In the wars between GNOME and KDE (which now has even split between the two factions warring over KDE4 and KDE3.5), some of the other environments get lost in the shuffle and are often forgotten about.
One which I think is underappreciated is Fluxbox. Based on the original Blackbox 0.61.1 code, Fluxbox is a blindingly fast, simplistic approach to providing a graphical user environment while staying out of one’s way. Easy to use, easy on resources, and easy on the eyes, Fluxbox is an elegant choice that is often overlooked when the options are weighed between other graphical environments on Linux machines.
I started using Fluxbox when I was on some extremely quarrelsome hardware and needed something with a lot less going on than GNOME or KDE so that I could more effectively troubleshoot it. What I found out was that Fluxbox had an extremely tweakable interface… and I like things I can tweak and customize. I also discovered that it ran extremely fast on the limited hardware I had at the time, something else that KDE and GNOME didn’t have.
Intrigued, I stuck with it for a while and over time I learned a few good hacks that I thought I would share with the three or four readers I’ve acquired here.
Installation
If you’re a Slackware user, you won’t need to worry about it… Fluxbox is one of the window managers that Patrick Volkerding includes with the best Linux distro on Earth. If you didn’t bother installing it with your Slackware setup, it’s on the disk, otherwise, it’s pretty easy to download it from Fluxbox.org and install it with a few simple steps:
tar -zxvf fluxbox-1.0.0.tar.gz(as root)
cd fluxbox-1.0.0
./configure
make
make install
In Slackware you’ll then want to (as root) cd /etc/X11/xinit and change the symlink you have there to xinitrc.fluxbox by entering the following arcane command:
ln -s xinitrc.fluxbox xinitrc
This will make Fluxbox your default window manager.
If you don’t already have an xinitrc.fluxbox in your xinit directory, you’ll need to create one. Mine looks like this (and it’s the default one that installed with Fluxbox as a part of my base Slackware installation):
sysresources=/usr/lib/X11/xinit/.Xresources
sysmodmap=/usr/lib/X11/xinit/.Xmodmap# merge in defaults and keymapsif [ -f $sysresources ]; then
xrdb -merge $sysresources
if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
xmodmap $sysmodmap
fi
if [ -f $userresources ]; then
xrdb -merge $userresources
fi
if [ -f $usermodmap ]; then
xmodmap $usermodmap
fi
# Start the window manager:
exec /usr/bin/startfluxbox
Once you create it, make sure you chmod +x xinitrc.fluxbox to make it executable, or else it won’t work.
Confused yet? Well, that’s your own fault. You should have just installed it from the Slackware CD, like I usually do. It’s a lot easier that way.
If you’re running an Ubuntu box, this gets a lot easier. Just open a terminal window and type this:
sudo apt-get install fluxbox
It’ll prompt you for your password, and after that it’ll do all the dirty work for you. Then, once it’s installed, all you have to do is log out and log back in (making sure you selected Fluxbox from the “switch session” option in the login manager).
If you’re using something other than Slackware or Ubuntu, you’re out of luck. I do most of my howto articles on this blog on those two distros, for simplicity’s sake. Haven’t you been paying attention?
Trent
Patrick
Joe
Aha, the fluxbox tutorial! This is more than I know about fluxbox, and therefore, really helpful. Thanks! Now I can begin the tweaking…
By: eyeofliberty on June 30, 2009
at 00:03
Good article Trent, now you’ve got me back to using Fluxbox even with my dying hardware-generated glitches.
By: Dave on June 30, 2009
at 23:49
[...] a great Fluxbox tutorial over at The Linux Critic that briefly got me using it again. I think I broke it trying to set my own wallpaper though, or [...]
By: Boredom is Still Counter Revolutionary « fullmetalgerbil on July 1, 2009
at 01:11
why so difficult install procedure? or was it meant generally for any distro? because in slackware you can just do: slackpkg install fluxbox.
nice fluxbox howto. thank you.
By: tricqster on July 1, 2009
at 09:43
Because in my experience, that doesn’t always work for everybody, so I figured I’d go into the nuts and bolts of installing it from scratch — which, if you’re a slackware user, shouldn’t be too difficult.
By: Trent on July 1, 2009
at 09:48
it’s not about difficulty. I preffer using slackware packages, that are prepared for me. if slackware offers it, why to use something else? and in case, that there will be some update, slackpkg will automatically update package (fluxbox) for me. I believe, this is safer, and keep my box more “consistent”. if you will install it manually, you are on your own.
sure, that’s only my way, and my opinion. if you like it in that way, it’s completely OK, I didn’t mean it’s wrong.
By: tricqster on July 1, 2009
at 12:23
[...] screenshot time I posted a screenshot in my Fluxbox article a month ago, but Fluxbox is just so tweakable and so sharp looking I feel the need to post another [...]
By: Fluxbox screenshot time « The Linux Critic on July 30, 2009
at 10:40
[...] possible so I don’t see any default color flash for a moment. Most people just use the method Trent mentioned with the rootCommand option in the Fluxbox Init file, and it works fine. I’m just [...]
By: Fluxbox In-Depth: Mad Customization And Other Tips « The Linux Critic on August 3, 2009
at 09:36
[...] page: Solutions Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)Fluxbox: How I make it feel like homeFluxbox In-Depth: Mad Customization And Other TipsGiving Ubuntu a real tryCanonical launches Ubuntu [...]
By: Now using Fluxbox on Ubuntu 9.04 « The Linux Critic on August 7, 2009
at 18:50
Great Tutorial, thanks a lot!
By: Alto Stratus on October 19, 2011
at 20:56
My pleasure!
In all honesty, I still actually refer back to this old post once in a while when I forget how to do something or miss a step or two.
By: Trent on October 20, 2011
at 18:33