Arch has never been a minimalist distribution. Splitting packages is rare compared to other distributions, and dependencies aren't made optional whenever possible. Arch has *never* been minimalist... it has nearly all optional features enabled across all the packages. It also uses systemd. Debian use it too, but splits packages more so it's kept around even if it's not that minimal either. Despite its "minimal" install state, Arch is not as minimal as Debian.
Devuan could replace Debian soon and is currently in the list now, but I kinda wanted to have a systemd option for those who might be used to it, and Devuan doesn't seem like it has its shit together. Its stable is still on Jessie, although I guess you can update to any branch you want.
Jacob Adams
and of course, the minimalism rant:
The thing for me when it come to this is that I'm kinda disgusted by the amount of bloat in popular applications and environments.
Let's take the picture viewer as an example. What does it do? That's right! It views pictures! We have also seen picture viewers that can run with very tiny amounts of ram, and do their job pretty well. Why then should we be using a picture viewer that does the exact same practical thing as this minimal picture viewer, but is 10+ times heavier?
I've heard this a lot, the whole "lel just get a newer computer grandpa!" I'd like to let you know that I use minimal setups both on a 2012 Fagbook Pro, and a Xeon workstation being used as a desktop. Both of these have 16+ GB of memory. What you have to understand is that just because we have the resources, doesn't mean it's right to use them to the limit. Why should we artificially use more resources for the same tasks just because we have the capability to do it. That's retarded. At that point we should just rewrite the kernel in electron because clearly anyone who has a problem with that just needs to download more wam.
Another key component for me is that achieving a high level of minimalism often involves switching to a vey terminal-heavy lifestyle. This is good as it provides a universal interface. The interface used to shitpost, consume content, and whatnot, is the same interface that would be used when administering a server, when configuring my NAS, when working with Amazon EC2 installations, etc.
Why do you hate keeping things simple? Why do you want things to use more resources than they have to to complete their function?
TL;DR: /minimalism/ is a very logical way of doing things, and provides a universal interface.
Oliver Martinez
awesome is BLOAT
Isaac Phillips
I wonder why though. I don't have any experience with that one, but from what I've seen it's just like any other tiling WM
Isaac Gonzalez
Minimal, yet complete. I love not having to make sacrifices and jump through hoops for the sake of these threads. Void is so comfy.
Ian Lee
I am thinking of using a low spec spare laptop (thinkpad x100e) with a very minimal system, without X, with everything running from the tty.
I'd like a distro that is extremely low maintenance, probably a rolling release model would be optimal. I imagine sticking to cli only would allow source based distros even on low end hardware. I am also ok with BSD.
I never ran any distros from the OP, except for debian, what would you recommend? I initially thought of going with arch or even freebsd out of familiarity, but you guys seems to be more experienced with very minimal systems, so I thought of asking here.
Levi Parker
Is Gentoo actually a good idea for low-end hardware?
Like, how much time would it take to compile something like Firefox on a Core 2 Duo or i5 G1?
Leo Wright
Maybe Alpine or Void with Musl? Those aren't source-based, but they would be very light, and the more minimal alternative libc wouldn't be too much of a problem, as the Void wiki claims that it's mostly graphical programs that have incompatibilities on Musl. I'm not a BSD person, but I always see BSD people talking about OpenBSD as being the best of the bunch, so maybe try that if you want to go that route.
I wonder if you guys have pasta for other things. Anything is welcome.
Wyatt Johnson
that op is too bloated
Brody Jenkins
Not sure if we can agree on what though, because I would leave aside Debian links, but would add resources on system tweaks.
Benjamin Perez
>would add resources on system tweaks That would be helpful.
Noah Johnson
Ah, so you think Debian should be left out next time? I was thinking the same, but still on the fence about it for the reasons As for system tweaks, what do you have in mind?
Thomas Foster
So I am not the only one discarding Debian. Maybe eliminating the links but naming it in parenthesis after Devuan is a good enough trim. As for tweaks I was thinking on something like the ALSA pasta above. That stuff is low level and one may not even know is possible. Other stuff would be networking, network setup, maybe scripting instead of using bloated applications (I am thinking on a screenshot script I've made). Also we need more recommendations on alternative programs. Something along those lines.
Isaac Sullivan
>no StumpWM
Ethan Rivera
Does VoidLinux have an AUR or some sort to keep packages updated which are not in official repository?
