MX-Fluxbox

[junoluna]

never having used fluxbox before, i am extremely impressed.. it is lightning fast and really easy to get the hang of

guesstimating from conky stats that it uses about 20% less RAM than xfce from start up through to my normal running processes, which is a big bonus for people with less horse in their machines

excellent job jerry ... i think i will spend the rest of the day 'working' in it

[handy]

Does this MX Fluxbox spin use Openbox as its window manager?

[Jerry3904]

Only know what fluxbox.org says:

Fluxbox is a windowmanager for X that was based on the Blackbox 0.61.1 code.

[chrispop99]

Does this MX Fluxbox spin use Openbox as its window manager?

No; Fluxbox is a window manager.
Chris

[Adrian]

From what I understand both Fluxbox and Openbox were derived from Blackbox so think of them as forks (alternatives).

[Jerry3904]

@Adrian: MX has lots of Qt apps that show up in this Fluxbox overlay with tiny fonts. The Fluxbox documentation says that such font concerns have to be answered inside the Qt toolbox itself. Do you have a suggestion on how to do that?

[PPC]

@Jerry3904

Hi! I've not yet had time to test MX-Fluxbox, I've only seen the print-screens available here.
Maybe some "work" I did on antiX fluxbox can be handy here on Mx?- Checkout my thread viewtopic.php?t=47962
(I used all 3 desktops available out of the box on antiX. I modded them all and then went back to the default icewm. It would be great to see MX-icewm too :-) )

During my time experimenting with antiX Fluxbox I made it look very similar to my Mx instalation (I like using the toolbar on the bottom of the screen, on both antiX and MX).

I do have some thoughts on MX-Fluxbox, I apologise in advance because, not having tested it, I don't know if I'm making redundant or uncessary/unwanted suggestions..., So here it goes:
- Most people like having a "start menu"- FB allows an "arrow" do be put on the toolbar, so the user can click it and access the rootmenu. Maybe you can use that as a default setting?
- I like having icons on my FB menu, I've not tested how much RAM this takes up..., but most people like seeing icons- the eye recognizes images faster than having to read text, right? Is the lack of icons on the menu a design choice?
- Skiddoo's fluxbox version also allows the use of quick start (text) entries on the toolbar, which can be handy (I used this FB version on my experiments)
- Using this version, I managed to find a "workaround" to have "icons" on the toolbar- using adapted fonts with icons for firefox, file manager, terminal, etc.- it's a very convoluted way to make FB look more like MX XFCE, if you so desire. Also, this way you can add a quick launch icon for the "replacement" for Whisker menu I saw mentioned on this thread.
- I used a window decoration theme that looked almost like the default MX's theme, I have that file around on a hard drive, I believe- drop me a line if you want to use it on MX-Fluxbox and I'll dig around for it..
- To finish up, something about my personal take on desktop "design"... A screen grab had FB's toolbar on the left, like the default MX XFCE- I don't really like it, but, if using it that way, maybe putting the clock on top would make it act more like most MX users expect the desktop to behave?

Using all of some of these suggestions i'll make MX-Fluxbox look almost like the XFCE version most people are used to, but, making it much more lighter on RAM usage (I did not upgrade my MX 18.X because I read 19 uses much more RAM...)
Maybe making MX-FB look the way it does on the screen grabs was a design option, to differentiate it from MX-XFCE, but, most of the user base, I believe, does like the way MX looks out of the box, so, having similar looks out of the box maybe appeals to some more users. Advanced users can tweak FB as they see fit...

P.
You've done a excellent piece of art, Jerry!

[dolphin_oracle]

@Adrian: MX has lots of Qt apps that show up in this Fluxbox overlay with tiny fonts. The Fluxbox documentation says that such font concerns have to be answered inside the Qt toolbox itself. Do you have a suggestion on how to do that?

you might want to check what font size you are setting the text and such to in the fluxbox configuration.

FWIW, antiX's fluxbox doesn't have that problem, and antiX uses a lot of the Qt apps.

[Jerry3904]

Thanks. We have tested raising the font size in the overlay file. It raises the menus, titlebars and toolbar but it does not affect the Qt apps (so corroborating what the fluxbox documentation states). I bet those sneaky antiX people have done something tricky here...

[dolphin_oracle]

I doubt it. I think it's the other way around. I suspect our gtk theme plugin is only in use under xfce.