fluxbox

This article talk about fluxbox, the lightweight window manager that looks so... ugly, but is in reality ways to cool.

Introduction

Fluxbox is a beautiful lightweight window manager. Ideal for computer low on resources. It's really not so heavy as many bloated desktop environments like Gnome or KDE. Sure Fluxbox will runs very well on computers with many resources. This way, you keep so more power and resources for your real work! It's not for nothing that Fluxbox is used on many Linux based live rescue cd tools.

Like with many things, the default configuration file sucks. Or at least, these are keep to use so less possible resource. You should need to tweak the stuff a bit to get it like you want. You could even hate this toy just because of the to minimalistic configuration file. But don't give it up! You need to tweak it, you are a Linux guru, well ..., good ..., you won't be afraid and will tweak this up to your needs and then, yes then ... you will love fluxbox :-P

The default styles included in the debian package is a bit ugly. Personally i don't find these great at all. But the great news, with many thanks to the Internet you can get many more themes to get it much more beautifuler. Once you have take your theme, put it in your ~/.fluxbox/themes/ and it will be available in the style configuration menu.

Usually i modify the fonts heights of the different default themes i like, looks a bit dumb, but then the default themes look already many better.

I have made a deb package with some modified themes, mostly the height of the fonts are set to a bit lower, so it's looks many better. Look here if your interesting.

Also with the default config, there aren't many keybindings set. You should look to the little GUI tool called fluxkeys to bind some keys to some actions. I wanted to control the main menu, maximalize, minimalize, fullscreen with a shortcut key on the keyboard. Nice, i have a weird key on the laptop, with a windows logo so, these isn't used for any good thing yet, so i bind many shortcut keys to that windows logo.

Installing fluxbox

Installing fluxbox is peace of cake, maybe take first a look to which stuff are available concerning fluxbox:

apt-cache search fluxbox

Usually i install:

aptitude install fluxbox fluxconf fbrun

And this is completely optionally, install a display manager, ideally somethings light as xdm. This is a good replacement of the bloated gdm or kdm:

aptitude install xdm

Nicely enough, xdm is heavely customizable and ligthweight too. See the xdm article.

Keybindings

There is an easy GUI tool to aid to config the different keybindings for some actions. Or you can manually edit the ~/.fluxbox/keys file. Let's first use the little gui called fluxkeys:

fluxkeys

Usually i want a keybind for each thing i frequently use: "RootMenu" (Mod4+j), "fullscreen" (Mod4+f), "ExecCommand xterm" (Mod4+n), 'ExecCommand fbrun' (Mod4+e) etc.

The key Mod4 is the windows key. So press on the windows key, then J to get the root menu.

Customizing the menu

When you click with the right mouse button on the desktop, or use the keyboard combination win+j you will get the root menu. This is equivalent to the traditional menu where all applications are located. This menu aids you to easily start a program from an ordered menu with the mouse.

The system wide menu configuration file is located at /etc/X11/fluxbox/fluxbox-menu. But each user can have a custom version in ~/.fluxbox/menu. Usually, in the users config file, i adjust the ~/.fluxbox/menu to point to the original config menu /etc/X11/fluxbox/fluxbox-menu and then add some custom lines to my own menu config file.

An example:

[begin] (fluxbox)
[include] (/etc/X11/fluxbox/fluxbox-menu)
[submenu] (Quick Links) {}
    [submenu] (System) {}
        [exec] (Shutdown) {sudo shutdown -h now}
        [exec] (Restart) {sudo reboot}
        [exec] (Hibernate) {sudo /usr/sbin/s2disk
    [end]
    [exec] (xterm) {/usr/bin/xterm} </usr/share/pixmaps/terminal.png>
    [exec] (grun) {/usr/bin/grun}
[end]

Note that we make use of sudo and have tweaked the sudo config so that all users are able to shutdown, reboot and hibernate the PC. See the sudo article for more informations.

Some nice themes

Take a look on the theme page of fluxbox!

• http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/themes.php
• http://www.tenr.de/styles/
• http://customize.org/fluxbox
• http://fluxbox.myx11.org/
• http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/skins/themes/fluxbox/
• http://box-look.org/

But after all, just look on your lovely search engine with the keyword fluxbox theme! You will find many result and i'm sure, you will find some nice themes that match your taste!

See some of my screenshots

Here's some screenshots about fluxbox, i still need to put some recenter one and some to show better the stuff.

Some other nice stuff

With some other nice stuff i means stuff i use with the xdm, fluxbox environment. As this isn't a desktop environment such as Gnome and KDE... Fluxbox has been kept minimalist but you can add some toys to make the environment much more attractive.

Conky

I like to use conky to get some system information on the desktop, just above the wallpaper. Usually i let run multiples instances of conky to display some different info left and right on the screen. See the some screenshots about fluxbox . See also the conky page.

Resources

• http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net
• http://fluxbox-wiki.org/index.php/Fluxbox-wiki
• http://fluxbox-wiki.org/index.php?title=Category:English_howtos
• http://doc.ubuntu-fr.org/fluxbox - French website with many info.

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