Jackson Young
>GNU >Minimalism >on same line
Tyler Richardson
>FFFFFFFFFF is this why people say Arch installation takes hours?
Christian Robinson
not really. It's mostly people who are very inexperienced on the command line and have no idea what they're doing taking hours to figure things out.
Joseph James
Did you forget to set up your download servers?
Evan Bennett
It takes minutes but the Arch wiki is not as good as people say (and has become shittier since systemd).
Eli Baker
yeah, the guide i was following didn't mention that
Brayden Bennett
There's no need to update the live environment you use to do the install. Though you should install reflector into it and use it to generate a mirrorlist of fast servers
Im using i3bar with i3blocks at the moment, should I switch to lemonbar with some sort of scripting back-end or to polybar?
Camden Watson
>window shadows BLOAT
Michael Campbell
well, it turns out i was downloading from China and when i moved up my country's servers, it told me to remove db.lck and it worked :)
Landon Smith
I just use Firefox-bin on muh gentoo. Updates are too regular to waste time compiling a program that large.
David Morales
Thanks for the suggestions. After reading for a bit I decided to go with Alpine. I'll be playing with it for a while on a vm, then replicate the setup to the machine later.
David Brooks
set your mirrorlist and stop following step by step guides without knowing what you're actually doing and how things works
Nolan Jenkins
>Is Gentoo actually a good idea for low-end hardware? It's quite the opposite. Is a good idea for high-end hardware. If you don't have at least a quad core I wouldn't even bother trying it; it's a waste of time. You need a powerful processor.
Carter Hernandez
t-that's how i learn. i figured it out
Jace Myers
Fucking wasted
Christopher Jackson
Working on a chart of alternatives to blatware, here is what I got:
I know many of these things are not well known so ask and I'll provide a link. Also do share your opinion.
Mason Brooks
Obligatory: >pacman is fast but not safe, it tends to break shit and config protection is implemented in a terrible way >there is no official process to verify that a package is stable within the distro, in other distros a lot of packages are in a testing repo despite that specific package's developer claiming it to be stable on its own, because it might not be stable within the environment of a specific distro >(arch v gentoo related) arch users complain about 'muh compile time' when it comes to gentoo, while in fact they compile a lot of AUR packages themselves, namely the *- git packages that pull the source from a git repo >but it gets even better: they only compile a handful of packages, and those not being libraries mostly, the self-compiled packages get linked against precompiled libraries from a different setup (e.g. different optimization levels), which can then cause even more instability because it's a clusterfuck of unequal shit >arch uses (((systemd))) and switching to something else is hard >the vim package on arch pulls in X, so if you want to have a fancy terminal text editor on a headless server, you need to install a shitton of GUI stuff which you'll never need nor use >maintainer told the guy who complained to just symlink vi to vim (vi is inferior)
Elijah Ward
which Jbar?
Benjamin Peterson
We revised it in an earlier thread. those things are mostly true, but have nothing to do with being /minimal/. Also, vim does not pull in X anymore. Maybe it used to, but certainly not now.
Some of them are just underdogs, not really better or more minimal alternatives; for example mercurial. Emacs is the exact opposite of minimalism, it has a web browser, videogames, image viewers, irc clients and much more shit in it. Maybe nano is a better alternative, many people don't know it's configurable too. Instead of lighthttpd I'd suggest nginx. It's a way better widespread alternative and it's the main apache competitor.
Hudson Flores
Is crux good? Does their package manager have a lot of packages? Should I bite the bullet?
Jeremiah Long
>there is no official process to verify that a package is stable within the distro, in other distros a lot of packages are in a testing repo despite that specific package's developer claiming it to be stable on its own, because it might not be stable within the environment of a specific distro Being bleading edge is part of the arch philosophy >(arch v gentoo related) arch users complain about 'muh compile time' when it comes to gentoo, while in fact they compile a lot of AUR packages themselves, namely the *- git packages that pull the source from a git repo Most of the compiles "a few". Lowering AUR packages as much as possible is what arch users do and most of them, especially the bigger ones, are still binary packages. >but it gets even better: they only compile a handful of packages, and those not being libraries mostly, the self-compiled packages get linked against precompiled libraries from a different setup (e.g. different optimization levels), which can then cause even more instability because it's a clusterfuck of unequal shit Irrelevant since they compile end user programs and not libraries. All you get is at most your AUR program be bugged. >the vim package on arch pulls in X Proven to be false.
