I am looking to install the blackbox window manager (http://blackboxwm.sourceforge.net/)
and i downloaded it, but where do i put the files, its says in the readme to run configure (./configure) but there are a host of other files with it, where should i extract those files before i run configure?

If you downloaded the .tar.gz file, unpack it with tar -zxvf filename.tar.gz. That will create a directory right below the directory where you unpacked it. Drop down into that directory and then do ./configure. When that is done, type make to carry out the actual compiling. Finally, su and then type make install to install blackbox to appropriate directories.

then can i delete what i extracted?

After a successful "make install", yes :}

Cheers,
Tink

Sure. Once it's compiled, you really don't need the extracted files any more. However, some people keep it around in case they want to uninstall. Personally, I get rid of the extracted stuff once I've compiled.

If you would like to. If you are just trying it out you may want to keep the source around for a while. I say this because you can do a

su
make uninstall

and remove the software if you decided you don't like it and don't want to keep it on your system. Otherwise, yeah you can delete the extracted source files without worry. By the way, if you are looking at new window managers, you might be interested in XFce (www.xfce.org) it isn't quite as lite as blackbox (considerably lighter than Gnome or KDE though), but is a little bit more usable (my opinion) Version 4 is a complete rewrite for GTK2 and is in beta right now, although it is very stable. Just a suggestion.

PhilD

thanks guys, this place is great, answers immideatly!

i see you are running slackware 8.1 if you really want you can get blackbox as a package from ftp.slackware.com then all you have to do is use pkgtool and select it from the menu this is good especially if you plan on taking it out again as it can remove everything that it installed

i downloaded from /slackware-8.1/extra/blackbox-0.62.1/ on the ftp, but thats a tgz...

Purrrfect :}

Just do a installpkg blackbox-0.62.1.tgz ;)

Cheers,
Tink

ok i did it, but the menu has like no programs! how do i run programs like gaim or mozilla if they are not in the menu when i right click, also i heard that fluxbox supports kde and gnome, does this meen that blackbox does not and i cant run programs like giam or kpackage!

I run fluxbox as my main wm and it runs KDE and Gnome apps very nicely. And since fluxbox is based on blackbox code, I think that anything flux runs, blackbox should handle without a problem. Besides, I think that the ability to run KDE and Gnome programs is more dependent on the presence of the KDE and Gnome libraries than on the window manager.

I'm going to take a guess here that the blackbox menus are similar to the fluxbox menus (so ignore this if I'm wrong ). At least in fluxbox, there is a file called menu in the fluxbox hidden directory (.fluxbox/menu). Do a ls -al to see the hidden directories and files and see if blackbox has a hidden directory as well. If you open the fluxbox menu file in a text editor, you can easily add menu items.

If blackbox has a terminal program already in the menu, you can always run programs from the command line as well.

Ok, i have some question for you

1) I downloaded fluxbox (slackware package version) from http://fluxbox.bottino.com/
(got the link from http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/)
and i went into the terminal and ran
> installpkg fluxbox-0.1.14-2.tgz
it did it all but i cant find where the main file is! Its not in the default dir (/usr/local/bin/fluxbox) so i cant run it! Is there another way i should install it?

2) How can i run programs from command line, such as mozilla or gaim?

Thanks!

OK, a couple of questions right back at ya

-If you type whereis fluxbox what do you get back?
-When you installed fluxbox, were you su or root?

I compiled mine from the source tarball and it installed without a hitch but I was su when I ran make install.

As for running from a terminal, first get a terminal going and at the prompt type the program name. As long as the program is in your path, it should start right up. If it doesn't, find out where the program is with whereis and try executing using the full path.

Hey all.. If you want to add stuff to the menu, fluxbox looks for a directory in $HOME called $HOME/.fluxbox. In there, live the menu, style, and keybindings files.

If you like hand editing files then start tearing into the menu file. If you would like an app to make life easier for you check out whiteBOX or fluxCONF. Both are GUIs that lets you modify the menu and style files EASILY. You can get them off the fluxbox links page. FluxCONF is designed with fluxbox in mind hence the name. WhiteBOX was designed for BlackBox, but since flux and black come from the same place it all works together.

Hope that helps