GEEKY FUN: Fluxbox
Fluxbox is a window manager that can take the place of a ‘typical’ desktop environment like KDE or Gnome.
Sometimes Fluxbox is referred to as a ‘light-weight’ window manager which is accurate - it’s light. With that lightness comes speed. No more waiting the the KDE splashscreen to finish building, you log in and within seconds you’re looking at a full functional desktop ready to go.
I’m not ready to use Fluxbox full time yet, though. It’s taking me a while to get productive with it because it’s just so foreign. It’s like an alien landscape in which none of the rules I know to be true apply.
Pretty much everything has to be configured by editing text files in your /home/user/.fluxbox directory. Even the desktop wallpaper has to be put in manually.
In order to get even a little bit productive I had to map some keys so I could bring up the ‘run’ dialog in order to get at some of my programs.
I’ll be playing a little more with Fluxbox over the next few days and posting the interesting bits here.
You can get Fluxbox here.
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POSTED IN: Geeky Fun
8 opinions for GEEKY FUN: Fluxbox
Srinivasan R
Oct 26, 2005 at 5:51 am
I used to use XFCE and it was really nice. It requires low system resources.
http://www.xfce.org/index.php
Jon
Oct 26, 2005 at 8:47 am
The light weight window managers certainly are fast. Since I can switch back and forth between them, I can learn one of the other ones at my own pace.
I’m slowly getting Flux up and running….it’s FAST!
Geoff
Oct 26, 2005 at 2:01 pm
What’s the best way to switch between them?
Jon
Oct 26, 2005 at 2:07 pm
The depends on whether it’s installed or not.
On your xdm or kdm or gdm (you know - that login screen before you get to your desktop) there should be a ’sessions’ menu. Click on it and see what there is to see. Hopefully Fluxbox will already be in that list. If so, select it and then log in normally.
Most login managers will log you into the last environment you used. Therefore, to switch back to Gnome (or KDE or whatever) you will have to re-select it from the sessions menu the next time you log in to make it the ‘default’ again.
If Fluxbox isn’t installed, then you’ll have to install it and then (hopefully) it will show up in that ’sessions’ menu.
If you have your system set up to automatically log you into your desktop when you boot, then you likely have never seen the login screen. If this is the case, then ‘log out’ (not ’shut down’) of your desktop. You will then be presented with the login screen and can do your thing with the ’sessions’ menu.
Let me know how that works for you.
Geoff
Oct 26, 2005 at 9:17 pm
Oh, so it requires logging out; wasn’t sure if that was necessary.
I currently only have Gnome installed; I’ll put more on later, perhaps.
Ganesh
Nov 26, 2005 at 6:03 am
isnt there a switchdesk command? i remember i used it sometime ago on my (old) RedHat9 box..am currently on ubuntu 5.04 which doesnt seem to have this command…
Jon
Nov 26, 2005 at 10:12 am
Hi Ganesh,
I’m honestly not sure. I haven’t mucked around with Fluxbox in the last few weeks. A little Googling shows that there may be some problems with Switchdesk, but since I don’t really know what it is, I don’t really understand the problem.
I’m sure that’s not very helpful, sorry.
Fluxbox lover
Feb 25, 2007 at 11:21 am
I started to use fluxbox in DSL 0.x and i hated it I didn’t take time to learn to canfigure it, so I changed to XFCE but it was slow on my pentium 160mhz 32mb of ram, so some time later I learned fluxbox I use one entire day to configure it and is the best and more comfortable WM I’ve ever used.
I just love it, I wont change it for beryl :P
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