installing a new window manager
 

I am trying to install Openbox on my system just to give it a try. I downloaded the latest release, but can't seem to get it to work. I untarred the file ran configure. make and checkinstall. I then used installpkg to install it on my system. I didn't see any errors during the above steps, but when I run xwmconfig openbox does not show up as an option. I'm sure I probably am missing a step somewhere, but can't figure out what it is. Any help would be appreciated.

you need to create a xinit.openbox in /etc/X11/xinit. What you put in is dependent on how OpenBox does things, so you will have to dig into that yourself.

Thanks for the quick reply. Ill do some digging to see if I can find out how to do that and what is required.

When you figure just what you need to do to get it running, please post that here..

Thanks
F_M

Another thing you can do is edit your .xinitrc in your home directory and change the last line to run "openbox" or whatever the bin file is for openbox is (instead of say fluxbox or whatever else you're running.)

If you have a fluxbox or blackbox xinitrc file in /etc/X11/xinit, just go into there and do a "cp xinit.blackbox xinit.openbox" Then edit the xinit.openbox file to run openbox at the end instead of blackbox... then when you run xwmconfig as your user, you'll see openbox there.

Thanks Seiken, I followed your advice and copied one of the other xinitrc to openbox and edited the file. After that xwmconfig found openbox and startx started it.
Openbox started with 4 terminals open, one of which had a clock in it. Closing all the terminals shutdown openbox. I'm not sure if that is normal. Any openbox usesers out there that can shed some light??
The configuration programs in the menu don't seem to run. Perhaps they are separate installs???

How I made Open box work:
1. Download latest version form Openbox home page.
2. Cd to download directory
3. tar -zxvf filename (the name of file you downloaded)
4. cd to directory created by tar
5. run /.configure
6. run make
7. run checkinstall (note checkinstall is not part of Slackware. I found that out after trying to run it the first time.)
8. su to root
9. installpkg (packagename)
10. cd to /etc/X11/xinitrc
11. cp xinitrc.twm xinitrc.openbox
12 pico xinitrc.openbox (curser down to bottom and replace twm with openbox. I also deleted the last lines to prevent unwanted terminals from opening)
13. save file
14. from console run xwmconfig select openbox. (should now be one of the choices.)
15. startx
Open box should now run

NOTE: Openbox ran ok on my laptop, however I wasn't happy with the graphics when I start Firefox. So I have switched back to XFCE. XFCE seems to work better on this system due to limited video capabilities.