Macbook Pro mid-2007 + ArchLinux

[hydrospell]

Decided to turn my old Macbook Pro into an Arch Linux machine to learn the ways of unix/linux... After a couple of false starts I got xorg up (yay), xmonad and some basic applications setup.

NOW, all you beards out there, what packages should I look for for daily computing? HIT ME.

 

[hydrospell]

Currently have chromium + vimium because I can't figure out how to get Firefox 27 to work with pentadactyl.
Weechat in urxvt for IRC (#geekhack)
vim/gvim and my nice fonts/colourschemes of course
what else?

[sth]

for daily computing? what do you do?
this stuff is good for any general linuxry:
dmenu is an awesome launcher. you can probably find a million customized pkgbuilds in AUR that have patches rolled in, such as history (most useful). also cant recall if it has tab completion built in but if not that's a good patch too.
terminator is a great "modern" terminal emulator/multiplexer.
i use openbox these days but i used to like dwm. you have to know exactly what you like, and if you dont, be prepared to add an additional "config day" to getting your machine just how you like it because to change the settings, you have to edit a c file and then recompile. thankfully it's < 2000 sloc and compiles even on a P4 in about 30 seconds or less. again, like dmenu, you can find pkgbuilds of pre-configured pre-patched dwm installs too.

[hydrospell]

dmenu - using it right now with xmonad! Yes it has tab completion and "fuzzy search": typing 'fc list' will also get you 'fc-list'
Will take a look at terminator - any perks over urxvt?

In xmonad you just write the config file and hit Mod+P. It will recompile and restart in one go without you having to quit X.

[n7]

I used wmii for a few years, then switched to i3 for xrandr support, and now lately I've been using awesome because I wanted to try the layouts in the copycat-killer/lain repo. I love tiling WMs  )

tmux is a definite must for me. I keep a few vim sessions running, and irssi for IRC in a tmux session on a server I can access from home and from work so I can easily pick up from where I left off. From there, vim-airline and tmuxline.vim (with the fonts from Powerline) give me more than enough eyecandy for my tastes.

[sth]

dmenu - using it right now with xmonad! Yes it has tab completion and "fuzzy search": typing 'fc list' will also get you 'fc-list'
Will take a look at terminator - any perks over urxvt?

In xmonad you just write the config file and hit Mod+P. It will recompile and restart in one go without you having to quit X.

perks over urxvt? it looks more modern so if you like your tabs to match your gtk theme there's that i suppose. the real reason i like it is because you can split windows and have multiple sessions visible at once (in frames). so, for example, at work, i have 2 vpns, so one tab in my term is two sessions, one for each VPN. then in another tab, i have my local machine, then the next has 2 sessions connecting to a remote system i use for work. keeps things nice and tidy

[hydrospell]

n7:
tiling WMs win man.
tmux rocks. of course i have that too.

Have not figured out how to set up powerline on arch yet ... have it on my Mac gvim and tmux. Looks amazing.

sth:
why do you need gtk in your term emulator?

[hydrospell]

Need some advice:

What's the most lightweight + usable:

• twitter client? app.net client?
• email client?
• music player (with basic library management)?
• BT client?

Thanks in advance!

[hashbaz]

I see some window manager talk in here.  I've spent time with awesome and xmonad and liked both, but I'm now on i3 and loving it.  It's very simple to configure, and well-documented.  irssi and mutt are the standard answers for textmode IRC and mail clients, and both are great in my experience.  There isn't really a great way to handle html email with images in mutt though.

[n7]

n7:
tiling WMs win man.
tmux rocks. of course i have that too.

Have not figured out how to set up powerline on arch yet ... have it on my Mac gvim and tmux. Looks amazing.

I'm using vim-airline because it uses viml only instead of Python. The thought of running a python script every time my $PS1 was loaded kind of irked me.

As for the powerline fonts, I use them in urxvt with fontconfig and the following in my Xresources:
URxvt*font: xft:Terminus:pixelsize=14,xft:Inconsolata\ for\ Powerline:pixelsize=14
I followed the Powerline documentation for installing the fonts on Linux. I'm running Gentoo, but I can't imagine it would be any different on Arch.

• music player (with basic library management)?

I've been trying to get a grasp on this for a while. There really doesn't seem to be quite the "out of the box" analogue to something like Foobar2000 or iTunes, as much as it pains me to admit it. I've been meaning to get around to reorganizing my music library on Linux, but I just have other things to work on at the moment  )

moc (music on console) was a nice, simple player the few times I've used it
mpd (music player daemon) runs a daemon on your system that you can connect a client to (like ncmpcpp) for listening to music. It's probably a setup I'll go for when I get the time to dedicate a whole afternoon or two to it.

[angelic_sedition]

For pentadactyl, did you go to the site and download the most recent version? You can't get it from the mozilla page.

For window managers, I've tried xmonad, awesome, ratpoison, and a bunch of floating ones. Out of all of them, my favourite by far is bspwm (manual tiling wm; supports floating). The configuration is extremely easy (haskell made me cry), and the fact that it's controlled entirely with shell commands makes the bindings easier to setup and more flexible than most other window managers. Sxhkd is the recommended hotkey daemon, and it allows for prefix key, modifier key, and modal bindings for any shell commands. Otherwise, I'd recommend openbox.

Also, terminator is pretty meh imho (and it doesn't work with ranger image preview). I don't think it has any perks over urxvt, and definitely think urxvt looks better. For a modern looking terminal emulator, the most fancy looking one I've tried is terminology.  +1 for tmux which obsoletes terminator's splitting capabilities.  I'm switching from primarily guake to termite with a dropdown script now. Regardless of whether you like a tui file manager, I feel that ranger really just destroys all other file managers in terms of efficiency. Nothing is more useful to me in terms of daily computing. That and the unite plugin for vim which I use as a clipboard manager and for all file search and buffer switching (access any file in 2-5 keystrokes with my bookmark and keybinding setup) and the sneak plugin which is even better than easy motion imho (get anywhere in view in 3-4 keystrokes).

Twitter client: The only thing I've tried is turses.
Email: Mutt with offline imap and notmuch (but it takes FOREVER to setup; if you're using gmail and don't have a specific reason to want a client, I'd say go with offline gmail or thunderbird (+ muttator or teledactyl if you want vim bindings; not exactly lightweight, but works immediately) instead; I have a ridiculous amount of config files, and none of them have been more time consuming for an initial setup; if you want to do it, the best guide I found was Steve Losh's)

Music player: for gui, clementine; otherwise cmus or mpd and ncmpcpp which destroys all else (both very lightweight and usable)
BT: look at rtorrent or transmission (and maybe deluge which has a gui and cli interface)

I'd also recommend stow for config files (makes it easier to put them all in a directory (possibly for use with git) and organize them and then symlink them to ~/). Bitlbee with weechat is also pretty cool. Arch is the best.

