Using FLUXBOX as a Window Manager

[Sector11]

Where VastOne beat me to the punch by saying

Blasphemy ! Do that and Be GONE!!! 


Can we have him drawn and quartered?
The nerve!

[jefsview]

Sure...

I saw that endless loop chain one time too... It was because for some reason the install of Fluxbox did not have the correct rights on the directory and it could not write what was needed

Okay, so it wasn't just me 

Shortly thereafter, I added that second internal harddrive, so I just re-did my install, but used the most current ISO, which had FB on it. Saved a few steps.

[vrkalak]

One thing you have to remember when using the Fluxbox WM, that after you Add/Install/Remove/Edit something, you need to 'refresh' (Recogfigure) the WM.

Yes, the Menu is auto-updating but sometimes I have to 'refresh' the Menu or in the Terminal do a "sudo update-menus"  That's all that is needed, with Debian.

[VastOne]

Interesting...

I installed audacious

I then ran ran sudo update-menus but nothing changed

Is it possible something else needs to be installed?

Thanks vrkalak

[Jmagick]

Interesting it is...  I've used FB for quite awhile, this seems to be an issue only with certain programs.
When I installed Darktable, it auto updated to the menu but, with the install of Digikam it did not update into the menu. Did the same thing in Ubuntu and #!.
Don't remember which program in #! as I have always manually added them in the past no matter which distro.  Be curious to see the fix for this.

J

[lwfitz]

HAHAHA Sector11! At least I didnt say KDE!

[Sector11]

↑ Oh oh ... that be worse.

mauh mauh

[lwfitz]

I have to say, I am totally blown away by fluxbox right now. Its like Openbox on crack 

Im in love all  over again!

[jedi]

^OB on crack!!!  Yeah for sure a good way to put it!  I'm really liking it as well and have now switched to using it as my default WM.  @VastOne, the flickering issue with the Tint2 panel is gone after I removed the ability for it to autohide.  Not sure if that is relevant or not, but since then it has functioned perfectly...

[PackRat]

After figuring out the transparency of Fluxbox, I was able to turn off Compton...

Booting now with the Liquorix 3.7.0-9 kernel and Fluxbox, I am down to an eve 100 MiB on boot and now claim Fluxbox as my default WM

Now onto figuring out the Slit mess, if I am reading it correctly it is somewhat akin to Conky

Don't know if you have this all figured out yet so I'll post anyway. If you want compositing with real transparency, you can add your compton/xcompmgr script to the $HOME/.fluxbox/startup file - this file is like the openbox autostart.sh file. Fluxbox does not always play nice with compositors though; something about the window name/class conventions issued by fluxbox - I didn't find much of an answer when googling the issue. I have it working and will post a scrot.

The slit in fluxbox is a dock. Any app that can be docked can reside in the slit, and there is a $HOME/.fluxbox/slitlist file where apps can be defined to automatically dock in the slit. If you use a one line conky like myself (any conky will do this) change own_window_type to dock and it will park in the slit and always - by default anyway - be above maximized windows and remain visible. Note that with own_window_type set to dock, the x,y displacement of the conky window is ignored, it goes where the dock/slit is set.

[VastOne]

Aye, I ended up using Compton and it works quite well with Fluxbox... The only issue I see is on boot with my Conky panel, I have to open it and save it twice for transparency to actually work with it ... It has a chalk white film over it until I do that

I do use the Slit for that top panel, and it works out great... One of the things I had always wanted with that panel was the ability to autohide it.  With Slit, I can do that

Thanks PackRat...

[PackRat]

No problem.

As promised, the screenshot. Fluxbox - latest built from git sources, compton, real transparency in urxvt-unicode (requires an .Xdefault setting), tabbed urxvt, and conky in the slit so that maximzed windows do not cover all that useful info:

[VastOne]

I have a couple of apps that are behaving strangely in Fluxbox that I cannot make sense of

I have these apps open

iceweasel
medit
filezilla
terminal
spacefm

If I use alt tab I can tab switch to medit, terminal and spacefm with no issues... but trying to get to iceweasel or filezilla, neither one of these will come to the foreground, they will only stay in the background

I actually have to minimize spacefm, terminal and medit to be able to get to iceweasel and filezilla

If I close everything but iceweasel and filezilla, I can tab between the two of them with no issues

If I have those two open, and open any one of medit terminal or spacefm, the behavior starts again, meaning that it does not need to be all three of them started

The same thing happens if I use the mouse to click on any one these apps, it is not just the alt tab function that causes it

Anyone else seeing anything like this?

[PackRat]

Yes, I duplicated the problem you're having. Although, using Alt-Shift-Tab cycled through all of them.

edit - did some searching; looks like it is related to the focus model. I was using click-to-focus which I think is the default. Switching over to mouse focus, or mouse focus strict solves the problem on my system. I can also get the Alt-Tab working as expected if I leave it as click-to-focus, but turn off the Auto Raise option.

This focus model pretty much makes things behave the way I want:



Edit - too weird -

If I change the default:

Code Select Expand

Mod1 Tab :NextWindow {groups} (workspace=[current])
Mod1 Shift Tab :PrevWindow {groups} (workspace=[current])

to:

Code Select Expand

Mod1 Tab :NextWindow (workspace=[current])
Mod1 Shift Tab :PrevWindow (workspace=[current])

in the $HOME/.fluxbox/keys file, the Alt-Tab and Alt-Shift-Tab works as expected with the default focus model. Eliminating {groups}, however, results in tabbed windows not being treated as a group.

Final Edit - I couldn't duplicate the issue on my desktop computer. Desktop is Debian Wheezy, and the laptop is Debian Sid and has a touch-pad. Other than that, pretty much the same setup.

[PackRat]

rkwurth asked a question in the #! forum -- http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?pid=321189#p321189

This solution should work on any window manager actually. If you have wmctrl and zenity installed, you can have a popup dialog of open apps to switch to (a common Alt-Tab behavior for other wm's)

The code:

Code Select Expand

wmctrl -ia `wmctrl -l | cut -d' ' -f1,4- | zenity --list --column Window | cut -d' ' -f1`

can be bound directly to a key binding or used from a script. Downside is that it will show all the running apps (and switch to them) regardless of the desktop.

A wise man once said "screenshot or it didn't happen!"



There is also a program called superswitcher that apparently does this - and other things - but I have never used it:

https://code.google.com/p/superswitcher/