MANJARO LINUX

LXDE-OPENBOX Guide
Beginner's Guide
After Installing Openbox
Debian LXDE
Wallpaper Changer
Manjaro Linux
Arachnophilia HTML
Araneae HTML Editor
Fbpanel
FastStone Image Editor
Image Magick
MyStuff Menu
Openbox Menu
Openbox Dock
Openbox Dynamical Menu
Openbox Themes
PhotoFiltre Editor
Poor Mans Radio Player
Wbar Dock

I recently decided to try a non-Debian based distro, in particular, something based on Archlinux. I really did not have the time or desire to re-invent the wheel, so I had no real desire to try Archlinux itself. So I checked out what was available and settled on Manjaro, which has received a lot of attention lately and which comes with the basic stuff already set-up. So I downloaded and installed the Openbox version after first looking at the lxqt-version. My few flirtations with lxqt, before with Siduction, and now reviewing Manjaro-lxqt, both left me cold. If lxqt is really the wave of the future, then I think my surfing days have ended.

The download went well and wireless worked out of the box. With two exceptions, there was little that was different from the Debian-based Openbox distributions that I usually use. The first noteable difference was a tool that presented itself at the end of the main installation. This tool allowed the installer to choose from a set of applications in each of the 5 main Linux application categories. There were 4 to 10 applications offered in each category. This was a welcome addition because it reduced the normally long task of removing, installing and configuring apps to finally get what I like. For Debian-based distros, I have this down to a science, but here I was on new terrain, which I quickly discovered. The second noteable difference had real substance: no synaptic, apt-get or aptitude!

A little reading with the help of Google got me the answer. Things were not that difference. There were still app repositories, to be exact, 5 for Manjaro. They were roughly characterized by somebodies idea of the "stability" of the apps they contained, so there was the familiar: stable, testing and unstable (cutting edge), although they were named something else. Instead of Synaptic, there was Pamac and Octopi, instead of apt-get and aptitude, there were pacman and yaourt (French for "yogurt"). Terminal nomenclature for standard operations was as follows:

sudo pacman -Syu reloads and synchronizes all packages in all the repositories, updates,
sudo pacman -S geany installs geany,
sudo pacman -R geany removes geany,
sudo pacman -Rs geany removes geany and its dependents,
sudo pacman -Rns geany removes geany, dependents and configuration files,
sudo pacman -Qdt lists orphans,
sudo pacman -Qtdq cleans (removes orphans),
sudo pacman -Rns $(pacman -Qtdq) removes orphans and their configuration files.
sudo pacman-mirrors -g updates all mirrors,
sudo pacman-mirrors -g -b stable updates only mirrors with stable packages,
sudo pacman-mirrors -g -b testing updates only mirrors with testing packages,
sudo pacman-mirrors -g -b unstable updates only mirrors with unstable packages,

Pamac and Octopi are front-ends (GUI's) for pacman. Like Synaptic Package Manager in Debian they give information about applications and make changes (installing and removing) by pointing and clicking. All-told, there seemed to me to be an over-abundance of duplication, but I suppose there is no harm in repetition as long as the users can see it for what it is.

I set-out to test the system by asking it to install Oracle Java, a necessity on my systems and sometimes elusive to install on a Linux operating system. I did searches for various combinations of oracle-java, oraclejdk, jdk, etc using both Octopi and Pamac. Octopi presented nothing until I highlited "Yaourt" in the right column. Then I got the 6 choices shown in the picture on the left. A similar result occurred when I used Pamac and checked the box labeled "Search in AUR". Further reading informed me that "AUR" stood for "Arch User Repository", and it contains over 44,000 packages and is moderated by the collective. So this is where the interesting stuff was, and the key to accessing it was yaourt (or Octopi or Pamac).

I put

yaourt oraclejdk

into the terminal and got the image shown on the left-middle, which showed the same 6 choices as already mentioned, with number 6 clearly being the latest model. So I entered "6" where it asked for package number to install and pressed enter. The installation went without a hitch, although it was interrupted with questions, many more times than an equivalent procedure in Debian would produce. I suppose this is part of the Arch-linux "hands-on" approach. I simply took the standard beginner approach by always answering "no" to changes (edits) and "yes" to continuing.

After the installation completed, both Pamac and Octopi then indicated Oracle Java was installed. But there were no menu entries, no .desktop files, no indications where the execs were, etc. With a Debian-based system, procedures such as the one described in the LXDE-OPENBOX Guide produce .desktop files which then create menu entries, and life is easy. However, from my experience there, I quickly found here the relevant files in /usr/lib/jvm/oraclejdk8-64/bin/. In /usr/share/applications/, I created the following 3 files:

controlpanel.desktop,
java.desktop,
javaws.desktop.

I used the following 3 names and execs:

Name=Oracle Java 8 Plugin Control Panel
Exec=/usr/lib/jvm/oraclejdk8-64/bin/ControlPanel,

Name=Oracle Java 8 Runtime
Exec=/usr/lib/jvm/oraclejdk8-64/bin/java -jar %f,

Name=Oracle Java 8 Web Start
Exec=/usr/lib/jvm/oraclejdk8-64/bin/javaws %u,

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Oracle Java 7 Plugin Control Panel
Comment=Oracle Java 7 Plugin Control Panel
Exec=/usr/lib/jvm/oraclejdk8-64/bin/ControlPanel
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Icon=/usr/share/icons/java.png
Categories=Settings;

which generally covers all my java needs. The names are indicative of the service provided. The box on the right is a complete copy of controlpanel.desktop.

Installing Wine and Skype and my other favorite Linux apps, and uninstalling the undesired stock apps proceeded using Pamac, pacman or yaourt without any problems. Because of the app-choice tool in the initial installation I had little to remove: file-roller, gnome-screenshot, tint2. I installed emendo, ispell, lxpanel, medit, mirage, openbox-menu, pavucontrol, pulseaudio, qupzilla, scrot, udisks, xournal, xscreensaver and my usual favorite Wine and Java applications.

I used the Manjaro Conky image to expand the Manjaro Conky to produce the last picture on the left. To summarize, Manjaro was a good experience, perhaps the easiest Openbox Distribution that I have set-up to date. Performance was smooth, reliable for the short time that I used it, and very fast (responsive).