Adrian Powell
>Maybe nano is a better alternative Micro might be a nice contender too. It's basically something like Gedit or Kwrite but in the terminal. Certainly not as minimal as Nano though.
Jason Baker
CRUX is GOAT
Ryder Cox
WM's that work with HiDPI displays?
Jason Peterson
>Some of them are just underdogs, not really better or more minimal alternatives; for example mercurial. I'll mercurial but fossil indeed has less lines of code than git. Underdogs indeed. >Emacs is the exact opposite of minimalism, it has a web browser, videogames, image viewers, irc clients and much more shit in it. Not by default, remember those are plugins (except for the tetris game, I think). >Maybe nano is a better alternative, many people don't know it's configurable too. I'll add it. >Instead of lighthttpd I'd suggest nginx. It's a way better widespread alternative and it's the main apache competitor. I'll add nginx too.
Jaxson Brown
While we're on the subject of editors:
>GNU Zile is a text editor development kit, so that you can (relatively) quickly develop your own ideal text editor without reinventing the wheel for many of the common algorithms and data-structures needed to do so. >It comes with an example implementation of a lightweight Emacs clone, called Zemacs. Every Emacs user should feel at home with Zemacs. Zemacs is aimed at small footprint systems and quick editing sessions (it starts up and shuts down instantly). >More editors implemented over the Zile frameworks are forthcoming as the data-structures and interfaces improve: Zz an emacs inspired editor using Lua as an extension language; Zee a minimalist non-modal editor; Zi a lightweight vi clone; and more... gnu.org/software/zile/
Noah Watson
I heard about GNU Zile, I am still waiting for the vi clone. Hopefully the vi clone can implement true ex mode, imagine how bloatless the system would be. I kinda feel the need to get some plugin support though.
Jaxson Nguyen
So, this is going to sound kind of weird. But I'm looking to build a musl system around emacs/exwm (using spacemacs). Has anyone ever attempted this?
I have alpine in a virtualbox instance and aside from the fact that I can't get the damn accelerated video drivers to work (stuck at 1024x768.. if anyone could help with this it'd be much appreciated!) it seems to work fine!
Note: had to compile emacs from the latest git repo to get the GUI to work
Michael James
Wasted gets. Checked.
Nicholas Thompson
I use i3 with .xinitrc export GDK_SCALE=2 export GDK_DPI_SCALE=0.5 and .Xresources *dpi: 192 Xft.dpi: 192 on a 3000x2000 panel, works perfectly.
Jaxon Anderson
It's pretty stable. You will have to configure and compile the kernel, xorg, etc but once you get everything set up it's a nice minimal system. Crux is almost like BSD; it has a base system and then everything else is installed from ports. The ports system could be better (like the Slackbuilds site for Slackware) and you will end up writing your own ports.
>Not by default, remember those are plugins (except for the tetris game, I think). My point still totally valid. I think erc (one of its irc clinet) is there by default, same goes for a shell (eshell), a programming language (elisp) and many many many other things. They call it an operating system for a reason, you cannot say it's minimal. It's ridiculous.
Easton Peterson
You made me think of busybox. Is a shell and a lot of utilities and still people think is minimal. What gives?
Brody Jenkins
stumpwm is not minimalist
Caleb Green
Yes, your points are valid. Vim now has a full shell since the last commit, add that it has a scripting language and is pretty much in the same shape that Emacs. I was looking at alternatives to both but feared was going a bit esoteric on my choices. Things like Vile and Kakoune instead of Vim, maybe they need to be known (at least until the vi version of Zile comes out).
Connor Bell
opinions on xmonad?
Luis Diaz
not minimalist at all
Jacob Collins
why? Not baiting, I'm not familiar with it at all.
Samuel Parker
So which distro can be configured to have the lowest memory consumption: Void or Alpine?
Ryan Scott
xwof :^)
Jonathan Bell
I'd say Alpine. Void can also use Musl, but it still uses GNU coreutils. Alpine replaces these with Busybox, which should be much more efficient.
Alexander Fisher
Alpine easily
Wyatt Gomez
For what I know it's basically dwm written in haskell, but its configuration is way more powerful. You have to know haskell tho, or its no point.
Parker Walker
Yeah it is.
Jeremiah Powell
Can NixOS be minimal?
