My first choice is Debian because I'm looking at going back to a minimal os install. Debian is a distro that I've used many times before, so I'm comfortable using it (unlike slackware). I would ideally install either xfce or openbox with just enough packages to have a fully functional every day usable os. Down with bloat I say.. Anyway my second choice is Bunsen Labs. This distro is my second choice because it's based on Debian, it's minimal, it has openbox installed as it's window manager of choice & it takes a lot of hassle out of setting up Debian from scratch. Bunsen Labs is a super awesome, lightweight distro that came to replace Crunchbang after it ended. My third and final choice is Elementary os. Elementary may not be minimal, but it does have an amazing look and feel to it, along with an awesome community & development team. Elementary looks almost like Macos, only better in my opinion.
I don't know if I will through a minimal Ubuntu into the mix, because I have slowly started to drift from Ubuntu for a while now. I don't really know why because Xubuntu is still an awesome & amazing distro to use. I currently still use it as my daily driver, but all my other devices run Debian or some form of Android.
Some people might not know this, but xfce4-terminal can be launched in a quake style drop-down mode. Here's the command.
xfce4-terminal —drop-down
You can easily make it more accessible by binding the above command to a keyboard shortcut.
Open “xfce4-setting-manager” from your menu or application finder....
Click on the Keyboard icon under Hardware section....
Under the application shortcuts tab, click on the add button and type the command above into the provided box....
Now you’re able to press a keyboard shortcut to launch a drop-down Xfce4 terminal. You can click on the button at the bottom right of the terminal window to open the preferences dialog and edit various things.
Xubuntu core is essentially Xubuntu without all the additional features. It installs only the the basic look and feel of Xubuntu. There's no office suite, media player, or any of the usual stuff that comes pre-installed with regular Xubuntu. The best thing about it is that it is around 600MB in size, so will be faster to download and can easily fit on a cd. You can install Xubuntu core from the Mini iso either by running the “Xubuntu minimal installation task” or by finishing the minimal install and typing “sudo apt-get install xubuntu-core^” once you have logged in. Alternatively you can download one of the community ISOs. Xfce is a great desktop environment & Xubuntu is a great distro to use (my fav for a while now). Xubuntu core is a nice thing to have if you don't like bloat and want something that you can call your own.
Lipstick left is a simple theme with only a left border. This theme is designed to be super minimal, space saving & out of the way. Download the theme from GitHub or check out my post on r/unixporn. Below is a dirty & clean screenshot....
