Linux Desktop Setup

Everyone here scoring serious brownie points with their advanced setups. And here I am, having used Linux for my personal setup for 15 years, using pre-installed Ubuntu on a practically default GNOME desktop. It&#x27;s wonderful that I can do that and be satisfied with that, without significantly hampering the possibility of advanced setups like the ones here.<p>Despite all the systemd&#x27;s, PulseAudio&#x27;s and whatnot&#x27;s, the customisability is still far greater than it is on OS X and Windows, and we can sometimes fail to appreciate that.

I&#x27;m always kind of amazed at this kind of desktop setups, and I guess they&#x27;re not suitable for lots of people for the simple reason that most users have a &quot;consumer&quot; relationship with computers and not a &quot;producer&quot; one.<p>My biggest question here for people with this kind of text setup would be: don&#x27;t you surf the web? Do you use then lynx or another text web browser? What about services and platforms that are designed from scratch with images and video as a prominent part of that UI? (Twitter, Facebook, Amazon store for example)?<p>I guess you simply switch to a visual browser and some visual tool to play video (vlc, mplayer), but I&#x27;m curious and I wonder if that text&#x2F;keyboard mode can be satisfying or convincing for users that are used on the traditional visual UI with windows, icons and the mouse paradigm.<p>I see the advantages here (OP mentions some of them), but I wonder if the trade offs for the normal user are to big to work in this kind of setup. Who would you recommend this to?

I&#x27;m a veteran of Linux for 23 years, and been Windows free for 15 years or so. I love Linux. I love my lightweight i3 setup. Neovim, neomutt, weechat, ncmpcpp...

Every time I have to use the slow windows computers at the college I teach at I wish they would put a lightweight linux on them. I wouldn&#x27;t go full command line but all I&#x27;m doing is a browser and word processing. A chromeos-like experience would be fine. Of course what really kills my work computer is the anti-virus. I f I could just disable that then the computer would be a lot more usable.

The author mentions the loss of vim-like web browser controls when the Pentadactyl extension didn&#x27;t convert over to the webextensions api.<p>You get the vim functionality back with the following extensions:<p>Firefox -- Vim Vixen (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;addons.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;firefox&#x2F;addon&#x2F;vim-vixen&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;addons.mozilla.org&#x2F;en-US&#x2F;firefox&#x2F;addon&#x2F;vim-vixen&#x2F;</a>)<p>Chrome -- cVim (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrome.google.com&#x2F;webstore&#x2F;detail&#x2F;cvim&#x2F;ihlenndgcmojhcghmfjfneahoeklbjjh" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;chrome.google.com&#x2F;webstore&#x2F;detail&#x2F;cvim&#x2F;ihlenndgcmojh...</a>)

Once upon a time I ran a very minimal setup with using awesome. Tiling windows were great but I found I missed some things that Gnome had done for me. So I&#x27;m back on Gnome but replaced Metacity with XMonad, which was a surprisingly easy change. That was back in 2012. Since then there&#x27;s a lot of churn in Ubuntu with first Unity then Gnome 3. But it hasn&#x27;t taken that much work to keep everything trucking along, especially thanks to gekkio&#x27;s PPA that now does most of the work in getting xmonad integrated with Gnome.<p>I might change one or two things every year, moving from gnome terminal to kitty recently, for instance, but I&#x27;m happy with my setup and it&#x27;s served me well.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;aclough&#x2F;dotfiles" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;github.com&#x2F;aclough&#x2F;dotfiles</a>

It&#x27;s been about 10 years since I used linux on the desktop. I notice this post on the front page and think: &quot;Great! Let&#x27;s have a look at what a modern linux desktop can look like..&quot;<p>Oh.. It looks exactly like running a high resolution VGA-mode console with tmux and no X. :P<p>(Probably very effective though!)

Background: Started using vtwm back in the early 90s, then on linux once it became viable. I now have a muscle memory associated with switching and manipulating virtual desktops to the point that I can&#x27;t even tell you what keys I&#x27;m hitting without thinking about it.<p>Whenever a linux-windows-setup post appears on the HN or reddit front page, I look at it with interest, and then realize that there&#x27;s no way I&#x27;d achieve any productivity gains in a reasonable time.<p>So maybe the moral of the story is: Choose correctly the first time, because you might be using your wm until you become an old guy&#x2F;gal too set in your ways to even think about switching.