[hydrospell]

n7 Thanks! I'll look into vim-airline when I have more time; yes the whole python thing bugs me slightly too.

angelic_sedition Yes I did! Tried the latest nightly with the latest Firefox and it refuses to install citing some compatibility mode thing. What versions are your pentadactyl and Firefox respectively?

Haven't tried bspwm, am using xmonad because am interested in learning Haskell but yeah, I did some google searches, bspwm looks quite nice with the border setting. I wonder how much work it will take to customize xmonad to that point. There are some pretty crazy ass tiling modes out there for xmonad which I haven't tried yet. Anyway thanks for the recommendation.

Clipboard management in linux is something I'm still trying to get used to... :\

Ranger looks pretty balls, even has ascii display of images. But I wonder if that's the point where a GUI file manager would just have been better.

I like the look of Steve Losh's mutt + offlineimaprc setup but yes, the setup time is crazy ass. I still haven't gotten to it. On a side note Steve Losh is the guy that made me switch my caps lock to ctrl + esc if tap only setup.

Using moc at the moment for music but it is quite unstable when used with network mounted volumes. Perhaps I should try out the mpd + ncmpcpp combo which everyone seems to be raving about.

Looking into stow, first time I've heard about it. Thanks for your many recommendations! Arch is best indeed.

[kfmfe04]

If you plan to do any development or learn any hard-core command-line programming/UNIX stuff (perhaps the greatest Joy of Linux), I highly recommend this setup:

1. Put your ArchLinux in an OSX Virtualbox.  If you are more adventurous, put this setup on a multi-core CPU box and access your ArchLinux remotely.

2. Use iTerm2 on OSX to access your ArchLinux - use vim in byobu-tmux to multiplex, Cmake and gcc to build applications

3. Use x2go to access the desktop remotely

I personally have Lubuntu running on a Win8 Virtualbox and I use a 2009 mbp with a hhkb to access that machine via iTerm2 and x2go.  With VPN, I have access to that machine where-ever I can get internet access.

[hydrospell]

I'm curious - why a virtualbox instead of an actual machine running arch?

[kfmfe04]

So I can do other work on the computer without having to reboot.  For example, on my Win8 box, I can play Steam games like Dota 2 or SC2 while the Linux inside virtualbox is running a webserver or a database like mysql.

On a OSX box, you can also continue to run all your OSX apps without having to reboot.

Note that Virtualbox is free and runs with very little overhead. 

New virtual machines are so easy to setup that I create new instances to test new versions of Linux or new releases.

The only issue I have found with it so far is that the 3D support isn't good.  For example, running a Win8 Virtualbox on a OSX box for the purpose of playing newer games usually doesn't work out so well.  But for Linux, this is a non-issue for 99% of the users out there. 

Years ago, I used to buy cheap HP boxes to run as mini Linux servers. 

These days, I just buy one multi-core box to run Win8 and pop as Linux server instances as I like inside Virtuabox.

[hydrospell]

Ah...
I have a dedicated mac and an older computer for arch linux, so I don't need to have it on a virtual machine.
How's the networking stuff for linux in a virtual machine? For example running a rails app on some weird port and wanting to see that web app from another computer on the local network -- is that troublesome?

[kfmfe04]

That's not hard at all.  Once you have the Virtualbox set up with Bridged Networking, it's like having a virtual NIC card from ArchLinux's point-of-view. 

Since you want to provide services from this server, you would want to assign yourself a static IP from inside ArchLinux (exactly what you would do if ArchLinux were living in its own hardware).

For example, I have wiki-media, gitlab, and mysql running out of the Lubuntu sitting inside the Virtualbox.

I used to never throw away old machines - I'd salvage them for server duty.  But these days, with the high cost of electricity and the amazing performance of multi-core CPUs, I have begun retiring old machines at a higher rate. 

YMMV, but once you find how easy it is to run a Virtual Machine, it'll be worth trying it out on your newer Mac and compare the difference against running hard-metal on an older piece of hardware.

[smknjoe]

VMware is much faster than Virtual Box or KVM. If you really want to learn Linux then I would continue with your original plan. Otherwise, it may be too tempting to fall back to the familiar OS when the going get's tough.

[angelic_sedition]

n7 Thanks! I'll look into vim-airline when I have more time; yes the whole python thing bugs me slightly too.

angelic_sedition Yes I did! Tried the latest nightly with the latest Firefox and it refuses to install citing some compatibility mode thing. What versions are your pentadactyl and Firefox respectively?

Haven't tried bspwm, am using xmonad because am interested in learning Haskell but yeah, I did some google searches, bspwm looks quite nice with the border setting. I wonder how much work it will take to customize xmonad to that point. There are some pretty crazy ass tiling modes out there for xmonad which I haven't tried yet. Anyway thanks for the recommendation.

Clipboard management in linux is something I'm still trying to get used to... :\

Ranger looks pretty balls, even has ascii display of images. But I wonder if that's the point where a GUI file manager would just have been better.

I like the look of Steve Losh's mutt + offlineimaprc setup but yes, the setup time is crazy ass. I still haven't gotten to it. On a side note Steve Losh is the guy that made me switch my caps lock to ctrl + esc if tap only setup.

Using moc at the moment for music but it is quite unstable when used with network mounted volumes. Perhaps I should try out the mpd + ncmpcpp combo which everyone seems to be raving about.

Looking into stow, first time I've heard about it. Thanks for your many recommendations! Arch is best indeed.

(+1 for vim-airline; very easy to customize as well)

Here's the :version info
"Pentadactyl hg6981 (created 2014/01/29 00:00:04) running on:
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:26.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/26.0"
So no, I'm not on FF 27.0. I'll update and see if it works. You might want to try vimperator instead? It seems a lot of people have switched back to vimperator recently.

I like bspwm primarily because you have 3(+) options for bindings (normal modifier key, prefix key (like ratpoison, tmux, etc.), and layer/mode enter key (like entering a window management mode that has to be escaped)). It's possible to do a prefix key with xmonad (which is what I was doing before), but Haskell is too complicated to be good for me personally.

What are your problems with clipboard management?

About ranger, that's where you're wrong. Ascii preview isn't the limit. Ranger has an actual image preview as well (using w3mimgdisplay), that now works with a lot of terminal emulators thanks to a patch. GUI FMs weep. I think you're using urxvt? It works in urxvt without any patch (just makes sure you have w3m installed and have image preview set to true in your config file). However, I've found it to be the most glitchy (actually only glitchy) with urxvt (have to have your Xdefaults right for it to work properly). It won't work with tmux either unless you apply the patch.

EDIT: The patch has now been merged, and the urxvt bug with the patch has been fixed. If you're interested see ranger-git from the aur.

Anyway, here's a screeny of it working flawlessly with termite and tmux: (screenception)


Losh's mutt guide is great, but his keyboard setup is meh. Dual role caps to escape is a good idea though.

Virtualizing never really interested me. @kfmfe04 How much ram does your mac have? I can't imagine running linux from virtualbox as I normally do without facing problems there (especially on a mac).

