When I was young and idealistic, most electronics ran on vacuum tubes and a No. 2 pencil was my note writing tool of choice. Paper and pencil served me for decades and still works for field notes, but are less practical in the office. So here I sit, keyboard in hand, trying to wrap my gray matter around this thing called Obsidian. Can this old dog learn new tricks?
First, this is not a Wayland critique. Wayland has its place and is likely the future of Linux desktops. Still, some applications and workflows remain tied to X11 or don’t behave well under Wayland or XWayland.
The purpose of this video is to build a lightweight, usable Graphical User Interface (GUI) on Debian 13 (Trixie) using Xorg (X11), the SLIM‑Fork Login manager (Display Manager or DM), and JWM (Joe’s Window Manager), instead of more common Desktop Environments and DM’s.
The base setup I propose will work straight out of the box, even for beginners. It won’t be visually polished by default. Improving the appearance requires manually editing configuration files, an intermediate skill I’ll cover in future articles.
Before moving forward, I want to discuss the choices I have mentioned. This is Linux and there are different ways to do everything, and my choices do not imply the only way of doing something.
Debian 13: Debian prioritizes stability over bleeding‑edge packages. That tradeoff suits 95% users. 5% are niche cases, and may need newer software, prohibitory software, and custom hardware drivers.
Xorg: Many legacy GUI applications were designed for X11 and may not behave correctly under Wayland or XWayland. So Xorg knowledge remains both useful and needed, in spite of what the experts tell us.
SLIM‑Fork: A maintained fork of the original SLIM (Simple Login Manager), which has been unmaintained since 2013. Slim-Fork has addressed several existing issues with newer Linux system environments. It is also light weight and relatively easy to configure.
JWM: Joe’s Window Manager is a lightweight, actively maintained window manager with a small footprint and useful features (panel, menu, basic taskbar). While based on the single xlib library, other libraries can be incorporated for greater capability’s, especially with graphics.
Today we will set up a Kiwix server on a Debian Linux container (LXC) using Proxmox VE. Kiwix is an application that allows users to view offline websites, such as Wikipedia, utilizing the ZIM file format.
This setup involves four key tasks:
Building a Linux container: Operating environment for Kiwix.
In this post we will perform a manual install of an application called File Browser. This small lightweight program that serves as a simple file server, allowing users to store and access their files over a network instead of storing them on individual devices. File Browser features a graphical web browser interface, making it easy to use across different platforms. Imagine easily accessing your files from almost any device.
One of the reasons for this post stems from my quest to replace the Nextcloud application. The direction the developers are heading in does not align with my current requirements.
File Browser is a minimalist application that focuses on one task, doing it well. It is significantly lighter than Nextcloud, while still meeting most of my core needs.
Since I am installing this application on a Debian 13 server, there are some important points to note. File Browser does not have a native Debian package, so the installation will deviate from the distribution’s standard practices. We will also be operating outside of the File-Browser standard installation recommendations as well. The reasoning for this will become clear as we progress. We will also be tinkering with system level settings, including creating a systemd service file and modifying well known port access.
This is an upfront warning that we will be operating without a safety net outside the comfort zone.
Our approach will be to;
determine our setup needs
create a Proxmox LXC container
Install a base Debian 13 server
Download the appropriate files
Modify our server setup
Install the software
Create a system user
Write configuration files
Test the server.
Taking things in small chunks, one step at a time, will help ground less experienced users. The process is not hard, but it is somewhat involved.
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