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New to Artix, seeking suggestions

I noticed there isn't an "introduce yourself" subforum, so I figured that General is the next best place to post.

So far I'm triple booting 3 OSes, all in UEFI on GPT. They are Windows 11, Ubuntu LTS, and Artix. I used the non-community LXQT version, with OpenRC init. Artix was installed via Calamares, on a partition layout that I had already set up in Parted Magic. I later intend to try a minimal Artix install. I'm not afraid of commands, but I hesitated when I saw the part in the install wiki page regarding network configuration. It basically says, reference the Arch Wiki, but omit the parts that are systemd-ish. However, I have no sure way of knowing which bits are specifically systemd.

I have installed Arch before, using "The Arch Way", but it has been 5+ yrs since. I didn't run it for more than a few months, before moving on to other distros. Most of my Linux experience is with Debian-based distros, like Ubuntu, and Fedora, and a bit of Manjaro. It seems most accurate to call myself a dabbler, having been tied to Windows because of games and certain softwares that don't run in Linux and have no native Linux versions.

I don't want to make this post long, so my main question is:

How much of the Arch Wiki is relevant to Artix, besides the clearly systemd stuff?

If someone can post links to helpful guides, tutorials, etc that would assist me in getting grounded in Artix, I'd appreciate it.

And a few things I'd like to note while using the Calamares installer:

The only offered mount points for the EFI system partition are /boot/ and /boot/efi/. I don't want to use /boot, because it will hamper encryption later should I choose to use it, and it will clutter up the /boot/ parth with EFI files.

However, the Arch Wiki discourages using /boot/efi/, saying that it's a legacy mount point. Interestly, my Ubuntu coincidently also mounts the EFI to this path, and doesn't offer a path choice.

I also specified a swap partition (shared with Ubuntu) during the install, but after booting Artix, it isn't automatically enabled. I used the command "cat /proc/swaps" to confirm.

After booting Artix, I was able to log into LXQT DE just fine. But if I select Openbox from the login menu, it just hangs and becomes completely nonresponsive (the desktop doesn't initialize). The only thing I can do is hold the Power button to shut down.

My next goals are to play around with LXQT, it's quite nice and has a relatively friendly UI. It definitely seems to have a lot of customization possibilities. I'd also like to get the appropriate graphics driver installed, and fix the resolution/fonts so that they aren't so small on my high res/dpi display.

My hardware is a Dell XPS 9360 laptop/ultrabook. It's fast enough for the things I need to do, but certainly no powerhouse. I felt that a lean distro and LXQT would be a good fit, to keep resource usage to a minimum.

Thanks for reading this semi-lengthy post, keeping it short has never been my strong suit.

Edit: I don't have a stance on systemd, either positive or negative. I don't have enough experience with it to decide if it's good or bad. However, I would eventually like to try Gentoo. And I've been reading in a lot of places that alt inits like OpenRC are more simplified. The idea of keeping the init system minimal, and being able to control it with simple commands and plain text config files, is appealing to me. I don't want to deal with a complex beast that requires reading mountains of docs.

Re: New to Artix, seeking suggestions

Reply #1 –
Quote from: AnonVendetta – on
... They are Windows 11, ...

"Ceterum censeo M$ esse delendam"
"Wer alles kann, macht nichts richtig"

Artix USE="runit openrc slim openbox lxde gtk2 qt4 qt5 qt6 conky
-gtk3 -gtk4 -adwaita{cursors,themes,icons} -gnome3 -kde -plasma -wayland "

Re: New to Artix, seeking suggestions

Reply #2 –
Me too, AnonVendetta, I dabble in multiple Linuces running on different partitions.  Can't let Windows and "Trusted Installer" hog the whole disk after all; and sometimes you can fix something you broke on one system on another that runs ok.  Openbox 3.6 works for me OK on Crux, Devuan and Artix.  Did you check out its dependencies with pacman?  Or ldd /usr/bin/openbox (which openbox if you might have one in /usr/local or somewhere) and check your library-path.

Re: New to Artix, seeking suggestions

Reply #3 –
Quote from: JHendry – on
Me too, AnonVendetta, I dabble in multiple Linuces running on different partitions.  Can't let Windows and "Trusted Installer" hog the whole disk after all; and sometimes you can fix something you broke on one system on another that runs ok.  Openbox 3.6 works for me OK on Crux, Devuan and Artix.  Did you check out its dependencies with pacman?  Or ldd /usr/bin/openbox (which openbox if you might have one in /usr/local or somewhere) and check your library-path.


I will look into your suggestions, but I meant that openbox won't start from the login screen, while LXQT does. I only did a default install on a customized partition layout, which should have no effect.