[daerid]

I don't know if I'd pick Arch for a first time install. Ubuntu might be a better/gentler transition.

Unless of course you're masochistic,  then might as well just go whole hog with a Gentoo install.

[angelic_sedition]

I don't know if I'd pick Arch for a first time install. Ubuntu might be a better/gentler transition.

Unless of course you're masochistic,  then might as well just go whole hog with a Gentoo install.

Well he/she already did. Not sure if it's a first time install though. But if the point is to be masochistic, then I'm sure you could do even worse than Gentoo.

[smknjoe]

Slackware is  a good "in-between" distro too. Ubuntu doesn't require you to know anything about Linux to use it and Arch isn't for newbies like Daerid said. That's not to say  Linux newbies can't learn to use it though.

[Oobly]

From your avatar I thought you'd be using Crunchbang (#!) already. Great minimalist distro with all the vital packages. Fast and smooth.

[hydrospell]

Oobly - where can I find out if arch or crunchbang is lighter?

Yes the crunchbang sign was from the linux distro indeed but I'm more amused by the combo of the logo + word + sound than the distro (haven't tried it yet, heard it's derivative of debian but don't quote me on that).

Rest of you - I'm so happy to see all this participation in this thread, want to check out all the cool things you guys suggested but am stuck at work, I'll give these a go and report back.

[hydrospell]

That's not hard at all.  Once you have the Virtualbox set up with Bridged Networking, it's like having a virtual NIC card from ArchLinux's point-of-view. 

Since you want to provide services from this server, you would want to assign yourself a static IP from inside ArchLinux (exactly what you would do if ArchLinux were living in its own hardware).

For example, I have wiki-media, gitlab, and mysql running out of the Lubuntu sitting inside the Virtualbox.

I used to never throw away old machines - I'd salvage them for server duty.  But these days, with the high cost of electricity and the amazing performance of multi-core CPUs, I have begun retiring old machines at a higher rate. 

YMMV, but once you find how easy it is to run a Virtual Machine, it'll be worth trying it out on your newer Mac and compare the difference against running hard-metal on an older piece of hardware.

I used to have a debian installation running from VMWare Fusion - it had weird latency issues which the host computer (Mac mini, connected via ethernet) doesn't have. But I didn't know how to debug network issues on a linux then (barely know how to now) so I didn't check the resolv.conf or anything. Perhaps I can have a go at this again when I have a spare afternoon... Good to know how other people do it.

[angelic_sedition]

Oobly - where can I find out if arch or crunchbang is lighter?

Yes the crunchbang sign was from the linux distro indeed but I'm more amused by the combo of the logo + word + sound than the distro (haven't tried it yet, heard it's derivative of debian but don't quote me on that).

Well crunchbang iso was about 200mb bigger than arch last time I checked (which doesn't necessarily mean anything.. but I doubt it's more lightweight than arch) . It is indeed a debian based distro (gets confusing with when there's archbang too).

[hydrospell]

I don't know if I'd pick Arch for a first time install. Ubuntu might be a better/gentler transition.

Unless of course you're masochistic,  then might as well just go whole hog with a Gentoo install.

Slackware is  a good "in-between" distro too. Ubuntu doesn't require you to know anything about Linux to use it and Arch isn't for newbies like Daerid said. That's not to say  Linux newbies can't learn to use it though.

I don't know if I'd pick Arch for a first time install. Ubuntu might be a better/gentler transition.

Unless of course you're masochistic,  then might as well just go whole hog with a Gentoo install.

Well he/she already did. Not sure if it's a first time install though. But if the point is to be masochistic, then I'm sure you could do even worse than Gentoo.

Slackware is  a good "in-between" distro too. Ubuntu doesn't require you to know anything about Linux to use it and Arch isn't for newbies like Daerid said. That's not to say  Linux newbies can't learn to use it though.

My first linux distro was debian some time back - this is more like a learn how to use arch as a computer rather than a headless server thing for me and I did learn more about how things work too.

That said this Gentoo thing sounds like another good challenge I can undertake with enough free time.

Archbang?! wtf.

[kfmfe04]

Well, with virtualbox you can experiment with as many distros as you like without leaving your primary OS, even if that primary OS is another version of Linux.

I've done so in the past with crunchbang, mint, and freebsd on OSX without issue.

I like crunchbang - one of these days, I may switch from lubuntu to crunchbang, but one thing that's bothered me about crunchbang in the past is, because it's debian-based, gcc versions tend to get stale.  I think I can get around it by going experimental packages but I never got around to it.

[quickcrx702]

Unless of course you're masochistic,  then might as well just go whole hog with a Gentoo install.

Stage 1 install FTW!  I remember the good old days when I had nothing better to do.  Want to install a huge software like Xfree86?  Just get it started and let it compile for a few days, then spend forever editing the config because you're picky AF. ROFL.  Seriously, it took forever.  Obviously this was back in the day when Gentoo was new, internet was slower, and computers were definitely slower.  I'm not sure which is worse, that or dealing with Redhat dependency hell back in the 90s.  On modern hardware things probably go much faster, but it feels like you spend more time tweaking your system than using it.  Gentoo, Arch, Slack, FreeBSD(not Linux but still fun to learn) are a good starting distro because you learn to look under the hood.  Once you have a better understanding of how things work, how to edit config files, setup networking from scratch, or compile your own kernel for example, move over to a distro that uses RPM or apt-get to make your life easier.  At least then you can troubleshoot when things go wrong, or just further customize your computer.

From your avatar I thought you'd be using Crunchbang (#!) already. Great minimalist distro with all the vital packages. Fast and smooth.

I agree.  Openbox or Fluxbox are the best window managers!  If you want something heavier, but not gnome, unity, or kde heavy, go with XFCE(I pronounce it x-feces LOL).

[angelic_sedition]

Unless of course you're masochistic,  then might as well just go whole hog with a Gentoo install.

Stage 1 install FTW!  I remember the good old days when I had nothing better to do.  Want to install a huge software like Xfree86?  Just get it started and let it compile for a few days, then spend forever editing the config because you're picky AF. ROFL.  Seriously, it took forever.  Obviously this was back in the day when Gentoo was new, internet was slower, and computers were definitely slower.  I'm not sure which is worse, that or dealing with Redhat dependency hell back in the 90s.  On modern hardware things probably go much faster, but it feels like you spend more time tweaking your system than using it.  Gentoo, Arch, Slack, FreeBSD(not Linux but still fun to learn) are a good starting distro because you learn to look under the hood.  Once you have a better understanding of how things work, how to edit config files, setup networking from scratch, or compile your own kernel for example, move over to a distro that uses RPM or apt-get to make your life easier.  At least then you can troubleshoot when things go wrong, or just further customize your computer.

From your avatar I thought you'd be using Crunchbang (#!) already. Great minimalist distro with all the vital packages. Fast and smooth.

