[SOLVED] CLI alternatives and minimalistic WM

[mali2297]

yes i agree
however, i would like to login to x by default, rather than having to do a startx everytime.

That's easy, add this to the end of ~/.profile:

if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ $(tty) == /dev/tty1 ]; then
  startx
fi

[Tenken]

I would agree with urukrama's recommendation of SLiM. It only has a few dependencies and supports (experimentally ) logging into multiple desktop environments/window managers.

[sujoy]

That's easy, add this to the end of ~/.profile:

if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ $(tty) == /dev/tty1 ]; then
  startx
fi

can u kindly explain the code snippet?

[y-lee]

You may be interested in reading A day without X

Would you be able to survive one full day without using the X server? Linux offers us a wide assortment of CLI based tools which use curses and/or framebuffer for functional user interfaces. There is no reason why you shouldn’t be able look up stuff online, read your email, look at pictures, watch movies and listen to music as you are trying to configure X.

[mssever]

can u kindly explain the code snippet?

That's easy, add this to the end of ~/.profile:

if [ -z "$DISPLAY" ] && [ $(tty) == /dev/tty1 ]; then
  startx
fi

First, it checks whether the environment variable $DISPLAY is set. If not, then X probably isn't running right now. If $DISPLAY is unset (literally, if the length of its value is zero), then it checks the output of the tty command (see the man page) to see if it's running on the first virtual console. If so, it runs the command startx.

[kadath]

BashBurn works well for burning CDs and DVDs.

http://bashburn.sourceforge.net/

[Rumor]

@sujoy:
You might be interested in perusing this thread in the Arch forums. It offers quite a variety of very lightweight, minimalist applications, several of which I use on my old P2/233 laptop that runs Arch.

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=41168

[sujoy]

hey guys!

i installed mpd+ncmpc

but when i go to browse i dont see any files
i have one mp3 in the music_directory, but nothing shows up

[Tenken]

Have you created the database yet?

mpd --create-db

[dewey]

Nice to see a fellow arch user.

I recently switched from xfce4 to fluxbox, and am in much the same situation.

Here's what I've personally chosen so far.

Music Player - mpd with Sonata front end
video player - mplayer
chat client - pidgin
file browser - Rox (You can even get it to control the desktop)
Torrents - Transmission
Web browser - firefox-nightly (firefox3 from AUR)

And for a login manager that's lightweight, try SLiM.
http://slim.berlios.de/