I&#x27;ve been using Linux at home without any windows installation for a couple of years, and about 11 years in dual-boot. But my installation resembles a &#x27;windows&#x27; computer much more.<p>I use xfce, but most of my time is spend in a terminal with tmux running for the window configuration. Though, I do have some &#x27;snaps&#x27; installed. (Discord, Spotify). So I&#x27;m not running entirely inside of the terminal.<p>For me, this balance is perfect, for any serious work I can just use the terminal&#x2F;tmux&#x2F;vim setup, and for relaxing I just have spotify, discord, youtube,.. open on a second monitor.<p>As for distro, I&#x27;m running Debian. I&#x27;ve tried a few others (openSUSE, Fedora, Ubuntu, #!) and by far #! was my favourite for some time, but when it discontinued I went for Debian. I should check out BunsenLabs :)

Nice setup.<p>A while back I moved to Arch with Xmonad, dmenu, tmux etc, but for about a year now, my workstation has been the same tools on top of Ubuntu Server. I have an Ansible playbook that I can apply to a fresh install and have almost my whole working environment ready to go - just a few things I haven&#x27;t got around to including&#x2F;automating.<p>The great thing about running this kind of setup is that you need a deeper understanding of Linux to do all the things that you would otherwise rely on a fully-fledged DE to do for you. For me, this has translated into greater fluency on servers, because my daily driver more closely resembles one.

Off topic, but I really enjoyed his post about commuting to work by bike[1]. I was in Krakow, Poland, and getting around by bike was a joy. Unfortunately, here in Ukraine drivers are very aggressive and the infrastructure for biking is just not in place.<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hookrace.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;cycling-to-work&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hookrace.net&#x2F;blog&#x2F;cycling-to-work&#x2F;</a>

I&#x27;m heading in similar direction. also using Arch Linux, VIM. do like i3 &amp; tmux, using suckless terminal (I like terminal in true colors). and tend to favor default settings everywhere unless really really forced. installation takes couple hours (IF you know how) - lasts for eternity.

He has got a nice setup, especially as he&#x27;s able to choose all of his own software. I&#x27;ve been using Linux as a primary OS since the 90&#x27;s but I still need to interact with Windows for work.<p>I used to dual boot my work laptop, which was made easier by Office 365 webapps becoming more usable, but still there were lots of gaps.<p>This summer I got a new work laptop, and just cloned the existing M.2 drive onto a bigger, faster one I purchased. Now I run the work laptop as a VM image through QEMU&#x2F;KVM on top of my regular Debian desktop.<p>This works remarkably well, and has improved my workflow a lot as I now never have to dual boot. Windows even runs faster this way, due to the faster M.2 drive. I&#x27;m not sure how I&#x27;m going to explain it to the IT department if I ever have to get the laptop repaired though.

Slightly offtopic: the author says the background of <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hisham.hm&#x2F;htop&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;hisham.hm&#x2F;htop&#x2F;</a> shows live statistics, that&#x27;s not the case as far as I can tell, just 4 pre-recorded images shown successively.<p>Ontopic: Quite impressive setup. For me it would be too strictly regulated for a comfortable use, though technically I like it. To each it&#x27;s own.

So his Linux desktop setup is basically the Linux terminal setup :)

Similarly: OS: openbsd (was slackware) WM: cwm Mail, file mgt, authoring: emacs Agenda calendaring: orgmode Writing: latex Statistics: R ;-)

How does your setup work with a second monitor that comes and goes?<p>Use case: I have a laptop that I take everywhere for me, but I plug into a second monitor while at work. I also use multiple desktops, and this pattern is sometimes causing windows to jump to another desktop when disconnecting the monitor.

Even though Pentadactyl is not under active development anymore, I&#x27;m pretty happy with Vim-Vixen. It doesn&#x27;t have &quot;caret mode&quot; (from what I can tell) but the switch was very smooth. There are also a lot of other options for vi-browsing for Firefox now.

I&#x27;ve been using Ubuntu on an Thinkpad L460 for about 9 months now full-time. While there is a curve and I&#x27;m always looking for new ways to solve problems. What running Linux has done for me that I didn&#x27;t expect is to make sure all my code plays nice with other projects.<p>Example: I&#x27;ve got processes that make models out of stock data and does backtesting. Even though I use my own custom code for a lot of things, I make sure that in the end if someone wants to dump into numpy&#x2F;pandas they can in just 2 lines.<p>I started out with Linux to use a free hand-me-down laptop and I stayed when it was powerful and I could still make a living coding with it.

I have been using a very similar setup for 12 years now. In the past few months I&#x27;ve been wondering what the Linux experience is like for newcomers and &quot;normal&quot; users. I am considering doing a clean install with a full fledged modern desktop environment such as KDE. I may not be able to manage such an environment, I fear that it&#x27;s too constrained compared to controlling everything that runs on my computer. But I&#x27;d like to try.<p>Has anyone done a switch from very minimal keyboard first lightweight environment to a modern desktop environment? If so, what was it like?

it&#x27;s always surprises me that linux developers still care about ctags...<p>There are more powerful solutions and easier to setup (YouCompleteMe, for example). I was completly sold out when I tried for the fist time a few years ago. I was pretty happy to drop all my ctags&#x27;s related scripts.