I agree.  Openbox or Fluxbox are the best window managers!  If you want something heavier, but not gnome, unity, or kde heavy, go with XFCE(I pronounce it x-feces LOL).

best floating window managers*

Whaaaaaaatt? More like the other way around.. after you're comfortable with your mint or ubuntu and like customization and making your life easier, move to arch. Aptitude and rpm over pacman and the aur? Madness! Compare that to using ppas and having to compile a bunch of stuff yourself. Of course this is only my experience, but I've ONLY had things go terribly wrong on distros like mint, and when I've had problems, they've been much easier to troubleshoot on arch. Hard to beat the arch wiki. I know exactly what I've setup and done, and if there's ever some unwanted behaviour, I usually know exactly the cause. Distros like arch for customization. Ubuntu and mint if you're new to linux and have no idea what you want.

[smknjoe]

Whaaaaaaatt? More like the other way around..

Obviously, you weren't using Linux 10-20 years ago. That's how it was back then. You didn't have the "luxury" of distributions that worked out of the box like Ubuntu. You needed 2 PCs just to get one good installation of Linux going. One for downloading software and reading documentation and the other to install the distro on. That's what Quick is referring to. Even Slackware, Arch, and Gentoo will support most common hardware out of the box these days. You used to have to download and install drivers for everything manually IF they were even available.

[angelic_sedition]

Whaaaaaaatt? More like the other way around..

Obviously, you weren't using Linux 10-20 years ago. That's how it was back then. You didn't have the "luxury" of distributions that worked out of the box like Ubuntu. You needed 2 PCs just to get one good installation of Linux going. One for downloading software and reading documentation and the other to install the distro on. That's what Quick is referring to. Even Slackware, Arch, and Gentoo will support most common hardware out of the box these days. You used to have to download and install drivers for everything manually IF they were even available.

I wasn't talking about anything that was said about using linux in the past; I was referring to the recommendation to start with something like gentoo and switch to ubuntu. I seriously doubt that that recommendation was made for people living 10-20 years ago. I understand what you have said, but it's not relevant to my intended point. I was talking primarily about package management primarily when I said "More like the other way around.."

[smknjoe]

Well, yeah. It has everything to do with what was said. Quick was suggesting to start out with a minimal distro like Arch so the user can learn more about the in and outs of Linux...just like everyone used to have to do. Then move to a full featured distro like Ubuntu once you have learned Linux.

You suggested that was not the way you would do it and that you would start with Ubuntu/Mint and then move backwards to something like Arch.

There were no package managers back then. You had to do everything manually. That's why he said that apt and rpm were a great way to make your life easier (and they are compared to doing it manually.) He wasn't saying that apt and rpm were "superior" package managers when compared to pacman and others.

[angelic_sedition]

Well, yeah. It has everything to do with what was said. Quick was suggesting to start out with a minimal distro like Arch so the user can learn more about the in and outs of Linux...just like everyone used to have to do. Then move to a full featured distro like Ubuntu once you have learned Linux.

You suggested that was not the way you would do it and that you would start with Ubuntu/Mint and then move backwards to something like Arch.

There were no package managers back then. You had to do everything manually. That's why he said that apt and rpm were a great way to make your life easier (and they are compared to doing it manually.) He wasn't saying that apt and rpm were "superior" package managers when compared to pacman and others.

Well, no. It still doesn't really have to do with what I said, and I wouldn't necessarily suggest either starting with Mint or switching to Arch (it depends). The part I was addressing was not the one about the past.

Are you suggesting that Quick can communicate with people in the past? Your point is only valid if the suggestion was being made for people living "10-20 years ago." It wasn't; I don't know where you get that from. Pacman exists today. The suggestion is for people in the present. And the implication is that rpm and apt-get are better package managers (or that Quick does not now about modern package management on arch, which seems less likely). I will quote for you:

" Gentoo, Arch, Slack, FreeBSD(not Linux but still fun to learn) are a good starting distro because you learn to look under the hood.  Once you have a better understanding of how things work, how to edit config files, setup networking from scratch, or compile your own kernel for example, move over to a distro that uses RPM or apt-get to make your life easier."

Note the "are" and the "move." It's all in present tense, so I don't know why you're trying to speak for quick and say that quick was talking about the past. If that was the intention, then the wording is utterly atrocious. The transition seems clear to me. Also note, I'm not trying to be obnoxious; I'm just saying my point was about linux distros today not in the past, and I don't disagree with what's been said about using linux in the past.

[smknjoe]

You are right, Quick didn't mention how his past experience helped him learn Linux.

Stage 1 install FTW!  I remember the good old days when I had nothing better to do.  Want to install a huge software like Xfree86?  Just get it started and let it compile for a few days, then spend forever editing the config because you're picky AF. ROFL.  Seriously, it took forever.  Obviously this was back in the day when Gentoo was new, internet was slower, and computers were definitely slower.  I'm not sure which is worse, that or dealing with Redhat dependency hell back in the 90s.  On modern hardware things probably go much faster, but it feels like you spend more time tweaking your system than using it.

Obviously, you have much more experience and knowledge than anyone else. So, nobody else chime in with their experience or suggestions. This is AS's thread!

[angelic_sedition]

You are right, Quick didn't mention how his past experience helped him learn Linux.

Stage 1 install FTW!  I remember the good old days when I had nothing better to do.  Want to install a huge software like Xfree86?  Just get it started and let it compile for a few days, then spend forever editing the config because you're picky AF. ROFL.  Seriously, it took forever.  Obviously this was back in the day when Gentoo was new, internet was slower, and computers were definitely slower.  I'm not sure which is worse, that or dealing with Redhat dependency hell back in the 90s.  On modern hardware things probably go much faster, but it feels like you spend more time tweaking your system than using it.

Obviously, you have much more experience and knowledge than anyone else. So, nobody else chime in with their experience or suggestions. This is AS's thread!

I never said that quick did not mention past experience.  I did not even imply it; I explicitly stated I WAS NOT referring to the section of quick's post about it. You have made it clear you are incapable of reading or are intentionally trying to distort my words. You are the only one claiming to speak for quick. Thank you for quoting exactly the part I made clear I was not talking about; this is the third I have iterated this to you.

I never said anything about having more experience or knowledge than anyone. I did not tell quick that I thought he was wrong or lacked knowledge and experience. I did not even say that YOU were wrong. All I've said is that I was not talking about what you were, and you somehow equivocate this to a claim that I am an expert and know better (about what? I might ask). It's not a matter of knowledge but one of relevance. I gave an opinion on distros and package management, and after I clarified that I was not talking about linux in the past, you decided to go off on me and start making wild accusations about what I and quick are saying. This is truly a petty attempt to salvage your initial statement. If anything, you are the one trying to hijack this thread by continuing to berate me .. and for what? I don't know if you have a problem with me for some reason, but that's hardly a good reason to resort to sarcasm and blatantly false implications about me. I have no problem with you, and I apologize if I have offended you, but I do not appreciate how I am being treated.

