Fluxbox clutter
 

I'm still new to linux , but I thought I'd try Fluxbox as I've heard so much good stuff about it.

One thing I don't get is that by default you don't get any of the normal desktop clutter like menus and shortcut icons. This means that you have to start apps from console/xterm. And you have to leave this xterm window open while the app is running - so you're doubling the amount of windows you've got to have open.

Am I missing something here?

First of all, Fluxbox is a Window Manager, not a Desktop Manager. Gnome and KDE include Desktop Managers - because of that there are icons on the desktop and all the other stuff. In Fluxbox you can right-click on the desktop though to get a menu from where you can launch applications.
The menu is read from a simple XML-like file in ~/.fluxbox/menu. Just open it in an editor and add the applications you want.

ok I get it now. cheers

The xterm, restart, exit menu is the default one if Flux cant find any other. Try the example one in the devel sources which'll have the Fluxbox Configuration menus and the style selection one too.

create a entry in your menu to fbrun , mine is located here /usr/X11R6/bin/fbrun
then just use it to launch programs.

you should have a menu file in /home/username/.fluxbox
make an entry like this
[exec] (fbrun) {/usr/X11R6/bin/fbrun}

get idesk or rox, if you want file managers and icons

excellent, thanks. I'll definitley give all those suggestions a go