Moving to Openbox

tonyisnt · 2008-09-18 03:21:11

Being something of a minimalist myself (or at least someone who tries to be), I've always been attracted to the idea of running just a WM, but I've never been able to stick to it. I've also long felt that the best looking desktops I've ever seen have been *box desktops, which actually includes alternate shells for windows like bb4win and the like. I even used blackbox for a little while in the first year or so that I used Linux, but it just didn't stick.

With all of the Openbox desktops I've seen, and of all the things I've read, I think it's time for me to make a serious stab at switching for good. If everything goes well and I can land on a setup I'm happy with, I'll lose Gnome for good. As-is, my Gnome setup is isn't necessarily "standard"; I've been without a taskbar/window list for almost as long as I've been using Linux (late 2005), so all I've had is an autohiding panel at the top of my screen with the menubar on it, my tray, my clock, and a few other things. I think I could easily lose the tray altogether, and I like the idea of a root menu better, anyways. I can probably lose the clock, too, since Conky covers that quite well for me. I don't really need any of it anymore.

Themes shouldn't be much of a problem. Configuration shouldn't be much of a problem, either. I'll have to adjust to using a few different programs, but for the ones I use the majority of the vast majority of the time (Firefox, etc.), there will be absolutely no difference. I've been using xcompmgr for compositing/transparency for a long time and don't want any fancier effects, so I already have that down.

So, when it comes down to it, this is where I'm at...

Things I'm pretty sure I have replacements for:

- Nautilus (as a file browser) will probably be replaced my pcmanfm. I've used it a little bit before and I liked it, so I think that's what I'm going with.
- Keybinds are all going to be handled by xbindkeys. Only a few things have to be switched from the Gnome keyboard shortcuts to xbindkeys.
- For the last few weeks I've been using tilda instead of gnome-terminal. With a few minor annoyances with it, I prefer it.
- Xcompmgr and transset/transset-df stay.

More importantly, though, are the things I'm not sure about. Not a huge list, but it's there. These are:

- "Run" box
- To keep the functionality of what I do use my panel for, I'll probably need a tray program and perhaps a workspace switcher, though this isn't entirely necessary. I want a tray with a completely transparent background, so it looks like my icons are just sitting on the desktop. Something I can throw volwheel on will be good. Like I said, I probably won't go for a panel.
- A text editor that is very similar to Gedit. If I can't find one, I'll probably just keep it. I don't think it has too many Gnome dependencies.
- A calculator would be nice, but probably not 100% necessary.
- Games. I don't use them terribly often, but solitaire and freecell and a few others have a bit of a hold on me.
- A data CD burner. Not really necessary since my other programs handle this, too, but having it built in to Nautilus has been nice.
- File manager actions/scripts. I'm not sure about how pcman is with this. I've heard it's not a big problem with Thunar, but again, I'm not sure.
- An image viewer.

And finally, things I might want to keep, but I can probably do fine without:
- A graphic system monitor.
- A small calendar program that just shows me the dates; it doesn't need to do scheduling or anything, I just want to see what I see when I click on the clock applet in gnome-panel.
- An archive manager. Not totally important, and CLI is often more powerful and not that hard.

OK, so, basically I'm looking for suggestions on some things. I don't want anyone to do anything for me, but pushing me in the right direction would be nice. I think one of the most important things is figuring out how to get my tray transparent. With the little toying around I've done (stalonetray, docker, trayer) under Gnome, programs like Quod Libet and Deluge keep the background color of gnome-panel. I'm hoping this isn't a chronic problem.

Crude representation of what I'm hoping to acheive:

I think that's it.

NoOneImportant · 2008-09-18 03:54:56

Openbox actually does its own keyboard and mouse bindings, so xbindkeys isn't very necessary.

Also, lxde also has some useful utilities that are not interdependent. For example, lxpanel and gpicview. You can install those without install everything from the lxde group.

tonyisnt · 2008-09-18 03:59:50

Yeah, but if I've got xbindkeys set up how I want already, there is no reason to go through and move it all from xbindkeys to Openbox. Plus, my keybindings will be the same no matter what with xbindkeys, and I can use it with any DE/WM I want.

Oh, and I just realized I forgot to mention that I'm going to need something to get files onto the desktop, as well.

