Openbox Themes and Apps
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This wiki article deals with customizing the appearance of Openbox in Frugalware Linux. Helper programs such as panels and trays are also explained.
Contents |
Themes and appearance
This supplemental wiki article has information about customizing your desktop interface after installing Openbox.
With the exception of the Openbox Themes topic, the following section is intended for users who have configured Openbox to run as a standalone desktop, without the assistance of GNOME, KDE or Xfce.
Openbox themes
Openbox themes control the appearance of window borders, including the titlebar and titlebar buttons. They also determine the appearance of the application menu and on-screen display (OSD).
Additional themes are available from the standard repositories:
This package is by no means definitive. You can download more themes at websites such as:
- box-look.org
- customize.org
- http://www.minuslab.net/themes/
- http://celo.wordpress.com/themes/
- http://vault.openmonkey.com/pages/openbox
- http://hewphoria.com/?p=submission&type=theme&cat=7
Downloaded themes should be extracted to ~/.themes and can be installed or selected with the ObConf tool.
Creating new themes is fairly easy and again well-documented.
For a GUI theme editor, take a look at ObTheme.
X11 appearance
If you are running Openbox as a standalone, you will need to configure .Xdefaults file. Save a copy to ~/.Xdefaults and /home/root/.Xdefaults for windows opened as Root.
Xdefaults is a user-level configuration dotfile, typically located at ~/.Xdefaults. When present, it is parsed by the xrdb (Xorg resource database) program automatically when Xorg is started, and can be used to set or override preferences for X and X applications. It can do many operations, including:
- defining terminal colours - configuring terminal preferences - setting DPI, antialiasing, hinting and other X font settings - changing the Xcursor theme - theming xscreensaver - altering preferences on low-level X applications (xclock, xpdf, etc.)
X11 mouse cursors
Extract the desired Xcursor theme to either /usr/share/icons (system-wide access) or ~/.icons (local user access). There are also a limited amount of themes available in the community repository that can be installed using pacman.
Add this to ~/.Xdefaults:
Xcursor.theme: [name-of-cursor-theme]
where [name-of-cursor-theme] is the name of the cursor theme directory. For example:
Xcursor.theme: Vanilla-DMZ-AA
To change the size:
Xcursor.size: [size]
Sometimes it is required to symlink the icon directory into each user directory to make the window manager use them:
$ mkdir ~/.icons $ ln -s /usr/share/icons/[name-of-cursor-theme] ~/.icons/default
For more information see: X11_Cursors
GTK themes
GTK2/ GTK+
First, extract the desired theme to /usr/share/themes (system-wide access) or ~/.themes (local user access), then:
GTK+ themes can be managed easily with the lxappearance utility. To install, run:
Now you can simply run lxappearance to set the desired theme.
If you have gnome-settings-daemon, it can avoid you from changing the gtk theme and reverting back to original theme. By default, the autostart.sh for openbox provided with the package runs it. So, make sure that you don't have it running.
GTK fonts
To manually change the type and size of your fonts, add the following to ~/.gtkrc.mine:
style "user-font" { font_name = "[font-name] [size]" } widget_class "*" style "user-font" gtk-font-name = "[font-name] [size]"
where [font-name] [size] is the desired font and point size. For example:
style "user-font" { font_name = "DejaVu Sans 8" } widget_class "*" style "user-font" gtk-font-name = "DejaVu Sans 8"
Both font_name and gtk-font-name fields are required for backwards compatibility.
You can also use lxappearance to set GTK font settings. Please refer to the above section.
GTK icons
First, extract the desired icon theme to /usr/share/icons (system-wide access) or ~/.icons (local user access), then:
Add the following to ~/.gtkrc.mine:
gtk-icon-theme-name = "[name-of-icon-theme]"
where [name-of-icon-theme] is the name of the icon theme directory. For example:
gtk-icon-theme-name = "Tango"
Ensure ~/.gtkrc-2.0 is configured to parse ~/.gtkrc.mine:
# ~/.gtkrc-2.0 # -- THEME AUTO-WRITTEN DO NOT EDIT include "/usr/share/themes/Rezlooks-Gilouche/gtk-2.0/gtkrc" include "/home/username/.gtkrc.mine" # -- THEME AUTO-WRITTEN DO NOT EDIT
You can use lxappearance to choose GTK icon themes. Please refer to the above section.
Desktop icons
Openbox does not provide a means to display icons on the desktop. Xfdesktop, PcmanFM, ROX, iDesk, or even Nautilus (and the gnome-settings-daemon) can provide this function.
