[Question] From MacOS to Linux, need advice on best software packages

257m , 10 months ago

For a keyboard based window manager I recommend i3, Sway. or Qtile. You will never have use the mouse again for navigating windows. You can use bumblebee status to rice your i3 status bar.

amadeus , 10 months ago

I can recommend Arch because their Wiki made it very easy for me to solve all my issues more or less on my own. Personally I am interested in trying VanillaOS 2.0 soon.

amadeus , 10 months ago

I don’t think it holds much valuable information for you but since I switched from macOS to Linux a while ago too I am herewith sharing with you my Journey to Linux blog post from back then. ☺️

cloudwanderer OP , 10 months ago

Thanks, that was a very interesting read!

amadeus , 10 months ago

For remapping keys I used input-remapper when I came from macOS to Linux.

cloudwanderer OP , 10 months ago

Thanks! That looks exactly like what I was looking for. I hope it works as promising as it looks :)

Drito , 10 months ago

About the status bar I want to suggest Tint2 because it is relatively easy to setup. You can create new widgets by writing an “executor” in bash. This is how I display the window name in my Tint2 panel.

execp_command = xdotool getwindowfocus getwindowname

There are more advanced executor examples here. github.com/IanLeCorbeau/tint2-executors/…/master

The other suggestions are also nice, maybe more featured, but Tint2 was just less intimidating for me.

cloudwanderer OP , 10 months ago

That looks promising, especially since my current status bar is also just a collection of shell scripts, so that might be easier to switch

cloudwanderer OP , 10 months ago

I forgot one essential tool, where I need a recommendation for: spotlight. I use it to switch quickly between applications or to folders. Keyboard shortcut, first letter of the application name and enter… I know there are solutions, but I only heard from Ubuntu, which I don’t want. Anything simple and fast you can recommend?

mrXYZ , 10 months ago

@cloudwanderer rofi as a window switcher, in KDE default runner has window switching.

cow , 10 months ago

Fuzzel is also nice if you are using Wayland.

cloudwanderer OP , 10 months ago

Thank you everyone for all your suggestions! I’ll quickly try to summarize them for myself. So what you suggest is:

Operating Systems:

• NixOs
• Debian 12
• ElementaryOS
• mint
• PopOs
• EndevourOS
• Fedora
• arch
• Opensuse
• Novara

Tiling Window Manager:

Recomended to use something based on wayland.

• hyprland (can be configured from file, good compatibility with nix)
• sway (proposed with Debian, multiple suggestions, config via file as well, good for custom keybindings, already options for sway in nixos)
• i3
• bspwm
• KDE Plasma
• dwm / dwl

Status Bar:

• swaybar (in case of using sway)
• waybar (when using wayland)
• eww
• ags
• KDE neon

Package Managers:

• flatpack
• brew (is this already stable enough?)
• Nix (obvious choice if nix os chosen)
• snap
• (pacman if arch)
• integrated one

Packages:

• together with wayland alacritty or kitty
• foot
• Yakuake
• suckless

At the moment I am trying to avoid anything where RedHat is involved. Not because of the recent controversy, but simply IBM is known to kill their software solutions on a whim. (although i still use ansible), so Fedora is unfortunately out (again, no judging on how great it is). I’ve been quite interested in EndevourOS, so that might be fun to try out. Debian for the desktop probably not right now. I’m running it on servers for stability, but for a desktop environment, i prefer having more recent packages (e.g. neovim). The “sales pitch” for Mint sounded pretty interesting as well. However i’ll give NixOs a try first, simply because it was mentioned very often, same with sway.

Based on this i’ll try out these combinations first:

1. NixOs with sway and eww
2. NixOs with hyprland and waybar
3. NixOs with dwl and ?

If this does not satisfy, i’ll look into endevourOS and mint, but that might require some Ansible I assume.

Thank you very much!

wviana , 10 months ago

Just get to know Rio that may be an alternative to Alacrity.

cloudwanderer OP , 10 months ago

It looks very interesting!

But I don’t see the unique selling point of it compared to alacritty and kitty, besides web-enabled. Is there anything that it does better than these 2?

dashietm , 10 months ago

I can absolutely recommend hyprland to you, tiling compositor with animations you likely know from macOS, lots of configurability and a good example of using it with nix (NixOS might be a good choice here) github.com/fufexan/dotfiles

Also quite a nice discord server or matrix if you have questions about it.

NormalC , 10 months ago

• a minimal, fast system

• keyboard / shortcut based - all interactions can be done from keyboard (within common sense limits)
• all keys can be custom mapped (i have muscle memory of my custom keys for certain actions, so i’d like to keep them)
• all can be configured from dotfiles (worse case shell scripts and ansible)
• very low ressource consumption, snappy system with no delay

I’d recommend Debian 12/testing/sid with the Sway compositor. Homebrew, Nix and Guix can all be installed on top of any GNU/Linux distribution to provide containerized packages. Flatpak can be used to obtain the latest version of graphical applications as well. Terminals like alacritty and kitty are Wayland natives and Foot is widely considered to be the most minimal “default” terminal for Wayland compositors. You can use Sway’s built in “swaybar” or status bars like Waybar and eww. Sway configuration is just like i3 where you can configure specific devices like keyboards and monitors from a single file.

generalEdo , 10 months ago

Man, sway is kinda sexy. I messed with i3 and used it for a fee weeks before switching back to vanilla debian. Definitely going to try out sway.

flashgnash , 10 months ago

I daily drive NixOS on a gaming PC and work laptop, works great for both and haven’t encountered that password issue you mentioned

