I looked at various “distributions” like Crunch Bang, Dream Linux, Arch Linux, and countless others.  Yet it is somewhat of a stretch to call most of them distributions since just bundling and branding or Debian based packages. So I decided to just go to the source and roll my own. This is by far the best option for a clean minimal desktop with only what you need and will use on it.

Let me first describe my idea of “cleanness” in a desktop install. I will be using Debian 6.0.1 as the base for my system. I have chosen this over Ubuntu for the ease of doing a very minimal clean install free of Gnome, KDE, etc. My install will be using awesome window manager, which is a very lightweight tiling window manager that uses lua. If you prefer something more familiar to the average user please look at Openbox, Fluxbox, or similar to maintain the minimalist approach.

First let’s install the base system using the Debian small CD iso image (consult Debian site for other architectures):

debian-6.0.1a-amd64-businesscard.iso – AMD 64bit

debian-6.0.1a-i386-businesscard.iso – i386 (32bit)

For easiest results I use a spare USB drive I can format and use unetbootin to load the ISO image on the drive. Once it is loaded on the drive I boot from it. You may need to hit a key like ESC to choose what device to boot from depending on your hardware and BIOS configuration. You can also use a CD and burn the ISO image onto it.

When I run the install I select a separate /home dir and to encrypt using LVM (optional but good for security). Towards the end of the install you will be prompted to select broad groups of install sets. De-select all but “Standard system utilities” and complete the install. You may also want to select “Secure Shell Server” if you will be using SSH to connect to your desktop (always nice to have).

Now in my case I wanted to install awesome and get the basic desktop going. If your hardware includes a Nvidia graphics card use this howto to install the kernel.

Install sudo and add your user to the /etc/sudoers file:

(as root) apt-get install sudo vim

vim /etc/sudoers

# Change username to your user and add below line to file

username ALL=(ALL) ALL

Now let’s add contrib, non-free and Debian multimedia to our APT sources.list file.

Open /etc/apt/sources.list using vim or other txt editor and add contrib and non-free after main in the file so the lines read

deb http://yourmirror.org/path/to/files/ squeeze main contrib non-free

Also add the line for Debian Multimedia:

deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org squeeze main non-free

Once done update your apt repo cache by running:

sudo apt-get update

First install the multimedia repo key:

sudo apt-get install debian-multimedia-keyring

Select yes when prompted to add the key.

Install SLiM (optional) if you prefer a graphical login manager. Along with awesome and its extras.

sudo apt-get install slim awesome awesome-extra

Now you can reboot (if installed Nvidia driver be sure to) or just run slim to get the graphical login and enter using your username which should launch awesome. Once loaded you may want to read up on the awesome man page for keyboard shortcuts.

If you right-click on the desktop or left-click on “A” in top left corner you will get a basic menu. Choose open terminal and we can install other wanted/needed packages for your new desktop.

You can pick and choose what packages to install but I will give you a basic rundown of ones I installed to make me able to work efficiently while still being minimal.

• feh – image viewer
• wicd – network configuration tool
• moc – music on console command line music player
• uzbl – lightweight web browser framework
• conky – desktop system information display
• vlc – video player
• pidgin – IRC and IM client
• gedit – text editor (choose your favorite)

sudo apt-get install feh wicd moc uzbl conky vlc pidgin gedit

The Arch Linux wiki has nice page of lightweight applications for many needs. Once you have the above packages you can use uzbl to download and install Firefox or Chrome.

In command prompt:

uzbl --uri=http://www.google.com/chrome/

Download the file, it will be saved in your /home/username directory.

Run:

dpkg -i google-chrome-stable_current_YOURARCH.deb

It will give error that some packages are not installed. This is to be expected.

To remedy the missing dependencies run:

sudo apt-get install -f

Then run the above command to install Chrome browser.

Install any other packages you may want. In Part 2 I will discuss pimping out your awesome desktop.

Host prod-servername01
HostName ec2-184-88-888-88.compute-1.amazonaws.com
User someuser
IdentityFile /.ssh_keys/servergroup.pem

Once you have all your servers in the config file I create a very simple script to start gnome-terminal with each group of servers:

gnome-terminal --tab --title=prod-servername01 -e 'ssh prdo-servername01' --tab --title=prod-servername02 -e 'ssh prod-servername02'

From the above example you can get the idea of adding more tabs for each additional server. I then create desktop or menu shortcuts for each grouping of server to launch a terminal and ssh into all in the group.

find / -type f -size +20000k -exec ls -lh {} \; | awk '{ print $8 ": " $5 }'

Int he above example I am using find / which will search entire root filesystem. You can change this to /var/log of any path you want to find the largest files. You can also change the 20000k to a smaller or larger size (20000k = 19.53 MB).

