I am not sure that's too important though. The DM dies once it's done the work, and while it's loaded it's irrelevant how much ram it uses because you can't do anything else anyway, unless you are of the command line type of guy, which doesn't seem to be the case.

About the openbox thing, TheStarLion, can you start openbox from the command line? Try putting openbox into your ~/.xinitrc file, and then use startx to start the session manually. See if it loads, if not, see if there are error messages or something.

If the DM is active, you might need to go to the console using control+alt+f1, then use "startx -- :0.1" to start another X session and see what happens.

Well, that's crystal ruled out. I don't mind mucking around in the config files like that once in a while, but having to do it that often isn't something I'd enjoy.
XDM, I've tried, and its minimalistic interface is useful, but not if I'm likely to change sessions, so I'll leave it at GDM.

I couldn't start Openbox from within my normal XFCE session - probably wouldn't start because there's already another WM active.
I also didn't have an .xinitrc file, so I'm not entirely certain what to add to it.

I also tried running startx as you suggested, from control-alt-f1 at the gdm login to tty1, I logged in and ran it and got an error. While in an XFCE session, it just tells me there's another WM already active.
I suspect I've mis-interpreted where you wanted me to enter that command.

"Often" means "repeatedly, customarily". It's not the right word here. You shouldn't need to touch the config files often. If you use crystal, in fact, you shouldn't need to touch them at all. If you use plain fvwm then you will need to do "intensive" (that's the word) editing at first. But once it's set up you shouldn't ever need to see that config again unless there's a serious update that changes the syntax (not likely since the fvwm development pace is from nil to extremely slow at best.

But, I agree that fvwm is not for the lazy, or those that simply haven't the time or interest to learn it. That's not a good or a bad thing. Fvwm simply is not like other wm's. There are quite a lot of good wm's, openbox and fluxbox are two excellent wm's, so if they really work for you I don't advice going the fvwm route anyway.

Most wm's do have a --replace flag, use openbox --help and take a look. I don't know if openbox has it.

~/.xinitrc is a file that will be sourced when you run "startx". It's used to define which wm will be loaded when you use startx. If it doesn't exist, just create it with a text editor (note that its name starts with a dot) and then put a single line inside of it, like this:

That's the correct place, but I can't be sure what the problem is without taking a look at that error. The xorg errors will appear on the screen (more extensive info usually at /var/log/Xorg.0.log), any error related to openbox should be logged to ~/openbox.log if you use the line I posted above in your ~/.xinitrc. I don't think the problem is in Xorg, because that would prevent GDM from running as well. So it must be something wrong with openbox.

Remember that if you have gdm loaded, you will need to add the display number to the startx sentence, otherwise it will refuse to start a new X session complaining that there's already an X running on the current display.

Or :0.2, or whatever belongs if you have more than one gdm running.

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using "startx -- 0:1" on tty1, I get the following error (After making the .xinitrc)

Invalid MIT-MAGIC-COOKIE-1 keygiving up.
xinit: Resource temporarily unavailable (errno 11): unable to connect to x server
xinit: No such process (errno 3): server error

The correct syntax is

Oops. My mistake.
I tried that just now.
Now I get:

Fatal server error:
Server is already active for display 0
If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock
and start again

followed by the same three lines I had before.

Sorry, that one was my fault, try this

ps. that should work for the X part, if openbox doesn't come up, look into the log file (assuming you used my line for xinitrc above), and see if there's something into it.

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That worked, although I don't seem to have anything at all - just a blank screen, a mouse pointer and the openbox menu if I right click.
I thought there was meant to be a panel like that flux/black box has at the bottom?

I use Crunchbang.

In previous issues it used lxpanel at the bottom - I preferred that. Now it has tint2 at the bottom.

Have you got either installed?

No. Openbox is just a window manager. It manages windows, and little more.

If you want a panel, then use AWN, fbpanel, perlpanel, suxpanel or any other 3rd party application. This is a bit outdated, but you can use it as a starting point:

http://www.gilesorr.com/wm/helpers.html

You can start them in the same .xinitrc file, but remember to add an ampersand at the end of each line, except the one that launches the wm, which must be the last one. For example:

Surely openbox has a way to autostart programs as well, you could use that instead. I just don't remember *how*.

Most standalone wms are this way, including fluxbox. IceWM has a native taskbar so you might want to check it. It's kind of a win95 clone or something like that. Fvwm has some extra modules that can do this (FvwmButtons and FvwmIconMan). I think e17 also has native panels, it's quite experimental though.

This litle experiment, however, demonstrates that openbox is working, and your config is sane. It remains a mystery why it doesn't work from GDM though... I don't know much about GDM so I can't help. But at least now you know it's not openbox fault.

Tint2 is installed, but doesn't appear to launch.
lxpanel isn't but I can install it easily. I could try that, and see what happens, if not then I'll just see what I can knock up.

This raises the question though that if startx will launch into an openbox session with no issues, why can GDM not log into an Openbox session?

Well, it's an improvement from before, and thanks to all of you for helping. I'll use AWN, as I like that, and it has it's own autostart setting in it's control panel, hopefully that will work.

Crunchbang has a file to autostart apps called ~/.config/openbox

Here is a copy of the entire file:

I've seen that, but after investigating an Openbox help page on autostarting, I've discovered that when Openbox is launched by the startx command as used above, that script isn't run.
But since I only have a few things to start, it's not too much of a problem. I just use grun to launch AWN and wicd, then from AWN I run Dropbox and Guake, then finally gsetroot for the desktop wallpaper.