NoOneImportant · 2008-09-18 04:25:39

I guess I'm just more comfortable with letting the window manager handle my keybindings.

pcmanfm can drag and drop to and from the desktop, especially when you let it draw the desktop (which it can)

Stythys · 2008-09-18 05:29:09

- "Run" box

gmrun

- To keep the functionality of what I do use my panel for, I'll probably need a tray program and perhaps a workspace switcher, though this isn't entirely necessary. I want a tray with a completely transparent background, so it looks like my icons are just sitting on the desktop. Something I can throw volwheel on will be good. Like I said, I probably won't go for a panel.

stalonetray. As for workspace switcher openbox has that built in. You can use the scrollwheel just to scroll through them, or push down the scrollwheel to see details.

- A text editor that is very similar to Gedit. If I can't find one, I'll probably just keep it. I don't think it has too many Gnome dependencies.

Scite?

- A data CD burner. Not really necessary since my other programs handle this, too, but having it built in to Nautilus has been nice.

nautilis already has a builtin cd burner -.-

- File manager actions/scripts. I'm not sure about how pcman is with this. I've heard it's not a big problem with Thunar, but again, I'm not sure.

I use pcmanfm, but I'm not sure how well it handles actions/scripts either.

- An image viewer.

feh? =P. if you want lightweight at least

And finally, things I might want to keep, but I can probably do fine without:
- A graphic system monitor.

conky?

tonyisnt · 2008-09-18 05:37:52

@NoOneImportant: I wasn't aware of this. I knew ROX did, but not pcmanfm.

@Stythys: gmrun looks fine. stalonetray, as long as I can get the background on it transparent correctly, is what I'm looking at most. I know that the workspace switching can be done with the scrollwheel, but I kind of like the little boxes to click on, too. I know Nautilus has CD burning built in, but if I dump Gnome I won't be using Nautilus. And finally, when I said "graphic system monitor" I guess I meant one with a GUI, and really it's for finding processes more than watching resources (I already have conky set up for that). (And this one isn't really necessary, since using kill and killall and such works fine, really.)

EDIT: I could use feh, but I'm looking for something that at least has backward and forward functionality. Eye of Gnome, you could probably guess, will leave with gnome.

Last edited by tonyisnt (2008-09-18 05:44:06)

NoOneImportant · 2008-09-18 06:09:49

tonyisnt wrote:

EDIT: I could use feh, but I'm looking for something that at least has backward and forward functionality. Eye of Gnome, you could probably guess, will leave with gnome.

gpicview

it doesn't do slideshows, but if you want slideshows then check out gthumb as well

as for cd burning, I'd like to know that too

Last edited by NoOneImportant (2008-09-18 06:12:36)

dav7 · 2008-09-18 06:35:27

I use Openbox too, and love it. Here you go... no idea if this is suitable, this is just what comes to mind when I think of the categories you list.

- "Run" box

No idea. I have Openbox configured to start urxvtc when I hit F4, and while F4 sounds like it'd be a fairly depended-on key, it isn't actually that bad - the only app it clashes with is htop. Oh, and I exit terminals with 'x'.

- To keep the functionality of what I do use my panel for, I'll probably need a tray program and perhaps a workspace switcher, though this isn't entirely necessary. I want a tray with a completely transparent background, so it looks like my icons are just sitting on the desktop. Something I can throw volwheel on will be good. Like I said, I probably won't go for a panel.

Both 'tint2' and 'bmpanel' can go transparent, although the 2nd requires you have composite support for this functionality (but functions perfectly as a 100%-opaque panel if you don't have composite enabled). The former, while coming along nicely (it's quite a new project, designed specifically for openbox), lacks any sort of tray support. bmpanel does have tray support. Since I can't manage composite, I use tint, and since I use no tray-using applications (I use hotkeys for everything ) it all works out perfectly.

- A text editor that is very similar to Gedit. If I can't find one, I'll probably just keep it. I don't think it has too many Gnome dependencies.

GEANY!!!!!!

- A calculator would be nice, but probably not 100% necessary.

I use the 'calc' util from the terminal. And /exec -o calc <...> from irssi.

- Games. I don't use them terribly often, but solitaire and freecell and a few others have a bit of a hold on me.

I don't game

- A data CD burner. Not really necessary since my other programs handle this, too, but having it built in to Nautilus has been nice.

cdparanoia, from the terminal?

- File manager actions/scripts. I'm not sure about how pcman is with this. I've heard it's not a big problem with Thunar, but again, I'm not sure.

Yes, Thunar works with configurable actions, (that can be bound to all files, or tied to specific files based on filetype).

- An image viewer.

feh or mirage works for me. Mirage is written in Python though, so is a little slowish. Mirage is better for bigger images though, since feh takes milliseconds to load small images, and multiple orders of seconds to load large-ish images (here anyway), like 1280x1024+.

