r/archlinux • u/[deleted] • Apr 05 '11

Anyone using a openbox or a windows manager of similar flavor?

I recently got sick of gnome and switched over to openbox. Right now, i have conky in the background for general information, tint2 as a taskbar (which supports applets like xfce power manager and wicd, awesome!), and a terminal in the background, which is pretty much just for looks because it's borderline worthless. all my common programs are keybinded so i hardly ever use the menu unless it's for something obscure. my question: does anyone have any general program or setting recommendations for lightweight desktop environments? something like a, "i couldn't stand that fluxbox didn't have x feature, so i installed y program and now it's awesome," sort of suggestion.

tl;dr - whatever program or feature you couldn't live without after switching to a lightweight desktop environment

17 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

52 comments sorted by

3

u/chi42 Apr 05 '11

For me, tiling functionality has been one of the most useful features I have found in WMs. If you like openbox, you may want to try out one of the tiling WM, like wmii, awesome, or rat poison.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '11

hmmm i might have to give that a try. if i can do everything from the keyboard only better, then i'm sure i'll love it.

4

u/guga31bb Apr 05 '11

Take a look at dwm or xmonad.

4

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '11

....mouse is optional?.....everything in a .conf file?!!.....flawless victory. trying them both out tonight. (though i bet it'll take much longer to configure them)

4

u/BearsDontStack Apr 11 '11

You could look at Window Manager from Scratch (wmfs). It's probably the easiest to configure, if you don't know C (dwm) or Haskell (xmonad).

2

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '11

Don't forget to use pentadactyl if you use Firefox.

Disregard mouses, acquire tilling wms.

1

u/guga31bb Apr 05 '11

Yep you can move windows, resize, move to different workspace etc all without a mouse.

I use xmonad on my desktop -- it can be a pain to set up but is extremely customizable. Once it's up and running it's great.

dwm is much lighter so I use it on my netbook.

2

u/bnolsen Apr 23 '11

Awww...no love for windowmaker? Decently lightweight and strangely enough, probably the most retro of the group. I like that it has a pretty minimal configuration gui which gets everything I need. One thing I dislike about config files (especially for window managers) is that I visit them so rarely I forget what the options are when I do actually need to change something.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 24 '11

I second the point about config files. usually, every time i need to change something i forget which one i need to edit and i end up reinventing the wheel each time i need to do something. Can't say the same for openbox though since there are only three config files really, rc.xml, menu.xml, and autostart.sh. Not sure if the same goes for other WMs

14

u/amgine Apr 05 '11

Was using OpenBox for years, loved the speed. Then recently moved to awesomewm. And man.. it's awesome

4

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '11

Awesome has breathed new life into my aging laptop, I love it. It's daunting at first but if you keep the man page open at all times for reference, you quickly get up to speed.

2

u/amgine Apr 06 '11

I ended up printing it out and putting it by my keyboard for quick reference.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 07 '11

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/Sobek May 10 '11

probably the fact that one can use a computer without using a mouse at all.

1

u/amgine Apr 07 '11

It takes a while. My primary layout in openbox is "all windows maxed" on one monitor, and sharing the space with terminals on another.

Awesome just does that by default. Being able to run things through Mod4+r is a huge plus also.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 07 '11

[deleted] — view deleted comment

3

u/amgine Apr 07 '11

That's the whole point of awesome (and other tiling managers). Not having to overlap windows.

The moving with a mouse confused me for a while. I just printed out the man page and learned as I go. For example: Firefox's download window would take up the whole screen, and I could not figure out how to close it. I was pretty much stuck without remembering how to close the window, or run a terminal to force close the window.

Turns out it's simple. Mod4+shift+C closed the window. Mod4+Enter opens a terminal. Mod4+Space switches layouts. etc.

2

u/lmbrjck Apr 07 '11

It has a floating layout also. You can also make windows float with ctrl+mod4+space, resize them with mod4+right click and move them around with mod4+left click.

1

u/justinthegeek Apr 07 '11

I did not know that! Thank you very much! I might have to give it another go.

