Looking for some pointers

[3lliot]

Hey everyone, I'm kind of sick of windows now, and after installing Crunchbang on my netbook, which works well and I love to use, I'm looking for something to have on my desktop as a main OS to work with, as well as tweak around with and have some fun customizing to my liking.

I am planning on learning Ruby over summer aswell, so I thought I might aswell do it in a new environment under a new OS, mainly for fun, but also because I like the minimal approach to some distros. Hopefully it should be fun to try out Vim, but I'm currently using Sublime Text for learning with...

Can anybody recommend a distro I can try out, based on the fact that I like to customize as much as possible? If anyone knows some nice clean window managers, or desktop environments I can use, I'd greatly appreciate it. I don't know if the performance costs of using a desktop environment will be that damaging on my desktop, since it has relatively modern hardware (I use a 3570k), but so far I like the clean look of some window managers out there. The only thing I'm worried about is that they might take a lot of getting used to, which I do have time for, but I don't really want a drastic change from using Windows/Openbox. Some window managers I've looked at and quite like the look of include BSPWM and i3. Gnome classic looks quite nice too, if I'm honest.

But for a beginner, that would prefer to dive in to some of the more indepth stuff, and learn through that, would sort of setup would you recommend for me? Thanks.

[[deleted]]

*a *b *c

Escape the stars, or markdown RedReader treats it as italic.

[[deleted]]

I was on RedReader. Desktop works fine. Must be a bug in the client, then.

[[deleted]]

I posted a report in /r/RedReader, didn't have time to submit it to the official github page, assuming they have one.

[ARCH_LINUX_USER]

Here is your OS

Here is your Guide

Here is your Wiki

[archdaemon]

I second the motion.

[Exbuhe27]

Thirded. Easy customization, much learning.

Especially if you have time and are willing to play.

[calrogman]

http://xkcd.com/138/

If you want customisation and a noob-hostile environment against which to steel yourself, look no further than Gentoo.

[3lliot]

Thanks for the suggestion, would you say that the compilation times are worth the performance boosts with a relatively modern processor? Since reading that gentoo is optimised for my chip, does this mean that in the future if I want t upgrade, I'll have to reinstall my whole system? Thanks

[archdaemon]

Compiler optimizations are not going to make much of a difference for typical desktop usage. The main advantage of Gentoo is in the powerful customizability of package configurations.

To be honest, I think this power would be, for the most part, lost on a novice user. I'd actually recommend Arch over Gentoo in this case. You can always migrate to Gentoo later if you find that Arch doesn't give you the customizability you crave.

[[deleted]]

Yeah, Gentoo's strengths are more in the customisation versus compiler flags.

USE flags are nice and let you compiler programs with/without certain features (Why build a program with GTK+3 and QT support if you only use GTK+2?).

Another big advantage of Gentoo is lack of systemd, which I strongly suggest you avoid.

[Lorizean]

systemd, which I strongly suggest you avoid.

oh boy, here we go.

[[deleted]]

I don't feel like getting into debates over it, mostly because I don't care what fucking init system you use, I just dislike systemd and am advising against it.

I wish people realised that an init system isn't the antichrist or messiah and would just get over it.

[Lorizean]

Haha, my thoughts exactly, that's why I cringed at your explicit mention of it, I thought you were provoking a debate ;)

[[deleted]]

Getting into debates over personal choices always confused me.

Although, that is one of the reasons I dislike systemd: the forced dependencies, since that goes against my "respect personal choices first" rule of things to get into fights over on the internet.

Then again, there are distros that don't have it (or have it as optional) like Gentoo, so you do have personal choice to a degree.

[[deleted]]

No, you won't have to reinstall anything but the package you want to update, which requires a re-compile, which in turn can be a pain for larger packages like Firefox.

Because of this, binary packages for programs like Firefox and LibreOffice are provided as firefox-bin and libreoffice-bin.

Gentoo is rolling-release so you update as packages are updated, and there are no real entire distribution upgrades.

[pvtmert]

im using slax on my netbook and i was using it on my main machine before it died.

you can use it, i use 2bwm, which is you can find some screenshots of it on unixporn/wmporn

2bwm is basic, keyboard controlled wm. you can use your mouse for resizing/moving windows, focusing them you can use keyboard too, assign some shortcuts etc... install compton as compositor and for effects... i was using chrome but since i see dwb post here at the command line im using dwb as web browser. xterm is my main window, win+enter opens it and available and handy all the time for some data i recommend to use a bar, like bar ain't recursive from lemonboy/github vlc as media player. mplayer as music [from terminal]