Every time you reply to me, it's about something different. First it was about the difficulty of setting up linux in the past and having to download and install drivers manually. Then you threw in package management in the past (or lack of it).. and now you throw in "experience and knowledge" all while claiming to speak for quick (and me).  NONE of this is relevant to the point I was trying to make, and again, I do not disagree with what you said about linux in the past; it's simply not relevant to what I was saying. I will quote myself again from when I initially replied to you: "I wasn't talking about anything that was said about using linux in the past."

Please stop misconstruing what I and other people have said and pretending like you can speak for us. Thank you. Let the thread get back on topic.

[hydrospell]

edit: shame on me for not using the preview function. Let me retype this post - Nested quote hell happened.

[angelic_sedition]

I also understand where the Ubuntu guys are coming from. If you're one of those who are looking for a viable desktop operating system to work with that is not Mac OS or Windows, Ubuntu in its current incarnation looks inviting enough to try out/use. I don't believe that Linux should be limited to tech-savvy people or people who have the time and willingness to pick up abstract concepts or coding skills just to use the OS.

Agreed. I started out trying Ubuntu for fun before I even understood what a partition was and would never have been drawn to linux in the first place if the only way to do it was through a text based installation. Having default programs is nice at first, but I've always ended up disliking the defaults, whether it be on Windows or OSX or Mint. The nice thing for me about linux has always been having the choice to choose what you want yourself if you want to (but not having to). On Windows, you can't just decide you don't want to install windows media player, notepad, paint, etc. They're there whether or not you like it.

Edit: Responded too soon I guess Were you able to try out the other suggestions?

[smknjoe]

Unless of course you're masochistic,  then might as well just go whole hog with a Gentoo install.

Stage 1 install FTW!  I remember the good old days when I had nothing better to do.  Want to install a huge software like Xfree86?  Just get it started and let it compile for a few days, then spend forever editing the config because you're picky AF. ROFL.  Seriously, it took forever.  Obviously this was back in the day when Gentoo was new, internet was slower, and computers were definitely slower.  I'm not sure which is worse, that or dealing with Redhat dependency hell back in the 90s.  On modern hardware things probably go much faster, but it feels like you spend more time tweaking your system than using it.  Gentoo, Arch, Slack, FreeBSD(not Linux but still fun to learn) are a good starting distro because you learn to look under the hood.  Once you have a better understanding of how things work, how to edit config files, setup networking from scratch, or compile your own kernel for example, move over to a distro that uses RPM or apt-get to make your life easier.  At least then you can troubleshoot when things go wrong, or just further customize your computer.

From your avatar I thought you'd be using Crunchbang (#!) already. Great minimalist distro with all the vital packages. Fast and smooth.

I agree.  Openbox or Fluxbox are the best window managers!  If you want something heavier, but not gnome, unity, or kde heavy, go with XFCE(I pronounce it x-feces LOL).

best floating window managers*

Whaaaaaaatt? More like the other way around.. after you're comfortable with your mint or ubuntu and like customization and making your life easier, move to arch. Aptitude and rpm over pacman and the aur? Madness! Compare that to using ppas and having to compile a bunch of stuff yourself. Of course this is only my experience, but I've ONLY had things go terribly wrong on distros like mint, and when I've had problems, they've been much easier to troubleshoot on arch. Hard to beat the arch wiki. I know exactly what I've setup and done, and if there's ever some unwanted behaviour, I usually know exactly the cause. Distros like arch for customization. Ubuntu and mint if you're new to linux and have no idea what you want.

^^^^You did not understand Quick's post^^^^ and I was trying to help you, but that was really stupid of me.

Good luck hydro!

[angelic_sedition]

^^^^You did not understand Quick's post^^^^ and I was trying to help you, but that was really stupid of me.

Good luck hydro!

Really? Still? Maybe I can help you learn English since you don't understand the difference between past and present tense. You're one of the worst trolls I've seen.

[smknjoe]

That's me. Super troll.

[hydrospell]

Let the thread get back on topic.

Yep let's. I find the good part of the linux experience is when people recommend cool tools and software and if you understand the work of programming software, the feeling amazement of how these cool tools were done by self-organised people! I appreciate you both trying to get your points across, let's put the focus on the main topic from here on. Thanks

I agree.  Openbox or Fluxbox are the best window managers!  If you want something heavier, but not gnome, unity, or kde heavy, go with XFCE(I pronounce it x-feces LOL).

one of the main draws of trying out a pure linux install for me was that I could use tiling/floating WMs, not the traditional desktop environment model. xmonad for myself sir.

I often think of what the people behind Ubuntu are trying to achieve being something different from the typical programming-literate, tech savvy Linux crowd - they offer an alternative OS that you can still just jump in and sort of figure it out even if you have no knowledge on programming languages, config files, command line etc. Imagine if I was a casual computer user but Mac OS and Windows both frustrate me. Ubuntu would look like a very viable option to at least try out simply because it looks so non-threatening.

retyped this part above because I posted something, took it out because it was all nested quotes for a two-liner comment from me, and angelic_sedition managed to catch what I posted before I took it out which he/she quoted below

ninja edit

Agreed. I started out trying Ubuntu for fun before I even understood what a partition was and would never have been drawn to linux in the first place if the only way to do it was through a text based installation. Having default programs is nice at first, but I've always ended up disliking the defaults, whether it be on Windows or OSX or Mint. The nice thing for me about linux has always been having the choice to choose what you want yourself if you want to (but not having to). On Windows, you can't just decide you don't want to install windows media player, notepad, paint, etc. They're there whether or not you like it.

Edit: Responded too soon I guess Were you able to try out the other suggestions?

YES OH MY GOD. I've been a Mac user for 7 years now but the sheer awfulness of WMP still haunts me. Winamp ftw lol. I kinda liked notepad for writing HTML though, it's an awful code editor but it felt like you were creating something out of nothing, a sort of harsh McGuyver pride. How silly haha.

I haven't yet, work has been taking up my time. I did install ranger yesterday on my work machine (Mac OS, http://brew.sh/) and had fun laughing at myself typing 'man ranger'.   Still need to learn the key bindings, customize it which takes the longest time, then try the 'scope' thing which lets you preview all sorts of file types, am I right?

[smknjoe]

Unless of course you're masochistic,  then might as well just go whole hog with a Gentoo install.

Stage 1 install FTW!  I remember the good old days when I had nothing better to do.  Want to install a huge software like Xfree86?  Just get it started and let it compile for a few days, then spend forever editing the config because you're picky AF. ROFL.  Seriously, it took forever.  Obviously this was back in the day when Gentoo was new, internet was slower, and computers were definitely slower.  I'm not sure which is worse, that or dealing with Redhat dependency hell back in the 90s.  On modern hardware things probably go much faster, but it feels like you spend more time tweaking your system than using it.  Gentoo, Arch, Slack, FreeBSD(not Linux but still fun to learn) are a good starting distro because you learn to look under the hood.  Once you have a better understanding of how things work, how to edit config files, setup networking from scratch, or compile your own kernel for example, move over to a distro that uses RPM or apt-get to make your life easier.  At least then you can troubleshoot when things go wrong, or just further customize your computer.

