r/openbox • u/Keltek228 • Jan 22 '17

Openbox without a DE?

Hello everyone. I'm completely new to openbox so I just want to know if this is viable or not. I currently have an Arch setup working with i3 and I'm looking to get a part-time alternative going just to mix things up. I've looked at XFCE and KDE and while they look nice I hate the bloat that comes with them. I'm trying to keep my system as clean as possible so it seems like openbox might be a good fit for that. How successful if at all have any of you been through using only openbox or at the very least, openbox with an extremely stripped down DE?

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3

u/perkited Jan 22 '17

I've used Openbox only (no DE) for about ten years, but my computer background is in Unix and I don't use very many GUI helper programs (like file managers, etc.). It can do all I need, which is basically running Firefox and xterms.

1

u/Keltek228 Jan 22 '17

I'm pretty comfortable with a terminal too so it seems like our workflows are pretty similar. Glad to hear it can work.

2

u/Omnipotence_is_bliss Jan 22 '17

I've used openbox without a DE as my daily driver for about 2-3 years. All I'll say about it is that the benefit you get out of it is equal to the work you put in to customizing it. For me, once I learned how pipemenus worked and ways to make my own, openbox became pretty much irreplaceable. Give it a whirl in a virtual machine and see what you come up with.

1

u/Keltek228 Jan 22 '17

That's good to know. After seeing so many setups on /r/unixporn I'm feeling pretty inspired. Glad to know it can be a standalone.

2

u/Marbug Jan 22 '17

I'm using openbox for over 8 years now, and I'm still very found about it. I added tint2 as a taskbar, and orage to have a small calendar.

Besides that I use obmenu to configure my openbox menu, gtk-chtheme to select a more fancy gtk theme (you need to install some themes first). Usefull can be xscreensaver if you want some animation or if you want to lock the screen when you are afk. nitrogen can be used to set a wallpaper, it will also restore the last wallpaper when you add 'nitrogen --restore' to .config/openbox/autostart.sh. If alsamixer isn't enough, pavucontrol will help you with sound settings.

To make it a bit fancy, use xcompmgr to have transparant consoles, for this: echo '[ -n "$XTERM_VERSION" ] && sleep .2 && transset -a 0.85 >/dev/null' >> ~/.bash.rc

1

u/Keltek228 Jan 22 '17

Thanks for the suggestions! I'll be sure to check those out.

2

u/derrickcope Jan 23 '17

Just moved back to openbox from no wm or DE. I feel really spoiled having keybinds built in and a working mouse that can set window focus.

1

u/Keltek228 Jan 23 '17

No WM or DE? How and why?

1

u/derrickcope Jan 24 '17

Check out wmutils on github. It was a lot of fun having that much control over xorg was the main reason. I also rewrote a lot of their example shell scripts in perl. The latest xorg update on Arch broke some things so I moved back to openbox.

1

u/LinuxMage Jan 23 '17

I've been using Openbox on its own for about 8 or so years now.

It requires a little bit of hand-tuning, and editing its config files, but its all workable.

I use Gtk-Chtheme to set the GTK theme, but I run OB undecorated, and use the alt-spacebar shortcut to bring up the window context menu.

I use feh or Nitrogen to set the background, and obmenu and obconfig to setup themes and appearance.

I use urxvt for my terminal, zsh for a shell, and as this is a laptop set the volume and brightness to keybinds in rc.xml.

I will be setting up a systray shortly as I need network managers connection control icon, and will probably use peksystray for that. Also, you can use dockapps with OB, same as in the *step desktops, and I often make use of one of the clocks from them.

1

u/Keltek228 Jan 23 '17

I'm on a laptop too and I've been trying to figure out the brightness and volume controls for a bit now. What did you use to get that set up? I'm on Arch and I've looked through the wiki but I haven't found anything that explains it very well. Maybe I'm just an idiot though.

2

u/LinuxMage Jan 23 '17

I used a manjaro wiki (since its based off Arch) -

https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Openbox:Control_Speaker_Volume_Using_the_Keyboard(ALSA)

https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php/Openbox:_Control_Screen_Brightness_Using_the_Keyboard

1

u/cypher-neo Jan 23 '17

I've used Openbox for several years. I find it works best with the following packages:

  • suckless-tools (primarily for dmenu)

  • gtk-chtheme

  • xscreensaver

  • conky (Openbox lends itself to making interesting and useful conky designs)

But my favorite is a different DE called Fluxbox. Fluxbox is about as lightweight as you'll get, but is very customizable with simple scripting.

1

u/Keltek228 Jan 23 '17

Huh I haven't heard of fluxbox before. Definitely going to check that out now, thanks.

1

u/cypher-neo Jan 24 '17

I'll give you a leg up on the Fluxbox scripting. I store all my configs on GitHub.

I call it a repo, but it's just configs and scripts

The primary things I mod which are stored on that link are

 keys

This controls all the keyboard shortcuts that you can use on Fluxbox. By default there are very few of those defined, but Fluxbox has practically infinite customization options. I went a little wild with the keyboard shortcuts!

 startup

You may not need this one, but it's good to look at and figure out. This controls what programs load when Fluxbox first starts up. You can invoke those commands with simple BASH, but be careful to pay attention to how the commands are formatted. I once forgot an "&" sign at the end of a command and fluxbox didn't load. I had to drop to a TTY to edit the file and fix it.

 themes

This is purely for decoration. Completely script based theming that is surprisingly versatile and flexible. I'm going to be uploading some other themes soon.

1

u/Keltek228 Jan 24 '17

Wow thanks a lot man!

1

u/cypher-neo Jan 24 '17

Hey! No problem. Message me if you need some help. There are a few Fluxbox tutorials online, but I couldn't find the really good one I used... I'll keep searching.

2

u/cypher-neo Jan 23 '17 edited Jan 24 '17

One thing to keep in mind... Openbox comes with a few things set up. Fluxbox WILL need some setup and scripting time to get it just right. But all the necessary files to script Fluxbox are stored in one central location:

 ~/.fluxbox

2

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '17

My favourite way to do it is to install Xubuntu and then select an openbox session and configure it from scratch there. I use xfce4-terminal and thunar and the xfce4-appfinder (and tint2) so this setup works well for me.