New commer: Saying hi and asking for some insight...

Question

Hi all.
Firts some background. I made the switch to linux permenant about a year ago and have never looked back. I have used mainly Gnome throughout that year and then KDE. I've also tried XFCE. Hop around from distro to distro and although all have their pros and cons, their special way of doing things I can't shake the feeling that each distro I've tried has held my hand every step of the way.
In comes a review I read about Arch Linux. Then I thought, what better way to learn linux (seriuosly) than to follow the "Arch way".
Now although I have rather decent hardware specs, I want to squeeze as much power and speed from my system. Therefore I thought about setting up a lighter WM. Along the lines of Openbox, LXDE etc. From the artwork/screenshots section in the forum I've seen some amazing setups, things of beauty.
So what I would like is some insight as to what would be the best setup. Up util now I've always had my hand held by either Gnome or KDE, but with Openbox for example the options are somewhat overwhelmimg. Best filemanager, best panel, best system tray etc.
This newcommer would like to hear from you on this subject.
Thanks in advance.
Cheers,
P.

Answer 1

A common misconception among many newcomers (no offense intended) is the idea that there is a universal "best" solution for their computing. The truth is that it comes down to your level of experience and what you use your computer for most. I think I or others could better assist you if you gave us an idea of what you do with your computer. For instance, telling someone to use awesome or dwm isn't too smart if they use their mouse a lot and have trouble remembering keybindings.
Most Archers use Openbox or a tiling window manager. I can't say if Openbox is right for you, but I can tell you why _I_ like it: it's fast, supports the XDG standards, is EWMH compliant, and has dozens of configuration options. If you can understand HTML, you can understand Openbox's config files. Unfortunately, they're a bit more verbose/bloated compared to Fluxbox's simple configuration. Openbox's sheer number of options gives power to the user, and thanks to their great wiki, nothing's hidden from you. I think it's worth the 30 minutes to an hour to spend setting up your keybindings, behavior options, and menu. OBconf can help with the more frequently changed options, too.
The thing about Openbox is that it doesn't come with a panel. If you're used to a panel/taskbar, you'll have to either use a separate panel app (like pypanel) or use a window manager that comes with one (a la Fluxbox). The same goes for the tray and pager. If you really need all of those functions, however, it may just be smarter to go to a full desktop environment, where those features come standard. XFCE is the lightest full desktop environment. LXDE seems like a DE, but most of the software used are separate projects.. so it straddles the fence between "software setup" and "desktop environment".
I hope my post helped and wasn't too wordy.