MX Fluxbox versus other Window Managers and Desktop Envioroments

[PPC]

During my increasingly less free time, I tried, in antiX and Mx other WM: Enlightenment (E. for short).
There are many things that particular WM does right: small memory footprint (some 50Mb less than Fluxbox!), manages desktop icons and wallpapers by itself, has composition, lots of eye candy (like window previews) and it's very simple to add icons to the toolbar or the preferred applications menu. It's gorgeous, if you happen to like eye candy and animations- looks like a full blown DE (like XFCE, but with even more eye candy). It has a amazing and blazing fast app and file searcher!
I do recommend E. if you want a even lower resources usage, and like eye candy...

But... I went back to MXFB- I feel like it's a bit like my baby- I tweaked until It looks like I wanted it to look (I posted a screen shot, a while ago, I don't even need to run the Dock- it's great, but I want to conserve my RAM - my OS looks a Kind of MX XFCE with a bottom toolbar) 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!).
MXFB it's rock solid- the icons don't go missing out of the blue, like they sometimes do in E. Nor do "gadgets" jump around randomly when you are moving them.
Fluxbox does look way more spartan, with very little eye candy- and even uses a bit more RAM- but, when I put an icon on screen, it stays there, allowing me to launch my apps as fast as possible.
What are OS's and WM and DE's suppose to do? Allow users to run the apps they need, no matter if it's for work or play!
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!
So, despite having some minor disagreements with Jerry's default design choices, I do believe MXFB, is, in fact one of the (lower resources) system available out there, while providing a ample array of tools and almost infinite application choices.
Well done Jerry, and the rest of the Dev team!

P.

[mxer]

Another popular WM is Openbox, very similar to fluxbox; a lighter, seemingly more useful WM, would be JWM, or IceWM; each to their own.

(My personal favourite is Fluxbox as in AntiX.)

[ceeslans]

<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!

[Jerry3904]

@PPC: thanks for the good words, and for your helpful ongoing critique during development.

[dolphin_oracle]

During my increasingly less free time, I tried, in antiX and Mx other WM: Enlightenment (E. for short).
There are many things that particular WM does right: small memory footprint (some 50Mb less than Fluxbox!), manages desktop icons and wallpapers by itself, has composition, lots of eye candy (like window previews) and it's very simple to add icons to the toolbar or the preferred applications menu. It's gorgeous, if you happen to like eye candy and animations- looks like a full blown DE (like XFCE, but with even more eye candy). It has a amazing and blazing fast app and file searcher!
I do recommend E. if you want a even lower resources usage, and like eye candy...

But... I went back to MXFB- I feel like it's a bit like my baby- I tweaked until It looks like I wanted it to look (I posted a screen shot, a while ago, I don't even need to run the Dock- it's great, but I want to conserve my RAM - my OS looks a Kind of MX XFCE with a bottom toolbar) 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!).
MXFB it's rock solid- the icons don't go missing out of the blue, like they sometimes do in E. Nor do "gadgets" jump around randomly when you are moving them.
Fluxbox does look way more spartan, with very little eye candy- and even uses a bit more RAM- but, when I put an icon on screen, it stays there, allowing me to launch my apps as fast as possible.
What are OS's and WM and DE's suppose to do? Allow users to run the apps they need, no matter if it's for work or play!
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!
So, despite having some minor disagreements with Jerry's default design choices, I do believe MXFB, is, in fact one of the (lower resources) system available out there, while providing a ample array of tools and almost infinite application choices.
Well done Jerry, and the rest of the Dev team!

P.

Its one of the things I like about my antiX-fluxbox setup is that once you get done customizing, you can really make fluxbox sing. I always map Super_L to bring up the fluxbox menu, so that thing I don't need desktop space to right click on and I can full screen my apps. (keys file, Super_L: rootMenu)

I would like some more info on that menu setup though. I agree, having applications on the fluxbox menu is what mx-fb setup is missing.

[Jerry3904]

Well, the menu does have "All apps" which brings up the full Whisker menu so for me they're not missing at all. Just sort of compacted.

[dolphin_oracle]

Well, the menu does have "All apps" which brings up the full Whisker menu so for me they're not missing at all. Just sort of compacted.

well, it brings up xfce4-appfinder in full mode. I like it, and it can stand separate from Xfce thanks to Xfce's modularity, but you still end up with one menu for fluxbox control and a second app for actual app launching. And it exposes Xfce applications that don't work in fluxbox. Logout for instance.

[wdscharff]

Therefore I like this community and this forum, the tips that come up at the same time and that you would never have thought of on your own, but that make the work easier and also meet (my) aesthetic demands
Whether it's the rounded corners, the idea of basic tiling windows or the menu to put on the super_L key.

I'm almost a bit nostalgic that after 5 years of using xfxe I'm switching so painlessly to Fluxbox ;-)

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[dolphin_oracle]

FWIW, instead of setting Super_L to the rootmenu like I don on antiX, on MX I have Super_L set to the xfce4-appfinder for application launching.

[wdscharff]

I do not use the xfce4-appfinder (anymore), I have everything in the menu.
The xfce4-appfinder occupies about 55 MB RAM after the first call, most appimages don't create a desktop file and I have to enter the wine programs manually into the menu, so the appfinder is of no use to me anyway.

So I once generated a menu with all programs that can be called with fbmenugen and integrated it as a submenu in my fluxbox menu. Because it looks so nice with icons. I don't mind that there are still a few duplicate entries and I still have to sort a bit.
Except the taskbar, the wallpaper and sometimes conky my desktop is empty. I like that :-)

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