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hello....first post.
I recently installed BL onto a pretty old HP laptop with 4G RAM, and the install went smoothly. Now I'm trying to learn BL.
Because I'm fairly new to Linux, I want to load many, or perhaps all, of the de's that are available with the tasksel command.
A couple questions:
a) will loading all these de's cause any problems with BL?
b) is there a file in either the home or the root directories that show the currently active de or wm?
c) not sure how I can remove those that I want to discard after I try them. I have used apt, and pacman, but how will I know the exact name of the packages that I might want to remove?
thank you for your consideration..........all advice & suggestions are welcome.
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You're in for a ride. Any full DE is going most likely going to bring in its own settings daemon at the least, and also probably a notification daemon, a power management daemon, it's own file manager and other default applications and more. I'd recommend adding and removing sessions one by one as you're sure to discover weirdness somewhere, and trying to figure out which DE caused it will be easier with only one option.
Installing XFCE first is your best bet, that's a full DE that shouldn't interfere with BL as we already use xfce4-notifyd, xfce4-power-manager, xfce4-screenshooter and Thunar file manager...
https://wiki.debian.org/Xfce#Install_Xf … led_system
LXDE is also pretty light and modular, and the last 2 releases of BL have accommodated running it alongside BL by separating the Openbox naming system (bl-autostart, bl-rc.xml, etc...)
GNOME will be trickier, it's going to pull gdm3 in with it, which will mess with BL screenlocking if you choose it over lightdm (and vice versa).
KDE Plasma will pull all sorts of Qt apps with it. Both GNOME and Plasma have so many dependencies.
You'll know what DE you're using because you'll have to choose it from the login screen, or specify it when you start it from TTY if you don't use a display manager.
There's no real way to cleanly uninstall a DE without possibly removing some needed packages. You're almost sure to run into some dependency package that will get removed with the DE you're removing. Take note of what packages are being removed so you can reinstall them (see /var/log/apt/history.log).
This link is only the tip of the iceberg of common problems...
https://wiki.debian.org/DesktopEnvironm … n_problems
That said, you could start a thread in our BL and General Linux Discussion forum about what you plan to try and how it goes, you're sure to get some help, warnings and general feedback...
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewforum.php?id=23
Also, there are some older threads already discussing some issues, you could try searching for the DE on our forum...
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=6071
And of course, this epic CrunchBang thread from way, way back, 30 Window Managers in 30 Days...
https://web.archive.org/web/20150207013 … p?id=18273
Last edited by hhh (2024-04-15 19:18:06)
No, he can't sleep on the floor. What do you think I'm yelling for?!!!
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hhh,
Thank you for the prompt reply. Sounds like I could be in way over my head rather quickly, so for now I'll try the 30 Windows Managers in 30 Days thread.
Very good advice, thanks again.
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No problem. Note that 30 WM's is a 12 year old thread, a lot of it is sure to be outdated!
No, he can't sleep on the floor. What do you think I'm yelling for?!!!
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That section s a good start @t4d ;
My Linux installs are as in my music; it s on Metal
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Thanks to Willy Wonka for this advice - I've had a similar curiosity as well.
I would agree that XFCE and LXDE are probably most appropriate for BL as they are lighter than Gnome and KDE Plasma (by a lot), and that is after all what makes BL so good, that it is lean.
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Thanks to Willy Wonka for this advice - I've had a similar curiosity as well.
I would agree that XFCE and LXDE are probably most appropriate for BL as they are lighter than Gnome and KDE Plasma (by a lot), and that is after all what makes BL so good, that it is lean.
Lol, I was wondering who you were talkin about ! !
My Linux installs are as in my music; it s on Metal
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There's no earthly way of knowing
*Ha ha, he's singin'*
Which direction we are going
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkg7dp1QY9k
Willy Wonka is a horror character, first class.
Is the grisly reaper mowing?
No, he can't sleep on the floor. What do you think I'm yelling for?!!!
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I would agree that XFCE and LXDE are probably most appropriate for BL as they are lighter than Gnome and KDE Plasma (by a lot), and that is after all what makes BL so good, that it is lean.
BL doesn't need any DE - it's meant to provide a reasonably usable interface as it is. Certainly, if you want to try alternative environments then XFCE and LXDE would be good places to start, but they're alternatives to BL, not optional extras.
