Favorites

My favorite distribution is a hybrid development starting with the Openbox Windows Manager. I am biased towards the Openbox Window Manager, partially because of familiarity, but also because of the Openbox reliabilty, stability, lightness and substance. I favor cutting edge applications, but only if they do something (have real substance) and are stable. Finally, I favor starting with a distribution that has a friendly, active and sensible forum; especially attractive is a forum in which some of the distribution's developers are active. Also, rolling distributions that can be upgraded regularly over long periods of time are preferable.

With this criteria in mind, my favorite distribution on which to base my personal system is Sparky Linux. I generally start with Sparky Linux Base-Openbox, although Sparky Linux Lxde is equally satisfactory and probably better for a beginner. Sparky is based on Debian-testing with a little bit of well proven Debian-unstable included. There appears to be several smart people involved in the development of Sparky which is a real plus. Distributions developed by a single person are dangerous in the long term because their continuance depends upon only one person, who can quit and thus end the project at any time. Sparky Linux has the advantage for the end-user of not being so concerned about foundation philosophy, but rather being more directed to having applications and tools that really work well. In other words, they do not overly restrict their end product because of weight, type or philosophy. Based upon Testing with a smidgeon of compatible Sid, Sparky has also been very stable when distro upgrades come along. My first attempts with other pure Sid based distributions blew up in distro upgrades, which were probably my fault, but still a nuisance.

One of the beauties of Debian-based distros is that any of them can be morphed into any other one, or some unique hybred cross. It seems that regardless of which distribution that I initially install, it ends up looking and operating the same way. After that, what happens is just a matter of which sources are activated in the sources list.

For a person who wants a system that requires little configuration and changing from the beginning installation, Sparky Linux LXDE is probably the best choice. Especially noteworthy is that wine and playonlinux are installed, even in the 64-bit edition, which means wine applications can be easily installed and used. Playonlinux has a GUI-tool that actually does the installation of some wine apps. Synaptic-Package-Manager is present in all of these distros, so installing or removing Linux apps reduces to mastering Synaptic. Once this is done, which Linux apps are installed at start-up is of little importance. It has been my experience that getting wireless, audio, java and wine working are the big initial steps in getting a sound, working Linux distribution.

In general, applications are a matter of personal preferences. Therefore, I generally install Sparky Linux Base, which has a minimal set of applications, and proceed from there to achieve my morphed LXDE-Openbox operating system. Here is my installation recipe:

• Install Sparky Linux Base, and do
     sudo apt-get update,    sudo apt-get dist-upgrade,    sudo apt-get autoremove .
• Download and run boxinfo to get a list of all the items in the initial install.
• Install my favorite text editors, medit [6266KB] and geany [11,000KB]:
     sudo apt-get install geany medit .
  
