spDE

spDE is an Arch and Gentoo metapackage which installs all software I use on my computers. If you're using Gentoo, it comes with USE flags so you can disable what you don't need/use. After installing this package you should end up with a system near identical to mine. It can be compared to a post install script like LARBS but cleaner because it uses your existing package manager to install the system (except dotfiles).

It is a "sequel" to the now dead original spDE project, which similar to LARBS was a post-install script which installs my configuration files and packages. Problem with that approach is that it is a lot of work to maintain and there are way too many points of failure. Not to mention it is hard to reverse the process.

I started creating this ebuild after all my builds of software got ebuilds to save time setting up a Gentoo system. It also takes less work to maintain an ebuild because all you need to do is add the programs to the DEPEND variable. I later expanded it to also run on Arch GNU/Linux.

Installation: Gentoo

First off, add my overlay. Then simply run emerge --keep-going --autounmask=y --autounmask-write --ask --quiet x11-misc/spde as root. Apply required USE changes using dispatch-conf and then U (use).

Then, follow 'Using spDE'.

Installation: Arch

To install spDE on Arch, add my repository. Then run pacman -Syyu; pacman -S spde. Now that you have spDE installed, follow 'Using spDE'.

Using spDE

After installing spDE, you may find that software does not have any configuration. You can install my dotfiles and later have your own very easily. First of, run spde -i to create the /usr/share/spde directory which will contain all configuration files. Now, install the dotfiles to your user by using the spde -a command. Now, follow 'Starting spDE' if you don't know what to do next.

Starting spDE

Alright, so you have spDE installed, now what? First, you need to start it. You can skip this if you use a display manager. In that case simply set the environment to speedwm and it will work as expected. To start it with xinit, run startx /usr/bin/spde -r. For sx, run sx sh /usr/bin/spde -r. After that, you should reach a desktop provided Xorg is configured properly.

Help, spDE deleted my configuration files by accident

Don't worry, don't panic, I thought of this. If spDE finds configuration files that it will rewrite, it is going to back them up first. All your configuration files will be in ~/.config/spde/.old_conf. If you added your user twice, sadly there's nothing you can do. Sorry.