Fluxbox In-Depth: Mad Customization And Other Tips

Introduction

When I was first preparing to switch to Linux many years ago, I went into research mode and looked around the net a bit. At the time, part of the allure of Linux were the crazy cool desktops people had. After I switched I tried Gnome, then KDE, and was depressed at how uncool and *dozelike they were. Eventually, I discovered that all those amazing desktops were the result of Fluxbox (or the other *box forks). I switched immediately.

To my surprise, I found that not only was I able to get a really cool appearance, but Fluxbox made all the things I wanted out of a window manager, and some I didn’t know I wanted, simple. It turned out that I was not the only user to have noticed those operating system limitations and failings I’d been grumbling about for years, particularly with *doze. The Fluxbox crew apparently knew my pain and had gone about addressing all of those complaints.

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Fluxbox 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 screenshot just to illustrate that.

This is Fluxbox v1.0.0 with the “sid_fluxarnation” style, running on top of Slackware 12.1. I don’t recall where I got the sid_fluxarnation style, but you can easily find one like it, among about a billion others by going here or by following any of the other links in the “styles” section at the bottom of this page on the Fluxbox site.

Also in that screenshot, you can see I’m running GKrellM 2.3.1, using the K5-FVWM theme for it which I downloaded from Muhri.net.

As always, if anyone has questions regarding how to configure or tweak their Fluxbox setup, let me know. It’s easier than you might think! Cheers!