Fluxbox Beginners Guide Part 1
This “guide” is meant for people who already have Ubuntu installed. Not for people with a server install.
It’s aimed at people new to Fluxbox and is meant to help them getting started.
Before you think about installing it beware Fluxbox isn’t exactly the most user friendly wm. So if you are having trouble with xfce/gnome/kde this won’t be for you.
On the other hand, if you are bored with those, by all means try Fluxbox.
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1. Installation
Open up your favorite cli client and use apt to install it for you.
sudo apt-get install fluxbox
2. Start Fluxbox
Log out and start Fluxbox (press the “session” button).
3. Usage
You open up the menu by right-clicking the background.
The menu will be made automatically when you installed it, so all your programs should be in there under “applications” and the various sub menu’s.
Have a look around.
You can’t display icons on the desktop. However there are ways around that.
4. Shortcuts
The config file for shortcuts is in /home/username/.fluxbox/keys .
Open it.
You should already see some shortcut, so learn them or modify them to your liking.
Before you start adding new ones, you’ll need to know this:
| Mod1 == Alt Mod4 == Windows key Control == Ctrl Shift == Shift |
So a short cut for “alt+f1″ would be “Mod1 F1″.
Besides those keys, the rest is as you would expect.
I find it easy to assign programs to the function keys.
Because I do so, I hardly ever need to use the right-click menu and it saves me a lot of time.
This is my keys file:
| OnDesktop Mouse1 :HideMenus OnDesktop Mouse2 :WorkspaceMenu OnDesktop Mouse3 :RootMenu OnDesktop Mouse4 :NextWorkspace OnDesktop Mouse5 :PrevWorkspace Mouse8 :NextWorkspace # top side button mouse -> next workspace Mouse9 :PrevWorkspace # bottom side button mouse -> prev workspace Mod1 Tab :NextWindow # Launch programs F12 :ExecCommand xterm # opens a cli client # Media keys # System Volume # MPC (music player command for music player deamon) # Visual F1 :ToggleDecor # removes or adds window decoration # Screen shot: Control F12 :Exec scrot -e ‘mv $f ~/Desktop’ # takes a screen shot of the entire screen |
(Exec or ExecCommand is the same)
If you wish to use nautilus, use the "nautilus --no-desktop" command.
5. Visual improvement
5.1 Styles
There are a few decent Fluxbox styles (right-click -> styles to choose them) but there are much better ones online.
A simple google search will tell you a lot, but I found http://customize.org/fluxbox to be one of the better ones.
After you downloaded the .tar.gz extract it to /home/username/.fluxbox/styles .
After that the style will be available through the menu.
5.2 Gtk themes
Most if not all of the apps will use the default ugly grey nautilus colour (the one I reffer to as the win95 theme) and that isn’t real nice to look at.
There is a nice little program available that will let you set gtk themes for your apps.
sudo apt-get install gtk-chtheme
Open it using a terminal and you’ll be able to pick the gtk themes you installed in /home/username/.themes .
The gtk-chtheme app will even preview the theme for you.
5.3 Wallpaper
You must have noticed that either you didn’t have a wallpaper or couldn’t change the one your theme set for you.
Use this command to set the wallpaper.
fbsetbg -f /path/to/image.png
5.4 Conky
If conky fits anywhere, it’s on a fluxbox box.
6. Editing the startup file
You can add programs/commands in this line to execute at startup.
The text we need is located in /home/user/.fluxbox/startup
It’s really easy to modify.
The default file looks something like this:
# fluxbox startup-script:
#
# Lines starting with a '#' are ignored.
# You can set your favourite wallpaper here if you don't want
# to do it from your style.
#
# fbsetbg -f ~/pictures/wallpaper.png
#
# This sets a black background
/usr/local/bin/fbsetroot -solid black
# This shows the fluxbox-splash-screen
# fbsetbg -C /usr/local/share/fluxbox/splash.jpg
# Other examples. Check man xset for details.
#
# Turn off beeps:
# xset -b
#
# Increase the keyboard repeat-rate:
# xset r rate 195 35
#
# Your own fonts-dir:
# xset +fp $HOME/.font
#
# Your favourite mouse cursor:
# xsetroot -cursor_name right_ptr
#
# Change your keymap:
# xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap
# Applications you want to run with fluxbox.
# MAKE SURE THAT APPS THAT KEEP RUNNING HAVE AN & AT THE END.
#
# unclutter -idle 2 &
# wmnd &
# wmsmixer -w &
# idesk &
# And last but not least we start fluxbox.
# Because it is the last app you have to run it with exec before it.
exec /usr/local/bin/fluxbox
# or if you want to keep a log:
dsf
# exec /usr/local/bin/fluxbox -log ~/.fluxbox/log
Guide taken from my Ubuntu blog http://linuxowns.wordpress.com
