Introduction

Fluxbox is a very small Linux window manager, that is little resource greedy. If the newest Gnome or KDE work very slowly, then we can successfully replace them with the Fluxbox.

Installation

We have to install following packages: sudo apt-get install fluxbox To know what files was installed we can issue following command in the shell: dpkg -L fluxbox

Now we have to logout and from option menu of login screen we choose Fluxbox session. Since this moment after successfull login we will be drop to the Fluxbox environment.

Alternatively you can edit following configuration files, to set fluxbox as default window manager:

	~/.xsession - type in following line:
	exec /usr/bin/startfluxbox

	/etc/X11/default-display-manager - change existing line:
	/usr/sbin/lightdm
	to: /usr/bin/xdm
				

If we set default display manager to xdm and the screen will be bloated with some unwanted artifacts, then we have to restore previous display manager: /usr/sbin/lightdm in file: /etc/X11/default-display-manager.

Menu configuration file (popup after right-click on the desktop)

The file that hold right-click menu is: ~/.fluxbox/menu It have following statement:

[begin] (fluxbox)
[exec] (gnome-terminal) {/usr/bin/gnome-terminal}
[exec] (geany) {/usr/bin/geany}
[exec] (firefox) {/usr/bin/firefox}
[exec] (thunderbird) {/usr/bin/thunderbird}
[exec] (reboot) {/usr/bin/gksudo "/sbin/shutdown -r now"}
[exec] (shut down) {/usr/bin/gksudo "/sbin/shutdown -h now"}
[submenu] (Original menu)
[include] (/etc/X11/fluxbox/fluxbox-menu)
[end]
[end]


Short description:

• After tag [begin] we place in the () brackets text - title of the menu. [begin] tag must be closed with [end] tag.
• After tag [exec] we specify command that have to be executed after clicking the menu-item. In the first () brackets we write command menu caption. After that we place command in {} brackets. If the command takes some options we place them after it. If we want execute command with root privileges, then we write it as follows: {/usr/bin/gksudo "/sbin/shutdown -r now"}
• After tag [include] - in the () brackets - we specify another menu file which should be included at the [include] tag position. For example we can write: [include] (/etc/X11/fluxbox/fluxbox-menu).
• After tag [submenu] we specify submenu's caption that holds another menu-panel. Each [submenu] tag must be closed with [end] tag.
• [exec] and [submenu] tags can have specified full path to the 16x16 icon file, for example </usr/share/icons/hicolor/16x16/actions/libpeas-plugin.png>. We place the file in <> brackets. The icon will be displayed to the left of item caption.

Background of the desktop we set with the command fbsetbg, for example:
fbsetbg -f /usr/share/backgrounds/Small_flowers_by_Dariusz_Duma.jpg

Styles and window behavior we can change with following menu options: Root -> Original menu -> Styles
Root -> Original menu -> Configuration