I'm new to arch and I have a fresh installation after following the Beginner's Guide from the arch website.

So far so good.

My biggest reason for trying arch is the claim, that you do what you want and there is nothing you don't want.


I basically would like to setup a Desktop, that has a simple lightweight GUI. If you know of motif, that would be perfect, except that is not available from what I understand. But you get my point I think in what I mean by simple. Another important consideration is *No* anti-aliasing for fonts or anything. I tried a few common desktops, like Ubuntu Unity and found that if you turn font anti-aliasing off, then the fonts get distorted. I assume this just means, pick a better font. Can anyone recommend a good font for whatever gui you refer me to.

Something else. Linux is complex, so there are desktops, window managers logins and etc.

What exactly do I need to get. I know I need Xorg and I need a Window Manager. What else would I need.

Please only refer me to packages available in arch. I don't want to compile or get anything external to the distro since I'm wanting to learn to use it first.

At last, as I mentioned earlier. If you have ever seen an older Unix system with X-Windows and Motif, then that is exactly what I'm looking for in simplicity and efficiency. What would be the best way to get to something like that without having to cross GUI boundaries and different type of libraries.

If you can help me with this, please list the packages I need to install and what the basic command is for installing them if they require anything out of the ordinary.

Thank you, and Arch looks really minimal, which makes me very happy!

userlinux1,

Welcome to LQ.

Naturally, do this first:

Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motif_28software%29

In October 2012, Motif was released as a source code distribution under the GNU LGPL v2.1.
Motif .deb package is available from:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/motif/

Convert .deb package to Arch Linux package using debtap script(see post #38 by helix):

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=187558&p=2

NB Offline conversion is now possible, as long as you run "debtap -u" first with root privileges. This command updates pkgfile and debtap database and also downloads the latest AUR packages list.

debtap (32 & 64 bit):
https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/?O=0&K=debtap


DEs:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...op_environment

WMs:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Window_manager

You should read this, recursively (the first two sections are particularly important):
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...ecommendations

Especially this:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php...user_interface

In respect of fonts, I strongly recommend making use of @bohoomil's Infinality repositories as these produce the finest font rendering I have ever seen on a computer (IMO):
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Infinality

EDIT: Having said that, if you *really* want to get your hands dirty:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Font_configuration

most important now is to read those general recommendations, and think of a strategy how you want to start the GUI later (from the shell or via display manager).

try windowmaker:
http://windowmaker.org/
it's in archlinux extra repo, so a simple
should suffice.