AV Linux... continue with Openbox, or not?

[AVLinux]

Hi!

I have a AV Linux MX Edition 21.2.1 ISO 99% ready to release and I have a nagging notion in the back of my brain (the part where the dust and cobwebs are) to go back to a pure XFCE4 setup and revert/remove Openbox... But why you may ask? You were so jazzed about Openbox before...? And yes I was... I was disenchanted with how much RAM XFCE4 was using and to be honest that still bugs me however AVL 21.X has been out long enough a few Openbox bugaboos have appeared..

- Openbox has keybindings that interfere with some common Audio programs, the only way to change them is hand editing the Openbox xml files and they are NOT easy..
- Many reviewers on YT seem to have no clue what Openbox even is and when they encounter it in AVL they are either puzzled, completely miss the point or hate it instantly..
- In retrospect I don't recall many (or any) people saying OMG it uses Openbox?? That's so AWESOME!!!
- New Linux users in general are about enterprise-y Desktops, as GTK 2 fades away many people are not even aware of Openbox, LXDE and other light setups and what is/was cool about them.
- Openbox ceased meaningful development many years ago, which is nice for stability but not so good for getting with emerging DE's
- Some XFCE4 stuff tied to the missing xfdesktop stuff like setting wallpapers from images doesn't work in the current setup..
- Some miss having Desktop Icons and although I don't care for them personally a seemingly large number of people do...
- XFCE4 4.18 is coming out soon, I think looking ahead and the realities of supporting GTK4 and other things it will be best to not create an XFCE4 hybrid with any other Window Manager so why keep doing it now..?

To be clear I'm asking for this current ISO update based on MX-21/Debian 11 Bullseye.. For the future MX 23/Debian Bookworm cycle I'm still weighing options... move to Enlightenment?... See what XFCE4 4.18 has to offer? Stop doing AV Linux and instead create production-oriented meta packages for the MX Repos..? Who knows..?

Many may not care but if you do I would be interested in opinions one way or the other.. Thanks in advance!

Glen

[pianokeyjoe]

Stick to XFCE4 as that DE is tightly integrated into MX and is far more popular and friendly for noobs and seasoned Linux users alike. Has modern releases and support and well, you are releasing a specialized version of the OS for Multimedia production, that said, it just makes more sense. Let users add their own additional desktops and WMs as they see fit. Maintaining and curating packages for 2 interfaces can also be daunting not to mention very time consuming. Just my thoughts though. As for Enlightenment as the default for AVL in the future? I strongly advise against it. If you are going to continue using MX Linux as the base, and MX is XFCE based, I strongly suggest sticking with that and leave Enlightenment and Openbox up to the users to install. As much as I love Linux for its various DEs and WMs, the KISS formula applies. And as you said, alot of users online do not even know or like what Openbox is or is there any more modern support. Enlightenment? Well that is another beast for sure..

[FullScale4Me]

IceWM has plain text configs, recently updated (October 2022), and has more than a bit of expertise of use in the MX Linux realm.

[chinface]

in terms of usability, I prefer the old full xfce setup (i liked being able to drag the window to the top of the screen to make it go full screen)
but, i think it's awesome that if i stop nitrogen and conky from loading on startup, i can get down to about 340mb ram usage.

personally i was a big fan of the old #! openbox+tint2+thunar setup, but that's not for everyone.

as above, maybe icewm could be a good option for a super slim system that's still reasonably intuitive to use

have you considered kde? it's officially part of the mx universe as well, and from what i've heard is at least as light if not lighter than xfce now (although i think i remember reading somewhere you're not a qt fan?)

even if you did go for a full DE, surely wouldn't be too difficult for people to do their own WM setup if they want to get super lean, esp if there was a list of apps/daemons etc that need to bet set to autorun

[AVLinux]

Thanks for the replies, I appreciate the input!

To clarify I'm not really looking to go lighter/smaller so something like IceWM would really mean a redesign of everything, I think my issue already is being non-standard, I love LXDE, Openbox, MX-Flux, antiX and all of them but I think a majority of my particular user demographic will be turned off even further by something like IceWM. As mentioned I probably should have left such specialized tinkering to the User and just kept it simpler in the first place but I'm always mindful of making older PC's into useful recording appliances and when RAM consumption gets in the 500Mb neighborhood that hits older machines pretty hard.

[alextone]

Personally, i'd drop Openbox for Enlightenment. E has proved to be highly useful and configurable in levels easier than OB. (imho)

I guess we should be asking you Glen. Which one would you prefer, in the context of time you have, among your other interests?

Alex.

[Be OK]

On my grumpy laptop i use avl for years now. I installed xfce as desktop, runs on this machine I7 8core ,much better.
Glen no matter witch way you choose, ii am certain that AVL will keep running music :) Greetings Jan.

[AVLinux]

@alextone

I'm talking about for an AVL-MXE ISO update of the current release so even though things are going well with Enlightenment on the development MXDE builds I wouldn't want to do anything as major as completely changing the D.E or introducing PipeWire as a default etc in the current AVL-MXE.. The XFCE4 part is already in place as it always has been, I'm talking about simply changing only the Window Manager part back to xfwm and removing Openbox.

