Configuration Information
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 or KDM
and would like to be able to choose Fluxbox at the login prompt, create a
fluxbox.desktop file like this.
As root:
mkdir -pv /usr/share/xsessions &&
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 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
To generate the application menu, first you may wish to run
fluxbox-generate_menu
-h, in order to choose any <user_options>, then issue:
cd ~/.fluxbox &&
fluxbox-generate_menu <user_options>
Alternately, copy a pregenerated menu:
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.ext>
to point to the actual image you want to use, where ext must be “xpm”, if imlib2-1.5.1 is not installed to allow
other image formats.
cp /usr/share/fluxbox/styles/<theme> ~/.fluxbox/theme &&
sed -i 's,\(session.styleFile:\).*,\1 ~/.fluxbox/theme,' ~/.fluxbox/init &&
[ -f ~/.fluxbox/theme ] &&
echo "background.pixmap: </path/to/nice/image.ext>" >> ~/.fluxbox/theme ||
[ -d ~/.fluxbox/theme ] &&
echo "background.pixmap: </path/to/nice/image.ext>" >> ~/.fluxbox/theme/theme.cfg
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.