OS / WM Choices.

[elderK]

Hey people,

Recently I have suffered a !@#$up on my main machine (My beloved laptop...) and, whilst installing Linux I decided "Hey, why not try something different..".

I am sick of linux, marginally sick of GNOME and I loath KDE. So, Im in a bit of a pickle.

Blackbox is fine, if you want minimal, as is WindowMaker but both lack the weird 'together' feel of KDE or GNOME.

So, Im looking at the BSDs. Net, Open, Free, Dragonfly.. oh, so many to choose from and, I need your help!

What OS / WM combination should I choose, for a nice, minimalistic but functional Development system.

What I am seeking in a combo...
- Looks nice in a minimalistic way. (Read as: I dont want !@#$ing eyecandy but I would like a refined ui).
- OS should support recent hardware, particularly Intel ICH7/8 chipset.
- Should be fast and NOT be bloated.
- Stable.
- Support the usual stock development tools (gcc, make, ld yadda yadda yadda...)
- Be relatively kind on the download size.
- Tolerable boot time. (Linux was okay with this).

I cant make my mind up.
~zeii.

[Alboin]

OpenBSD and Blackbox is probably the most stable, minimalistic thing I can think of.

There's also xfce on FreeBSD, which has a nice UI, and is mostly minimalistic.

This is a pretty good list of UI's.

Even though it's Linux, Gentoo is minimalistic and I have found it to be very fast. (Mine boots to a prompt in a little over a minute, and the programs themselves are very quick.) Also, it allows you to pick and choose what you want, leaving to little bloat.

[TheQuux]

Linux/FVWM are awesome. Nothing else I've found is quite usable for development.

On the other hand, somebody I know swears by Solaris/CDE...

[elderK]

I tend to use Slackware (whatever is the latest version at the time), with Blackbox.

But, Im a little sick of Linux in general.

~zeii.

[binutils]

I am using plan9port
http://swtch.com/plan9port/

need xterm
http://invisible-island.net/xterm/

in .xinitrc
exec rio -term xterm

[mystran]

But without Beryl you can't have a nice spinning desktop cube and wobbly windows?

[anon19287473]

Hey people,

Recently I have suffered a !@#$up on my main machine (My beloved laptop...) and, whilst installing Linux I decided "Hey, why not try something different..".

I am sick of linux, marginally sick of GNOME and I loath KDE. So, Im in a bit of a pickle.

Blackbox is fine, if you want minimal, as is WindowMaker but both lack the weird 'together' feel of KDE or GNOME.

So, Im looking at the BSDs. Net, Open, Free, Dragonfly.. oh, so many to choose from and, I need your help!

What OS / WM combination should I choose, for a nice, minimalistic but functional Development system.

What I am seeking in a combo...
- Looks nice in a minimalistic way. (Read as: I dont want !@#$ing eyecandy but I would like a refined ui).
- OS should support recent hardware, particularly Intel ICH7/8 chipset.
- Should be fast and NOT be bloated.
- Stable.
- Support the usual stock development tools (gcc, make, ld yadda yadda yadda...)
- Be relatively kind on the download size.
- Tolerable boot time. (Linux was okay with this).

I cant make my mind up.
~zeii.

Use OpenBSD as the OS (any OS where 'N' is the default for "Will you be using X?" has got to be minimalist) with one of the following window managers

ratpoison http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/
dwm http://www.suckless.org/wiki/dwm
stumpwm http://www.nongnu.org/stumpwm/
evilwm http://www.6809.org.uk/evilwm/

[Speewave]

i was happy with a FreeBSD. it lacked alot of things sadly like my WiFi Card. and for a dumb reason X wasn't compatable on my PC under BSD but in ubuntu it was