And finally, things I might want to keep, but I can probably do fine without:
- A graphic system monitor.

htop in terminal?

- A small calendar program that just shows me the dates; it doesn't need to do scheduling or anything, I just want to see what I see when I click on the clock applet in gnome-panel.

terminal -> 'cal'

- An archive manager. Not totally important, and CLI is often more powerful and not that hard.

Squeeze?

As you might have guessed, I live out of a terminal, use bash for everything, script my life, and hate GUIs.

-dav7

Last edited by dav7 (2008-09-18 06:39:18)

NoOneImportant · 2008-09-18 06:53:58

about a cd burning app

recorder looks very promising (just glanced at the UI, but haven't use it yet)

linkity linkity

moljac024 · 2008-09-18 09:54:15

- "Run" box

gmrun

- To keep the functionality of what I do use my panel for, I'll probably need a tray program and perhaps a workspace switcher, though this isn't entirely necessary. I want a tray with a completely transparent background, so it looks like my icons are just sitting on the desktop. Something I can throw volwheel on will be good. Like I said, I probably won't go for a panel.

You should give stalonetray and trayer another shot. Maybe they'll behave better outside of gnome. Since those 2 are the best tray apps available on linux, you might struggle in finding a replacement.

- A text editor that is very similar to Gedit. If I can't find one, I'll probably just keep it. I don't think it has too many Gnome dependencies.

GEANY!!!!!!
Awesome editor + small IDE

- A calculator would be nice, but probably not 100% necessary.

I use the calculator from gnome (rarely need it though)

- Games. I don't use them terribly often, but solitaire and freecell and a few others have a bit of a hold on me.

PySol. You'll love it.

- A data CD burner. Not really necessary since my other programs handle this, too, but having it built in to Nautilus has been nice.

I use Brasero for the very rare times I burn something from my laptop.

- File manager actions/scripts. I'm not sure about how pcman is with this. I've heard it's not a big problem with Thunar, but again, I'm not sure.

Besides Thunar, Rox also supports custom actions. Never could get around to using it. Maybe you'll like it more.

- An image viewer.

Mirage

And finally, things I might want to keep, but I can probably do fine without:
- A graphic system monitor.

The system monitor from LXDE ? can't remember the name right now, lxmonitor or something

- A small calendar program that just shows me the dates; it doesn't need to do scheduling or anything, I just want to see what I see when I click on the clock applet in gnome-panel.

That might be a hard one. You could script something with conky but you may need FVWM for that. There could be a nice tray app that does that for you.

- An archive manager. Not totally important, and CLI is often more powerful and not that hard.

Squeeze

Last edited by moljac024 (2008-09-18 09:55:47)

Rasi · 2008-09-18 10:11:55

- "Run" box

again: gmrun

- To keep the functionality of what I do use my panel for, I'll probably need a tray program and perhaps a workspace switcher, though this isn't entirely necessary. I want a tray with a completely transparent background, so it looks like my icons are just sitting on the desktop. Something I can throw volwheel on will be good. Like I said, I probably won't go for a panel.

trayer, stalonetray + tint2, or bmpanel which has a tray built-in

- A text editor that is very similar to Gedit. If I can't find one, I'll probably just keep it. I don't think it has too many Gnome dependencies.

Its tempting to say gvim now, but i won't.
gvim
Damn, i have done it anyway.

- Games. I don't use them terribly often, but solitaire and freecell and a few others have a bit of a hold on me.

scummvm, teeworlds, some chess game

- A data CD burner. Not really necessary since my other programs handle this, too, but having it built in to Nautilus has been nice.

the command line works fine for burning. only data cd's can be a mess, but bashburn is supposed to be good.

- An image viewer.

gthumbs, i cant believe they replaced this wonderful piece with fspot...

xd-0 · 2008-09-18 10:26:51

WM - OpenBox all the way.
Tray/Panel - Take a look at pypanel or bmpanel for complete panels (without menu). If you are going minimal with only a tray then the previously mentioned apps would do.
Mirage - Image viewer
Geany - Texteditor
Pcmanfm - Tabbed windows, can open terminal in current folder + as root, can handle the desktop (background+icons). though it doesn't have actions/scripts
Archive - File-roller + given applications (unrar etc..) Integrates rather well into pcmanfm.
Terminal - If you don't use background-pictures I would suggest the default xterm. A little different keybindings (shift+insert instead of crtl+shift+v etc...). But it is light, standard in almost all distrubutionsa and can look very good.
Cd-burner - Brasero, gnomebaker or one of the others. As long as it feels right.

