From KDE to Fluxbox
 

Hi all

I have seen fluxbox mentioned a few times here and there, and today I took a look at the website and it looks quite nice, something I think I'd like to try.

But being a Linux newbie, I would like to know, what kind of changes am I going to need to know about?

I know that the whole window management is going to be different, but do I have to do any kind of re-configuring for packages I already have installed, etc?

Is this process quite easy and pain-free, or am I expected to put a few hours/days into it?

Thanks for the opinions!

Hong

Naturally, it's not going to be totally pain-free or easy, but it'll be worth it. Just follow the documentation at fluxbox.sourceforge.net and get the development version 0.9.12 (which is quite stable now) to make use of all the functionality.

You'll be able to use programs you had installed for KDE. For example, if you want to use k3b, you just need to edit ~/.fluxbox/menu and add an executable for k3b in that file (fluxbox comes with a pretty good example menu file). Or you could start it up from the command line.

To get fluxbox to start instead of KDE, you'll have to edit your ~/.xinitrc file, but that's not hard and if you have any probs, post back here.

And remember man fluxbox

Cheers

Edit: Sorry for assuming you were using KDE, you could be using Gnome I suppose

Ok, so I'll need to add all my KDE stuff into Fluxbox menu, thats ok. Dont use that much anyway, only Xine, GTK-Gnutella, k3b few others....

I heard FB is a lot less resource hog than KDE, is this true?

I will be installing FB once i have finished upgrading my Kernel.

What are the main plus points (In your opinion) to FB over KDE? Except looks of course, FB looks the dogs b*******!

You've got a kick-ass computer so everything will run pretty quick on it, but yes, fluxbox is based on the very mimimal blackbox window manager and is minimal compared to something like kde which comes with all sorts of programs bundled up in the base package.

The main reason I like it is that you can configure it from the base up and totally personalise it.

You can always go back to using kde later if you want to, but I don't think you'll want to.

Thanks!

I'm gathering from that you are a fluxbox fan :D

Is it easy to personalise?

Theres a command to run that wil update your menu. Forget what it is called. It should already be listed in the fluxbox menu. It hunts for known programs and automatically adds then to the menu. Shouldn't really have to manually add anything unless it's an obscure program that flux doesn't know about.

Don't let anyone fool you. It's quite a transition from Gnome or KDE. One thing you'll want is a file manager. If you already have konqueror or Nautilus installed, I'd use them. You'll feel lost if you don't... No desktop icons is another big thing that you have to get used to. There are some addons to Flux that let you have a "desktop" tho....

You just need to give it time. It's actually a nice WM...

Thanks jong.

I use Konquerer at the mo, prob stick to that.

I'd suggest using the rox file manager, it's lightweight, not difficult to use and you certainly shouldn't feel lost with it.

The automatic menu generation tool is
$ fluxbox-generate_menu

I think this should run when you first install flux, then you configure the menu the way you want to.

Thanks dcdbulter.

Well, I am nearly thru with my kernel upgrade, then I'll do fluxbox, prob next weekend.

:D

Ok, on ./configure I am doing I am gett error:

Could not find XOpenDisplay in -lX11

WHat does this mean?