Really liking Openbox . . .
 

Hi all

I really like KDE 4.4.3, which comes with Slackware 13.1. It is very responsive even on my Pentium III IBM laptop, and that, even with Nepomuk, Akonadi, and Strigi running!

However, I'm building Linux from Scratch 6.7 on that laptop right now and I decided that I wanted a much lighter-weight X environment for building LFS because I really only need Firefox and Konsole. The other stuff that's running in KDE that make it nice to use day to day simply uses resources that aren't needed when I'm mostly just compiling software.

So I started looking for light WMs. I played a lot with TWM, which I like. But I wanted to be able to Alt-Tab between Firefox and Konsole. I think I can do that if I customize the .twmrc, but I haven't gotten that far with it yet.

So I built and installed Openbox from Slackbuilds.org, along with the Tint2 panel/taskbar. It works perfectly for what how I want to use it!

Regards,

@Tint2 - neat, haven't seen that one yet.

@Lightweight - fluxbox is another excellent alternative. However you don't get a battery monitor with it.

Another happy Openbox/tint2 user here. In combination with dropdown terminal (I personally use tilda, but yakuake is also good) and GNU Screen it makes a very decent workspace.

I made my own dropdown terminal using xterm and fluxbox settings.

@ my LQ blog

Nice! I use openbox/tint2.

I also use other lightweight programs to compliment OB such as:
wbar -Mac-like launch bar
adesklets - widgets embedded in background
feh - sets the background image.

Also using the xdg menu I automatically have a list of installed programs in the context menu. Here is a list of my configurations. I have an EEEPC.

Also check out this thread on LQ for more apps.

I used the Openbox / tint2 setup on crunchbang for a long time. Its definately a nice setup, and dmenu adds a useful launcher option.

Now i've switched to Xfce with tint2 (thanks to crunchbang again). I like the font smoothing I can get with Xfce better, and generally appreciate the little configuration guis.

For an ultra-light setup though i'd go to OB in preference to icewm or fluxbox any day.

Openbox looks pretty cool actually. I've spent the last few nights messing around with FVWM after hearing very favorable things from people on this forum. The configuration is a little daunting as the defaults are really off-putting.

I might give Openbox a try :)

I have a twmrc that can do alt-tabbing (my version of it). Although it sounds like since you already got openbox going, there might not be much reason to go back to a less featureful window manager.

I had never heard of tint2. Just installed it and liking it.

If you don't mind sharing, how are you doing the alt-tab?

I have an honest queation with me being new to linux what is openbox and what is it used for exactly

Openbox is a graphical window manager -- an application that works in the X-windows environment to draw windows on the screen (for programs like Firefox) and interpret mouse and keyboard input.

Window managers are less full-featured than the so-called "desktop environments" like KDE (comes with Slackware) and Gnome (which comes with Ubuntu). Desktop environments feature items like a desktop that can have folders and icons for applications on them, and context-sensitive right-click menus. But the lines get blurry sometimes.

The best Windows analogy is that Windows 3.1 was a window manager which Windows 95 was a desktop environment.

Regards,

-Drew

It's also extremely lightweight. IMO perfect for netbooks because it takes less than a second to log in on my EEE pc.

Here are some key strokes. Alt-tab is uncommented, and the others are if you want some way to see a list of the different windows to cycle through. I don't know what your functions look like, so I included mine.

I found this a useful starter for ob -

http://urukrama.wordpress.com/openbox-guide/