Aaron Fisher
>If you want a minimalist tiling window manager, then StumpWM is not what you're looking for. The code base is ~15k sloc, the binaries produced are ~60mb
Chase Morgan
>the binaries produced are ~60mb Do we have a comparison with other windows managers? Anyways I think ram consumption is more important, but I have no clue about how much does it eat.
Parker Kelly
it's just fucking huge man; and has so many useless features saying stumpwm is a lightweight window manager is like saying emacs is a lightweight text editor if you want a similar experience, just use ratpoison which is written in C; works with multiple monitors out of the box and requires 0 configuration to be usable i've been using ratpoison for years; it's by far my favourite window manager out of those i've used
Aaron Reed
Most of that binary size comes from sbcl, you can replace that with clisp and it's much smaller. Not everything needs to be compiled C code to be minimal.
Jason Hall
in my mind; if an application requires some kind of emulator, interpreter or rte then it is inherently bloated. i want the core components of the system i use to be efficient, minimal, responsive, well documented and not need a million dependencies.
Kayden Robinson
I don't mind interpreted code if I'm already going to have the interpreter on my system anyway. For example, at my current job I write a lot of Ruby so I literally have to have it on my computer, regardless of whether or not I need it for other software.
Nathan Green
I'd recommend GuixSD instead.
David Gonzalez
a window manager doesn't need to be "extensible" or to be configured on the fly or support fucking vector fonts, regardless of if you have the required runtime installed or not. managing your windows should not be resource intensive nor should the manager be a pain in the ass to configure
Eli Baker
Ruby example guy here, I didn't read all the posts, didn't realize we were talking about WMs. Yeah I actually agree with you 100% in this case.
John Rodriguez
What is a Jbar? It's the dwm status bar
Kevin Fisher
Post yfw when you learnt that you can't go minimal with GTK applications because GTK theming is PNGs for every element of UI.
Leo Anderson
What's the most minimal modern graphical toolkit?
Landon Lopez
there is a reason why I am abandoning the GUI altogether user
Landon Rodriguez
FLTK or WxWidgets, probably
Oliver Adams
Do those support proper DPI scaling for hidpi and whatnot?
Grayson Gomez
...
Liam Morris
PerlTk
Michael Reyes
Probaly not
Jackson Hughes
I wouldn't exactly consider them modern then.
Justin Russell
>the vim package on arch pulls in X wrong, please remove this next time you post it. everything else is ok: the AUR is shit, and i'm sure some people use vi nowadays even though i just ln it to neovim.
>NetworkManager -> ConnMan -> SetNet do the others support USB tether and bluetooth PAN? >Pidgin -> Bitlbee i use bitlbee but if you don't have an irc client, for XMPP you can try gajim (gui) or profanity (tui like irssi, haven't tried it). discord-terminal is a thing, haven't tried it, but bitlbee-discord is absolutely broken. not sure about other protocol support because xmpp, discord, and irc are all i use >Thunderbird -> Alpine -> Mutt if it's easy to set mutt up with my six email addresses then i'll give it a try >HexChat -> Weechat -> Irssi all three of those suck. i'm writing a client in C, i'll update on Sup Forums when it's working >qBittorrent -> RTorrent -> Transmission (transmission-daemon + transmission-remote-cli) explain how you prefer transmission over rtorrent >zCI -> screenfetch -> inxi never heard of inxi, i use neofetch >htop -> top no >Unbound -> bind9 i use both depending on what for >Gedit -> Leafpad -> Emacs (nox) / Vim like i said, i use neovim over vim now >TrueCrypt -> GNU Privacy Assistant -> Keyringer / Tomb i use veracrypt or luks >KeePassX -> kpcli / pass (+ pass-tomb) i use keepass2 with addons >Git (with tig) -> Fossil -> Mercurial (with hgv and Hg-Git) git and fossil are completely different, and i don't know how hg/git are better than one another >Postfix -> Exim + Dovecot i still use postfix lol >Apache -> lighttpd -> darkhttpd -> Bucktooth (+ Bucky) nginx >BIOS -> Coreboot -> Libreboot if i fall for the thinkpad meme i'll do this. how is compatibility on desktops?
everything else you listed i either don't use at all, already use the recommended, or i might try in the future. thanks for listing some stuff i didn't know about
Brandon Lopez
what's your video card? and i don't know much about emacs but it should compile fine with musl you can configure it at compile time to be as minimal or as feature-rich as you'd like. it's way better than GNU coreutils. sbase and toybox are far from complete so busybox is the only thing i can trust right now for linux userland what's your opinion on tcl/tk
Gabriel Johnson
>i use neovim over vim now Why? I think vim works perfectly fine and I never understood why they're rewriting it. It's an unnecessary software and it does nothing but splitting users and developers. Why shouldn't I consider it evil?
