Moving to Openbox

Misfit138 · 2008-09-19 19:02:41

Brasero has NEVER worked for me. Not one time, not on any machine.
Pity, because I would prefer it since I use mostly GTK2 apps.
All it has ever burned is coasters for me. I've tried everything, nothing fixes it.

haxit · 2008-09-19 19:10:30

Text Editor = Mousepad ftw!!

skottish · 2008-09-19 19:30:55

I'm surprised to here the number of people that haven't got Brasero to work. It worked for me every time I used it. I'm using recorder right now just to see if it works out alright.

As far as 'light weight' stuff goes, I just use whatever works best for me. I have OpenOffice installed to use primarily as a 300MB document converter. GIMP isn't very light either. Ditto for Firefox. Scite is truly the most powerful text editor I've found that isn't based on vim or emacs. It's a bonus that it's super light and quick, not a reason. The major exception for me on usage has been dropping QT4; I didn't want an entire toolkit for a calculator and a dictionary!

DonVla · 2008-09-19 22:43:52

skottish wrote:

I'm using recorder right now just to see if it works out alright.

yes recorder is great. it has some minor flaws, but it´s the best _really_ light-weight burning app out there (ok, besides typing the commands in an terminal).

Last edited by DonVla (2008-09-19 22:44:15)

fuscia · 2008-09-19 23:30:22

having to convert mp3s into .wavs is an annoyance not worth putting up with.

icrave · 2008-09-20 07:40:41

Recorder automatically convert mp3 and ogg files to wav in the last version. You need to install mpg123 to support mp3.

fuscia · 2008-09-20 14:05:55

icrave wrote:

Recorder automatically convert mp3 and ogg files to wav in the last version. You need to install mpg123 to support mp3.

well, i'll be damned! that works. thanks. sorry, k3b.

celettu · 2008-09-20 15:21:42

tonyisnt wrote:

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.

trayer. Here's how.. Or consider using lxpanel...it can be easily configured to leave everything you don't need (like the taskbar), has transparancy, and well, it's easy.

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.

Leafpad?

San

heleos · 2008-09-20 16:00:46

tonyisnt wrote:

- "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:
http://xs131.xs.to/xs131/08383/tray834.jpg
I think that's it.

gmrun, as people already said
stalonetray, or trayer
leafpad, or geany
calc
don't know what to do about games
don't burn cd's often, but I like k3b
i like thunar, it also handles the archive manager thing with xarchiver
gqview

Phrodo_00 · 2008-09-21 00:41:02

tonyisnt wrote:

- "Run" box

gm-run or dmenu

tonyisnt wrote:

- 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.

maybe pypanel?

tonyisnt wrote:

- 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.

medit

tonyisnt wrote:

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

I use qalculate or wxmaxima when I need something a little more powerful, old and lispy

tonyisnt wrote:

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

hhhmmm... I don't really think there are a lot of mini games like that besides of gnome-games and the kde games, if you want a little more action I'd look for kenta cho's shooters or wesnoth

tonyisnt wrote:

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

brasero has been working pretty good for me.

tonyisnt wrote:

- 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.

Thunar-actions (or whatever it's called) works pretty much the same as nautilus-actions

tonyisnt wrote:

- An image viewer.

I like gthumb and mirage

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

tonyisnt wrote:

- 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.

xfce's orange is a gtk calendar widget with appointings... you could also look at dates.

tonyisnt wrote:

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

there's squeeze and xarchiver

when I used just a wm (later I found out I'm addicted to gnome-panel, and if i'm gonna load bonobo, gconf, gio and all that I'd rather use the whole gnome... with the exception of metacity, I like openbox better) I used openbox with pypanel, conky, urxvt (I still use it now), thunar and xfce-run or something, which was a window with gnome's applications menu ordered in two gtktreelistviews

Renan Birck · 2008-09-21 22:46:31

I think this is on topic here:

I have a quite elaborate Fluxbox menu. I would like to know if there exists any utility to convert this menu to the Openbox format?

Thanks.

tonyisnt · 2008-09-22 03:22:30

OK, I'm pretty well settled in, but there are still a few things nagging me.

