The Linux Thread - The Autist's OS of Choice

[The Anarki Main]

hey what is the most basic bitch window manager I can install on my server, just for the few times i just plug a monitor to it directly to launch a web browser for it's web interfaces? something that won't mess with power and networking configurations when it's installed?

Openbox

 

[Caesar]

...is there a reason though that you're using the server itself for the web UIs? You could even Chuck tailscale or whatever on the server and access the web UIs from any device with a browser from any network without having to open ports and crap.

If they're all web UIs, it seems like it'd take longer and be way more hassle to get the monitor going each time. TBH, even clicking the power switch is probably more effort once the URL is in your history.

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

How many other Gentoo users are on the Farms here? I know it's a meme, but surely some of you are?

There's quite of a few of us here (myself included). Granted I have embedded and SOC stuff so crossdev actually kinda matters for me.

 

[Betonhaus]

...is there a reason though that you're using the server itself for the web UIs? You could even Chuck tailscale or whatever on the server and access the web UIs from any device with a browser from any network without having to open ports and crap.

If they're all web UIs, it seems like it'd take longer and be way more hassle to get the monitor going each time. TBH, even clicking the power switch is probably more effort once the URL is in your history.

because my next task involves work that may take down the networking stack if i make a mistake. up to this point I've been doing everything through ssh and the web interfaces remotely.

granted, for a single task I could just use the cli to reverse any breaking changes but it will be trickier

 

[Caesar]

because my next task involves work that may take down the networking stack if i make a mistake. up to this point I've been doing everything through ssh and the web interfaces remotely

I didn't think you were that dumb or inefficent but I had to ask lol

 

[Darkholme's Dungeon]

I didn't think you were that dumb or inefficent but I had to ask lol

Wouldn't be linux otherwise.

 

[TheDataHorder]

hey what is the most basic bitch window manager I can install on my server, just for the few times i just plug a monitor to it directly to launch a web browser for it's web interfaces? something that won't mess with power and networking configurations when it's installed?

a custom xinitrc config that launches firefox and nothing else could be a solution.

 #/etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc or ~/.xinitrc
exec /usr/bin/firefox #or wherever your Firefox is located

i haven't fucked around with x like this in a while, but from memory it'll start a fullscreen Firefox instance that'll drop back to a cli when closed.
personally i also have an accessible gui via remote desktop (via freerdp) but if something goes wrong, i drop back to a cli to cut out anything that could be causing issues.
up to you though.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

hey what is the most basic bitch window manager I can install on my server, just for the few times i just plug a monitor to it directly to launch a web browser for it's web interfaces? something that won't mess with power and networking configurations when it's installed?

Most minimal window managers won't do anything with your power or networking configuration.

If you want floating. Openbox. If you want tiling and you want an easy config i3. If you can deal with setting up something with a c header file for the config dwm is pretty minimal

 

[Belisarius Cawl]

hey what is the most basic bitch window manager I can install on my server, just for the few times i just plug a monitor to it directly to launch a web browser for it's web interfaces? something that won't mess with power and networking configurations when it's installed?

The earlier recommendations seem pretty solid. IceWM is still another option out there that is surprisingly still being developed actively. WindowMaker was also brought up not too long ago in this section of the forums, a real blast from the past for me and also actively developed. I just wanted to add that you can run your server "headless" without any need of physically showing up and plugging in a monitor through SSH X11 forwarding or, (AFAIK) better, VNC. I've messed with VNC on a virtual private server not because I really needed to but just to see whether I could. The only thing missing was sound but it looks like you don't need that. Might save you some gas money or whatever to use either of those methods. The documentation offered by Digital Ocean should generalize well to your specific use case.

 

[Another Char Clone]

The systemd thing. Openrc is the most usable of the non systemd inits I have tried so far. The one area I need to get worked around though, is getting proper screen locking worked out for my window managers with slock or i3lock. For systemd on arch I already got everything figured out for how to set things up to have the lock execute properly when the system is suspending or the lid is closed. Tbh I just need to sit down and work on it until I know exactly where it's failing. I usually have other things that are more interesting, or I would rather do than fix it.

The only big feature I don't see in openrc is the support for user mode services, services that are started and run as the logged in user. There is sys-apps/openrc-navi, a fork that does it. The main difficulty is trying to start services that interact with DBUS and X11 DISPLAY, since those variables don't really propagate back to openrc if you start the GUI with startx like me instead of using a display manager like XDM.
I have resorted to using s6 to plug into xinitrc to autolaunch what I need instead.
There's also some confusion (on my end) and consideration on how services should be started and stopped:

• Once per user login?
• Once per seat/session?
• Only once during the initial login?
• What about cross login/session interactions?
• How do you track and shutdown services across logins?

 

[Betonhaus]

anyone familliar with dockge? is it worth it over yacht if i'm still using docker compose for everything?

