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From Installing OpenBox 3.4.2 in Foresight Linux

This is a new version of the blog post as we should have this howto in our Wiki. And we should keep this uptodate.

What is Openbox?

From the Openbox homepage,
"Openbox is a minimalistic, highly configurable, next generation window
manager with extensive standards support." From using it, I often think
of fluxbox with the benefits of being able to dip into Gnome or KDE for
the items that I want to use. Your desktop will then run with speed and
simplicity using only the elements you want to use with it.

Absolute Minimal Openbox

First we install group-openbox. Conary organizes packages in groups, so if you install this group all core Openbox packages will be installed:

$ sudo conary update group-openbox

This currently installs these troves:

  • openbox
  • obconf

You can now log off and login again - choose "Openbox" as a session. Openbox is minimal by default though so when you login to the environment for the first time, there will be no taskbars, nothing...just a large blank area. You can left or middle click to open menus.

Some comfort: obmenu

Obmenu is a menu editor designed for openbox. It's easy to use, allowing to get the most out of the powerful Openbox menu system, while hiding the xml layout from the user.
It also (optionally) installs a bunch of dynamic menus (pipe menus), such as Gnome menus or a quick-navigator.

fbpanel

fbpanel is a very fast and functional menu bar. This panel also
also is an area where we can dock any Gnome services/icons that we want to dock such as Pidgin and Banshee To install fbpanel:

$ sudo conary update fbpanel

Now we need to copy the default configuration file for fbpanel so we can build our panel to our liking:

$ mkdir ~/.fbpanel
$ cp /usr/share/fbpanel/default ~/.fbpanel

Let the Configuration Begin!

Now we need to configure Openbox so that it's ready for us when we logout of Gnome. The configuration files reside in ~/.config/openbox.

We'll need to either use obconf and obmenu which will create
the files we need or manually create them ourselves. There are some files that we'll need to make manually though

Visiting there now will show that there aren't any files in this
directory. The file we'll absolutely need to create is autostart.sh.
Other files that will be in here are rc.xml which is for obconf
(openbox configuration) and menu.xml (openbox menu system). Those two
files will be created once you are in openbox and have initiated the
commands obconf and obmenu.

The autostart.sh file is what starts all of our services and our
fbpanel we just installed as well as setup our wallpaper and other
items. Instead of going through the options
you can place in here, 

# This shell script is run before Openbox launches.
# Environment variables set here are passed to the Openbox session.
. $GLOBALAUTOSTART

# Start Your Panel
(sleep 2 && fbpanel) &

To create the menu.xml file for openbox, we'll copy from the default
installation to our .config/openbox directory (so we can use
obmenu...otherwise, that command will give us an error) so use the
following command in a terminal:

$ cp /etc/xdg/openbox/menu.xml ~/.config/openbox/

If you'd like to configure your fbpanel (it already has a default
appearance from the file we copied) you may do so at any time. Do this
by opening your ~/.fbpanel/default file in your favorite text editor.
Then visit the documentation page on the fbpanel homepage
and edit your fbpanel according to your taste. If there is interest, I
can cover customizing the fbpanel in a later post. For now, we'll go
with the default settings and I'll take a screenshot of my customized
one so you can see what is possible.

Now you're ready to login and reap what you have sown Logout of
Gnome and change sessions in GDM to Openbox. Notice that your pypanel
starts up and has the gnome applications we recorded in the
autostart.sh file above running and docked! You can add more options to
your autostart.sh file and you can also edit .fbpanel/default (in your
/home/user directory) to store settings for your panel.

I've Installed and am Running, Now What?

Now you get to customize the Openbox menu with your favorite
applications. Menus are activated by right clicking anywhere on the
desktop. There are a few default applications...I choose obconf right
away so that I can choose a theme I like and increase the text size
since I'm using a high resolution. After that is done, I right click
for the menu again and go to applications >> xterm. When the
terminal pops up, I type obmenu. From there, I'll be able to edit my
right click menu.

Now instead of entering obmenu in a terminal each time, let's add it
to our right click options. In obmenu window that you opened in the
last paragraph, expand the Openbox 3 option. Find obconf and highlight
it. Click 'new item' and add obmenu for a label, execute for action,
and obmenu for Execute. This will add obmenu to your right click
options so you don't have to open a terminal each time to do things.
You can also customize any of the items you find in applications...I
put a few things I normally need such as thunderbird, firefox,
gnome-terminal, etc. Feel free to add whatever you need...you can have
many submenu's . It's setup is pretty straightforward.

Alternative Panels

There are quite a few alternative panels out there. Pypanel is one.
Perlpanel is another. Pypanel is available in the Foresight
repositories. So, if you don't like bugs and just want a simple panel
with xml configuration file (pypanelrc) then substitute pypanel for
fbpanel or gnome-panel above and you'll be set. There are more than
just these two but these two are the ones I've seen websites note about
openbox.