Essential ingredients in an openbox (or other WM-only environment)

Atticus · 2008-05-22 23:32:57

hi all, I'm working on an installable livecd using larch that will use Openbox as the main WM. I'm attempting to create a light, yet usable desktop, with a moderate level of pre-configuration. I'm hoping people can help me create a list of essential programs and utilities that improve the Openbox experience. Here's what I have so far...

WM: Openbox
File Manager: PCManFM
Background: Nitrogen (I prefer the wallpaper selection tool to feh's)
Panel: Tint (The new one, I like it, but it's a little light. Pypanel or fbpanel may be better options, I like cairo-dock, but don't know if I can count on 3d capabilities out-of-box)
Tray: (Not much experience with this yet, stalonetray?)
Icons? May not do icons. If I do, probably ROX-Filer which would replace PCManFM. Maybe find a panel with quickstarters

Then I'd like to have some basic configuration utilities. Here is what I have so far.

Background: Using Nitrogen's built-in selection tool, not great, but best I've found so far
Network: wicd. UI is kind of weird, but seems pretty powerful
Printer: system-config-printer (from AUR)
Theme Manager: gtk2_prefs & gtk_engines

I'd like some more GUI configuration tools, but it's hard to find environment-agnostic ones. I've been looking at absolute linux (slackware-based) which has a lot of small tools. I may see if I can use some of those.

I'd like to stay away from too many gnome/kde dependencies for these if possible.

What am I missing here?

Megamixman · 2008-05-22 23:42:31

lxappearance in AUR is good for GTK Theme and Icon selection.

bender02 · 2008-05-23 00:45:58

Tray, quickstarters & panel: if you'd use any of the { lxpanel, pypanel, fbpanel }, then they have tray and quickstart support. If you'd stick with tint, then I have good experience with stalonetray (and bad with trayer).

By the way, it seems to me you're converging to lxde.

EDIT: typo.

Last edited by bender02 (2008-05-23 00:46:30)

Atticus · 2008-05-23 01:05:09

I have to agree, what I'm doing has some overlap with lxde. I may end up just using their environment instead of trying to compile my own.

I've been looking at wbar for a quick launcher and it looks pretty cool.

abhidg · 2008-05-23 07:16:19

I used to use nitrogen before, but ~6months ago it started giving a segfault error,
so I started using feh. I've an action defined in Thunar on images like:
"Set this as wallpaper" --> "feh --bg-scale %s" and so I can right click on
any image and set that as background.

And of course eval $(cat $HOME/.fehbg) in .xinitrc restores the background on next boot.

zenlord · 2008-05-23 14:08:50

- Why do you need nitrogen or feh when pcmanfm has the option to show your background?
- network: netcfg2
- printer: http://localhost:631

Just to keep it low on resources

Atticus · 2008-05-23 14:22:24

I didn't know pcmanfm could show backgrounds, I'll have to look into that.

I wasn't aware of netcfg2. What does it do that makes it worthwhile to add?

zenlord · 2008-05-23 19:52:37

Netcfg2 makes you able to switch networks without X. At the moment, it isn't suited for roaming users, but such a GUI should be easy to write (if you know how to write GUI's, that is...)

Look into the second tab of the pcmanfm preferences and thou shallt see!

Zl.

zenlord · 2008-05-23 21:36:56

I had almost forgotten: conky can be helpful to display system information and still is lightweight...

My arch right after boot consumes <50MB with openbox, pcmanfm, fbpanel (but might look into tint2), conky.

Atticus · 2008-05-25 14:09:46

hey all, I've been working on conky, stalonetray, wbar, tint, pcmanfm, and nitrogen for the desktop environment. I think for now, I'm just going to be using conky as a clock, but if people have some fun ideas I'm open to that. I haven't really looked into the pcmanfm as background yet, though I will soon.

moljac024 · 2008-05-25 14:25:17

bender02 wrote:

Tray, quickstarters & panel: if you'd use any of the { lxpanel, pypanel, fbpanel }, then they have tray and quickstart support. If you'd stick with tint, then I have good experience with stalonetray (and bad with trayer).
By the way, it seems to me you're converging to lxde.
EDIT: typo.

Funny, I just switched from stalonetray to trayer.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-05-22 23:32:57

Essential ingredients in an openbox (or other WM-only environment)

#2 2008-05-22 23:42:31

Re: Essential ingredients in an openbox (or other WM-only environment)

#3 2008-05-23 00:45:58

Re: Essential ingredients in an openbox (or other WM-only environment)

#4 2008-05-23 01:05:09

Re: Essential ingredients in an openbox (or other WM-only environment)

#5 2008-05-23 07:16:19

Re: Essential ingredients in an openbox (or other WM-only environment)

#6 2008-05-23 14:08:50

Re: Essential ingredients in an openbox (or other WM-only environment)

#7 2008-05-23 14:22:24

Re: Essential ingredients in an openbox (or other WM-only environment)

#8 2008-05-23 19:52:37

Re: Essential ingredients in an openbox (or other WM-only environment)

#9 2008-05-23 21:36:56

Re: Essential ingredients in an openbox (or other WM-only environment)

#10 2008-05-25 14:09:46

Re: Essential ingredients in an openbox (or other WM-only environment)

#11 2008-05-25 14:25:17

Re: Essential ingredients in an openbox (or other WM-only environment)

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