Remember, the nr1 reason people change to a WM is that they want a slim desktop that only fit their own needs, not the other way around.
So even if you should be going for slim applications with few dependencies, you should also focus on what feels right.
So even if an application may be somewhat bloated, as long as they feel right, you should stick with them.

Also, consider skipping desktop-icons. Personaly I do all of my filemanagment either in xterm or in pcmanfm. The desktop is left clean with a nice wallpaper and of course conky
So good luck, and Im looking forward to some nice screenshoots

thayer · 2008-09-18 15:13:26

I think there are plenty of good suggestions here, so I just want to point out that there's absolutely nothing wrong with continuing to use Nautilus and/or gedit after you drop GNOME--especially if these are two applications that you have come to rely on.

For example, folks can tout the greatness of Thunar and Pcmanfm, but the bottom line is that Nautilus is the only FM (aside from Konqueror) which can access virtual filesystems seamlessly. You can access remote resources via SSH, FTP, and Samba by simply entering the address in the location bar--none of these lightweight file managers can do that...and the next version of Nautilus will support tabbed windows like all the rest.

Gedit may be a bit heavier compared to other editors, but it too ties very well into Nautilus, which may make your life easier.

Just something to keep in mind...

As for calculators...I prefer galculator.

Last edited by thayer (2008-09-18 19:03:40)

AD28 · 2008-09-18 15:29:33

thayer wrote:

I think there are plenty of good suggestions here, so I just want to point out that there's absolutely nothing wrong with continuing to use Nautilus and/or gedit after you drop GNOME--especially if these are two applications that you have come to rely on.

Thank you.. I can't stand it when people blindly use apps simply because they have small footprints. It's always nice to streamline a system, but "streamlining" to the point of hindering your productivity is just stupid.

Openbox is nice not because it's lightweight, but because it can be customized 100% to your needs.. so do that - customize it 100% to your needs. Don't ditch app X for Y solely because Y is lighter.

skottish · 2008-09-18 15:45:45

There are a lot of good suggestions here. I would like to also recommend Scite as a graphical text editor. It is amazingly configurable and powerful for something that has as small as a footprint that it has. And, it's really fast with almost no dependencies.

Oh yes, for calculators:

Speedcrunch is awesome. QT4 only. I'm currently using qalculate-gtk. It's not as nice as speedcrunch, but I don't have QT4 anymore.

On more thing: sakura is a very good terminal. It's very similar to XCFE Terminal. Very fast, full clipboard support, tabs, easy to configure, and has a built URL launcher. It works flawlessly for me.

Last edited by skottish (2008-09-18 16:07:25)

ssjlegendx · 2008-09-19 00:54:56

Like you, tonyisnt, I've traditionally been a GNOME user and am accustomed to using some GNOME applications. As of late, however, I've been using mostly Openbox, and I've tried a number of "alternative" applications.

A text editor that is very similar to Gedit. If I can't find one, I'll probably just keep it. I don't think it has too many Gnome dependencies.

Check out medit. It's much like gedit in appearance and functionality. Plus, it offers some extras like a built-in terminal, file browser, etc.

A calculator would be nice, but probably not 100% necessary.

galculator is a possible replacement for gcalctool (the GNOME calculator); however, I still prefer the latter.

An image viewer.

Eye of GNOME can perhaps be replaced with Mirage.

A graphic system monitor.

I'm not sure about this one.... I'd like to find one myself.

An archive manager. Not totally important, and CLI is often more powerful and not that hard.

For a graphical archive manager, I suggest xarchiver. I seem to recall hearing that it allows you to view the underlying commands and/or output....

skottish · 2008-09-19 01:04:39

pcmanfm has built in archiving that's far more reliable than xarchiver. I don't know if it has all of the functionality, but it does everything I need it to do.

If code completion is important, then medit isn't going to work. It's too bad too; It's almost as fast as Scite and has a really nice gui layout.

Xyne · 2008-09-19 01:13:02

run app: gmrun
calculator: galculator
image viewer: feh (I use it to set my desktop background too)
cd & dvd burner: graveman (lightweight, simple, easy)
text editor: geany/(g)vim
graphic system monitor: conky (highly customizable, can be set to run on desktop background)

Try pypanel... you might be able to customize it to do exactly what you want and might realize that you want a bit more than a bare tray while doing so.
Not sure about the calendar... osmo is nice but not as simple as what you want.

Misfit138 · 2008-09-19 03:08:26

Openbox, ristretto, thunar, galculator, gmrun, sakura, squeeze, pypanel. numlockx, conky, tilda.
Yup. Tilda rules.

