Install Openbox

Why Openbox ?

When I leave Ubuntu (with gnome) for a more configurable and lightweight distribution (even if I know Ubuntu can do that), I wanted to change my desktop environment too. On the (French) forums of Archlinux many people using Openbox and at this time I followed the #! CrunchBang Linux forums a Linux distribution based on the Openbox + tint2 environment. CrunchBang user make beautiful configuration for the duo.

I was also interesting by pekwm & Bmpanel (maybe in the future?), I don’t remember the others…

Install

I think they are on the depot of your distribution, for example on :

Archlinux

For Openbox :
yaourt -S openbox

Extra (not on all distrib) – Graphic applications for configuration :

yaourt -S obconf obmenu obkey openbox-themes obtheme

FreeBSD

For Openbox :
# cd /usr/ports/x11-wm/openbox/

# make install clean

If you need a ~/.xinitrc for launch a session you can add that. (I use Slim for launch X session and I need it)

echo "exec ck-launch-session openbox-session" > ~/.xinitrc

I had ck-lauch-session because of ConsoleKit (it’s useful for mounting automatically a usb key for example without root right), on FreeBSD ck-launch-session doesn’t work, you have juste to put :

echo "exec openbox-session" > ~/.xinitrc

You need create configuration files :

Archlinux

mkdir -p ~/.config/openbox

cp /etc/xdg/openbox/* ~/.config/openbox

FreeBSD

mkdir -p ~/.config/openbox

cp /usr/local/share/etc/xdg/openbox/* ~/.config/openbox

It’s all for today…tonight maybe.

I will explain the configuration of Openbox later, and the panel, and others usefull utilities.