Moving back to Arch, but got a few things I'm kinda 'scared' about :(

Question

It'll be probably a week as I wanna wait for my new monitor to arrive, but I'm thinking about moving back to Arch.  I've used Arch before for a few months off and on, but I could never stay here, I don't know why but I just couldn't.  Anyone have any advice on what I should give a shot at this time?  I've only really used Openbox the last few times and I'm trying to stay away from KDE and Gnome.  What should I give a try and what's the learning curve for it like?  Also, if I were to add hard drives in at a later time, would they auto-recognize or would I have to mount them in /etc/fstab myself?  If so, how would I find the name of it (/dev/sdb4, etc)?
Is Arch even for me though?  I mainly do web dev, music, some games (which I think should work in wine), and graphics editing.  Now, I've bought the Adobe suite so would that run perfectly normal in wine or should I dual boot for that?  Or would a virtual box of Vista be enough for it?  Yes, I know it's Vista, but it's what I've bought (I must of been high when I did it to).  I'm not worried about RAM and CPU requirements for the Virtualbox, so would that be a better route than a dual boot.  Because every time I try and dual-boot I end up screwing something up and have to re-format anyways, so what would you suggest?
When I am ready, I still need to find some applications that would be useful for me in Arch, etc.  But how would this partition scheme work for something like this on a 750gb drive?
/boot - 100mb
/ - 20gb
/var - 200gb
/home - rest of drive
Also, any applications you could recommend I give a shot for the last and hopefully good experience here.

Answer 1

E17 is a nice bit of fun, or you could try a straight up Compiz desktop. Personally I use Openbox, but i have been thinking about making a second user to try out a Compiz desktop without all of the Gnome or KDE clutter.
I'll recommend a VM over duel boot if you have the memory and CPU horsepower to back it up. (if it's less than 2 years old you're probably pretty good) The VM allows more flexible switching between the systems, you can set it to a specific desktop so all you have to do is switch between them with a keystroke, and it will run everything for Windows flawlessly, unlike Wine. (Not knocking wine but it's not perfect yet.)
Welcome back!
For apps:
web dev: you could try bluefish. I am not sure how it compares to others, but I rather like it. (Only used it for a class for about two weeks)
Music: depends on your style to be honest. if you really wanted to, you could use VLC to play music. There are more music players in Linux than any other type of app. At least from what I have found so far.
Graphics editing: Well there is always GIMP. It has a sharp learning curve, but it is just as functional as Photoshop. I think there is a Gimpshop that makes it more like Photoshop. Icescape is another one, and again high learning curve. (That might just be because I am still not exactly sure what Icescape is supposed to be used for...) There are others, but they generally are not on the technical level of Photoshop/GIMP.
Games...   Well there is a games repo that has a few nice things in it. If your games play in Wine, cool! If not, look for the VM that virtualizes the GPU so you get a little better gaming. If your really serious about the games, dual booting is the only way to go. (Hint for dual boots... install Windows first, then shrink it to to left side in Gparted, which is the beginning of the disk in English, before making partitions. Gparted does make it a little easier to do in my opinion.)
Edit: Ok...  minimalistic as possible...   hmm ...         Awesome  Ratpoison and perhaps Musica all seem to be the minimal types. dvtm with screen is another that just came to mind...
Last edited by LeoSolaris (2009-04-14 03:59:30)