 

[Penne Dreadful]

Building my future Gentoo workstation from Debian. Systemd has an assist here, but only because I'm using systemd-nspawn to containerize the build. Finished the Chromium build last night, which required me hacking /var out from underneath it at runtime because Chromium wants 25GB to build. Playing around with USE flags from qemu at the moment. Portage sure makes my DWM install feel right at home. savedconfig plays along so nice.

How many other Gentoo users are on the Farms here? I know it's a meme, but surely some of you are?

Been on Gentoo for about a decade at this point. It just works.

 

[prollyanotherlurker]

The only big feature I don't see in openrc is the support for user mode services, services that are started and run as the logged in user. There is sys-apps/openrc-navi, a fork that does it. The main difficulty is trying to start services that interact with DBUS and X11 DISPLAY, since those variables don't really propagate back to openrc if you start the GUI with startx like me instead of using a display manager like XDM.
I have resorted to using s6 to plug into xinitrc to autolaunch what I need instead.
There's also some confusion (on my end) and consideration on how services should be started and stopped:

• Once per user login?
• Once per seat/session?
• Only once during the initial login?
• What about cross login/session interactions?
• How do you track and shutdown services across logins?

There are probably some ways around that. I'm definitely no openrc expert at this point so I couldn't say anything definitively on how to do it the best way.

I always use dbus-run-session dwm (or whatever window manager) in the xinitrc. Or dbus-exec exit-with-session then the window manager. Depending on what you want.

Then sometimes It makes sense to set variables in the xinitrc. Like I was having an issue on something not using the right gtk theme until I added that into the xinit. And finally it was setting it properly.

Tbh I feel like even if I wasn't constantly trying new things on Linux, there would still be so much to learn just sticking with a single os, and a single window manager, and just spending time getting to the point where I know exactly how to set everything needed for every part of my system.

I also totally get why some people don't want to bother learning about any of it and just want ubuntu or Linux mint with a full desktop environment so they never have to think about any of this stuff.

 

[ZMOT]

to be even fairer, it's not like he knew what each package does, dude has mained windows for years (like many).
I'm quite sure we've all done something like that at some point, i accidentally deleted some librarys on my server when i was setting it up, so i had to reinstall from scratch.
while it's retarded, everybody does something really fuckin stupid when learning, failure is the best teacher.

not really an excuse, unless the argument is "windows says a lot of shit, just don't listen".

as for fucking up, in my experience it's much easier to fix a linux install compared to trying to unfuck windows, if you even can. like up until recently I had one on a faulty harddisk to the point it crashed windows. if you missed the bluescreen which didn't tell you anything, there was literally nothing in the event log (just that the restart wasn't planned, very helpful). this means windows doesn't even tell you when it gets fucked or why. good luck diagnosing that, let alone fix it.

 

[Betonhaus]

not really an excuse, unless the argument is "windows says a lot of shit, just don't listen".

as for fucking up, in my experience it's much easier to fix a linux install compared to trying to unfuck windows, if you even can. like up until recently I had one on a faulty harddisk to the point it crashed windows. if you missed the bluescreen which didn't tell you anything, there was literally nothing in the event log (just that the restart wasn't planned, very helpful). this means windows doesn't even tell you when it gets fucked or why. good luck diagnosing that, let alone fix it.

To be fair, if the hard drive failed it wouldn't be able to write logs anyways

 

[jeff7989]

Wanna see some progress? Tell me which version of "open with" is new. Hint, it doesn't have category view and just vomits list of all installed programs.

 

[Kosher Dill]

What's the best way to have a script run at startup? (or login, don't care which)

I'm fooling around with running Pipewire without SysTemD and it works fine except you need to run all the daemon processes manually, because it's only packaged with a SysTemD .service file and nothing else.

I've seen various suggestions like:
- Cron job
- .profile
- .bash-login (and all the million other "special" shell files)
- XDG autostart

Ideally it should be something independent of what DE, WM, and shell you happen to use. Any suggestions?

 

[Susanna]

What's the best way to have a script run at startup? (or login, don't care which)

I'm fooling around with running Pipewire without SysTemD and it works fine except you need to run all the daemon processes manually, because it's only packaged with a SysTemD .service file and nothing else.

I've seen various suggestions like:
- Cron job
- .profile
- .bash-login (and all the million other "special" shell files)
- XDG autostart

Ideally it should be something independent of what DE, WM, and shell you happen to use. Any suggestions?

It needs to run as a user service. Systemd makes this very easy, but I don’t see why you couldn’t put it as an XDG autostart.

 

[TheDataHorder]

-snip-

at least windows has systems in place to try and fix shit (i.e chkdsk). Linux has nothing. something breaks? tough shit, go fix it yourself.
even user friendly distros don't have this (despite being marketed and recommended to non-techie users), which in my eyes is a failure.
windows is far from perfect, but at least it can try to fix itself. get off your elitist high horse for fucks sake.

 

[Susanna]

at least windows has systems in place to try and fix shit (i.e chkdsk). Linux has nothing. something breaks? tough shit, go fix it yourself.

fsck