
Old-school desktop using Debian Jessie - vu3rdd
http://sohcahtoa.org.uk/osd.html
======
sciurus
I tried to live in this world. I still have the puppet modules I used for it
up on Github [0]. Start from the base system, disable installing recommended
packages, and set up _exactly_ what you want. Marvel at how you can run
`pstree` without the output scrolling and that you know what each process does
and how to configure it.

I'd switched to this setup after getting fed up with bugs that I couldn't get
a handle on troubleshooting. Things like NetworkManager forgetting I had a
wireless network interface until I restarted my GNOME session. After a while
though, constantly tweaking my setup to cope with new needs became tedious. A
"stock" linux distribution and desktop environment may have felt opaque, but
it offered a lot of integrations and polish that I struggled to replicate.

So now I'm running Ubuntu GNOME and sticking with the LTS. Thankfully I
haven't had any serious issues. If I do, I'll roll up my sleeves and try to
learn more about modern linux plumbing instead of running away from it.

[0] [https://github.com/sciurus/personal-
puppet/tree/master/modul...](https://github.com/sciurus/personal-
puppet/tree/master/modules/software/manifests)

------
sdkmvx
I run a similar system, but with OpenBSD. I don't have to fight systemd and
DBus and PulseAudio there. I find OpenBSD to be a much better put together
system in general, at the expense of some desktopy things I'd rather do
without anyway.

------
icebraining
That's how I always install my systems. A few differences in my process:

\- If you will have net access during installation, get the netinst image
instead of downloading 500MB of stuff you won't need.

\- Instead of sprinkling "\--no-install-recommends" on every apt command, you
can configure it as the default:
[http://superuser.com/a/615583/93821](http://superuser.com/a/615583/93821)

~~~
vu3rdd
Yes, I follow that process too. I almost always use netinst. There is also a
mini iso.

------
kev009
Seeing the systemd removal steps, it seems like a lot of what has been said
about systemd being 'optional' is becoming less and less true. It's spreading
tentacles rapidly in the core. If systemd is the direction they (Debian
majority) want to go, then go for it, but they falsely placated opposition to
get it in and it's not surprising to see the departure of developers. I've
been left with a bad taste and am jumping off the Linux train for good.

~~~
digi_owl
Devs on both sides of the issue has left, largely because politics went before
engineering.

Then again, systemd seems like a very political project...

------
walterbell
One way to manage the boundary between "minimal" and "supported" is to use a
VM-based system like Qubes.

You can simultaneously occupy multiple "timelines", e.g. hand-built Linux from
scratch, Ubuntu LTS, bleeding-edge Debian, and even Windows -- each in an
isolated VM.

------
jackalope
"mpg123 has no controls..."

It does with the -C option:

    
    
        -C, --control
            Enable  terminal control keys. By default use 's' or the space bar to
            stop/restart (pause, unpause) playback, 'f' to jump forward to the next
            song, 'b' to jump back to the beginning of the song, ',' to rewind, '.'
            to fast forward, and  'q'  to quit.  Type 'h' for a full list of
            available controls.
    

It's actually a very competent player, even able to play streams. Mplayer and
cmus are also very good for audio playback in a minimalist environment.

------
abalashov
That's what passes for "old school" these days? No systemd, dBus or an all-
encompassing GNOME Politburo? This is my normal Linux installation process. I
shudder to think what the "new school" looks like.

I was expecting kernel 2.0.30, libc5, ext2, ipfwadm, FVWM 1.0 (not that FVWM2
stuff) or CDE.

------
VLM
xterm? urxvt scrolls so fast its invisible.

Also xmonad beats icewm.

I haven't used a USB stick for anything other than OS installs in many
years... ditto playing music on a desktop, a thing of the past.

I do need my emacs. (edited to add, and my vnc and rdesktop clients to access
other machines)

And I personally chromium although I can respect the firefox choice.

When I read desktop I thought physical desktop as opposed to laptop, but
laptop users need wifi... I've personally found that setting up a wifi gui is
harder than just manually editing simple and straightforward config files.

[https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse#WPA-
PSK_and_WPA2-PSK](https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse#WPA-PSK_and_WPA2-PSK)

You probably only set up one wifi network, unless you're one of those coffee
shop people.

~~~
mercurial
> I've personally found that setting up a wifi gui is harder than just
> manually editing simple and straightforward config files.

Wicd-curses is very usable.

~~~
icebraining
I like the idea of wicd, but it has given me a lot of pain when in less-than-
stable WiFi environments. It also doesn't (or didn't, at least) support
multiple simultaneous connections, like wired + wireless, which are
occasionally useful.

------
bitbckt
I guess I'm "old-school". Get off my lawn.

