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Openbox Themes and Apps

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Note: This article is a supplement to the main Openbox article.

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

Note: The main Openbox article has information on installing Openbox.

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:

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S openbox-themes


This package is by no means definitive. You can download more themes at websites such as:

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.) 

Xdefaults

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:

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S lxappearance


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:

User terminal 48px.png
$ gconftool-2 --set /apps/gnome_settings_daemon/plugins/background/active --type bool False

Recommended programs

Note: The main Openbox article has information on installing Openbox.

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

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.
Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S thunar
Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S rox
Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S pcmanfm

PcManFM package also provides desktop icons.

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S ntfs-3g

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

Dmenu

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:

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S gmrun


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.

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S bashrun


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."

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 - kupfer


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.

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S launchy

It is launched by Ctrl+Space key combination.

LXPanel

The LXPanel run dialog can be executed with

User terminal 48px.png
$ lxpanelctl run


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.

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S gvolwheel


Volti

Volti is a GTK+ application for controlling audio volume from the system tray/ notification area.

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 voti


Volumeicon, volwheel

Volumeicon is a volume control for the system tray.

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S volumeicon


Volwheel is a tray icon which changes volume via mouse wheel.

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S volwheel


Battery & CPU

Trayfreq

Trayfreq is a light battery monitor and a cpu frequency scaler.

Root terminal 48px.png
# pacman-g2 -S trayfreq


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