Ah! I'm beginning to see a little light at the end of the tunnel. I think. I had seen references to autostart script, but hadn't used one because I'm using init:4: and slackware-xdm-theme to start blackbox which uses .xsession instead of .xinitrc. I didn't realize (hadn't paid enough attention) to notice there is already a startblackbox shell script in /usr/bin .xsession also uses it. This replaces or modifies it.

I had also seen most of the add ons, but wasn't using them as I don't care for a bunch of icons, etc on my desktop. On of the first things I do regardless of which DE I'm using is take everything off the desktop. That is one reason I was hoping to use fbpanel. It is also one the reasons, other than speed, that I was trying Openbox, and now Blackbox. I don't care for the Next-Step look of most of the others.

I finally since my last post installed Eterm, it seems to work fairly well at setting my background image, with the caveat that I have to use Gimp to rescale my image to fit the monitor I'm using.

But I'm wandering, I'll give this a try. It may even resolve the issue with nitrogen --restore.

you can use feh too, to set a background
https://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.2/graphics/feh/


I'm using this:

I finally have this working fairly well. It has been a stuggle for me and quite a learning experience. I copied the autostartblackbox script verbatim from BW-userx and commented out the bits he had in that I'm not using. I settled on using lxpanel as it seemed closest to what I wanted. The only thing that doesn't work is the logout function which I'm going to keep working at. Out of the box it requires more of LXDE than I want. I'm hoping I can find or write a shell script that I can use instead of lxsession-logout. There is a similar issue when using xfce4-panel and I think the lxpanel looks nicer. One of the things I discovered while playing around with the autostart was that it would attempt to launch nitrogen --restore, but then it would fall back to a blackscreen. I checked through the .xsession-log and found several errors about something overwriting the background command. I remembered that was one of the things I had to edit to get Esetroot to work. After editing the style I'm using and commenting out the rootCommands, nitrogen started working.. So I added nitrogen --restore & to my autostartblackbox and now frabuos joy! I have nice gui that will set my background image without haveing to manually edit the style each time. That also is one of the reasons I like lxpanel, it has a built in applet to add, delete, or movie items around on it without editing any files. I like easy when I can get it.

So, what I am actually running now is a basic install of slackwarearm 14.2 (as provided by sarpi) with slackware-xdm-theme, blackbox wm, xdgmenumaker, nitrogen, and lxpanel. Of course I have the necesary dependencies installed as well. I'm amazed by how much quicker this little board is with this setup. I don't think I would do all this on a desktop as there are to many conveniences that it doesn't have, but on the other hand I knew going in this would never be a valid desktop replacement.

Thanks for all the advice and pointers.

Ok try this, with xfce4-panel : loging out of blackbox. because xfce4 (panel) is looking for a session-manager, and blackbox does not have a session, because it is a Window Manager, not a desktop, so this is where you can get a hacker badge.

Add the panel then add a launcher, go into its properties add a custom command, that little piece of paper icon, click on it, give it a name, comment, the command 'pkill blackbox' w/o the quotes. Check 'Run in Terminal' save, then give that a try.

Don't forget to give it a icon of your choosing.

to start xfce4-panel in your script

1 members found this post helpful.

You're a genius! That works great. It has the added advantage of not requiring any additional packages that aren't included with a full install of Slackware, which has been one of my goals. Well, with an added convience or two like nitrogen. And if memory serves, I can stack launchers on top of that one for reboot and shutdown. I already figured how to do that playing with fbpanel I just couldn't make the logout to DM work. In fact it might also work without the necessity of a seperate menu maker. I'm not in the habit of using a desktop menu any way, I use the one in the panel. I might edit the blackbox right click to call up nitrogen, which is similar to what happens in LXDE, or XFCE for that matter when I use either of them.

glade you're happy, I hope it works out for you!

1 members found this post helpful.