From your avatar I thought you'd be using Crunchbang (#!) already. Great minimalist distro with all the vital packages. Fast and smooth.

I agree.  Openbox or Fluxbox are the best window managers!  If you want something heavier, but not gnome, unity, or kde heavy, go with XFCE(I pronounce it x-feces LOL).

best floating window managers*

Whaaaaaaatt? More like the other way around.. after you're comfortable with your mint or ubuntu and like customization and making your life easier, move to arch. Aptitude and rpm over pacman and the aur? Madness! Compare that to using ppas and having to compile a bunch of stuff yourself. Of course this is only my experience, but I've ONLY had things go terribly wrong on distros like mint, and when I've had problems, they've been much easier to troubleshoot on arch. Hard to beat the arch wiki. I know exactly what I've setup and done, and if there's ever some unwanted behaviour, I usually know exactly the cause. Distros like arch for customization. Ubuntu and mint if you're new to linux and have no idea what you want.

Whaaaaaaatt? More like the other way around..

Obviously, you weren't using Linux 10-20 years ago. That's how it was back then. You didn't have the "luxury" of distributions that worked out of the box like Ubuntu. You needed 2 PCs just to get one good installation of Linux going. One for downloading software and reading documentation and the other to install the distro on. That's what Quick is referring to. Even Slackware, Arch, and Gentoo will support most common hardware out of the box these days. You used to have to download and install drivers for everything manually IF they were even available.

I wasn't talking about anything that was said about using linux in the past; I was referring to the recommendation to start with something like gentoo and switch to ubuntu. I seriously doubt that that recommendation was made for people living 10-20 years ago. I understand what you have said, but it's not relevant to my intended point. I was talking primarily about package management primarily when I said "More like the other way around.."

He wasn't saying that rpm and apt were better than pacman. He was saying that rpm and apt were better than nothing.

Well, yeah. It has everything to do with what was said. Quick was suggesting to start out with a minimal distro like Arch so the user can learn more about the in and outs of Linux...just like everyone used to have to do. Then move to a full featured distro like Ubuntu once you have learned Linux.

You suggested that was not the way you would do it and that you would start with Ubuntu/Mint and then move backwards to something like Arch.

There were no package managers back then. You had to do everything manually. That's why he said that apt and rpm were a great way to make your life easier (and they are compared to doing it manually.) He wasn't saying that apt and rpm were "superior" package managers when compared to pacman and others.

Well, no. It still doesn't really have to do with what I said, and I wouldn't necessarily suggest either starting with Mint or switching to Arch (it depends). The part I was addressing was not the one about the past.

Are you suggesting that Quick can communicate with people in the past? Your point is only valid if the suggestion was being made for people living "10-20 years ago." It wasn't; I don't know where you get that from. Pacman exists today. The suggestion is for people in the present. And the implication is that rpm and apt-get are better package managers (or that Quick does not now about modern package management on arch, which seems less likely). I will quote for you:

" Gentoo, Arch, Slack, FreeBSD(not Linux but still fun to learn) are a good starting distro because you learn to look under the hood.  Once you have a better understanding of how things work, how to edit config files, setup networking from scratch, or compile your own kernel for example, move over to a distro that uses RPM or apt-get to make your life easier."

Note the "are" and the "move." It's all in present tense, so I don't know why you're trying to speak for quick and say that quick was talking about the past. If that was the intention, then the wording is utterly atrocious. The transition seems clear to me. Also note, I'm not trying to be obnoxious; I'm just saying my point was about linux distros today not in the past, and I don't disagree with what's been said about using linux in the past.

Again, he wasn't saying that rpm and apt were better than pacman. He was saying that rpm and apt were better than nothing.

[angelic_sedition]

Let the thread get back on topic.

Yep let's. I find the good part of the linux experience is when people recommend cool tools and software and if you understand the work of programming software, the feeling amazement of how these cool tools were done by self-organised people! I appreciate you both trying to get your points across, let's put the focus on the main topic from here on. Thanks

I agree.  Openbox or Fluxbox are the best window managers!  If you want something heavier, but not gnome, unity, or kde heavy, go with XFCE(I pronounce it x-feces LOL).

one of the main draws of trying out a pure linux install for me was that I could use tiling/floating WMs, not the traditional desktop environment model. xmonad for myself sir.

I often think of what the people behind Ubuntu are trying to achieve being something different from the typical programming-literate, tech savvy Linux crowd - they offer an alternative OS that you can still just jump in and sort of figure it out even if you have no knowledge on programming languages, config files, command line etc. Imagine if I was a casual computer user but Mac OS and Windows both frustrate me. Ubuntu would look like a very viable option to at least try out simply because it looks so non-threatening.

retyped this part above because I posted something, took it out because it was all nested quotes for a two-liner comment from me, and angelic_sedition managed to catch what I posted before I took it out which he/she quoted below

ninja edit

Agreed. I started out trying Ubuntu for fun before I even understood what a partition was and would never have been drawn to linux in the first place if the only way to do it was through a text based installation. Having default programs is nice at first, but I've always ended up disliking the defaults, whether it be on Windows or OSX or Mint. The nice thing for me about linux has always been having the choice to choose what you want yourself if you want to (but not having to). On Windows, you can't just decide you don't want to install windows media player, notepad, paint, etc. They're there whether or not you like it.

Edit: Responded too soon I guess Were you able to try out the other suggestions?

YES OH MY GOD. I've been a Mac user for 7 years now but the sheer awfulness of WMP still haunts me. Winamp ftw lol. I kinda liked notepad for writing HTML though, it's an awful code editor but it felt like you were creating something out of nothing, a sort of harsh McGuyver pride. How silly haha.

I haven't yet, work has been taking up my time. I did install ranger yesterday on my work machine (Mac OS, http://brew.sh/) and had fun laughing at myself typing 'man ranger'.   Still need to learn the key bindings, customize it which takes the longest time, then try the 'scope' thing which lets you preview all sorts of file types, am I right?

Honestly, I might go as far as to say that ubuntu and similar distros can be really great for not technical people in some cases. All my grandmother ever uses her laptop for is clicking a link on her desktop to open up her gmail. She doesn't even really understand what internet explorer is, and windows is way to bloated for her laptop (it's very slow with lots of popups and freezing). A basic linux install would be better suited to the computer and to her in my opinion.

Haha, wmp has changed a lot over the years, but I've always hated it. Winamp and foobar for me. I actually used to write everything in wordpad.. funny how things change.

