Submitted by Fluxbox 1.0 has been released. There’s a changelog, and a download page, of course. “Fluxbox is yet another windowmanager for X. It’s based on the Blackbox 0.61.1 code. Fluxbox looks like Blackbox and handles styles, colors, window placement and similar thing exactly like Blackbox (100% theme/style compability).”
*scnr*
“Fluxbox looks like Blackbox and handles styles, colors, window placement and similar thing exactly like Blackbox (100% theme/style compability).”
Now if only all Linux dists could use the same description.
(Ubuntu/mepis/whatever looks/acts/… as Debian…)
I’ve been using fluxbox since it first came out years ago and still love it =) I’ve tried openbox and a few other *boxes but fluxbox seems the most feature filled and the fastest. BTW, fluxbox isn’t theme compatible with Blackbox anymore as of the 0.70x branch. Someone should really update that frontpage.
Edited 2007-10-09 13:01
I’ll pretend I didn’t just read that Ubuntu looks like Debian. Many things (use your imagination) look like Ubuntu but Debian isn’t one of them
“I’ll pretend I didn’t just read that Ubuntu looks like Debian. Many things (use your imagination) look like Ubuntu but Debian isn’t one of them
”
Thank god, I want my Debian to be errr…Debian
some screenshots for curious people
http://vermaden.rox.pl/gfx/shots
You see, you really are everywhere on the internet!
Is it annoying?
It’s annoying for trolls vermaden
…having a “start” button would be a lot nicer. This is the reason why I switched back to IceWM.
You can just run one of many panels: gnome-panel, KDE docker, fbpanel, Perl panel, the XFCE panel etc. Since EWMH took hold all of them are compatible with any window manager.
Fluxbox (like the other *box WMs) has a root menu, which is like a start menu, except you can activate it using any binding. The default is right-clicking on the desktop. I like to add a keybinding to the keys file, for example:
Mod1 Space :RootMenu
Then I can just hit Alt-Space to get the root menu no matter what I’m doing, and it pops up wherever the mouse cursor happens to be.
Yes, but it would make it that much easier to pass on to noobs if it had a start button in it’s own panel. It must be fairly simple to implement.
“Yes, but it would make it that much easier to pass on to noobs if it had a start button in it’s own panel. It must be fairly simple to implement.”
I don’t think Fluxbox et al. are primarily intended to be used by noobs, sorry. It’s conception to be lightweight and the “lack of eye candy” won’t make it appealing to a noob who’s expecting something shiny, with wobbling windows, squeaking buttons and dancing elephants.
Your comment (sadly correctly) implies that having a “Start” button is required to make a GUI usable for noobs. For what I can tell you, my former “computer illiterate” boss had good experiences with XFCE 3 (due to a slow box running it) which has many “Start” buttons, at least you can see it this way. One complex hierarchical menu, usually connected with this “Start” button, can make the user feel overwhealmed due to a huge number of nested menue entries. Furthermore, the logic of having “Shutdown” or “Logout” (synonyms for “to stop sth.” below the “Start” level can be seen as a confusing element. When I have to stop something, why would I click on “Start”?
From my individual point of view, I like an application menu not to be tied to a certain fixed position on the screen, especially not on the lower left position; I prefer having it connected to a key or key combination, as well as the root menu concept where you can click anywhere you want (example: actually Alt+F1 and “Open” on a Sun Type 6 Keyboard, equ. left mouse button on root window, using WindowMaker).
Personally, I really like Fluxbox because it’s good at what it’s intended to. It runs very well even on lowest-end UNIX and Linux machines (486) and makes these archaical artifacts becoming a usable part of the society again.
This is not windows …
anyway: http://ftmenu.sourceforge.net
It would be nice if Fluxbox in the future would support (possibly as a plugin/option) compositing / 3d effects through AIGLX. Having a lightweight 3d desktop that doesn’t force me to install a full-featured desktop environment would be damn cool.
OTOH, probably it would be possible to make Compiz-fusion “fluxbox-like” by writing appropriate plugins for the menu and the bar (tabbing already exists IIRC). Is there some project (by Fluxbox guys or Compiz guys) in these directions?
Isn’t combining a WM made to save resources with desktop effects a bit against the whole point?
Well, I’ve been searching for this kind of combination for a while. As Compiz is already a WM, all it lacks is panel and desktop management part (ie, right click on the desktop, panels, etc). I wouldn’t be surprised to see a new DE rise from Compiz once KDE4 get out with it’s own compositing management. In fact I would be very keen to se a new DE in the war.