Leo Wood
>it's way better than GNU coreutils How?
Charles Lopez
they provide valid reasons as to why they would want a rewrite. not only that, but they also added a few features i've actually wanted in vim for a while. nothing big, but i can do shit like resize the split panes with my mouse.
someone else reported they could do this in normal vim with :set mouse=a but i could never get it working. idk, i still enjoy neovim
Ryan Rivera
easy, it isn't GNU
Chase Jackson
>GNU is not UNIX >Busybox is not GNU >Busybox is UNIX It makes sense.
Seriously tho, should I bother checking it out?
Samuel Sullivan
>do the others support USB tether and bluetooth PAN? ConnMan does but I am pretty sure SetNet doesn't >if it's easy to set mutt up with my six email addresses then i'll give it a try Not so easy to find good configs, I might post a guide and my setup so other can have a less painful process >explain how you prefer transmission over rtorrent The daemon is perfect, the remote interface is braindead easy, it helps that I am use to the config file, which is braindead easy too >never heard of inxi, i use neofetch Sorry that part is a bit tricky as zCI and inxi do a lot more than screenfetch, minus the ascii art >i use both depending on what for Apparently bind can do more than unbound and you'll need to combine unbound with nsd to get to its level, while doubling the code >i use veracrypt or luks That is for drive encryption, GPA and keyringer/tomb are more for directory encryption >thanks for listing some stuff i didn't know about Thank you for reviewing, I am already editing with the recommendations of the other anons
Austin Fisher
yeah, try it. many distros use it in initrd to provide a light base environment before the actual system boots. you can static compile it (or not), compile it against pretty much any libc, add or remove as many commands as you want, add/remove help text, support GNU features or remove support... just look through the menuconfig and you'll see how much control you get over the build. or just install busybox through your package manager and get an instant "good enough" setup without worrying about compiling.
Liam Parker
>ConnMan does but I am pretty sure SetNet doesn't cool, i'll check it out >Not so easy to find good configs, I might post a guide and my setup so other can have a less painful process i'd appreciate it. right now i use seamonkey and it has mail built in, but if i can use something like mutt, i may actually find a different internet browser >The daemon is perfect, the remote interface is braindead easy, it helps that I am use to the config file, which is braindead easy too oh so you prefer transmission out of experience? i've always been used to rtorrent. are they both comparable resource-wise? >Sorry that part is a bit tricky as zCI and inxi do a lot more than screenfetch, minus the ascii art i'll look at it. i got neofetch how i want it though so i may not switch >Apparently bind can do more than unbound and you'll need to combine unbound with nsd to get to its level, while doubling the code i only use unbound for caching >That is for drive encryption, GPA and keyringer/tomb are more for directory encryption oh, you mentioned truecrypt so i was thrown off
Daniel Turner
>what's your opinion on tcl/tk Minimal, yes, but doesn't look good, which shouldn't matter because is minimal
>Seriously tho, should I bother checking it out? If you are an end user and don't do scripting do try, but uninstalling other shells and the utilities it replace. Busybox replaces most common utilities, but not all of them and they dont come with all the features, so if you do a great deal of scripting you are warned
>i'd appreciate it. right now i use seamonkey and it has mail built in, but if i can use something like mutt, i may actually find a different internet browser Alpine is too a good mail client though I dont use I do respect, and according to hack5 multiple accounts are easy >oh so you prefer transmission out of experience? i've always been used to rtorrent. are they both comparable resource-wise? You got me there, dont remember the resource usage of rtorrent, can say transmission get near the hundred torrents on a 1.5ghz machine with 2g ram fine
Dominic Ramirez
>but doesn't look good, which shouldn't matter well, user interfaces should look nice or have a good interface to make it look nice. i don't want to use ugly interfaces; i might as well just use the commandline instead. >If you are an end user and don't do scripting do try, but uninstalling other shells and the utilities it replace. busybox works fine alongside another shell; you don't need to use ash or hush
i'll look at alpine and mutt documentation and see if it's easy enough for me
Aaron Ward
Sorry I didnt proofread, I meant he removes other shells as he wont need them
Liam Sullivan
i still prefer using bash. but ash is featured enough to be a decent shell if you want
