trying window maker

I've read about the Window Maker X11 window manager, and I've looked at screenshots, but I didn't think it was something I'd like. Besides, I've been very happy using Openbox and Fluxbox, and I've enjoyed using other WMs as well. But I had nothing better to do yesterday (or, nothing else that I really felt like doing!), so... I installed Window Maker in Bridge Linux, from the Arch repos.

Out of the box, Window Maker looked something like this, except for the icon down at the bottom-left, which is for a running instance of xfce4-screenshooter:

It's very important to read the Window Maker documentation over at windowmaker.org if you want to understand how to use this thing. Not surprisingly, the Arch Wiki also has good info about it (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Window_Maker); and, there's lots of other info out there on the internet, as well.

Window Maker comes with nice GUI tools for configuring everything -- the menu, themes, styles, and so forth -- and there are tons of dock apps that you can choose from to add.

I'm finding that I like Window Maker much more than I was expecting to. Here's how my desktop and menu looked after I set things up a bit:

Very nice WM -- definitely worth taking the time to learn to use.

anniversary!

One year ago today, I downloaded the Xfce spin of Bridge Linux 2012.12; I installed it two days later. This was my introduction to the world of Arch Linux. That Bridge installation is still going strong here. Later, I installed ArchBang, and then I finally installed Arch itself. Arch has become one of my favorite distros -- right up there with Debian -- and I owe a huge "thanks" to the Bridge Linux developer, Dalton Miller (aka "Ninja-1" at the Bridge forums) for helping me to get started down this road.

Here's a link to the announcement of the latest release, Bridge Linux 2014.02, at DistroWatch.

arch, archbang, bridge

I've been running Bridge Linux since February 2013 and ArchBang since June 2013. I like to spend a year or two with a distro to get a really good feel for it, but things have gone well enough with both of these distros that I'm becoming convinced that, along with Debian, I'll be using an Arch-based system for years to come.

I can't call myself an "Arch user" because I haven't installed "straight" Arch Linux. I'll probably do that at some point, but right now I'm having a hard time coming up with a reason to bother with a "real" Arch installation. ArchBang and Bridge get a user up and running with an Arch system much more quickly and easily; to me, it seems that installing Arch would involve extra, unnecessary time and effort, and I'd end up with an installation that wouldn't be much different (and perhaps no better) than what I've already got with either ArchBang or Bridge.

I don't know which I like better between Bridge Linux and ArchBang. ArchBang comes with Openbox, but other environments can be installed. ArchBang has been around a little longer than Bridge. ArchBang has more documentation, but that might not be so important because the user will refer to the Arch Linux documentation most of the time, anyway.

On the other hand, Bridge offers Xfce, GNOME, KDE, and LXDE/Openbox .isos (I've only tried Bridge Xfce).

In any case, both Bridge Xfce and ArchBang (with Openbox) are quite nicely done. I think that either environment is perfect for an Arch installation. Both distros include scripts to make it easy to get things set up. Bridge uses only Arch repos -- the [core], [extra], and [community] repos; ArchBang, along with those repos, includes the [archbang] repo, but I currently have no packages installed from that one (the command paclist archbang returns nothing). The Arch User Repository ("AUR") is, of course, available for both distros as well.

I think that eventually I'll want only one Arch installation, whether it's Arch, ArchBang, or Bridge Linux. Either one would be fine with me. For now, I'll keep both ArchBang and Bridge; I'm finding it helpful, sometimes, to be able to compare how things are done in each distro.

archbang live session

ArchBang, like Bridge Linux, starts you off with more than the minimal, non-GUI environment that you'll get with Arch Linux (from which ArchBang and Bridge are derived). Like Bridge, ArchBang uses the Arch repos. It includes the base Arch system, a functional desktop, and some scripts and configuration files.

A "real" Arch user might say, "If you want Arch, then install Arch." That's cool. But I appreciate having things set up a little bit for me. For now, I'll settle for being a "fake" Arch user as I check out Bridge and ArchBang.

