Arch Linux

pablokal

Administrator

From: Nijmegen, Holland

Registered: 2010-10-12

Posts: 2,622

Website

Fluxbox tweaking from the view point of an experienced Openbox user

Fluxbox is a very straightforward wm, but it has important details that are more difficult to master:
most of my recent posts are about these kind of details that make tweaking easy or difficult for a newcomer.

I think there are two kind of newcomers to fluxbox:
1. those coming from openbox or 2. those that are new to *box-like window-managers.
As I said before I think for newcomers  to box-like environments fluxbox in general is easier and offers more options at window management than OB.

For people coming from openbox there are some tweakings that are I find more difficult to do:
setting fonts without gui;
adapting the toolbar ( I reinstalled tint2 in thee fluxbox environment because  I couldn't mimic the tint functionality);
automatic fluxmenu updating; https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fluxbox section Arch Linux Xdg menu
If installed do:

$ xdg_menu --fullmenu --format fluxbox --root-menu /etc/xdg/menus/arch-applications.menu >~/.fluxbox/menu

adding icons to the fluxmenu; http://bbs.archbang.org/viewtopic.php?pid=10344#p10344
[doing this by hand is no option; according to fluxmenu.sh, something like obmenu it should be able to automate this process: I tried it but didn't work as expected. After installing fluxmenu from AUR you will change python to python2 in /usr/lib/fluxmenu/fluxMenu.py to get it working.
howto use keychains  or key combinations in the keys file}
see: http://www.xhbml.com/archives/36

oblogout for fluxbox: http://bbs.archbang.org/viewtopic.php?pid=10269#p10269

to be expanded

What I would like to see is a kind of rosetta stone like comparison of Openbox tweaks and howto do the same  in Fluxbox.
(See this wiki page on package managers as an example: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pacman_Rosetta)

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eerok

New member

Registered: 2012-06-16

Posts: 3

Re: Fluxbox tweaking from the view point of an experienced Openbox user

One difference with Fluxbox: xcompmgr doesn't work (it garbles the panel), and Flux is not friendly toward shadows at all.  However you need compositing for real transparency, so I've found that cairo-compmgr (in the AUR) works well if you turn the shadows down to 1 1 (you can't turn them completely off).  You get some fading and flipping effects as well.

(ETA: For some reason, in ArchBang (but not in my Arch install on the same machine) I need to change the flip duration to 0.30 seconds in the cairo-compmgr config to eliminate ghosting.)

My favorite Fluxbox tip is for centering windows.  It drives me nuts when I don't have this.  Put this in your ~/.fluxbox/apps file:

[app] (name=.+)
  [Position]	(WINCENTER)    {0 0}
[end]

Last edited by eerok (2012-06-17 06:59:04)

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noobus perpetuus