I have just installed OB..I was going through Urukrama's Guide and the OB webpage for hints on setting it up..I have installed a lot of apps for trying each one ..I have the following setup

1.Sabayon 5.5 LXDE / OB
2.Lxpanel,Gnome-panel,tint2 for a basic taskbar/panel
3.Docky,Cairo-Dock,AWN,adeskbar for cute looking docklets
4.Xcompmgr,Compiz for extra fx
5.obconf,obmenu,menumaker for menu generation
6.Nitrogen , feh for wallpapers
7.Gtk-chtheme , Gtk-theme-switch

Currently I have decided on one among the above namely Gnome-Panel,Cairo-Dock,obconf,menumaker ,nitrogen ,gtk-theme-switch

I am unable to resolve

1. Compiz ---I tried running compiz --replace and relogging in , nothing happens .
2. Xcompmgr ---This brings up a grey solid ugly screen and I do not know how to blend it with my existing wallpaper.However the docks get fired up
3. Reg the Dock , how do I go about?
4. Also the docks at the bottom (dunno which one) has a black rectangle..I want to enable autohide and transparent..Also some docklets do not trigger the application
5. I am also confused as to how to change the themes..Suppose I download a Gtk theme ...I log in to Gtk-theme-switch 2 , on selection of the file (tar.bz2 or gz) --It gives the error'Not a valid tar file"...But If I am not mistaken these are zipped tar files right?..I am however able to change window border colors from obconf...If I want to change Icons/Cursor/Themes/sounds etc what is to be done?

I have Nvidia GeoForceFx 4200 card

Pl help me on the above..

Hi!

I'll try to answer what I can:

1. I'm trying to understand what you're doing a bit better. By your title, I understand you are trying to run openbox. In that case, you can not use compiz - they are both window managers, so you can't run both. Compiz --replace doesn't work because there's nothing to replace, you would choose to start compiz directly (replace is for desktop environments that run more than just a WM).

2. Xcompmgr - I remember seeing the gray screen too when I started xcompmgr. My problem was that the root window was never set, so once I used feh to set the background, all was fine. Nitrogen should do this too. I'm not at my FreeBSD box right now to see if xcompmgr needs to run before feh in openbox autostart, but I don't think it matters.

3. What about the dock? Setting it up? I don't know anything about Cairo-Dock, so I can't help you there

4. You need to figure out which dock it is (I can't help you otherwise) but I'm assuming it's Cairo-Dock. Google search for configuring the docks you chose. Some require config files to be copied to your home directory somewhere.

5. Not sure here - I used LXappearance (few dependencies) to set gtk themes. Openbox configuration only changes window decorations, you'd need to use other programs to change cursors. LXappearance should do icons and themes though, and I think GTK-theme-switcher should too but perhaps it doesn't like the format of some zipped files.

Hope that helps some

I'm using openbox with xcompmgr on my LXDE desktops (Fedora 14, 15, and Rawhide; Ubuntu 11.04). I use pcmanfm for managing the desktop. Everything seems to work as it should. To set the window decorations I use obconf; to set the widget and icon themes I use lxappearance. Setting fonts requires looking in three places - obconf, lxappearance, and pcmanfm --desktop-pref.