ROX and PCmanFM have the additional advantage of being lightweight file managers.
Desktop wallpaper
Openbox itself does not include a way to change the wallpaper. This can be done easily with programs like Feh or Nitrogen. Other options include ImageMagick, hsetroot and xsetbg. Or Pcmanfm and Xfdesktop can do it too.
You can disable the wallpaper loading in gnome-settings-daemon like this:
Recommended programs
This supplemental wiki article details specific applications you may want to deploy after installing Openbox.
There is a list of Lightweight Software at Frugalware's wiki; most of it nicely fits with Openbox.
Login managers
SLiM is a light graphical login manager. It works for standalone Openbox configurations. Refer to the wiki SLiM wiki for instructions.
Compositing the desktop view
Xcompmgr is a lightweight composite manager capable of rendering drop shadows, fading and simple window transparency within Openbox and other window managers. (It's worth noting that xcompmgr is no longer developed, and so any issues are unlikely to be fixed) (Developed an issue with tint2 0.9, the systray icons have a tendency to corrupt)
Cairo Composite Manager -- A versatile and extensible composite manager which uses cairo for rendering, is an alternative.
Panels, trays, pagers
A number of utilities provide panels/ taskbars, system trays, or pagers to Openbox:
Panels
- Avant window navigator
- BMPanel
- Cairo-Dock
- Fbpanel
- LXPanel
- PerlPanel
- PyPanel]
- Screenlets
- Tint2]
- Wbar
- Xfce4-panel
Trays
File managers
Two popular lightweight file managers are:
- Thunar Thunar supports auto-mount features and other plugins.
- ROX ROX provides a set of file/desktop icons.
- PCManFM carries a bit more heft.
PcManFM package also provides desktop icons.
Allows PCManFM to access NTFS drives.
For even lighter options, consider Gentoo or emelFM2.. These programs implement a typical two-pane layout. Other file managers are xfe and muCommander.
Alternatively, you may use Gnome's Nautilus as your file manager. It is heavier and slower than previous solutions, but Nautilus supports virtual file systems, allowing folder access via SSH, FTP, or Samba. This is an advantage.
Application launchers
Set-up dmenu as described in the dmenu wiki article. Then add the following entry to the <keyboard> section ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml to enable a shortcut to launch dmenu:
<keybind key="W-space"> <action name="Execute"> <execute>dmenu_run</execute> </action> </keybind>
Gmrun
gmrun provides an excellent Run dialog box, similar to the Alt+F2 features found in Gnome and KDE:
Add the following entry to the <keyboard> section ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml to enable Alt+F2 functionality:
<keybind key="A-F2"> <action name="execute"><execute>gmrun</execute></action> </keybind>
Bashrun2
bashrun2 provides a different, barebones approach to a run dialog, using a specialized bash session within a small xterm window.
It can be launched through the Alt+F2 style approach mentioned previously. To make bashrun2 act more like a traditional run dialog, add the following entry to the <applications> section ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml:
<application name="bashrun2-run-dialog"> <desktop>all</desktop> <decor>no</decor> # switch to yes if you prefer a bordered window <focus>yes</focus> <skip_pager>yes</skip_pager> <layer>above</layer> </application>
Kupfer
Kupfer is a launcher inspired by Quicksilver, written in Python.
"You use it to summon an application or document quickly by typing the first parts of its name. It can also do more than getting at something quickly: there are different plugins for accessing more objects and running custom commands."
Launchy
Launchy is a less minimalistic approach; it is skinnable and offers more functionality such as a calculator, checking the weather, etc. Originally for Windows, similar to Gnome Do.
It is launched by Ctrl+Space key combination.
LXPanel
The LXPanel run dialog can be executed with
Clipboard managers
You may wish to install a clipboard manager for a richer copy/paste experience.
xfce4-clipman-plugin, parcellite, or glipper-old can be installed via pacman. Add the clipboard manager to your autostart.sh.
Volume managers
Gvolwheel
Gvolwheel is an audio mixer which lets you control the volume through a tray icon.
Volti
Volti is a GTK+ application for controlling audio volume from the system tray/ notification area.
Volumeicon, volwheel
Volumeicon is a volume control for the system tray.
Volwheel is a tray icon which changes volume via mouse wheel.
Battery & CPU
Trayfreq
Trayfreq is a light battery monitor and a cpu frequency scaler.