I like Openbox and it's right-click menu, it's lightness and how much configuration power there is to create the OB Window themes, I am a fan personally.. But it seems to have not really translated in the wider world. I don't live or die by Youtube reviews or Distrowatch rankings etc.. but it's foolish to also not pay attention to some of the concerns and critiques that have been noted.

@Be OK
Hi Jan, hope you are well! Thanks for the comments!

Building a test ISO now without Openbox, there are a lot of Packages and depends to root out and configs to get rid of and change around, even the theming Packages have to be modified...
Anyway, will see if it bursts into flames or not..

[Aceediq]

Well...considering that the linux world is full of regressions and most times, if not all, lack constant or consistent functions or behaviour, even among distro derivatives, I think it is down to your convenience, developers convenience but fortunately for us the users, your case is a developer-consumer circumstance, if it was not so, no matter how much I would love the distro, it will be unreasonable and inconsiderate on my part to always expect thhis distro to tick all my boxes seeing that you are a one man team and age, IMO, has caught up to you, whether you agree or not, therefore on the long run creating production oriented meta packages based on the distro of your choice will be the most feasible, continuing AVL will be feasible but I do not think it will be the most feasible


Now to my opinions based on thorough/breaking experiences on both MXDE-EFL & AVL-MXE, I would say sticking to xfce would be better because:

1. It does not matter by how much we try to reduce the impact of WM's or DE's on system resources, apps usage of system reaources are going in the direction where that wouldn't matter any longer, especially, media production apps. Also, 4GB RAM is the de facto standard now for any base distro and that is not even sufficient for AV production

2. Like you said, openbox configs disrupt usage of other apps and sometimes changing configs either doesn't work or breaks the functionality of other keyboard mappings and the ALT-key bindings of OB causes the most nuisance for me...Enlightenment is far easier to configure but it will be better not to have any conflicts at all

3. Enlightenment's guru meditation has caused me pains sometimes, as neither right click or left click resolves the issue, I need to force shutdown in such scenarios

4. Only distro-hopping hobbyist might relish in the time to get things right, they might not be bugs though but a little tweaking or research might be needed, for example, the keyboard locale issue we had & solved on Enlightenment and the major reason why I went through with that was because I discovered that I could do a screen recording with the screen scaling reduced, which was not possible on MXDE-EFL but guru meditation and having two different but one working way of changing system defaults was a wastage of my time. You can not also replace E apps

5. since this is a distro geared towards making AV production easy, why in the world does changing wallpaper need an almighty formula? and this was a reason for me to switch to Mabox linux because of the theming/ricing capabilities...I enjoyed my time with it (the bleeding edge, as I was able to play 0ad with mods & the availability of AUR apps not in the debian repos adding to the glee) but I will be back to either MX Xfce or Sparkylinux Xfce due to laggy rendering issues when I zoom out or zoom in in inkscape as I make flyer designs...I would have gone KDE but I am not a fan of Qt due to my dislike of separate theming engines...for now...it might change as new apps are widely adopting the Qt GUI

6. I do not know for what reason both MXDE-EFL and AVL-MXE mount only one of my two android devices, although the unmountable one is running a custom rom based on AOSP but all the same... they both mounted on Mabox Linux on a clean boot after which they both become unmountable at an unknown time when I start using the system

7. Hibernation which is a must have for me doesn't work most times, if at all on MXDE-EFL & AVL-MXE, even with swap partition creation at install

Nothing wrong with being lightweight on resources but a system for daily use or the average user, IMO, has left that realm...when you consider the ram usage of browsers with at least 5tabs open, talk less of running a production system

I stop here, as these are major pain points for me, my system specs below, if need be:

Sony Vaio VPCS123FG
Core i5-540M (originally i3-320M)
8GB RAM

[AVLinux]

@Aceediq

Those are some valid points, thanks for putting them together, I don't really argue with any of them but to explain..

I'm aware that for most people with newer computers the reality is as far RAM consumption any DE will be fine and not be an obstacle... However if people knew you had a million dollars in your bank account and just started charging you more money for everyday things simply because they knew you have more than enough money to pay for it you would feel differently... I'm annoyed by the principle not the reality.. Having spoken to the Enlightenment developer numerous times on IRC I know he obsessively makes E efficient and any changes to it are always weighed against the resource cost and I admire that.. but I agree for AV Linux the convenience costs of Openbox have not justified the resource savings..

In Enlightenment's defense my ISO's have the procstats module enabled which I have since learned causes significant instability, I have no idea why it hasn't been removed it from Enlightenment because the developer himself told me it was wonky...? On my development machine since 'unloading' that module I haven't had one guru meditation, it's been as reliable as a battleship..

Enlightenment is criminally lacking in User docs as well, things like your keyboard locale issue could be avoided with even a simple FAQ if not a User Manual, If I move AVL to Enlightenment in the future it will feature a User Manual just like it does now..

Lastly about hibernation, I really have no clue. Suspend and hibernation were borked and unstable on Linux for so many years I avoided it like the plague and my own computers are always only fully on or fully off, that said I have made no known changes to any of the existing MX configs that would affect suspend or hibernate. Really the Liquorix kernels, the 'threadirqs' boot parameter and a handful of specialized configs are the main difference between pure MX and AV Linux, so I don't have an answer about why it doesn't work..