&gt; rem -m -b1 -q -cuc12 -w$(($(tput cols)+1)) | sed -e &quot;s&#x2F;\f&#x2F;&#x2F;g&quot; | less<p>Regarding composability:<p>Suppose I want to add the following to that calendar:<p>1. two little emojis (or ASCII art) at the top to scroll among months. Bound to left&#x2F;right arrow keys, and also clickable with mouse. This is a common feature of the calendar widgets I&#x27;ve seen.<p>2. clickable mutable daily content. So if I peruse my calendar and spot an error I can click to select, fix it, then click off it to update it.<p>Can this be achieved only using shell scripting?

My Linux desktop setup at work is latest Ubuntu LTS + Sublime Text + Spotify + Docker. At home I use latest Ubuntu + Sublime Text + Spotify + Steam. If I ever need to reinstall Ubuntu at home or work, I&#x27;l go with the minimal installation option. I&#x27;m guessing that I get to go with the minimal installation when I buy&#x2F;get new laptop, since there is no reason to do a fresh install otherwise.

&gt; I quickly noticed the huge compile time of KDE, which made it a no-go for me<p>Is compile time of the desktop environment really a discriminating factor?

Looks trivial to set up.

This is great fun. I&#x27;m running a very similar setup on a Raspberry Pi Zero W. I can plug it into an HDMI screen to start it up but then I can just run it headless via SSH.The &quot;disk&quot; size is 8Gb and my setup occupies 1.6Gb. 12 hours battery life with a 6000mA&#x2F;Hr battery...

r&#x2F;unixporn can be a good source for ricing inspiration.<p>I can recommend the unaboomer&#x27;s rice vids for a fun evening <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;channel&#x2F;UC2eYFnH61tmytImy1mTYvhA</a>

Ubuntu Mate FTW, hit the tweak control panel and dark theme, done.

Really nice setup. I&#x27;m using ubuntu for a little while and I&#x27;m hooked with the idea of deeply customizing a linux setup to be energy efficient and highly productive.

Cool setup, being able to mold your Linux desktop into what you need is a good thing!<p>I&#x27;m happy on Ubuntu LTS with a couple PPAs for latest mesa and some other applications.<p>More recreational though, gaming through Steam&#x27;s Proton or Lutris, big thanks to Valve for sponsoring wine, dxvk an various other bits and pieces!

I recently saw a thing about xmonad not under any circumstances being ported to wayland, due to its very high level of integration with X. Which to me read as, would require a rewrite rather than there can be no successor. Still, someone does have to actually put in the work.

Try tmux, it works very nice together with vim. I can also recommend polybar.

Mine is tmux&#x2F;vim, and firefox. If someone changed the rest of it, I&#x27;d think something looked a little odd, but I&#x27;m not entirely sure if I&#x27;m using Mint Mate or Mint Cinnamon.

Amazing amount of work spent in constructing an efficient workstation. Makes me wonder what i am i doing with only custom .dotfiles. Clapping my hands

Im surprised there were no changes to the default git diff and merge tools.<p>This is one of the first things i do on a new setup, to chane them to use &quot;meld&quot;.

Great read. Only thing missing was the hardware. I am always interested to see what kind of hardware people are running on.

Wish there were a terminal calendar program that could sync with O365.

linux user&#x2F;dev here since 1995, few years ago went back to windows.. never looked back.. happier now I never have to worry about shit not working and just do my kernel dev in different ways. I&#x27;m no longer interested in tons of desktop config either, more interested in apps that can do more for me, with less of me interacting with the computer to make that happen

this is a terminal, not a desktop. and it&#x27;s really great at being that.

@def- small typo<p>&gt; Since i’s a bitmap font

Amazing article!

awesome setup

That&#x27;s not a desktop setup.<p>It&#x27;s much more complicated than the workstation setup I use at work.<p>A desktop setup is my Xiaomi laptop with Ubuntu 18.04 that I use as media caster or to browse amazon while on the couch.<p>It works flawlessly, much better than the preinstalled Windows 10 in chinese.

In similar vein but vastly different:<p>Firefox + Tridactyl<p>i3 + i3bar + dmenu + rofi<p>dunst<p>Powershell instead of zsh<p>No desktop manager

I use cwm (initially from OpenBSD) and it’s pretty great. Zenburn terminal colors with anti-aliased Consolas as my font.<p>I don’t understand why someone would prefer bitmapped fonts vs ttf. They really hurt my eyes and look god awful...