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geekhack Community => Other Geeky Stuff => Topic started by: Seltox on Fri, 19 October 2012, 12:00:41

Title: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: Seltox on Fri, 19 October 2012, 12:00:41
Basically, what sort of customisation do you guys do to make your OS really feel like yours.

I've been fiddling with Ubuntu 12.04 lately, and wouldn't mind hearing what you guys do.  Might get some ideas.
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: boost on Fri, 19 October 2012, 12:15:36
Using the latest version of ubuntu, going to try out slackware soon
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: Seltox on Fri, 19 October 2012, 12:16:02
That's pretty awesome.  I love the idea of disk-less machines... And that may become a reality for me one day considering I intend to set up at 10+TB NAS for myself.  A disk-less machine would make pretty good sense then.  Or maybe just set up a HTPC instead :P
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: boost on Fri, 19 October 2012, 12:18:06
Quote from: Seltox on Fri, 19 October 2012, 12:16:02
That's pretty awesome.  I love the idea of disk-less machines... And that may become a reality for me one day considering I intend to set up at 10+TB NAS for myself.  A disk-less machine would make pretty good sense then.  Or maybe just set up a HTPC instead :P

Check out freenas for your raid setup
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: Grimey on Fri, 19 October 2012, 12:30:38
Few steps I can go into without much detail:

Change the WM, drop the DE (I don't need one normally).
Build all the 3rd party stuff I enjoy, Pianobar, xFlux, IDE or your choice, etc.
Pull down all the my configs from dropbox for all the previous mentioned items.

I am more happy when doing things from the command line within either OpenBox or Awesome for coding or forum reading.  I do play some games through WINE occasionally, but that doesn't really require me to change my setup.
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: alaricljs on Fri, 19 October 2012, 12:38:44
I could do diskless if it weren't for ~4GB of email and a quota that doesn't fit anywhere near that.  Also have a ~1G email influx every 6 months before I prune the useless crap back down to 4GB.  That and having the email local on SSD makes searching through it SOOO much faster.

I customize the crap out of both Linux and Windows... For Linux, I have a list of packages that must be installed for my system and then I just transfer my home directory over.  fvwm, vpnc, vnc, mrxvt, rainlendar, pidgin, volwheel, systrayx, TB, FF, VirtualBox, vim, audacious, LibreOffice.  That's just for work... then personal includes KiCad and necessary compilers.  W7 goes in a VM, mostly for IE and corp crap that doesn't have a Linux equivalent.

Windows... I have a theme I load up, shove the taskbar on the left edge of the screen and my apps get pinned and a couple scripts onto a small toolbar for sleeping the PC and monitor.  All Snap, AHK, Cygwin, EAC, FF, ImgBurn, IrfanView, Jumplist Extender, KiCad, Launchy, LibreOffice, PuTTY, Rainlendar, Sketchup, SoundSwitch, Steam, TB, FF, VNC, UltraMon, Vim, VirtualBox, WinAmp, WinSCP, XManager, Zoom Player.  Also a few AHK scripts to deal with my hotkeys and wallpaper.
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: davkol on Fri, 19 October 2012, 12:59:26
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Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: Findecanor on Fri, 19 October 2012, 18:30:24
I don't run a lot of stuff. I install Window Maker, tweak the theme, set the desktop background to a neutral grey and pin the window list below the dock. Map Caps Lock to Control, etc. Small stuff.
I keep my collections of files and projects in a directory (or symlink) right under root, but that is mostly a habit from when I used to dual-boot with Windows and had them on a FAT32 partition.
My desktop has been largely unchanged since '97.
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: sirtetris on Sat, 20 October 2012, 07:09:45
What I need to feel like home is:
Using Arch Linux btw.
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: älg on Sun, 21 October 2012, 05:26:24
- Install archlinux.
- Install i3 window manager
- Install rxvt-unicode-256color
- Copy dotfiles for mutt, irssi, pidgin, vim, git
- Install solarized colortheme for urxvt, vim and mutt
- install eclipse with plugins (android, cdt...)
- install some crosscompiler
- mount my homefolder from university via sshfs
- set up cronjobs for backups

Most of the programs I use are pretty stock, as I have to work on many different systems and getting used to for example a heavy modfied shell is just not practical for me.
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: mztriz on Sun, 04 November 2012, 21:05:24
The things that make my box feel more like "home" are customizations.

I change my shell to zsh and edit my .zshrc file with things I use. For example I have an alias called school which quickly switches me into my dropbox school directory. I also change the colors of my terminal to textmate's twilight theme. I change my vimrc to have things that I actually use in it (syntax highlighting on etc).  It's the little things you use that really  make the difference. Add keyboard shortcuts that you'll use. As others have said, you can change or edit your windows manager, change the theme, change the icons. Make your computer more useful to your purpose.  In the end that's what will make it feel like home.
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: sth on Sun, 04 November 2012, 21:22:49
for my own non-mission critical stuff (as in, i can handle taking an hour to figure out a problem):
debian (stable or testing depending on the machine) + xorg + dwm + dmenu + tabbed + surf. suckless sucks less. not really that into configuration these days, i modify config.h to remove 5 of the 9 tags. never needed more than that. sometimes i go the extra mile and install terminus, and fiddle with xresources. mostly i just don't care.
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: mztriz on Sun, 04 November 2012, 21:33:26
Another thing I forgot to mention...
If you're looking for interesting dot config files (i.e .vimrc, .bashrc and so on) check on github a lot of people have theirs publicly available. You may find some cool and useful configs.
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: kravlin on Mon, 05 November 2012, 17:52:59
Install Awesome, find a nice black background with a single image on it, spend 2 - 3 hours setting up conky just perfectly.... Spend 6 months using it and then reinstall and do it all over again.
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: sth on Mon, 05 November 2012, 21:27:09
here's a screenshot of one of my thinkpads. GH zoomed out really far just to show tiling without ugly-ing up the nav bar.

(http://i.imgur.com/vSplA.png)

that term color scheme is a total pain in the butt on this display (****awful thinkpad panels...). i was just goofing around with xreources :)

here is the 'desktop'
(http://i.imgur.com/GVgRl.png)
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: älg on Tue, 06 November 2012, 13:24:06
:D once you got a tiling wm, you just don't care about even setting a wallpaper...
Title: Re: What do you do to your Linux distro to make it feel like home?
Post by: sth on Sun, 11 November 2012, 17:55:45
precisely... IF there are no windows open it's just a hint to do some work or leave the computer. no need for pretty pictures :P