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Linux Desktop Setup

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Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#151

Post by mixmastamyk »

meddlepal wrote: post #96
theandrewbailey wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Linux in some form for 15 years. Like you, it's been some pre-packaged usable out-of-the-box distro (Xubuntu, Crunchbang, Mint). I've never once compiled a kernel, as I never had to, or saw the need, and it doesn't seem like fun (neither would fixing the compile errors the inevitably come up when I try to compile anything from C/C++). I've never had audio problems that everyone else seems to have, and…

15 years ago I used to do Gentoo stage 1 builds and fuck around with all that nonsense. Nowadays I slap Fedora + XFCE on my desktop and every 12-18 months I do a major lift and shift upgrade. I run mostly stock settings as well. No you're not a noob. All the nonsense I used to go through was just that... nonsense.

I look at my times running 4 OSs simultaneously as a learning experience, not nonsense.

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#152

Post by mxuribe »

Symmetry wrote: post #148
mxuribe wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like a sort of "best of both worlds" scenario...i'm interested in any suggestions. The last several years had me use more debian-centric distros (formerly Ubuntu, nowadays Mint). Is there a pair of DE+tiling WM setup that you suggest might be good? I'm open to recommendations!

For me XMonad+Gnome has worked pretty well. There's a nice PPA[1] that gives you most of what you need then you load the Gnome compatibility options[2] in XMonad config file and everything works. Well, there is one annoyance in that there's some sort of race condition and I have to restart xmonad after everything is up (alt-q by default) if I want windows to avoid the task bar like they should. But that only an extra…

This sounds great; thanks!!

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#153

Post by crimsonalucard »

I'm not gonna lie windows and osx wins on all fronts in terms of useability. I only use linux because of the server software and bash interface.

Post like these are almost masturbatory in the sense of "look how complicated much more complicated my setup is then yours." Dude let's be real.

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#156

Post by pojzon »

fookitty wrote: post #86
pojzon wrote: post #22

Im surprised there were no changes to the default git diff and merge tools. This is one of the first things i do on a new setup, to chane them to use "meld".

That's probably because he uses vim

You can change those tools to any editor. Meld is just a popular option.

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#157

Post by palunon »

redthrow wrote: post #147
javipas wrote: post #40

I'm always kind of amazed at this kind of desktop setups, and I guess they're not suitable for lots of people for the simple reason that most users have a "consumer" relationship with computers and not a "producer" one. My biggest question here for people with this kind of text setup would be: don't you surf the web? Do you use then lynx or another text web browser? What about services and platforms that are designed…

> most users have a "consumer" relationship with computers and not a "producer" one. Linus Torvalds avoids Linux distributions like Gentoo or Arch because he believes the whole point of a distribution is to make it easy for the end user to install and use useful apps on top of it. He also doesn't care about trivialities like bash vs zsh. It doesn't (and shouldn't) matter to 99% of people.

> the whole point of a distribution is to make it easy for the end user to install and use useful apps on top of it

Ubuntu is hard (not impossible, just harder than Arch) to setup the way I want my computer to be.

It's not hard to install useful apps on top of Archlinux (can't speak about Gentoo, never tried it), it's maybe not intuitive at first.

Maybe we can recognize different users have different needs, and what's right for some isn't for others.

> trivialities like bash vs zsh

Yeah, when you spend your life in a shell, the choice shouldn't matter, right ? Just like carpenters shouldn't care about saws...

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#158

Post by hibbelig »

lunchables wrote: post #97
karussell wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Gnome I can use "Super key" + left key if I need multiple aligned windows on my screen. Can you still convince me to try i3 :) ?

I use dwm, but it is similar. It has a master area and a stack. The windows "snap" functionality is in several DE now, including gnome. The difference in tiling wm is that 1) it is far more flexible than just one window left and one window right 2) it doesnt take an extra keyboard shortcut, it organizes them automatically. I would say flip the question around: if I can automatically tile windows, why would I use gnom…

Actually, I found this pretty useful. I have to use "graphical" programs (browser, IDE, email client) rather than terminal based ones. And the graphical ones seem to assume that their windows are pretty large.

Let's say I start my server in my IDE and I use my browser to interact with it. Then the bottom right of the IDE (where the console output of the server is) will be visible even with the browser in focus, and so I can see what the log output is doing.

I have got keyboard shortcuts that move windows to predefined positions with predefined sizes. E.g. full height but only the right 85% of the screen. Or full width but only 90% of the height.

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#159

Post by the_pwner224 »

NextHendrix wrote: post #65
Vinnl wrote: post #29

Everyone here scoring serious brownie points with their advanced setups. And here I am, having used Linux for my personal setup for 15 years, using pre-installed Ubuntu on a practically default GNOME desktop. It's wonderful that I can do that and be satisfied with that, without significantly hampering the possibility of advanced setups like the ones here. Despite all the systemd's, PulseAudio's and whatnot's, the cus…

Absolutely. I, like many others, spent quite a few years in the gentoo/arch+minimal riced tiling wm camp but am now happy and comfy on "bloated" fedora 29 and kde. More than anything it just feels like i've grown out of it, and it's nice having a computer I can actually rely on for once.

You may want to look into getting a tiling plugin for KDE. I'm in pretty much the same boat as you, used to use tiling WMs but now on Arch + KDE. The KWin tiling plugins are fairly simple - the only configuration is setting shortcuts to move windows around and resize them (I use super+WASD to move between workspaces, super+ctrl+WASD to move windows around on the screen, super+alt+WASD to move windows between workspaces, and super+Q/E to resize windows). That's it - the plugins make using the computer easier in 95% of cases without adding too much complexity, for for the other 5% you just toggle off the tiling and do it manually. And of course the mouse is still usable to move/resize windows.

Here's a newer script that overall seems to work better: https://github.com/lingtjien/Grid-Tiling-Kwin

And the older script I used to use: https://github.com/faho/kwin-tiling

Re: Linux Desktop Setup

#160

Post by Miner49er »

javipas wrote: post #40

I'm always kind of amazed at this kind of desktop setups, and I guess they're not suitable for lots of people for the simple reason that most users have a "consumer" relationship with computers and not a "producer" one. My biggest question here for people with this kind of text setup would be: don't you surf the web? Do you use then lynx or another text web browser? What about services and platforms that are designed…

I personally use Chrome or more recently Firefox with Vimium installed. Vimium allows most web surfing to be done without a mouse. https://vimium.github.io
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