• Create /usr/share/applications/medit-root.desktop by opening medit.desktop:
     sudo medit /usr/share/applications/medit.desktop
  and changing the exec to exec=gksudo medit %F, and then saving it as /usr/share/applications/medit-root.desktop. This gives me a tool to open root text files by just right clicking them and choosing medit-root to open with.
• Use medit-root to create geany-root.desktop and pcmanfm-root.desktop in /usr/applications just as medit-root was created.
• Used medit-root (or geany-root) to edit leafpad.desktop, adding the line NoDisplay=true, or remove leafpad, which also removes Sparky-aptus and Sparky-tray, so act accordingly.
• There are several simple lightweight tools that should be in every Linux distribution, but are not. Sparky-Openbox-Base is no exception:
     sudo apt-get install apt-xapian-index grabc inxi nfs-common ntp openbox-menu udisks wavemon xdotool ,
  which will add 7852 KB, most of which is for udisks [3139KB], which is not needed if you don't use the Devices Submenu (See Openbox Menu Guide for more information.).
• I like fbpanel [548KB], which is about the same size as tint2 [509KB]. Fbpanel has a nice clean menu and colorful appearance, is easy to configure and has the rather unique genmon plugin. You can replace the average Conky with an fbpanel with much less resource useage and the same information. So:
      sudo apt-get install fbpanel     sudo apt-get remove --purge tint2 .
  Try launching fbpanel by putting fbpanel in run or lxterminal. At worst, this will create a configuration file, ~/.config/fbpanel/default. Open this file and delete or inactivate (use "#") the volume plugin. This will eliminate the panel launch problem. Replace tint2 with fbpanel in ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh . While you have ~/.config/fbpanel/default open you might as well edit it to create the configuration that you like. In particular, the net plugin interface will have to be configured to your net situation, which can be found by putting inxi -F into the terminal. In my case, interface = wlan0. If no audio volume control appears in the tray, install pasystray (see 12. below), or put a launcher on the panel for pavucontrol or veromix.
• To install Oracle-java, much more useful than iced-tea-openjdk, follow the instructions in LXDE-OPENBOX Guide - Java.
• To install wine [442 MB] in a 64-bit Sparky system:
     sudo apt-get install wine .
  To configure wine, put the following in the terminal:
      wine path-to-app.exe ,
  which will launch an automatic configuring tool. Simply answer yes to all the ensuing questions. For an appropriate test app, I use PhotoFiltre [12.5 MiB], which I always install anyway. PhotFiltre is a super image editor with a lot of editing tools designed for ease of use. It is a good substitute for Gimp, the primary Linux image editor, and Windows Photoshop, which are designed for professional photographers and constitute overkill for most of us. Download the portable English version of PhotoFiltre as a .zip file (not the version for Linux) and simply extract it to ~/bin, which you should create beforehand if not already present. Then, the launcher should be something like:
     wine ~/bin/PhotoFiltre/PhotoFiltrePortable.exe .
  If there is an issue with freetype fonts, then precede this step with
     sudo apt-get install libpng12-0:i386 libfreetype6:i386.
  You may have to create /usr/share/applications/wine.desktop so that a wine launcher appears on menus. See LXDE-OPENBOX Guide - Wine for details. After using wine a few times, a collection of wine app.desktop files, often duplicated, will appear in ~/.local/share/applications. These control what apps are offered when right-clicking a file to choose a launcher. Delete the duplicates and all those that you do not want to see when right clicking.
• Install the relatively heavy apps dear to me:
     sudo apt-get install camorama   sudo apt-get install filezilla   sudo apt-get install handbrake   sudo apt-get install vlc .
  Download and install the latest 64-bit Debian file for Slimjet web browser. Sizes (approximately): camorama [33MB], filezilla [37MB], handbrake [23MB], vlc [78MB], slimjet [53MB] . Install skype.
• Install the small apps [42MB] dear to me:
     sudo apt-get install arandr asunder catfish gaiksaurus gdebi gparted gprename lxappearance mirage pasystray parcellite pavucontrol scrot simple-scan streamripper wicd xarchiver xbacklight xcursor-themes xfburn xfce4-power-manager xournal xscreensaver-data-extra .
  
• Copy the wine and java apps [220MB] dear to me to ~/bin from my stock directory kept on an outside drive. Add their launchers to the Root Menu or the appropriate sub-menu, and that's all that is needed to install them. (This is already done for me - see 14. below.) For those that I want entered on the fbpanel menu or lxde menu, which is one of my submenus, I put a .desktop file in /usr/share/applications/ and an icon in /usr/share/icons/. These come from a stock set that I keep on an external drive.
• Replace the ~/.config/openbox directory with my stock one, which contains menu.xml (root menu), rc.xml and all my submenus constructed and configured the way I like. See Openbox Menu for a discussion on building menus. Do the same for ~/.conkyrc .
• I build a ~/wallpaper directory and direct nitrogen to point to it.
• Finally, and this is mostly for my own personal future reference, I remove the apps that I don't use or need:
     sudo apt-get remove --purge ftp gpicview iceweasel lxmusic mc mc-data mutt qpdf rtorrent volumeicon-alsa xchat xchat-common

Two image showing Sparky Linux Base with an fbpanel, with the fbpanel menu and my Openbox Root Menu open in the first one, are below.

The image below is a desktop with minimal fbpanel and Conky and an Openbox Dock with the wmdrawer menu open and the tooltip on Xournal. Just putting the tooltip on the penguin icon (no clicking required) launches the menu, moving the tooltip to a menu icon displays the app name associated with that icon and then left-clicking the app icon instantly launches the app.

An image of a desktop with minimal dock, expanded Conky to pick up computer processes and a fbpanel on the bottom, with everything concentrated on the right edge follows.

The net space loss from my additions and removals to the default Sparky Base installation is about 1 GB. The same recipe can be used when starting with Sparky LXDE with less app installing. Especially nice is Wine is already installed and needs only to be configured. Also, Open-jdk-iced-tea Java is installed, and, if it works for you, the need to install Oracle Java is removed.