Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

brj · 2023-11-04 22:43:19

Hello team,
I've been using bunsenlabs distro for a few years now and I love its lightweight yet rich desktop environment.
I've started to try another distro (mainly for the package manager system) and I'd like to setup the same desktop environment I have with Bunsenlabs.
How can I get there? As what I did thus far is not giving me the expected result...
I installed lightdm, openbox and all the components of Bunsenlabs (conky, nitrogen, jgmenu, pulse, lxterminal, .. etc) then I copied the skel files under the .config directory of the user home I use to login to the system but this doesn't work.
Is anybody able to help out?

Thanks!
~BRJ

johnraff · 2023-11-05 02:38:05

Hi brj, welcome to the forum!

Reproducing the BunsenLabs environment on another distro than Debian is an interesting project, but, depending on what distro that is, success is not 100% guaranteed.

What you need apart from the packages listed as dependencies, like lightdm, conky etc are the custom BunsenLabs packages themselves. These are hosted in a different repository from regular Debian - on a BunsenLabs system, look at /etc/apt/sources.list.d/bunsen.list. But the repository setup presupposes a Debian system using apt to manage the packages.

What distro are you planning to switch to? You say the reason is "mainly for the package manager system" which suggests apt is unlikely to work. Is there any mechanism for installing Debian packages? If not, you would have to build the BunsenLabs packages yourself directly from the source code on GitHub: https://github.com/orgs/BunsenLabs/repositories

For some of our packages, building for another system might be simple, but you'll have to try this for yourself.

Good luck, and please report back here on how it goes.

brj · 2023-11-05 09:27:09

Hello johnraff,
thanks very much for the details provided!
I had the feeling a was still missing something.. and you gave me confirmation
I also think it is an interesting project and for sure I'll my progresses should I succeed.
I actually told half of the reasons I decided to try another distro which is systemd.
I don't want to say it is better or worse, I just wanted to try something different and I got satisfied with the result.
The distro I moved to is Void Linux.

Thanks again for the hints! I'll update this thread with the results should I succeed

~brj

Last edited by brj (2023-11-05 09:42:09)

johnraff · 2023-11-05 09:32:23

I don't know Void Linux (except the name) but if I can help with explaining the contents of our packages, please ask.

brj · 2023-11-05 09:43:21

johnraff wrote:

I don't know Void Linux (except the name) but if I can help with explaining the contents of our packages, please ask.

Very much appreciated the kind help and the welcome! TY!

hhh · 2023-11-05 13:47:54

Here are instructions for building packages on Void Linux...

https://github.com/void-linux/void-pack … /README.md

Hopefully @PackRat will see this thread, he uses Void. I'll add the distro name to the thread title.

PackRat · 2023-11-05 14:29:40

dpkg is in the Void repos -

The OP can ask on the Void reddit forum ( https://www.reddit.com/r/voidlinux/ ) if anyone has worked with deb files.

@johnraff / hhh - What are these "custom BunsenLabs packages themselves." that the OP will need? For most *.deb files, the OP can use thunar (file manager of choice) to unpack the *.deb file and copy the necessary files - like themes - to their proper location. The only real issue would be anything that requires systemd to function.

@brj - What wasn't working when you tried to re-crearte BL on Void?

hhh · 2023-11-05 15:03:10

PackRat wrote:

@johnraff / hhh - What are these "custom BunsenLabs packages themselves." that the OP will need? For most *.deb files, the OP can use thunar (file manager of choice) to unpack the *.deb file and copy the necessary files - like themes - to their proper location. The only real issue would be anything that requires systemd to function.

@johnraff can answer this fully, but I'm guessing it's just easier to compile and install the bunsen-packages then to try install, move and populate everything (pipemenus, power management, BLOB themes manager, jgmenu, xfce4-notifyd, lightdm, Bunsen/Debian alternatives, autostart, logout dialog, restart scripts for conky/picom/tint2 etc...)

Other than that (which is a lot, you'd have to be very familiar with BL to get everything), I'd say you're right.

hhh · 2023-11-05 15:21:35

^ Following up on that, here are the Bunsen packages I currently have on my Ubuntu 23.10 desktop...

bunsen-common bunsen-utilities bunsen-docs bunsen-conky bunsen-pipemenus bunsen-exit bunsen-configs
bunsen-archive-keyring

Some other packages that were installed at some point have since been removed or manually configured (themes, icons, BLOB, I can't remember the rest). bunsen-meta-all also brings in our patched version of xfce4-power-manager (and -data and -plugins), but, as you can see from the linked post and the follow up discussion with John, I version bumped those packages myself so it wouldn't get overridden by Ubuntu's packages.