Any know any good lightweight DE that could be combined with compiz? I’d take only Compiz + AWN, but it feel a bit bare, missing some widgets and control maybe? Any suggestion?
what would be wrong with adding compositing features such as window buffering to fluxbox? Then you will remove the last CPU intensive task that the WM has to do. Focus on making it GPU efficient for all I care, but buffered windows would go a long way to making fluxBox even better.
As long as it actually _is_ quicker. When I tried enabling Compiz under gnome, my Firefox tabs took a second to open. I use tabs for virtually every page I look at, so it became so irritating that I dumped Compiz and went back to metacity. Still, it would be configurable I suppose so I could always turn it off.
One day people will learn that compositing != Compiz. There is 2d compositing with xcompmgr/kompmgr, which, at least for me, is extremely fast. Just run xcompmgr -a to get basic window buffering. There’s practically no slowdown at all, but you won’t get annoying redraws.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll check it out.
By enabling compositing you’re creating a new workload that was not there before. You’re offloading it to the GPU instead of the CPU, ok, but it still eats resources that were not supposed to be consumed.
When we set to use a lightweight WM (I use Blackbox myself) we do it for extreme resource savings, right? But if you save CPU with the WM but at the same time ride the GPU hard… it just seems pointless overall. You negate many of the benefits of a lightweight WM: running on older hardware, extremely snappy response etc.
Considering all this, don’t be surprised if compositing support never makes it into the official source. But then again, Fluxbox has always been a compromise between extreme resource saving and pleasing a larger crowd, so it might be added and left to the user to activate or not.
Edited 2007-10-10 02:11
When we set to use a lightweight WM (I use Blackbox myself) we do it for extreme resource savings, right? But if you save CPU with the WM but at the same time ride the GPU hard… it just seems pointless overall. You negate many of the benefits of a lightweight WM: running on older hardware, extremely snappy response etc.
Maybe I just want a cleaner WM, not a lightweight WM.
Or maybe I want a compromise between a full-featured desktop environment with AIGLX effects (which is really heavy) and a bare, no-AIGLX window manager.
Your reasons for running Fluxbox are not necessarily my reasons.
Support for AIGLX/XGL or whatever in fulxbox would be cool, and probably possible, if the fluxbox devs find it worth doing.
Using compiz-fusion with fluxbox might get more problemetac, since both of them are window-managers. Not like in KDE/GNOME were you replace Kwin/Metacity with another window-manager(like compiz-fusion)
(on a sidenote, I don’t really like this replace-thing… I really hope that Kwin4 offers *some*(the most essential parts) of the functionality of compiz/fusion)
There is an option for this somewhere or a patch on the sourceforge page. What I’d like to see is the abilty to have more than 1 toolbar with the ability to add a proper pager into it..not just something that let’s you know what desktop you’re on.
Edited 2007-10-09 14:01
i use it on my server. a server needs no gui, but sometimes firefox comes in handy!
flux is wonderful for less demanding gui work, and looks great
Edited 2007-10-09 16:57
I never thought I’d live to see the day Fluxbox reached 1.0. What’s next, Enlightenment and Wine going 1.0? Madness!
No, Enlightenment will never reach 1.0, unless when it comes bundled with Duke nukem Forever, as numerous others have mentioned
What many of the people commenting about what is missing from a Desktop solution such as Fluxbox, is that one of the key aspects about a desktop is how *productive* you can be with it.
All the flash menus, the compiz and beyrl, the transparent decorations, the amazing menu configurations don’t mean anything when you want to get work done.
What *does* matter is continuity, speed and simplicity.
/***
Stop reading now unless you want to read an even longer, rambling, slighly drunken series of vaguely related opinions.
****/
I use XFCE on my work dev box (debian testing), my day to day tasks (on this particular box) require CVS, a web browser, various editors (mainly vim with heavily customised configs), sftp, ssh and other web dev related tools.
I simply love XFCE because it does *exactly* what I require it to. Gnome and KDE are far too resource intensive for my dev box.
Fluxbox is worth consideration as an alternative with less overhead – but will it increase my productivity?
****
Far too often we see reviews based on eye-candy – but not enough based on the full user experience.
Eye candy should augment functionality, not replace it.
Does a wobbly window in compiz really have a purpose? (after the initial 5 minutes of “oooh, how neat”)
Yes, it’s great to have a sexy looking desktop, but it should be balanced by the user interface experience – that ‘holy grail’ of human/computer interaction.
Desktop reviews should always try to keep that fact very much in consideration, as in the final analysis, it’s the end user that matters, not the developers.
Edited 2007-10-09 19:27