Basically what I do is have a .ssh_keys directory in my main computer’s home directory which I symlink in my Dropbox directory. Then on other computers I create a:

ln -s /home/myuser/Dropbox/.ssh_keys /home/myuser/.ssh_keys

I do the same with my .muttrc and any other configs I want to use. I even keep my wallpapers in the Dropbox folder where my awesome config file randomly loads one using:

awsetbg -f -r /home/myuser/Dropbox/wallpapers/

• Browser
• XTerm
• gedit (or similar text editor)
• pidgin (for IM)

That is about it.  I sometimes might open GIMP to edit an image or something to manage images when I upload them.  But this is not a daily occurrence. For work I now use Google Apps which includes Google Docs so there is not even a need to use OpenOffice or a PDF viewer for that matter.  It’s a minimal new world and I am just fine with that.

• The Firefox Delicious plugin is very nice and integrated. Chrome equivalents are just prettied up basic bookmarker.
• The strange download manager
• Flash player crashing on regular basis (for Linux at least)
• Strange formatting of some sites including GMail and other Google Apps sites

For the most part I see myself using Chrome more often and if I could get the same sort of Delicious plugin as Firefox has I would be much more likely to use it exclusively. Although I have read that the next version of Firefox is suppose to fill the gap Chrome is creating.

We shall see. . .

Core Needs

Let’s first look at your new companies hosting and servers.  being that you are lean you may most likely be working from home.  So let’s look at hosting and services you will need in order to host some of the Open Source applications will will talk about in a moment.  In my experience the basic things you need to get going in terms of setting up shop are the basics:

• Email
• Phone
• Website
• Computer(s)
• Branding
• Web Conferencing
• Conference Calling

Let’s look at these basic needs and assess how we can get them for little or no money.  Firstly the lifeblood of any business: email.  I have found that Google Apps free version is the easiest and best way to get email without the headache or grief of the dreaded Exchange Server.  You can have email, calendaring, wiki, private GTalk, and Docs all by using this service.  They even allow you now to download a customized version of Chrome browser already configured for your Apps Domain.  So then you need a phone number and extensions for your various people working from their homes.  I have checked out both grasshopper.com and phonebooth.com who are both low cost VoIP and virtual office solutions and find them more than enough to seem a lot less “lean” to your prospective clients.  Computers in most cases might not be an issue since those joining or starting the company (hopefully) already have a computer.  Another common need is web conferencing and conference calling.  I have found two goo free services to do this with ease.  Yugma is a funny named company that provides a stripped down free desktop sharing web conferencing with a pro level service that can be upgraded to for more advanced features.  It works on Windows, Mac, and Linux which is a big plus in today’s diversified OS usage.  For conference calling I have found Rondo to be the best call quality for the price (free).  I have used it for a long time to do daily status calls with teams of developers working from home.

Additional Applications

Some examples of the many Open Source projects one can use to get a jump start on their new venture can be broken down into their respective categories.  Let’s build a basic lean startup with software to fill the needs for most any software development or web service company.

Corporate Website - There are a plethora of Open Source choices when it comes to content management systems (CMSs) one can use to build their company web presence.  Many popular ones are intended for people using a LAMP stack.  Some popular choices are Drupal, Joomla, WordPress, and Plone to name a few.  depending on your needs and developers you have on hand any will work to build a company site.  You can even drop around $50 or less for a custom theme to match your branding if you do not have a designer on staff.

CRM - SugarCRM – a robust Open Source CRM that also has a large developer community and the option of Enterprises support.  With SugarCRM you can get your sales team in the habit of building pipelines and keeping tack of prospects easily. SugarCRM also has internal ticketing and bug tracking if you wish to utilize it.

Help Desk - osTicket – a powerful yet simple to setup and use help desk application in PHP.  Allows you to easily support your clients help desk needs.  There are many others out there but to me osTicket has made itself stand out above the rest.

Code Versioning – Subversion many people are using Git now as an alternative to SVN (Subversion).  Depending on your release cycle and ho you develop your applications greatly affects which you would choose.

Project Management - Redmine – a simple to use project management application with bug tracking, wiki, forums, repository viewer, gant/calendar, and many other features is a good fit for multiple projects.

Short Messaging and Collaboration – Along with the wikis, IM,email, and other means of idea and knowledge exchange I have found with an environment with everyone working remotely from home there is a loss of communication in terms of what is going on.  Being that when everyone is in a office you can look over and see what Bob or Alice are doing.  Or ask one of them for a quick opinion or help on something.  My solution to this was to implement a social network internally for the company.  Here people can share updates on what they are doing and feed off of one another.  It’s also a great way to automatically update a feed with Subversion commits.  The easy stripped down way to do this is by installing WordPress or using WordPress.com (hosting this site) and using the P2 theme along with setting the site to private in order to only let your co-workers contribute and read posts.  A more in-depth way to create this community is by having an install of Elgg which will enable the social messaging along with big bonuses like social bookmarking.

In Part 2 we will be covering the hosting infrastructing and tying all these things together.