PackRat · 2023-11-05 16:25:50

hhh wrote:

PackRat wrote:
@johnraff / hhh - What are these "custom BunsenLabs packages themselves." that the OP will need? For most *.deb files, the OP can use thunar (file manager of choice) to unpack the *.deb file and copy the necessary files - like themes - to their proper location. The only real issue would be anything that requires systemd to function.
@johnraff can answer this fully, but I'm guessing it's just easier to compile and install the bunsen-packages then to try install, move and populate everything (pipemenus, power management, BLOB themes manager, jgmenu, xfce4-notifyd, lightdm, Bunsen/Debian alternatives, autostart, logout dialog, restart scripts for conky/picom/tint2 etc...)
Other than that (which is a lot, you'd have to be very familiar with BL to get everything), I'd say you're right.

A lot going on under the hood for BL. The logout dialog is a good example of what will give the OP trouble. That will be using sysstemd commands like "systemctl poweroff", correct? That script and any others would need to be edited for use in Void (any non-systemd distro).

Getting Openbox set up on Void with the basic aesthetic and workflow is doable though:

Last edited by PackRat (2023-11-05 16:27:43)

hhh · 2023-11-05 22:17:57

Gorgeous scrot. For bunsen-exit you can, if you don't intend to setup a second desktop using stand-alone openbox or another wm setup, just hack bl-exit or create your own script and use commands like openbox-session --exit.

I'm not on my desktop ATM so doing a shutdown or reboot without using sudo is beyond my knowledge.

PackRat · 2023-11-05 22:51:38

hhh wrote:

Gorgeous scrot. For bunsen-exit you can, if you don't intend to setup a second desktop using stand-alone openbox or another wm setup, just hack bl-exit and use commands like openbox-session --exit.
I'm not on my desktop ATM so doing a shutdown or reboot without using sudo is beyond my knowledge.

True, bunsen-exit can - and is - easy to edit with the proper commands for Void (I have a copy of it actually somewhere in the backups).

hhh · 2023-11-05 23:00:19

We'll wait for OP to post before offering suggestions.

johnraff · 2023-11-06 03:02:11

Quick note about bunsen-exit: it's supposed to be init agnostic and should work without systemd.
(I haven't tried it myself though.)

In fact, there is very little systemd dependency in our packages. Only a couple of small places.

Did a quick grep for systemd in the control files and got:

john@beryllium:~/git/bunsen$ grep -i 'systemd' */debian/control
bunsen-apt-update-checker/debian/control:Recommends: systemd
bunsen-apt-update-checker/debian/control: NOTE: Without systemd the timer will be inactive and
bunsen-exit/debian/control:Depends: ${misc:Depends}, systemd|elogind, polkitd, polkitd-pkla
bunsen-meta-all/debian/control: systemd-timesyncd,
bunsen-meta-all/debian/control: systemd-timesyncd,
bunsen-os-release/debian/control:Recommends: systemd, lsb-release
xfce4-power-manager/debian/control: (build-depends)              libsystemd-dev [linux-any]

So nothing desperately important.

Last edited by johnraff (2023-11-06 04:03:36)

johnraff · 2023-11-06 04:32:43

PackRat wrote:

@johnraff / hhh - What are these "custom BunsenLabs packages themselves." that the OP will need? For most *.deb files, the OP can use thunar (file manager of choice) to unpack the *.deb file and copy the necessary files - like themes - to their proper location.

Yes, for many of our packages, all that's needed is to copy the contents to the right places (as set in debian/install). That's certainly true of themes, icons and the like.

Scripts just need to be executable and in user's PATH - for Debian that's probably /usr/bin - but the scripts also need to work correctly when they're run. That means checking the package's dependencies on other BL or Debian packages. Also, the presence of all the Debian "essential" packages is assumed without having to declare a dependency. And, maybe system commands on Void have different names? Or slightly different behaviour? Or don't even exist? Maybe all OK but needs checking.

It might be necessary to check over user permissions stuff like polkitd.

Python, perl, bash... might have different versions in Void from Debian bookworm, and subtly different behaviour.

Debian "maintainer scripts" are run when packages are installed. On BL they are often used to set some Debian alternative so can probably be ignored, but need checking.

Other stuff in the debian/ directory is often about documentation so can be ignored for personal use.

Maybe our most complicated package is bunsen-configs. There are probably examples there of all the things that might cause difficulties.

Last edited by johnraff (2023-11-06 05:15:59)

#1 2023-11-04 22:43:19

Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#2 2023-11-05 02:38:05

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#3 2023-11-05 09:27:09

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#4 2023-11-05 09:32:23

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#5 2023-11-05 09:43:21

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#6 2023-11-05 13:47:54

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#7 2023-11-05 14:29:40

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#8 2023-11-05 15:03:10

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#9 2023-11-05 15:21:35

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#10 2023-11-05 16:25:50

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#11 2023-11-05 22:17:57

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#12 2023-11-05 22:51:38

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#13 2023-11-05 23:00:19

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#14 2023-11-06 03:02:11

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

#15 2023-11-06 04:32:43

Re: Bunsenlabs openbox on another distro (Void)

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