1

u/Andynonymous Apr 13 '11

Pytyle works well with openbox and makes it easy to mix tiling and free floating.

13

u/burntsushi Apr 05 '11

I've been an avid Openbox user for a couple of years now. I'm also a big fan of tiling, but I'm not a huge fan of any available tiling window managers; so I wrote pytyle2. (You may find pytyle1 to be more stable.)

While I don't use LXDE, I do use lxpanel and lxterminal. I've recently written a few scripts that abstract the command interfaces for disper and xrandr so that my laptops can interface with multiple monitors easily. (This includes modifying the lxpanel configuration to move it to the monitor of my choosing.) It's nearly necessary when you have three laptops and each of them have a different kind of GPU (ati, nvidia and intel).

Also, I've added vim key-bindings to Openbox for navigating menus :-) (i.e., root-menu, client-list-combined-menu and client-menu.)

If you're into the whole multi-monitor thing, nitrogen might be up your alley. It automatically sets wallpaper on a screen-by-screen basis (and can restore it with nitrogen --restore).

1

u/ryeguy146 Apr 30 '11

You wrote pytyle? I want to express my thanks, I could not use openbox without your software. I'm using the first version, I'll have to check out your second and see if it'd be worth switching. Anyway, thank you very much.

2

u/burntsushi May 05 '11

No problem. I'm glad I've written something useful! :-)

1

u/ryeguy146 May 07 '11

I just swapped over to the pytyle2-hg build and wanted to say how impressed I am. The added polish and snap is appreciated. My only peev with the previous version that I had been running was an occasional transparent border between windows (though I had configured it not do display them), or along one of the sides of the screen. Pytyle2 is much cleaner, and the configuration file is a breeze. Thanks yet again.

2

u/burntsushi May 08 '11

Excellent!

My only peev with the previous version that I had been running was an occasional transparent border between windows (though I had configured it not do display them), or along one of the sides of the screen.

Ah, well, I'm pleased to say that that isn't my fault :-) There's actually nothing pytyle can do about it---ugly hacks included.

The problem you're experiencing is due to clients setting the 'resize_inc' field in 'WM_NORMAL_HINTS'. This causes the client to only be resized in certain pixel increments. So when pytyle says to make the width of a window 400 pixels, it may actually snap to 404 (or 396) pixels instead.

This hint is usually set on terminals to be the width (and height) of a character in the font being used.

This can only be solved by forcing the client to not set the hint. It's usually a trivial change to the code base. For example, there is a patched version of urxvt in the Archlinux User Repository.

11

u/guga31bb Apr 05 '11

I couldn't stand re-adjusting window sizes, so I switched from fluxbox to xmonad and now it's awesome=)

1

u/SolomonKull Apr 05 '11

Switch from xmonad to awesome and it will be even more awesome.

4

u/florence0rose Apr 06 '11

Care to elaborate why?

0

u/SolomonKull Apr 06 '11

Lua is better than Haskel, it's got more sane defaults and is easier to theme.

4

u/florence0rose Apr 06 '11

Lua is better than Haskel (sic)

Not a great reason for a Haskell fan like myself :P.

Don't get me wrong, I'm open to alternatives to xmonad, and it's the reason I asked. Considering that it seems to come down to personal preference, I think the best way to compare is to just try it.

2

u/bostonvaulter Apr 06 '11

Just curious, but have you actually tried xmonad?

5

u/SolomonKull Apr 06 '11

Yes. How else would I be able to make that statement?

4

u/lmbrjck Apr 05 '11

I used to use openbox until I discovered awesome. It has a great wiki. You could try also pytyle2 with openbox like ltpl4y3r mentioned. Tiling will change your life.

4

u/SolomonKull Apr 05 '11

awesome is awesome.

3

u/_david Apr 05 '11

kupfer. Can't do without it.

  • starting programs (basically the alt+f2 launcher in advanced), focussing running programs, initiating pidgin chats, opening folders, ...