ElementaryOS, mint and pop are good starter ones and elementary looks a lot like Mac’s interface

For desktop environments the ones I know well that have the top bar, GNOME has one by default but don’t think it’s very configurable, Pantheon looks a lot like the Mac UI and I think you can technically edit the html behind it? KDE is definitely the one people use for maximum customisability and you can create a top bar with that pretty easily

As for capabilities, most distros will do most things, they’re all pretty much the same under the hood and all run the same software depending on package manager

Package managers generally come with the distro and I think that’s usually the thing that makes people’s minds. I’ve not used brew but most package managers will be something like

Snap (most distros): “snap install firefox” Apt (Ubuntu based distros): “apt-get install firefox” Pacman (arch based distros): “pacman -S firefox”

Apologies if I got any details/syntax for any of this wrong am doing this off the top of my head and am rather tired

Auster , 10 months ago

I'd suggest Linux Mint.

• Simple UI
• (Xfce version specifically) is very fast (within reason; it's still a modern OS)
• It's already pretty keyboard-centric and it can be improved further if you like tinkering (my reason for dropping Windows was precisely lack of keyboard-centric controls, so if I stick to Mint, I guess it's good on that front)
• Keys can be custom mapped, although I guess most bigger Linux systems allow that either out of the box, or through 3rd party software
• Unsure what a "dotfile" is, so can't comment on that
• And Mint is still slowly adding animations to its functions (to some people's dismay), and I don't feel lag when alt-tabbing around, so I guess it is snappy too

backhdlp , 10 months ago

dotfiles are the hidden files and folders in your home directory like .bashrc or .config/.

iloverocks , 10 months ago

If you want to go really minimal you could use alpine Linux with dwl as a window compositor and st ans your terminal emulator

I currently run arch with kitty and hyprland but I’m thinking about switching back to Novara and arch in a distrobox or going with bedrock Linux with arch and nobara as a daily driver

eruchitanda , 10 months ago

I believe Arch+i3 would answers your needs.

eruchitanda , 10 months ago

i3 is pretty easy to configure, IMO.

Especially compared to other WMs.

CAPSLOCKFTW , 10 months ago

a minimal, configurable (file based for git) tiling window manager

I like i3, it ticks all your boxes. Made my own config in 2020 and it still works. Keep in mind that you have to design your whole desktop enviroment when you go the window manager route. bspwm might be an option as well

terminal based package management as easy as brew (maybe Nix?)

Every linux distro has it, I’m an Arch person, many people like Archs package manager pacman, so you could go with EndevourOS or if you’re adventorous with vsnilla Arch.

as much terminal emulator based as possible (i honestly mostly only need a browser and the terminal, most other apps have a TUI that i can use with the keyboard, see the above requirement)

Well, what kind of software you’ll run is up to you. Linux has all the TUI stuff. If you haven’t already, check out vim, emacs and nnn. Don’t forget to customize your shell (and choose it first, i would recommend zsh or fish).

**General advice:**Look into r/unixporn, most posts there have dotfiles, look for something you like an try it (with a fresh user that you can delete afterwarda maybe?)

Atemu , 10 months ago

for example user passwords just vanished/changed without any external influence, not allowing access anymore

Could you elaborate on this? It doesn’t happen for me and thousands of other NixOS users. Did you create some sort of impermanence setup or anything?

hallettj , 10 months ago

Could this have happened if https://nixos.org/manual/nixos/stable/options#opt-users.mutableUsers was set to false? I see a warning in the manual saying in that case users and groups will be replaced on system activation.

cloudwanderer OP , 10 months ago (edited 10 months ago)

It might have. I’ve tried nixos on a mini PC meant as a home server, so most configuration is done via SSH and users don’t change (much), I might have accidently activate it while trying nixos out.

Making users unable to login is a bit of an odd (side?) Effect, but maybe I’m not understanding the purpose of this option correctly. I’ll stay away from it for now :D

hallettj , 10 months ago

The NixOS ideal is that every detail of the system is configured through Nix expressions so that the system is completely reproducible. But in practice there are some details you might want to configure directly.

With users.mutableUsers = false you are in the “ideal” declarative mode where users and groups are supposed to be fully represented in configuration.nix including passwords (or hashed passwords). In this mode the Nix config overrides everything in /etc/passwd. If the Nix config doesn’t specify passwords I think the default is to leave the account without a password, disabling login for that account.

With users.mutableUsers = true NixOS respects changes to user and group accounts made outside of configuration.nix. Accounts configured through Nix will be added to /etc/password if they aren’t already there. But NixOS won’t remove accounts, and won’t modify or unset passwords. In this mode the default of leaving the password unset makes sense because you’re expected to set a password by running passwd. This is the typical choice because there are security problems with putting passwords in configuration.nix.

You can set passwords in the Nix config using the password, passwordFile, hashedPassword, or initialPassword options. If mutableUsers is true these options only set the password the first time the user account is created. I checked to see if there are any options that implicitly disable mutable users, but I didn’t find any.

olafurp , 10 months ago

I have a very keyboard heavy setup and have used the same distro for 5 years, I might be biased. That said…

Try KDE neon, you can set up a top bar and shortcut pretty much everything. It’s based on Ubuntu so you can get some familiarity.

For terminal you can look into Tmux. It’s pretty cool shortcutty terminal multiplexer that you can bring with you if you ssh into a server.

Yakuake is also nice, quake style drop down terminal that I use to launch apps or run some of my bash functions.

All in all, give it a go, imo Linux has the most modern display managers, most customization and best multitasking tools.