My Linux Desktop Setup

Published by Jess on May 20, 2008 under Desktops, Operating Systems

Now that I have pretty much all of the base setup of my desktop complete, I decided to post about it.

As mentioned before, my distribution of choice is Debian’s testing branch. When I first installed Debian I used Gnome as the desktop environment/window manager, and then I switched to XFCE to see how that worked out. While I really like both of those, after trying out Openbox at the recommendation of a friend I have fell in love with it. It’s very minimalistic and lightweight.

In addition to Openbox, I use fbpanel as my panel software, and conky to display the little bit of system information you can see in the screen shot on the left side.

Conky is a very powerful system information viewer. It let’s you print the information to the desktop, or in it’s own window. The configuration options are pretty easy to get the hang of, although I think it should be documented a little better. Conky has support for tons of information already such as CPU usage, Hard Drive statistics, uptime, and the ability to execute any command you normally would in a terminal and have the output displayed.

I’m still experimenting with various programs and such to figure out what works best for me, but as a running tally of what I am currently using:

  1. Openbox (window manager)
  2. Fbpanel (panels)
  3. Conky (system information/statistics)
  4. alsaplayer (audio)
  5. VLC Media Player (video)
  6. XChat (IRC)
  7. gFTP (FTP Client)

On an ending note, I get most of my wallpapers from Interfacelift. It’s a really nice collection of crystal clear high resolution wallpapers.