------
leephillips
I wound up with something resembling this installation by going in reverse. I
installed Ubuntu, confirmed that all my hardware was working, including
suspend, volume buttons, etc (Thinkpads) and then started uninstalling or
disabling things, leaving me with no desktop environment, dwm, and a very
responsive experience on old hardware.

------
agumonkey
Similar philosophy, except archlinux, systemd, wmii (no destkop), no office
suite. Emacs, Chromium, mpv, moc, transmission.

------
spain
"How to make Debian sorta more like Slackware?"

I just thought it was funny how much the end result resembled the default
Slackware install. Also for power management I'd recommend tlp[0] over laptop-
mode-tools.

[0] [http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/tlp.html](http://linrunner.de/en/tlp/tlp.html)

------
sklogic
Old-school is not particularly old. I was expecting something like CDE.

------
guylhem
I run a similar setup, on a X60, with more "modern" adaptations :

\- systemd allows me to have insanely fast boot, and perfect control on what
get started at boot. Debian likes to start everything and the kitchensync by
default, after you installed it. My systemd is compiled with a non-standard
path so only the .services I put there get run.

\- coreboot replaces the bios, likewise for the added freedom, the
hackability, and the speed gains. At the moment I can boot to a command line
in less than 5 seconds (because of grub and stuff), but I want to optimize
that further (the kernel and systemd each take less than 1 second, coreboot a
bit over their total - 3s is feasible now by removing grub menus, but I'd like
less than 2s so I guess I'll have to dig into things :-)

\- xorg is nice because it's like having an almost infinite number of VTs.
Yeah I know screen and the likes, but there're other nice things you get from
X, like the ability to display many different fonts, a very large unicode
range, graphs, etc.

\- lxde is quite minimal and non intrusive, yet you get modern things like
default application, .desktop file to start programs, etc.

\- for all my office needs, I use Microsoft Office in wine. Runs very fast,
fully unicode aware. That's cool because I'm using a xmodmap for mathematical
greek letters in the 3rd level, it all works!!

¬∞ / ¹≈ / ²≠ / ³∇ / ⁴∀ / ⁵∪ / ⁶∩ / ⁷∈ / ⁸⊂ / ⁹≽ / ⁰≿ / ⁻ ⃗ / ⁺±

θΘ / ωΩ / ɛƐ / ρϱ / ꚍꚌ / ψΨ / υϒ / ι∫ / ϖϵ / πΠ / ̂ ̈ / ̃ ̧ / ̊ ̀

α∂ / σΣ / δΔ / φΦ / ɣΓ / ηϘ / ϕϑ / 𝟀κ / λΛ / ̅ ́ / ̆ ̇

ζϟ / ξΞ / ςϚ / √⊥ / βϐ / νͲ / μϡ / ≤≺ / ≥≻ / / ⃝

I fully agree that starting from a minimal debian install is the way to go to
avoid too much cruft. There are many things I'm glad I'm not using, such as
NetworkManager and the likes (hopefully to be superseded by systemd some day)
but my setup is generally modern enough to do everything I need, while fast
enough even on 2006-era hardware, and old-school enough as in "if there's a
problem, I can pinpoint where it comes from and fix it"

It even replaced a very-recent macbook as my default computer.

There're many gains from using "modern stuff". I'd have killed to get
something as good as systemd and the current support of wine in the early
2000.

My take is to take the best free software has to offer, whether it's old or
new, to match your needs.

EDIT: I boot my laptop whenever I want to use it, because a few seconds is a
rounding error, and this saves more power than software suspend. I do suspend
when I take a short break. Congrats on the fast boot time without systemd, but
it's not the easiest way :-) My systemd starts a minimal debian testing in 700
ms. The kernel takes a bit above that.

~~~
gaius
How often do you boot?

I'm of the old-skool Unix generation when 500 day uptime on a SPARC or similar
was normal and even 1000 day wasn't considered particularly impressive. And we
never worried about what was or wasn't started at boot, cos that was easy.

~~~
vidarh
That's great for my home server, which only gets rebooted when something goes
wrong and/or I swap hardware.

But I've yet to experience those kind of uptimes for my laptop - either I
forget to plug the charger in, or I've dropped it, or it's decided to shut
down because "someone" in my house decided that covering the went with a
blanket was a good idea.

It just lives a much harsher life, and as a result boot times matter because
these things have a way of always happening when I urgently need to do
something.

------
sprash
Also interesting the debian package "usbmount": auto mounts plugged in sticks
as "/media/usb"

------
listic
Is Debian Jessie part relevant? I could do it on Wheezy or Ubuntu?

~~~
vacri
The first step is 'replace systemd with sysvinit', so there is some relevance.

