MX Fluxbox versus other Window Managers and Desktop Envioroments

[PPC]

@dolphin_oracle :

To generate a complete Fluxbox menu I use "menumaker" (I think the link is https://sourceforge.net/projects/menumaker/files/)
On my "menu-mx" file I added something like this (adapt as necessary):

## XFCE MENU- just paste the menu generated by MMaker here, under this line:
[submenu] (All Categories)
[exec] (Update Menu) {/home/[USER]/MMaker/menumaker-0.99.11/mmaker fluxbox -f}
[include] (~/.fluxbox/menu)
[end]

I simply uncompressed menumaker to the MMaker folder on my Home (no need to install it)
The "Update Menu" entry generates a new menu, running the command "mmaker fluxbox -f" (from the folder where it was uncompressed)- this generates or updates the menu (after installing/removing software)

P.

[mowest]

@PPC

I think that I have used menumaker in the past with Fluxbox or maybe it was Openbox, but I didn't know the trick you show above how, you can automate the rebuilding of the menu. This is great information, thanks for sharing this with the community.

I would like to encourage consideration of including menumaker in future releases, and also PPC's trick so that MX-Fluxbox users have an updating menu. I'm a little surprised that menumaker is not in the Debian repos. I believe it has been around for a while.

[ceeslans]

fwiw same can also be achieved with 'fbmenugen' --> an 18kb perl-script.
below scrot shows it is running in default mx rootmenu (~/.fluxbox/menu-mx).
it uses one entry in menu-mx (replacing the 'All Apps' line) to include a categorized application menu, generated by the script. if preferred, the user can regenerate it with icons - or plain text.

[Jerry3904]

(FWIW: I had a non-traditional concept for the menu, I didn't just forget stuff.)

Since I already have an "All Apps" entry, it's easy to paste in the code there so no change in the menu translations would be required:



Going to have to think about this--I don't see the use for myself TBH.

[PPC]

fwiw same can also be achieved with 'fbmenugen' --> an 18kb perl-script.
below scrot shows it is running in default mx rootmenu (~/.fluxbox/menu-mx).
it uses one entry in menu-mx (replacing the 'All Apps' line) to include a categorized application menu, generated by the script. if preferred, the user can regenerate it with icons - or plain text.

I never used this script because when I run fbmenugen I get this error:

Code: Select all

Can't locate Linux/DesktopFiles.pm in @INC (you may need to install the Linux::DesktopFiles module) (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.24.1 /usr/local/share/perl/5.24.1 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl5/5.24 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.24 /usr/share/perl/5.24 /usr/local/lib/site_perl /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl-base)

MMaker takes about 1 meg of disk space when uncompressed (vs 18kb), but works without any need to compile/install any dependencies, so I didn't even try to solve fbmenugen's problem ...

P.

[PPC]

(FWIW: I had a non-traditional concept for the menu, I didn't just forget stuff.)

Since I already have an "All Apps" entry, it's easy to paste in the code there so no change in the menu translations would be required:

Going to have to think about this--I don't see the use for myself TBH.

Jerry: I understand both that having a small and concise menu, and relying on xfce's app launcher are personal design choices- In fact, I quite like both ideas- but I also like, because I have low resources machines, to be able to access all applications in a relatively fast way via the menu- I use the menu entry to "All categories" precisely to keep the original "all apps" entry! It's my own personal choice, for my own system. There are loads of ways of having a fast and simple access to all applications- a simple and effective one is bookmarking "/usr/share/applications/" on Thunar!
That's what's good about having Fluxbox running on MX, so manyyy ways to make the OS run just like we want it!
P.S.- If you are considering using any kind of full blown menu entry on MXFB menu- you could use a universal expression, like simply "Apps", that does not require translation on most languages (except oriental ones, Greek, Russian, etc)

P.

[Jerry3904]

I never used this script because when I run fbmenugen I get this error:

Code: Select all

Can't locate Linux/DesktopFiles.pm in @INC (you may need to install the Linux::DesktopFiles module) (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.24.1 /usr/local/share/perl/5.24.1 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl5/5.24 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.24 /usr/share/perl/5.24 /usr/local/lib/site_perl /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl-base)

P.

I had the same experience.

[PPC]

<snip>
...and has all the the functionality I wanted it to have (for window previews I use skippy-XD; for app and file searcher, the excellent and fast Drill; and have a menu generator that does not even need to be installed!).
<snip>
... It's not even particulary hard to make MXFB have a fully working menu - it costs only a line in the menu (in my case "All Categories") and I can use all the apps I want from there, without using XFCE's launcher. I even wrote a small script to put (or remove) my prefered apps on the start of menu!
...

@ppc: could you please explain a bit more about the menu generator - and script to add/remove preferred apps on the startmenu.
would love to see how you are doing that, thanks!

Sorry, I forgot to reply to the add/remove preferred apps to the menu: the script is over https://github.com/PPC-scripts/fluxbox- ... /README.md

Grab the MX version, make it executable, run it, and choose what .desktop file you want to pin to the top of the menu- this does not mess in any way with the rest of the menu, but, always have a backup copy before trying to mess with system configurations...

P.

[ceeslans]

I never used this script because when I run fbmenugen I get this error:

Code: Select all

Can't locate Linux/DesktopFiles.pm in @INC (you may need to install the Linux::DesktopFiles module) (@INC contains: /etc/perl /usr/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.24.1 /usr/local/share/perl/5.24.1 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl5/5.24 /usr/share/perl5 /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl/5.24 /usr/share/perl/5.24 /usr/local/lib/site_perl /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/perl-base)

P.

I had the same experience.

Hmmmm... you probably did not read the 'install-readme' about dependencies requirements, because this specified the need to install the included 'perl-linux-desktopfiles_0.25-1.deb' ...

[Jerry3904]

I read it, grand merci, but didn't see the deb, just the GitHub files.