Unfortunately my Windows 11 already took a shit on itself, and I cleanly installed it less than a day ago. It happened while installing updates. It seems Windows can't be trusted to do anything right. If I weren't dependent on it for handful of things like gaming, I'd have abandoned it yrs ago. Always hated having to clean up and find fixes every time something goes wrong with it.

Openbox-session fails

Reply #4 –
Is your login screen gdm, kdm, xdm, slim?  I don't use a login manager or desktop manager (sometimes xfce-4).  When openbox-session starts it's just blank - you have to click the screen to get a menu.  Configure with etc/X11/xinitrc and .xinitrc in home directory.  Openbox uses a few xdg and freedesktop things, dbus working ok?   Oh, sorry, LXQt of course, hmm, never used it.  Hope it works out.
Update Xorg dependencies is all I can think of if no error messages.  Maybe rummage in ?var/log.

Re: New to Artix, seeking suggestions

Reply #5 –
Quote from: JHendry – on
Is your login screen gdm, kdm, xdm, slim?  I don't use a login manager or desktop manager (sometimes xfce-4).  When openbox-session starts it's just blank - you have to click the screen to get a menu.  Configure with etc/X11/xinitrc and .xinitrc in home directory.  Openbox uses a few xdg and freedesktop things, dbus working ok?   Oh, sorry, LXQt of course, hmm, never used it.  Hope it works out.
Update Xorg dependencies is all I can think of if no error messages.  Maybe rummage in ?var/log.

Honestly, I'm not sure what my login screen manager is. I'm aware that openbox opens to just a desktop and a right click menu, it's barebones. I'm not even sure if I'm using Wayland or XOrg.

I get the same results when trying to get into openbox when booted from the ISO, I use GRUB4DOS boot loader (not the same as FRUB2, and it has nothing to do with DOS )to load the iso into RAM.

Name of ISO used :artix-lxqt-openrc-20230605-x86_64.iso

Re: New to Artix, seeking suggestions

Reply #6 –
you're using sddm as your manager by default with lxqt.   Will need to add xscreensaver for a login screen when resuming from standby. fyi:  I did try changing DM's from sddm to lightdm (to get away from xscreensaver), but on resunption light-locker didn't play so well.

Re: New to Artix, seeking suggestions

Reply #7 –
Quote from: gavincc – on
you're using sddm as your manager by default with lxqt.   Will need to add xscreensaver for a login screen when resuming from standby. fyi:  I did try changing DM's from sddm to lightdm (to get away from xscreensaver), but on resunption light-locker didn't play so well.

You're not understanding, this has nothing to do with suspend/hibernation. I never mentioned those, not once, and I don't use these "features" with any OS because they're not useful to me. I was only noting that I can't access the openbox session from the login screen, whereas LXQT works from the same menu. Nothing more, nothing less.

You're right about sddm, it does appear that it's installed. I did a quick Google search and found that others have had the same issue. These reports date back several years or longer. Some have said that sddm doesn't refresh the screen when openbox is chosen. So, it's started successfully, but you can't see it because the screen doesn't refresh, and therefore looks frozen/nonresponsive. Others have said that manually setting a wallpaper fixes this behavior.

In either case, I'm not much worried about it right now, I'm happy with LXQT as it is.

Re: New to Artix, seeking suggestions

Reply #8 –
fair enough, it was more of an "fyi" as you didn't know what your DM was and on the chance the machine goes into suspend on inactivity and you can't get back to a login screen.  Enjoy.
 

Re: New to Artix, seeking suggestions

Reply #9 –
@AnonVendetta OpenBox for the past 10 years is just being maintained as a window manager, the desktop/session part of it may even be broken under some circumstances that you encounter there.
If you want a barebones desktop from a simple WM that is up to date there exists IceWM.
Also, LXQt is very modular, you can check in Session tab, there you can also change the window manager. I use lxqt with icewm on the thinkpad and works very well.

Re: New to Artix, seeking suggestions

Reply #10 –
Quote from: Hitman – on
@AnonVendetta OpenBox for the past 10 years is just being maintained as a window manager, the desktop/session part of it may even be broken under some circumstances that you encounter there.
If you want a barebones desktop from a simple WM that is up to date there exists IceWM.
Also, LXQt is very modular, you can check in Session tab, there you can also change the window manager. I use lxqt with icewm on the thinkpad and works very well.

Honestly, I'd prefer to use openbox as a window manager only, without a DE like LXDE running on top. The only reason I haven't tried harder, is because I have a feeling that openbox won't play nicely with high dpi/high res screens. With a bit of tweaking I have accomplished this with LXQT, everything looks "right". I'm aware that openbox isn't actively developed anymore and is considered to be complete. I'm also looking into fluxbox as a WM alt.