With Bridge Linux, there's a choice of Xfce, GNOME, KDE, and LXDE/Openbox downloads. ArchBang, on the other hand, simply offers Openbox. I downloaded archbang-14.06.2013-i686.iso (only 397 MB!) and burned the image to a blank DVD (I had no blank CDs available). Here's what it looked like when I first booted into the live session:

A sample of what's included in the live session:

- Openbox, along with the Openbox menu, configuration manager, and other goodies
- the tint2 panel
- Compton, a compositor for X
- Firefox 21.0
- SpaceFM 0.8.7
- medit text editor
- LXTerminal
- Galculator
- GuCharMap, the GNOME character map app
- Pragha music player
- GPicView 0.2.3 image viewer (from LXDE)
- scrot, for screenshots
- the Parcellite clipboard manager
- HTop, the system-monitor process-viewer

No office suite, no games, not much in the way of multimedia stuff; just a handful of tools to get the user started. The Openbox menu is nicely set up and includes an "Install" option. The "Guide" menu option opens Firefox up to the "ArchBang Document," a guide at the ArchBang wiki.

Running the live session from the DVD I burned was obviously not going to be as snappy as running it from a flash drive; I'll try that before attempting an installation. Here are a couple more screenshots:

Some links:

http://archbang.org/
http://wiki.archbang.org/index.php?title=Main_Page
http://wiki.archbang.org/index.php?title=ArchBang_Document
http://openbox.org/wiki/Main_Page
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Beginners%27_Guide

my bridge/arch experiment

I'm convinced, more than ever, that going with Bridge Linux instead of installing "straight" Arch is the way to go for someone like me. If I had any reason to do a fresh installation, I'd go with Bridge again.

Arch recently came out with a new Pacman version (Pacman 4.1.0 -- see this Softpedia article and the announcement at pacman.git for more info); after pulling that in today, I asked a couple of questions at the Bridge forums and at the Bruno's All Things Linux forums, edited my /etc/pacman.conf file a little bit, and that was pretty much it.

Everything I've seen so far leads me to conclude that the repos and config files I'm using for Bridge Xfce are pretty much the same as what I'd end up with if I installed "straight" Arch and went with Xfce. I don't get bragging rights, since I didn't "build the house from the ground up," but my ego remains intact.

Bridge Xfce is great to use, but the best parts about this "experiment" are getting to see how Pacman works and getting a feel for Arch Linux. I really like Pacman; as for Arch, time will tell. Things look good so far. I can't tell if it's any more or less "unstable" than Debian Unstable or the latest Fedora, or if running it is any more or less of a hassle than running either of those. I think I get more out of running Fedora and Bridge/Arch than I'd get from running Sid, though, because they force me to look at things from outside of my Debian "comfort zone."

takin' it to the bridge

I downloaded the latest Bridge Linux (Xfce) (bridge-xfce-2012.12-i686.iso), a "rolling-release" disro based on Arch Linux. Here's what the live session looks like when you boot into it:

On the desktop, there's a README text file containing some instructions for after the installation has been completed.

Here are few screenshots of the menu to show some of Bridge's default applications:

Installing Bridge Linux basically gives you an Arch system, but with an easier installation. However, I didn't think that the installer would be as simple as some others for someone new to Linux.

Once I got Bridge installed and booted into the desktop, a post-installation script started, which updated the system and downloaded some packages. I noticed that the script installed LibreOffice without giving me a chance to decide whether I wanted it installed or not (Bridge comes with Gnumeric and Abiword by default). I referred to the README to get some other stuff, like the flashplugin package.

Like Arch, Bridge uses the pacman package manager. I think there are some GUI front-ends for it, but there isn't one installed by default, so I've been using pacman from the command line. pacman seems fairly easy to use once you take a look at man pacman. I tried my luck at finding and installing a few apps, like Geany, Mirage, SpaceFM, and xfce4-terminal (Bridge comes with Terminator by default).

For the few questions I had, I was able to find solutions at the Bridge forums and/or at the Arch forums, or in the Arch wiki.

Bridge looks like a very good distro. I feel like after installing it, I'm running Arch Linux. The repos are Arch's. I had no problem using pacman to find the apps I wanted/needed, and I found a list of available apps at the Arch wiki. This is my first time around with an Arch distro, however, and I'm still just getting my feet wet.

Here's a screenshot after I finished setting things up:

The Bridge Linux home page can be found at: http://millertechnologies.net/index.html