Unity like de for arch, or similar alternative?
 

I lack much experience in Arch Linux coming from ubuntu 16.04, but would like to give this distro a spin in a vm for now tho. the guides i found for installing unity desktop environment/de for arch are 4 years old or more. Could someone recommend a similar one with dash lenses and corner top app-launcher.Currently, i can't install yum due to the git command not working, just core and partition.

As Ubuntu abandoned the Unity project, Gnome is likely the closest thing to Unity that you will find that is currently supported.

Also, not quite clear what you mean by “yum, git, core and partition “. I thought you were installing Arch? None of those things have anything to do with Arch. Perhaps I misunderstood you?

i can install the core level of arch, but i don't know how to install even yay yet. have much to learn. i was letting my current expirence level be known incase something advanced was suggested. yum was a mistype. Is kde plasma still a thing? heard somewhere this can be modded to be more like unity. gnome 3 i disliked due to lack of lenses, among other things. if plasma isn't a thing i'll go cinnamin.

So, a full blown desktop plus an AUR helper as your first ArchLinux attempt.
Good Luck with that.

I hope you are starting here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide

OK, so this post makes no sense. what is "yay"? When you install Arch, you MUST follow the Arch wiki install procedure and no other. All other install procedures are wrong because they rarely get updated.

KDE Plasma is alive and well but I would strongly suggest getting xorg running in Arch before you use pacman (not yum) to install KDE and perhaps a login manager. You will have far less trouble getting a simple window manager running in xorg as a test, then go for the KDE and SDDM install, if you use a login manager.

i think i broke my vm arch install. its stuck in this loop when i tried a kde install with the cmmand
pacman -S plasma

gets an unexpected download size error on first pckage. i used this guide before that command. only reason i didn't use sudo is because its through the iso on a vm. so already root.

https://www.lifewire.com/install-arch-linux-4177160

asfor the yay thing, that was when i tried to installl unity on a 2nd vm. o never mind that part.

As I mentioned previously, never use any install guide except the official Arch wiki. They all are out of date. Here is a link: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide

Plasma has a unity theme. https://www.addictivetips.com/ubuntu...-ubuntu-unity/

sounds like you have an outdated DB. Did you do a pacman -Sy first to sync the DB information?

You'll need git to install yay. git clone <yay sources>, cd to sources, makepkg -si
Yay should never be run as root, it was designed to be run as user.

I would also suggest for a timesaver to change the default package extension in /etc/makepkg.cnf (or similar) to .tar from .tar.gz to prevent it from compressing your packages. SAves a LOT of time if you install from AUR a lot.

And I mentioned previously...

You won't be any less of a newbie to anything new, ever.
If you became the master of unity then you'd still be a newbiew to dwm or something like that.

Since you are using a VM, which is quite the safe environment, why not go wild?
Go install a tiling window manager. Use things like dmenu as a launcher. (Dmenu is the FREAKING BOMB and has many uses outside of just being an app launcher)
Dunst for notifications, compton for compositing (effects like drop shadows on windows, as well as things like vertical sync, etc)
dzen2 for status bars, conky to generate the information to put in there.

And the best thing is: None of this is just 'a meme' or a joke. This kind of approach has some serious advantages, but has a high probability of turning you off quickly, but don't.
It's quite the extreme departure and that clashes with many learned habits one might call inferior but wouldn't know or realize the truth behind this unless doing some of it, in sincerity, for a bit.

So, if you got spare time and the desire to read a little, why not ditch the kludgy stuff and go for something else? I'm tempted to say "be the cool hacker you've always meant to be", but I sincerely believe that these 'esotheric' approaches have substantial merit for anyone.

The established way of thinking and doing things simply stands in the way of realizing this (quickly), but these obstacles can be overcome. It's not even complicated or hard, it's just more to learn because its different, and since it's different it's not like something you already know, so, more learning.

My post deleted the first time before it posted this is why late.

so, i am a bit unclear. are you suggesting i make a de out of pre-exthisting components using bash know how i'll learn as i go, and the arch wikipedia or is it something else? and is there an order this needs to be installed in, or did i misread entirely?

Yeah, make your own desktop environment on top of a window manager.
I'm using xmonad, for example, which is a tiling window manager
(Note, that WM in particular requires the haskell compiler and all that jazz, so, not recommended for a 'small footprint' installation, cause boy is the haskell suite HUGE).
What that means is that every window that is opened (with the exception of, things like 'floating' windows (user preference) is automatically put into a dynamic layout.

If you opened two windows, then you might have them split 50/50, or 75/25, while using as much space as possible.
Often these WMs are controlled by the keyboard and not the mouse (but the mouse usually works, too) and do away with things like window title bars.
So, for information, you use an infobar like "dzen2" (there are many, I use dzen2), which is then populated with info you want.

I set mine up like this:
https://i.imgur.com/RbnP79Y.jpg
On the very left, I see the 9 workspaces I have in xmonad, some I gave special icons, and they have little squares at them when focused.
(They also change color to yellow if an important background event happened in a workspace that is not currently on any monitor)
To the right of that, is the name of the window manager layout. In this case it's 'tabbed simplest' I dont think it's an official name, but it really is the simplest form of 'tabbed' windows xmonad has, I think.
With this layout, there is only one window visible at a time, and it's fullscreen, and I tab to others with the keyboard.


To the right of that, and ending the section that my WM is supplying, info wise, is the title of the currently focused window.

Then to the right of that (there's a bit of a gap to allow for longer titles), begins the 'conky' section.
Conky is a general system information provider, and I'm piping the following into dzen2:
Uptime, cpu and memory usage (clicking those (for my tablet) opens several system tools, like htop, etc), up and download speed, the date and clock, the output of a weather script, and a little script for emails, showing how many new ones I have in the box I care the most about.

(Most of these entries also have a 'click' function, like showing timezones of friends, mail client, etc)

Then dzen2 ends and trayer (a system tray bar) follows seamlessly due to the same color scheme and dimensions.
I have pidgin, a messenger running, as well as an RSS reader.

I also have a slew of hotkeys set up to do all sorts of things. Launching programs with dmenu (it's a fuzzy search 'direct by name' selection tool that can be used for a lot of things, including launching programs).
Opening some applications directly, text editor, mail, browser,terminal, etc.

It all might seem daunting at first, but if you chip away at this, slowly, then you will (most likely) end up with something incredibly cozy...that makes using anything else a chore :P

But yeah, it takes a while to get around, I went through several window managers and even desktop environments until I settled, but in a VM that's less of a pain than on an actual installation.

I find it quite rewarding, and I'm not even that big of a 'ricer' (someone who preens and skins and beautifies everything).

Oh, of course I also have desktop backgrounds, I set those with 'feh' a rather simplistic image viewer (and I don't really like, but it does this task how I want it.).

Caveat:
Some (maybe all of them) window managers, that is not going for a premade desktop environment, are without a 'compositor'. A compositor, in my case compton, does things like shadows on windows and other such effects, as well as doing v-sync to prevent screen tearing.

For notifications I use dunst, which is sleek and looks pretty (imho) most applications hook right into it, and for scripts and co, inotify-send "message" does the trick.


So yeah, again, I've used Linux for years now, the most important thing is probably to 'let go' a bit and experiment a little. It's not required, ready made DEs can be really good (I enjoyed XFCE quite a bit) but nothing beats this for me now.
Unless I find something better.

So yeah, can be quite rewarding. Your very own flavor DE, made from bits and pieces to, hopefully, satisfaction and specifications.