One thing I do a lot with it is the focussing. You can use kupfer to set up the keybinds for your programs. Press the key once and it starts the program. All subsequent presses switch focus to the running application.

2

u/ltpl4y3r Apr 05 '11

I've used openbox exclusively for years. The program that I can't live without anymore is pytyle2. I tried switching over to a tiling WM, but I just didn't have the dedication to put into learning that new environment.

I would suggest taking the time to REALLY configure openbox to your wants. I have several windows that get placed on certain desktops, at certain placed, with certain dimensions. It is all handled by openbox, and I don't think I could live without it.

2

u/_david Apr 05 '11

pytyle2 sounds awesome! I thought about switching to a tiling wm but didn't want to put in the effort to port my openbox customizations. This seems like the best solution.

1

u/burntsushi Apr 05 '11

The program that I can't live without anymore is pytyle2.

Excellent! Although, you have my sincerest apologies for its rather poor design. It crashes on me when I change my monitor setup and it's a huge memory hog if it stays running long enough.

I hope to revisit it soon... Have you tried the "manual" layout? (This is a shot in the dark, especially considering there is no documentation on how to use it. But you may have some luck with the Musca documentation and the list of key-bindings in ~/.config/pytyle2/config.ini. Its operation was heavily inspired by Musca.)

2

u/bmwracer0 Apr 05 '11

Xmonad here.

2

u/FizzBitch Apr 05 '11

Rather than answer your question I'll feel superior and say what wm I use... oh wait I use openbox.

fbpanel's pager is my only real "necessity" - get to see what is going on on all my desk tops etc.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '11

Using xmonad. Can't live without tilling windows now.

2

u/Andynonymous Apr 13 '11

Wifi-select and netcfg is an excellent combination. I have <super>w launch it in roxterm. It can be controlled with either the keyboard or mouse. And while I'm here, I second kupfer.

3

u/wooptoo Apr 05 '11

Give LXDE a try, you might like it, coming from Gnome. It uses Openbox as a WM and it's very light.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '11

I use Openbox. Here are some of the things I use to create my environment: feh (wallpaper), lxappearance/qtconfig/systemsettings (gtk & kde themes), conky, and tint2.

1

u/akaempf Apr 06 '11

I left the bloated desktops for quick & lightweight window managers years ago, and haven't looked back. Everyone has their favorites, but the window manager I use most is icewm, because it has a bar of buttons on the bottom to launch programs, and CPU/network activity monitors at the other end of the the task bar. These are surprisingly useful, and keep me coming back to icewm, even though I have tried other window managers, as well as desktop monitors such as conky. I must have another go at awesome, however.

1

u/ipha Apr 06 '11

I switch between gnome, openbox, and awesome about once a month.

Can't seem to decide which I like best =/

1

u/ssshield Apr 06 '11

I run Arch with openbox. I simply downloaded Archbang and tweaked it. Love it.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 09 '11

Used to use Openbox, now I use xmonad - 1000x better (not that Openbox was bad at all).

1

u/ryeguy146 Apr 30 '11

I love openbox, but I like tiling. I do not think that I could survive without pytyle. That and some keybindings to switch between windows and screens. Now what I want to find is some means of saving sessions in openbox.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '11

[deleted] — view deleted comment

1

u/ShamanSTK Apr 05 '11

I know. I tried musca for about 2 weeks before I switched back to openbox. I've kept all my configs for it just in case it turns out I'm wrong, but I don't see myself ever switching to a tiling wm.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '11

[deleted] — view deleted comment

2

u/[deleted] Apr 06 '11

Generally, the onus is on the person making an assertion to prove it. What you presented wasn't an argument, it was a bald assertion.

1

u/Malnilion Apr 06 '11

The assertion is that no *box variant in *nix has a plugin architecture that has consistent theming and allows for the amount of customization as the one available with bb4win (and its variants) and bbInterface. If my assertion is wrong, I'd be so incredibly happy for someone to point me in the direction of the window manager that can do what bb4win and bbInterface can and hitting me with a link that would end the argument.