Ranger bindings become pretty intuitive and are pretty similar to vim. Space, v, or V to select. yy to copy and dd to cut and pp to paste. Full window preview with i. m to mark and ' to go to mark. The only config I have really done is to change yn, yp, and yd (yanking names of files/directories) to yank to the + register, set f to smart-case search, and done a basic change to allow for my zsh aliases to work in ranger (which I can link you to if you're interested). I've started just doing most things inside ranger (chmod stuff and symbolic linking, touching new files, etc.) Ranger is pretty smart for the most part. The default scope file will pretty much already work for most things (they'll already preview without modifications). Same with the rifle.conf for opening stuff (it has things ordered so that by default, more obscure programs will open the file if you have them installed; the logic is that if you have something more obscure, it's more likely that you use it; rearranging is easy enough though). If you open a file (by hitting right/ qwerty l on the file) and it doesn't know what to do with it, it will give you the :open_with and you can type something like "gvim" and it will remember it which is pretty nice.

Edit: Also, for music programs, two great utilities I've stumbled across are beets and abcde. Abcde is what I use to rip my CDs now (automated for the most part.. type rip and it will rip and move anything to a folder corresponding to the artist and album). Beets has a lot of cool features, but I mainly use it to tag stuff where I know the tags are very wrong. New music I download, I run through beets to tag and import it into my music folder (and update my mpd database).. though I don't do it much anymore since I've stopped using itunes.

@smknjoe If you still think that suggesting starting with gento, arch, etc. and then moving to another distro for rpm or apt-get is the equivalent of saying that apt-get/rpm are better than nothing, then good for you. If you somehow don't interpret "Gentoo, Arch, Slack, FreeBSD(not Linux but still fun to learn) are a good starting distro because you learn to look under the hood.  Once you have a better understanding of how things work, how to edit config files, setup networking from scratch, or compile your own kernel for example, move over to a distro that uses RPM or apt-get to make your life easier.  At least then you can troubleshoot when things go wrong, or just further customize your computer." to mean that rpm and apt-get are better/easier package managers than what exists for gentoo, arch, slackware, and freebsd, then I will admit that I have no idea where you are coming from, as that is certainly the clear implication.  I'm not interested in arguing with you about quick's intent or implied meaning anymore. If you want to say anything else irrelevant to the thread topic, you can pm me.

[quickcrx702]

I only suggested an RPM or apt-get based distro "to make your life easier" because a lot of Linux users come back full circle to the noob friendly distros.  After YEARS of being in the trenches, you eventually get tired of configuring every tiny detail, and just want stuff to work as quickly as possible.  I'm okay with having some default choices made for me, and if I want to tweak something I can.  The reason I suggested not starting on an Ubuntu or Fedora type distro, which by the way didn't exist when I got started, is because you learn little or nothing by using those.  Their forums are cluttered with helpless users pretty much doing a "blind leading the blind" thing, whereas Gentoo, Arch, or FreeBSD forums have TONS of knowledgeable people.  There are very knowledgeable Ubuntu users, but they seem to be smaller in number in comparison, and I think they get tired of answering the same basic questions over and over again.  You are correct, the conventional logic is to start with an easy distro then work your way up to a harder one.  However, since you really don't learn much on those, I argue that you should do it the other way around.  If you want to make your life easier by using a less technical distro, at least you won't be helpless when stuff goes wrong or you want to customize something.


 Package managers aside, any of the more technical distros like Gentoo, Slackware, Arch, or even FreeBSD - which I mentioned earlier isn't even Linux but BSD instead, will encourage you to learn the nuts and bolts of your OS.  This way, you won't be making posts about "How do I install the newest flash and Oracle Java instead of OpenJDK(not compatible with certain apps)?", "How do I connect to a Windows share?", or "How do I setup my printer?", etc.  Obviously a lot of this stuff is automated by Ubuntu type distros these days, but what do you do when something goes wrong, or you have some special need?  There seem to be a lot of Ubuntu users who never even learn simple troubleshooting commands like dmesg or lspci for hardware, manually mounting drives using the mount command, simple networking stuff with ifconfig like changing MTU for QinQ VLAN tagging for GNS3 with a breakout switch, etc.  That's the reason I suggested trying a more technical distro first, because it forces you to learn stuff like that.  You could use Ubuntu for a very long time and never learn anything about what happens under the hood.

Arch is definitely a nice distro, I used it for about a year, and I have nothing bad to say about it.  I actually found it nicer than Gentoo which was my previous favorite.  If you are happy with it, and have time to play with it, there really isn't a reason to go back to an easier distro.  I just don't have the time or desire anymore to dedicate to setting up a system from scratch, compile my own kernel for performance and specialized needs, put a custom splash image on my bootloader, constantly tweak the hell out of it, etc., when I buy a new laptop.  Imagine taking the time to HEAVILY tweak a machine over a long period of time, then getting a new machine that you want to behave the same way.  For me it makes me cringe because it's like starting all over again, just with newer and nicer hardware.  Crunchbang is a happy medium.  It isn't completely bloated like Fedora or Ubuntu have become, the default choices are mostly good(openjdk doesn't work for certain business apps for me, so I skip it and install Oracle instead), and I can have a new system up and running within an hour.  I also don't get tempted to constantly tweak it just because I can.  Finally, as far as package managers, they are all pretty much the same to me.  You could argue to death about why one is better than another, but at the end of the day, all they do is resolve dependencies for you and limit the amount of manual work, along with giving you a database of what's on your system.  All of the package managers eventually will mess up and leave you with minor issues that need to be manually resolved.  Obviously Arch will arguably give you more bleeding edge packages than Debian, but with Debian you get arguably more stable packages.

So there you have it.  There is hopefully no more ambiguity about what I meant earlier.

[angelic_sedition]

I only suggested an RPM or apt-get based distro "to make your life easier" because a lot of Linux users come back full circle to the noob friendly distros.  After YEARS of being in the trenches, you eventually get tired of configuring every tiny detail, and just want stuff to work as quickly as possible.  I'm okay with having some default choices made for me, and if I want to tweak something I can.  The reason I suggested not starting on an Ubuntu or Fedora type distro, which by the way didn't exist when I got started, is because you learn little or nothing by using those.  Their forums are cluttered with helpless users pretty much doing a "blind leading the blind" thing, whereas Gentoo, Arch, or FreeBSD forums have TONS of knowledgeable people.  There are very knowledgeable Ubuntu users, but they seem to be smaller in number in comparison, and I think they get tired of answering the same basic questions over and over again.  You are correct, the conventional logic is to start with an easy distro then work your way up to a harder one.  However, since you really don't learn much on those, I argue that you should do it the other way around.  If you want to make your life easier by using a less technical distro, at least you won't be helpless when stuff goes wrong or you want to customize something.


