's absolutely
no equal to Crunchbang/BunsenLabs. OB fits here like no other. It's like this distro was born for it, and vice-versa.

OpenBox was a homeless WM and corenominal took it in. We're just continuing the relationship.

Of course it's cousin, FluxBox, works well here too, but you need to invite it in:

sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends fluxbox

unless you want the recommends:

  Recommends: xfonts-terminus
 |Recommends: feh
 |Recommends: eterm
 |Recommends: hsetroot
  Recommends: xloadimage

Snap · 2015-10-14 18:23:51

Really? i didn't remembered those recommends in Debian. They're different in every distro. I still don't know why packagers insist in adding usually weird (and different) recommended packages for Fluxbox (ie, in pclos only a clipboard is recommended... cannot remember the name... or is it a dependency?), Fluxbox itself doesn't need anything specific on top of a base system, Like Openbox, but...

Anyway, what S11 said.

(BTW, feh is not weird. It always makes its way in all my systems whatever the WM or DE )

Last edited by Snap (2015-10-14 18:24:49)

hhh · 2015-10-14 18:56:52

My newest toy, LXLE. Mwua ha ha ha haaa!
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic … 3099#p3099

Snap · 2015-10-14 19:26:08

It really looks interesting. I don't like to run buntus. My experience with them is that work flawlesly when fresh and go wrong and wronger after every update. I stopped installing them for friends and relatives, but a VM for a while to steal... ermm.. learn won't hurt.

I also learned (cough, cough...) a lot of neat tricks from Voyager X8. It's in french, but it worths some surfing and diving. There are also buntu versions of it.

http://voyagerlive.org/index.php/live-v … an-jessie/

srot

#1 2015-10-02 19:57:34

Distro Hopping

#2 2015-10-02 20:10:33

Re: Distro Hopping

#3 2015-10-02 20:17:46

Re: Distro Hopping

#4 2015-10-02 21:16:21

Re: Distro Hopping

#5 2015-10-02 21:27:29

Re: Distro Hopping

#6 2015-10-03 10:48:57

Re: Distro Hopping

#7 2015-10-03 22:17:58

Re: Distro Hopping

#8 2015-10-03 22:37:47

Re: Distro Hopping

#9 2015-10-03 22:54:14

Re: Distro Hopping

#10 2015-10-03 23:30:39

Re: Distro Hopping

#11 2015-10-09 19:18:26

Re: Distro Hopping

#12 2015-10-14 03:21:30

Re: Distro Hopping

#13 2015-10-14 04:52:41

Re: Distro Hopping

#14 2015-10-14 07:19:44

Re: Distro Hopping

#15 2015-10-14 07:46:40

Re: Distro Hopping

#16 2015-10-14 15:08:57

Re: Distro Hopping

#17 2015-10-14 15:27:12

Re: Distro Hopping

#18 2015-10-14 18:23:51

Re: Distro Hopping

#19 2015-10-14 18:56:52

Re: Distro Hopping

#20 2015-10-14 19:26:08

Re: Distro Hopping

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