The tray has pained me every step of the way. Turned out that the trouble with transparency was mainly dependent on what GTK theme I was using. Once I found one that would allow all icons to have a transparent background, all the tray apps worked OK. Well, mostly. I found that whenever I'd toggle the desktop the tray would minimize along with everything else, which is not ideal. Running stalonetray with the withdrawn option avoids this by making it a dock. However, it now draws a small border around the tray. I can tolerate it, but it's an annoyance because it's not what I want.

And then there is the fact that I can't get AllTray to work at all how it's supposed to. Programs go to the tray just fine, but when I click on their icon in the tray to toggle them, nothing happens. The only way to bring the program back is to right click and choose "Undock." Again, it's livable, but not preferable.

skottish · 2008-09-22 03:28:52

E17 doesn't set the background like any other WM, and in consequence transparency doesn't work. What I ended up doing with stalonetray was assigning a picture to it that was simply a copy of the same area of the desktop. It's a hackish way to get the "transparent look" without using real transparency, and I didn't need to fake the whole desktop. It worked perfectly. My newest solution is to not use any apps that need system tray support!

Last edited by skottish (2008-09-22 03:32:12)

tonyisnt · 2008-09-22 04:02:04

I don't think you understand the problem: I have transparency, but to have the tray completely transparent except for the icons (which is what I want) means that the tray minimizes with everything else when I toggle the desktop with hotkeys. So my solution was to use stalonetray in withdrawn mode, which now draws a little border around the tray that I don't want.

fuscia · 2008-09-22 04:33:52

Renan Birck wrote:

I think this is on topic here:
I have a quite elaborate Fluxbox menu. I would like to know if there exists any utility to convert this menu to the Openbox format?
Thanks.

the openbox menu is an xml file, which i find a total pain in the ass. i don't know if there's anything that will convert whatever fluxbox uses to an xml file, but obmenu is a pretty easy to use gui for setting up the openbox menu. essentially, you just add submenus and/or items and whatever the commands are for them.

tonyisnt · 2008-09-22 06:14:25

It seems there are a few others that are having this problem with AllTray.

http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/10221

pogeymanz · 2008-09-22 11:52:43

tonyisnt wrote:

I don't think you understand the problem: I have transparency, but to have the tray completely transparent except for the icons (which is what I want) means that the tray minimizes with everything else when I toggle the desktop with hotkeys. So my solution was to use stalonetray in withdrawn mode, which now draws a little border around the tray that I don't want.

Here is what you need to do, because there is a bug with stalonetray.

Recompile stalonetray via ABS according to this thread: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=39842

Then set its window type to dock in .stalonetrayrc

Then set withdrawn to NO (or false, or whatever. Turn it off).

Now it will look and behave how it should.

dunc · 2008-09-22 22:17:44

pogeymanz wrote:

Then set withdrawn to NO (or false, or whatever. Turn it off).

Aaaaaaaaaaah! I couldn't understand why the patch "didn't work". (Don't tell me: you've mentioned this before. I never read instructions properly. )

Not that it bothers me, since I use a borderless window theme anyway. But now I can switch to one with borders if I feel like it. Woohoo!

tonyisnt · 2008-09-23 01:48:46

Thank you so much for the info. It worked, but only kind of and after trying an assortment of different ways. Simply having "stalonetray &" in autostart.sh didn't make it launch right, so after playing around I figured out that "(sleep 2 && exec stalonetray) &" worked. I don't know how or why this mattered, or if it's proper, but it worked and so I'm keeping it.

I've worked through a few other issues today, the biggest being a problem with dbus. For some reasons .mp3s weren't launching properly, and neither were .torrent files. I added this...

if which dbus-launch > /dev/null && test -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS"; then
  eval `dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session`
fi

to autostart.sh (thanks to this thread), and then it worked.

Basically I'm left with three Openbox related issues: (1) AllTray still doesn't work, and I haven't located a fix, (2) Deluge defaults to Firefox when using the "Open Folder" feature, and (3) my monitor doesn't want to turn off when the computer is idle anymore.

I found this, which is pretty much the issue I'm having with Deluge, but I can't figure out how to fix it on my own. The other two I'm still researching, but I think that with AllTray in particular that I'm going to have to wait.

stonecrest · 2008-09-23 02:34:23

tonyisnt wrote:

(3) my monitor doesn't want to turn off when the computer is idle anymore.

Put "xset dpms 60 60 &" (or whatever times you want) in your .xinitrc.

tonyisnt · 2008-09-23 03:14:23

Alright, that works now. Also found out I could edit xorg.conf to get it to turn off at a set time.

