[/Thread] Barebones instalation of XFCE

[qyron]

On a separate thread I was started on the way of installing a WM on a machine from scratch.

That project is on hold but for other reasons I've come to the point where I would prefer trying to do a similar installation using just the XFCE window manager, instead of the full desktop standard installation and then build up.

I've already tried installing the XFWM, along with a session manager, but I ended with a non responsive system, that stops at the command line. I've already made some research on the web but I can only pull up standard installation routines, through meta-packages. The machine to be installed is the same, so resources are at premium, hence the need for doing a minimal install. The end result I am looking for is basically a glorified type writer, with a music player. I'm not even considering web surfing; FF takes a lot of time to open even in Live Mode for testing purposes.


Can someone share some knowledge on this process?

[Danielsan]

I believe you are missing the point, in order to work Xfce4 needs some requirements so the basic way to install xfce without a minimal set of components is installing it with a command like: # apt install xfce --no-install-recommends. Anyway installing a reduced version of a DE doesn't make any sense, for this purpose there are plenty of windows manager that are the lighter way to have a desktop interface without having a full desktop envinroment.

https://wiki.debian.org/WindowManager

[arochester]

If you want a lightweight Desktop Environment rather than a Windows Manager Xfce is perhaps not the best.

If you look at the graphic here: https://l3net.wordpress.com/2013/03/17/ ... -desktops/
you will see that the lightest Desktop Environments are Enlightenment and then LXDE.

Follow most of the the instructions here: https://www.maketecheasier.com/build-li ... nd-laptop/
to install LXDE instead.

DO NOT install LXDE. It is a large metapackage and will install most cruft.
You could install instead lxde-core. It is a small metapackage and will install less cruft.
OR you could install neither metapackage and just the packages you need. Look here https://packages.debian.org/stretch/lxde-core
and decide what you want. Dep=dependancy. Rec=recommended/

What kind of music player do you want? One to play your own files? The very light CLI applications are OK and work well - cmus and moc.

If you want a very simple "typewriter" type work processor try Focuswriter from Repository. Clue - move your cursor to the top of the screen for the menu.

FF takes a lot of time to open even in Live Mode

A LiveCD runs S-L-O-W-E-R than an install!

[qyron]

I want to use XFWM as my standard WM because during my experiments with OpenBox I always ended up falling towards application on the XFCE stack (Thunar being one) and because I need to make the machine minimally usable for another less exploring-prone user.

While I'm available to get down to the dirty business and actually learn how to use a new environment, this other user isn't, so I need to make a compromise. So, if I could configure a basic XFWM machine and then add on top of the WM whatever software I also require, that would be excellent. Taskbar I intended on using tint2 and loading conky to manage most common systemtray user information.

The machine I have to work on is an outdated EeePC model. The CPU is strapped for power to handle more demanding software. What I need from this setup is a word processor (preferably LibreOffice), a music player (considering Quod Libet, due to its companion tag editor) and, if possible, a video player (VLC, most likely), a PDF reader. Web surfing is on the borderline, as I suspect that most sites won't load properly or take huge amounts of time to do so.

[Danielsan]

You can use or grab the setup of Bunselab (ex #!Crunchbang) to find a very well done openbox setup.

https://www.bunsenlabs.org/