NoOneImportant · 2008-09-19 03:22:15

has anyone noticed that sakura renders fonts differently than urxvt? why is that?

skottish · 2008-09-19 03:25:16

NoOneImportant wrote:

has anyone noticed that sakura renders fonts differently than urxvt? why is that?

I'm guessing because sakura is a gtk2 app. It renders fonts just like Terminal.

fuscia · 2008-09-19 14:29:06

you can still use all the apps you're using now in openbox. if you want lighter apps, you can gradually convert over as you find ones that are suitable for your needs.

feh is a great image viewer. you can do slide shows, collages, etc. in openbox, you can use feh to set your wallpaper. (if won't show animated .gif's, but mplayer can do that.)

i'd take thunar over nautilus, even in gnome.

you know openbox has scrollable workspaces, yes? middle click will show you what's on each workspace, as well.

i use nano and leafpad for text editors. i use leafpad when i edit themes (which i do a lot) because i can keep it open when i view the changes. otherwise, i'd just use nano.

good luck finding something else that works besides k3b.

games? go outside and run around. (what the hell's wrong with you people?)

the great thing about window managers, as opposed to DE's, is that after you've been using one for a while, you realize that all you needed was access to your apps.

skottish · 2008-09-19 15:30:03

fuscia wrote:

good luck finding something else that works besides k3b.

Since we're in the land of many dependencies, Brasero woks very well too.

fuscia wrote:

games? go outside and run around. (what the hell's wrong with you people?)

No shit.

fuscia · 2008-09-19 16:42:03

skottish wrote:

fuscia wrote:
good luck finding something else that works besides k3b.
Since we're in the land of many dependencies, Brasero woks very well too.

i got some errors with it and didn't have any more patience left.

tonyisnt · 2008-09-19 18:53:14

Wow, lots of responses!

Basically I'll address things in order of what I feel is important.

First, I can't get everything to play nice with any tray I've used. With stalonetray, I'm almost there, but not quite. I turned on transparency, but a few programs continue to draw a grey background. Basically it's just Quod Libet and occasionally Deluge. They're both python, which I feel has to be the culprit, but I'm confused because sometimes the Deluge icon shows up fine. Also, I would like the tray to be at the bottom right corner of my screen, and for some reason it wants to keep ~10px gap from the side. I've thought about trying some panels, but since I don't really need/don't really want a taskbar, I don't think I want a full panel.

Desktop files (not icons, necessarily) are another thing. Yeah, maybe according to some people I "should" just stop using them. And I'm capable of this. However, I find it convenient to have just a few right there on the desktop—things like my todo list, a folder with todo tasks, and things I'll just be using temporarily. The problem is, PCman doesn't really cooperate. I want them in one row at the bottom left, and it won't allow my to manually sort them. Nautilus would work fine, but it won't play nice with conky while using openbox. (It also gets rid of the root menu when it's drawing the desktop, which isn't acceptable). At all. So, at this point it looks like I have to get used to not having them.

But anyways, onto other programs.

For a "run" box I'll just use gmrun. Simple and works.

For text editors, I'm leaning toward just keeping gedit. I'll probably try a few others, but it seems like most of the suggestions have had more than I need (except for spelling error highlighting). Dependencies aren't bad, so I can keep it.

Games aren't really important. Sometimes when I'm just sitting around playing a podcast I like to play something, though. Go outside, you say? I'm sleeping in the woods tonight. (I'm kind of an anomaly. I know more about tech-related junk than most people I know, but I can also start a fire in the rain without a match.)

Unfortunately I've never been able to get Brasero to work, and it looks nice. I've kind of been using Nero and Bashburn in conjunction. And, if I decide to stick with nautilus, I can keep the CD burning from that. Overkill probably, eh? Oh well.

For image viewing I'll use Mirage. Seems to be exactly what I was looking for.

htop will watch processes. Never used it until the other day, but it's simple and effective, so I don't need anything more.

And finally, I'll probably keep file-roller around just because.

@thayer and anyone else who pointed out I don't need to have super lightweight apps for every task: Thanks, and obviously you're right. I'm not interested in joining the I Use the Least Amount of RAM club. I'm interested in fine tuning and eliminating certain things I don't feel I need. Trying to eliminate Gnome apps basically came from wanting to eliminate Gnome, but the few Gnome apps I want to keep probably won't cause dependency problems. I don't like the idea of having to download hundreds of megabytes worth of packages every time I do an update, so why should I? I can pick and choose wisely and still get to where I need to be.

Last edited by tonyisnt (2008-09-19 18:55:08)

Arch Linux

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Moving to Openbox

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