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#1 2008-08-25 13:30:49

mrunion
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From: Jonesborough, TN
Registered: 2007-01-26
Posts: 1,938
Website

Switched from Gnome to Openbox...

...and I really love it!

I've installed xcompmgr, stalonetray, volwheel and ipager.

Now just a few questions I'm investigated, and I'd like opinions if you have them.

+  I use Thunar (now) and like it.  but I'd also like to have my NTFS shares "auto-mounted".  I've not started to investigate this yet, but I assume this is possible, right?

+  Notifications.  Thunderbird and Firefox notify me when I get new mail or when a download finishes.  Is there any other "notifications" I need?

+  Is there a good source of tray apps for common things?  I have the time on a "pipe menu" entry from a custom script I found.  I like it there.  But sometimes I like stuff like that in the tray.

Thanks, guys!


Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

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#2 2008-08-25 14:33:32

Army
Member
Registered: 2007-12-07
Posts: 1,784

Re: Switched from Gnome to Openbox...

Of course Openbox is better than Gnome tongue

With NTFS shares you mean external drives? Then http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/HAL will give you some hints smile If not external, but internal drives, of course you should do it via fstab

Notifications... I think noone needs it tongue No, seriously, I'm not quite sure what you mean. Who could know, which notifications you actually need, it's a thing of personal taste! Me personally, I don't really need it, for me it's enough if the icon changes.

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#3 2008-08-25 15:00:18

mrunion
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From: Jonesborough, TN
Registered: 2007-01-26
Posts: 1,938
Website

Re: Switched from Gnome to Openbox...

Thanx, Army.  I do have the drives in fstab, but Thunar just didn't "show" them on the left-hand side.  they are internal drives/partitions, not external drives.  Again, I'm still rummaging through reading about this Openbox/Thunar/Non-Gnome stuff.  I've used Linux for quite a while, but I was always a Gnome guy.  Guess I'm not any more!  I do like Openbox very much!

Last edited by mrunion (2008-08-25 15:02:47)


Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

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#4 2008-08-25 15:12:31

lldmer
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From: Amsterdam
Registered: 2008-05-17
Posts: 119

Re: Switched from Gnome to Openbox...

About the notifications: I just found out about noteo (in AUR) the other day. So far I like it (it seems easy to add notifications with extra modules and stuff). Some of the modules in AUR include gmail and pacman notifications. So give it a try, maybe you like it. (Although I'm also not sure on if I really need it)

About info like time etc on your screen: I use conky. You can configure conky to show almost anything you want on your desktop.

Hope this helps:)


For lack of better words: chair, never, toothbrush, really. Ohw, and fish!

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#5 2008-08-25 15:26:59

bgc1954
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From: Edmonton, AB, Canada
Registered: 2006-03-14
Posts: 1,160

Re: Switched from Gnome to Openbox...

If you're trying to do more of a minimalist approach now, maybe try pcmanfm instead of thunar.  Alot of us like and use it and it doesn't drag in the xfce deps.  It may even work better for you than thunar and it has tabs which I really make use of.


Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils ... - Louis Hector Berlioz

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#6 2008-08-25 15:59:27

thayer
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From: Vancouver, BC
Registered: 2007-05-20
Posts: 1,560
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Re: Switched from Gnome to Openbox...

mrunion wrote:

+  I use Thunar (now) and like it.  but I'd also like to have my NTFS shares "auto-mounted".  I've not started to investigate this yet, but I assume this is possible, right?

+  Is there a good source of tray apps for common things?  I have the time on a "pipe menu" entry from a custom script I found.  I like it there.  But sometimes I like stuff like that in the tray.

I'm not sure whether it'll affect NTFS shares, but the 'thunar-volman' package is responsible setting up automount prefs within thunar. Once installed, you can go into the thunar preferences and tweak your volume management options.

Regarding the tray, I always preferred stalonetray, but trayer is another option--I use pypanel these days which takes care of it and more.

Last edited by thayer (2008-08-25 15:59:58)


thayer williams ~ cinderwick.ca

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#7 2008-08-25 16:05:50

Inxsible
Forum Fellow
From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: Switched from Gnome to Openbox...

lxpanel is another option which provides its own tray. I like it quite a bit. I used fbpanel initially when I started using OB, but now I use lxpanel.