 Package managers aside, any of the more technical distros like Gentoo, Slackware, Arch, or even FreeBSD - which I mentioned earlier isn't even Linux but BSD instead, will encourage you to learn the nuts and bolts of your OS.  This way, you won't be making posts about "How do I install the newest flash and Oracle Java instead of OpenJDK(not compatible with certain apps)?", "How do I connect to a Windows share?", or "How do I setup my printer?", etc.  Obviously a lot of this stuff is automated by Ubuntu type distros these days, but what do you do when something goes wrong, or you have some special need?  There seem to be a lot of Ubuntu users who never even learn simple troubleshooting commands like dmesg or lspci for hardware, manually mounting drives using the mount command, simple networking stuff with ifconfig like changing MTU for QinQ VLAN tagging for GNS3 with a breakout switch, etc.  That's the reason I suggested trying a more technical distro first, because it forces you to learn stuff like that.  You could use Ubuntu for a very long time and never learn anything about what happens under the hood.

Arch is definitely a nice distro, I used it for about a year, and I have nothing bad to say about it.  I actually found it nicer than Gentoo which was my previous favorite.  If you are happy with it, and have time to play with it, there really isn't a reason to go back to an easier distro.  I just don't have the time or desire anymore to dedicate to setting up a system from scratch, compile my own kernel for performance and specialized needs, put a custom splash image on my bootloader, constantly tweak the hell out of it, etc., when I buy a new laptop.  Imagine taking the time to HEAVILY tweak a machine over a long period of time, then getting a new machine that you want to behave the same way.  For me it makes me cringe because it's like starting all over again, just with newer and nicer hardware.  Crunchbang is a happy medium.  It isn't completely bloated like Fedora or Ubuntu have become, the default choices are mostly good(openjdk doesn't work for certain business apps for me, so I skip it and install Oracle instead), and I can have a new system up and running within an hour.  I also don't get tempted to constantly tweak it just because I can.  Finally, as far as package managers, they are all pretty much the same to me.  You could argue to death about why one is better than another, but at the end of the day, all they do is resolve dependencies for you and limit the amount of manual work, along with giving you a database of what's on your system.  All of the package managers eventually will mess up and leave you with minor issues that need to be manually resolved.  Obviously Arch will arguably give you more bleeding edge packages than Debian, but with Debian you get arguably more stable packages.

So there you have it.  There is hopefully no more ambiguity about what I meant earlier.

My outlook is configure it once, automate that configuration, then never again unless you want to change something. I definitely understand suggesting something like Gentoo for learning, but I don't think that kind of steep learning curve would work for a lot of people switching from Windows, for example, immediately. I learned enough on Mint after a couple months (and Ubuntu occasionally years ago) to be comfortable enough to do a text-based installation. As for having a helpful community, I couldn't agree more though. If someone wants to learn

As for switching back, I assume you weren't specifically talking about the package management but saying that distros with apt-get, for example, are more "noob friendly?" I've personally automated my post-install setup so that I don't have to do everything manually again. I have a function to install everything I want and configure it (for the most part; it's still a work in progress), but I definitely wouldn't want to keep returning to arch and do everything manually every time. I agree that crunchbang (archbang or an arch based distro for me) are nice for quick setup, but I've personally too much into my customization to just go with someone else's choice of defaults. I'm not so much saying that pacman is a better package manager than aptitude. I'm saying between the official repos and the aur, a lot more is covered. I use a lot of obscure programs that weren't in the repos on Mint but can be easily and quickly installed from the aur.

As for the aur, a really nice program I've come across lately is aurel (an aur helper for emacs). I know the op is a vim person (I am too), but I've been messing around with emacs lately for the hell of it and have found it provides a much better interface for searching and installing aur packages (with vim bindings of course).

[hydrospell]

I know the op is a vim person (I am too), but I've been messing around with emacs lately for the hell of it and have found it provides a much better interface for searching and installing aur packages (with vim bindings of course).

TRAITOR.

[hydrospell]

Come to think of it, is there a way to tell the package manager, aptitude, pacman or otherwise, to generate something that when invoked on a completely new machine automatically installs all the installed packages? AUR managers too of course.

Then configs can be easily reconfigured on fresh machines with the correct files in the correct directories, so that one is more like maintaining a list of files and automating it with a shell script or something less primitive... I imagine you've got some sort of process down even though you say it's a work in progress still. This is where a VM would come in useful for setting up the automation!!!

[quickcrx702]

As for switching back, I assume you weren't specifically talking about the package management but saying that distros with apt-get, for example, are more "noob friendly?"

Yes.

Come to think of it, is there a way to tell the package manager, aptitude, pacman or otherwise, to generate something that when invoked on a completely new machine automatically installs all the installed packages? AUR managers too of course.

Then configs can be easily reconfigured on fresh machines with the correct files in the correct directories, so that one is more like maintaining a list of files and automating it with a shell script or something less primitive... I imagine you've got some sort of process down even though you say it's a work in progress still. This is where a VM would come in useful for setting up the automation!!!

Yes, you can do something like this.  If you read the man pages of the various package managers, you can see that you are able to run a query for installed software.  Just send the output to a text file, get the file to the new machine, and then do the reverse.  It's not going to be 100% automatic, you're going to have to do some edits to the list to make a package installation script that you can run, and to the config files of the installed software, but it's a starting point at least.

[angelic_sedition]

Come to think of it, is there a way to tell the package manager, aptitude, pacman or otherwise, to generate something that when invoked on a completely new machine automatically installs all the installed packages? AUR managers too of course.

Then configs can be easily reconfigured on fresh machines with the correct files in the correct directories, so that one is more like maintaining a list of files and automating it with a shell script or something less primitive... I imagine you've got some sort of process down even though you say it's a work in progress still. This is where a VM would come in useful for setting up the automation!!!

I know I'm a heretic for using emacs

Well I just have it all under aliases and functions (pacman -S this and that). So I'll just run something like "setup" which will include installation of everything I want.
I know that Aura (see: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=155778) allows for this option for the aur (you can save everything you have installed and then restore it from that data). I'm not sure about other aur helpers, but it's pretty easy to just copy a list and set it up yourself, like quick said.

I just keep all my dotfiles in one directory (~/dotfiles), so I'll move them in from a usb and use stow to symlink everything (dots is another way).. Config files and auto installation most of my programs takes care of most of the setup and configuration. Some things take a bit more of work. If something needs authentication (example: grive), I do that last, so I can just let it run without having to be there. For things that have to be configured before being compiled (something like dvtm), it's slightly more complicated  (though usually just involves some "cd"s "mv"s and "make"s), but there are very few programs I use that require this.  There's also some configuration for stuff not in my dotfiles folder (i.e. adding stuff to the fstab.. though that can change based on computer, so I have that set to prompt and stuff at the end). Also useful is a "minimal install" setup, where I have it setup just to install the very basics of what I need (if I ever needed to get to work right away on any distro for some reason) because installing and syncing takes a long time. I say it's a work in progress because I've only re installed arch once (and only tested half of what I've done), so there might be stuff I would want to do that I haven't thought to add yet. VM  definitely would be the perfect way to test.

One thing I'm curious about is, are you using a display/login manager? I'm not, but I wish I could use one just for screen locking. I've tried a bunch of screen lockers, and haven't been totally satisfied with any of them. (xscreensaver with xss-lock is what I'm using right now).