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Lightweight Archlinux Install

smakked — Sat, 2010-07-03 20:53

A small guide on how to build a minimal and functional system within Nix'. I use Archlinux myself but i am sure you could acheive the same with any distro with a bit of work. I based my install on Openbox but you can use what ever you like, PekWM, Fluxbox, Blackbox, IceWM. All are light weight and pretty easy to configure. These applications are what I like, as always with Linux there are plenty of other alternatives.

This is ideal for older hardware with in the early pentium range, it will run fast and be very usable and get the job done, i have run a setup like this on a Pentium III 500 Mhz and 128 Meg of ram and found it very usable and still fast.

I start with athe base install of arch which is about 550 meg install, with these apps added my total install sits at about 950 meg maybe more.

The best Part? This make for a Lightning Fast system. Which was my goal. And also as a learning exercise, very handy if you want to know what your system could be like.

This is good fun and probably not for anyone who wants point and click install. Most you will have to configure yourself by hand.



Official Repo


nvidia - Nvidia Driver

Openbox - Window Manager

obconf - GUI for Config changes to Openbox

obmenu - GUI for Openbox Menu Changes

lxappearance - To change GTK themes

leafpad - Light text editor

nitrogen - Wallpaper Changer

pcmanfm - File manager

squeeze - Archive manager

gimp - Photo Editing

mirage - Photo Viewer

claws email - EMail Client

weechat - IRC Client

sonata - Music Player (mpd needed)

conky - system stats

atop - More System states

urxvt - Light weight Terminal

terminal - Terminal (supports copy and paste)

gmrun - Run Command

gnome-mplayer (mplayer) - Movie player

links - Text based web browser

netsurf - Basic Web browser

geany - Editor for Programming

mpd - Music Player Daemon

xpdf - PDF reader

flashplugin - TO get flash going on web sites

emesene - MSN Chat client

transmission - Torrent client

transset - Transparency for apps

volumewheel - Volume control in the systray

Fonts


ttf-liberation

ttf-dejavu

ttf-bitstream-vera

ttf-freefont

ttf-ms-fonts

ttf-cheapskate

AUR


simpleburn - CD/DVD burning program

skype - Chat/Webcam/Phone

chromium-nogconf - Google Chrome Webbrowser with out Gconf :)

bmpanel2 - Panel

firefox-pgo-beta - Optimized version of firefox

lostirc - Gui IRC client

abiword-light - Basic Word program

xcompmgr-dana - Shadows for windows

Tweaks

The main tweak i use to get fonts to look nice is using patched versions of freetype2, libxft, cairo, fontconfig. These are all available in the AUR for arch but same thing can be done with any distro.


freetype2-ubuntu

fontconfig-ubuntu

libxft-ubuntu

cairo-ubuntu


Then use a custom .font.config in my home directory.

I also use chromium-nogconf, which is just chromium compiled with out gconf, as i fond gconf slows applications down.

the main thing i try to do is stay away from apps that have heavy Gnome Dependencies such as gconf.
This is just a starting point and you can add what ever you like , but this set up should get you going with every day to day usgae on a Computer.


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