2 to go.

meinhimmel · 2008-09-23 05:24:25

Here's what I prefer.

GKRun for the Run dialog.

Thunar for a file manager.

Feh for images.

Conky for system information.

Tint for a panel.

XFterm4 for a terminal.

I think that's the basics.

my88 · 2008-09-23 11:28:43

meinhimmel wrote:

http://i36.tinypic.com/14jbvqo.png
.

Can i get your wallpaper ?

meinhimmel · 2008-09-24 15:02:23

my88 wrote:

meinhimmel wrote:
http://i36.tinypic.com/14jbvqo.png
.
Can i get your wallpaper ?

Yeah, I just added the quote to the original one by platinummonkey.

Mine with the quote added:
http://i33.tinypic.com/2rwqelu.jpg

Original:
http://platinummonkey.deviantart.com/ar … d-74845953

The Avatar of Time · 2008-09-28 06:50:17

Hello all,

I figured I'd throw in some prefered app advice as well.

Run command: gmrun

Image viewer: feh and mirage, I use both depending on the task

File manager: midnight commander (mc) and Thunar, again I use, and need, both. Thunar for quicker renaming and faster picture finding, mc for most everything else.

Text editor: vi, or I suppose gvim, my only complaint on vi is that if i try to middle click paste a bunch of code, it gets tabbed in more and more as it goes. Maybe that's urxvt's doing, I don't know. Terribly annoying though...

Terminal: urxvt (installed as rxvt-unicode and launched as urxvt. also annoying )

Can't say about system trays or workspace switchers, sorry.

Chess is the only game you need Course, Neverwinter Nights can't hurt either.... though that's not exactly in the repos....

I have used brasero and k3b. K3b is the better app in many ways. However it rarely ever copies dvds on the fly without freezing (rarely as in once in the past year, and I have tried in multiple distros). It also uses kde dependencies which I don't like.

Brasero does copy on the fly for me, but seems to do less overall. Personally I think I'd recommend brasero over k3b if it works for you. Not to offend anyone, but kde apps can be great when they work, but they just don't work properly all that often for me.

On a selfish note, is there a way to make gmrun stay open all the time? Normally it closes once I run a command, I would like it to sit in the corner of the screen at all times. Any ideas?

And it probably doesn't belong here, but my k3b doesn't have an option to rip CDs into mp3. From what what I've read it can, so I'm not sure what I would be missing. I have lame and mpg123.

Anyhow goodluck.

Hmm, I just tried brasero and it crashes right after I click new audio project..... so maybe go with k3b instead

Arch Linux

#26 2008-09-19 19:02:41

Re: Moving to Openbox

#27 2008-09-19 19:10:30

Re: Moving to Openbox

#28 2008-09-19 19:30:55

Re: Moving to Openbox

#29 2008-09-19 22:43:52

Re: Moving to Openbox

#30 2008-09-19 23:30:22

Re: Moving to Openbox

#31 2008-09-20 07:40:41

Re: Moving to Openbox

#32 2008-09-20 14:05:55

Re: Moving to Openbox

#33 2008-09-20 15:21:42

Re: Moving to Openbox

#34 2008-09-20 16:00:46

Re: Moving to Openbox

#35 2008-09-21 00:41:02

Re: Moving to Openbox

#36 2008-09-21 22:46:31

Re: Moving to Openbox

#37 2008-09-22 03:22:30

Re: Moving to Openbox

#38 2008-09-22 03:28:52

Re: Moving to Openbox

#39 2008-09-22 04:02:04

Re: Moving to Openbox

#40 2008-09-22 04:33:52

Re: Moving to Openbox

#41 2008-09-22 06:14:25

Re: Moving to Openbox

#42 2008-09-22 11:52:43

Re: Moving to Openbox

#43 2008-09-22 22:17:44

Re: Moving to Openbox

#44 2008-09-23 01:48:46

Re: Moving to Openbox

#45 2008-09-23 02:34:23

Re: Moving to Openbox

#46 2008-09-23 03:14:23

Re: Moving to Openbox

#47 2008-09-23 05:24:25

Re: Moving to Openbox

#48 2008-09-23 11:28:43

Re: Moving to Openbox

#49 2008-09-24 15:02:23

Re: Moving to Openbox

#50 2008-09-28 06:50:17

Re: Moving to Openbox

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