Fluxbox-0.9.15.1

~/.fluxbox/init, ~/.fluxbox/keys, and ~/.fluxbox/menu

If Fluxbox is the only Window Manager you want to use, you can start it with an .xinitrc file in your home folder. Be sure to backup your current .xinitrc before proceeding.

echo startfluxbox > ~/.xinitrc

Or alternatively, if you use a login manager like GDM-2.14.10 or kdm and would like to be able to choose Fluxbox at the login prompt, create a fluxbox.desktop file like this.

As root:

cat > /usr/share/xsessions/fluxbox.desktop << "EOF"
[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Fluxbox
Comment=This session logs you into Fluxbox
Exec=startfluxbox
Type=Application
EOF

If you didn't install GDM-2.14.10 or kdm in /usr, then change that command to fit the prefix you chose.

Now create the Fluxbox configuration files:

mkdir -v ~/.fluxbox &&
cp -v /usr/share/fluxbox/init ~/.fluxbox/init &&
cp -v /usr/share/fluxbox/keys ~/.fluxbox/keys

Now if you have which-2.16 installed:

cd ~/.fluxbox &&
fluxbox-generate_menu

otherwise:

cp -v /usr/share/fluxbox/menu ~/.fluxbox/menu

Menu items are added by editing ~/.fluxbox/menu. The syntax is explained on the fluxbox man page.

If you want to use an image as your desktop background, copy the theme you like into ~/.fluxbox. Then add a line to make it use the correct image. In the following command, change <theme> for the name of the theme you want and change </path/to/nice/image.xpm> to point to the actual image you want to use.

cp /usr/share/fluxbox/styles/<theme> ~/.fluxbox/theme &&
sed -i 's,\(session.styleFile:\).*,\1 ~/.fluxbox/theme,' \
 ~/.fluxbox/init &&
echo "background.pixmap: </path/to/nice/image.xpm>" >> ~/.fluxbox/theme

In some locales the font specified in the theme may not contain the needed characters. This results in menus with blank items. You can fix this by editing ~/.fluxbox/theme with a text editor and altering it so that it names a suitable font.