With BL you've already got Debian GNU-Linux and in my humble opinion, new users could better devote their time to learning the basics of Linux than trying new shiny wrappers. But that's only my opinion...
...elevator in the Brain Hotel, broken down but just as well...
( a boring Japan blog (currently paused), now on Bluesky, there's also some GitStuff )
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You're in for a ride.
OP, this comment i quoted is coming from a guy who spent almost all of his free software career running openbox and xfce, only bothering to make extremely beautiful gtk themes, and who has now, once all of us old school masochists have switched permanently to Gnome and KDE, started fiddling with window managers, just in time to tweak them endlessly on both X and Wayland. So, the ride is much wilder than you can even imagine!
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There's no earthly way of knowing
*Ha ha, he's singin'*
Which direction we are going
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xkg7dp1QY9k
Willy Wonka is a horror character, first class.
Is the grisly reaper mowing?
Weirdly enough, I never heard of willy wonkers beforehand.
Thx for that @hhh
My Linux installs are as in my music; it s on Metal
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hhh wrote:You're in for a ride.
OP, this comment i quoted is coming from a guy who spent almost all of his free software career running openbox and xfce, only bothering to make extremely beautiful gtk themes, and who has now, once all of us old school masochists have switched permanently to Gnome and KDE, started fiddling with window managers, just in time to tweak them endlessly on both X and Wayland. So, the ride is much wilder than you can even imagine!
Hey, I had a cwm setup for a month circa 2010!
Blast from the recent past by el_ko...
No, he can't sleep on the floor. What do you think I'm yelling for?!!!
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kudos hhh for the points.
One is it here for the openbox/tint2, #! legacy, lightweight distro for an old hardware, or partially old, with little/medium RAM available, and for an active and friendly forum. If one wants a bigger distro/de(s) then, Distrowatch may help to pick one.
...But, give yourself time, take things one step at a time with Window Manager (WM) firstly, then pass it to Desktop Environment (DE) if you see it reasonable.
Tumbleweed | KDE Plasma
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Blast from the recent past by el_ko...
This was a good color scheme! I still have it, it's gonna go on my Crux VM as soon as I can get the internet up and running.
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johnraff wrote:
"With BL you've already got Debian GNU-Linux and in my humble opinion, new users could better devote their time to learning the basics of Linux than trying new shiny wrappers. But that's only my opinion."
johnraff, I think you have got it right..........I will continue my self-taught Linux journey by trying to learn & master some of the basics. Thank you.
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@t4d
First of all, welcome to the BL forums!
Your status has been changed to Member and you can now post links and screenshots in your posts.
P.S.
You can find many useful things about posts here:
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/help.php#bbcode
For example, hit the Edit button below your post above and replace the first part with:
[quote=johnraff]With BL you've already got Debian GNU-Linux and in my humble opinion, new users could better devote their time to learning the basics of Linux than trying new shiny wrappers. But that's only my opinion.[/quote]
You will get this:
With BL you've already got Debian GNU-Linux and in my humble opinion, new users could better devote their time to learning the basics of Linux than trying new shiny wrappers. But that's only my opinion.
EDIT
Always use the Preview button to make sure there are no errors before you hit the Submit button.
Last edited by marens (2024-04-17 00:48:00)
If people would know how little brain is ruling the world, they would die of fear.
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For example, hit the Edit button below your post above and replace the first part with:
[quote=johnraff]With BL you've already got Debian GNU-Linux and in my humble opinion, new users could better devote their time to learning the basics of Linux than trying new shiny wrappers. But that's only my opinion.[/quote]
You will get this:
johnraff wrote:With BL you've already got Debian GNU-Linux and in my humble opinion, new users could better devote their time to learning the basics of Linux than trying new shiny wrappers. But that's only my opinion.
EDIT
Always use the Preview button to make sure there are no errors before you hit the Submit button.
We're way off topic now, but you could also hit the "Quote" button and edit out the bits you don't want quoted.
The BBCode options are also at the bottom of each post you make, if you have BBCode enabled in you forum preferences, which is "on" by default (click the BBCode link)...
No, he can't sleep on the floor. What do you think I'm yelling for?!!!
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