Forum Rules

There's no such thing as a stupid question, but there sure are a lot of inquisitive idiots !

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#8 2008-08-25 16:39:40

mrunion
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From: Jonesborough, TN
Registered: 2007-01-26
Posts: 1,938
Website

Re: Switched from Gnome to Openbox...

I do also have pcmanfm installed and I kinda switch between it and thunar.

I switched to OB not so much because of wanting a minimalistic approach, but more because I was trying to get some Gnome things (panel stuff, nice launcher -- I was using AWN, and Compiz stuff) tweaks just the way I liked it.  I always liked a little eye-candy and I felt like I couldn't live without transparency, shadows and wobbly windows.

I tried Fluxbox and liked it pretty well -- but it just didn't fit right.  I then tried OB and was just thrilled!  I don't know what it was that "clicked", but I liked it alot.  I still have xcompmgr for my shadows and stuff, but I really CAN live without wobbly windows!  I like the shiny look of the theme I am currently using (Onyx-citrus).

GDM was smacking me around and starting some things I didn't want it to in OB (like AWN, etc.) so I ditched it and went with SLiM.  Dang!  That was cool!  Now I actually know what .Xdefault and .xinitrc and such do!

While I won't say I'm a "minimalist", I will definitely say I am much closer to that side of things than I have been.  I just wish I could get my menus back to the "Gnome" way of having all that stuff in there.  I am going to look at menumaker and see if that'll do it.  I have dmenu set up and it's OK though.


Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

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#9 2008-08-25 18:44:17

Lord Illidan
Member
From: Malta
Registered: 2007-10-25
Posts: 248

Re: Switched from Gnome to Openbox...

What do you mean by gnome way menu?

I found the Arch wiki very helpful on this : http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ope … Management
Menu maker worked quite well, it did turn up a few apps I never used, so I deleted them from the menu with obmenu.

Trayer is not bad as a system tray. What I didn't like about pypanel was that if it exited or crashed, any applications launched by it would also be killed. Fbpanel fit the bill better, but the menu didn't work as intended (duplicate entries), so I made a custom icon and linked it to the command to launch the menu : http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ope … _a_command

Openbox is great. Cheap on resources, theme looks good too.

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#10 2008-08-25 19:05:42

Rokixz
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From: Šiauliai, Lithuania
Registered: 2007-04-21
Posts: 251
Website

Re: Switched from Gnome to Openbox...

You may need to set your ntfs sistem to /media/ntfs , if you use gmail, your can use checkgmail (nice app smile).


http://ispconfig.lt - ISPConfig 3 based hosting. Coming Soon!

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#11 2008-08-25 19:21:18

fwojciec
Member
Registered: 2007-05-20
Posts: 1,411

Re: Switched from Gnome to Openbox...

Notifications can be very useful, for example to inform you when it is safe to remove an unmounted USB sticks and such (works great with Thunar)...  You can also program them yourself and use them in your scripts or cron jobs.  I use it for things like displaying low battery level warning on my laptop, to remind me of appointments in my google calendar and such...  You need either "notification-daemon" or "notification-daemon-xfce" to use them.

You might run into problems using them with xcompmgr though -- notifacation-daemon doesn't play nice with it, or rather xcompmgr doesn't play nice with notification-daemon.  Xcompmgr is a mess...  Openbox works much better (faster, more stable, lighter) without it.  If I want transparencies and shadows done right I use Compiz standalone configured to look and work like Openbox.

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#12 2008-08-26 13:59:32

mrunion
Member
From: Jonesborough, TN
Registered: 2007-01-26
Posts: 1,938
Website

Re: Switched from Gnome to Openbox...

Great info, guys!

I installed menumaker, but have not yet worked with it.  I do use gmrun and dmenu and maybe that'll do for now.  I actually installed noteo and am liking it pretty well so far.

xcompmgr has been playing nice so far, but if it causes problems I will take another route.  Compiz standalone intrigues me, so I may look into that more!


Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

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