Introduction to openbox
Openbox is a highly configurable desktop
window manager with extensive standards support. It allows you to control
almost every aspect of how you interact with your desktop.
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Note
Development versions of BLFS may not build or run
some packages properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated
since the most recent stable versions of the books.
Package Information
Openbox Dependencies
Required
a graphical environment and
Pango-1.50.14 (compiled with support for libXft)
Optional
dbus-1.14.10 (runtime),
imlib2-1.12.1 (to enable icons in the right click menu),
ImageMagick-7.1.1-15 (to show desktop backgrounds as seen in the
Configuration Information section below),
PyXDG-0.28,
startup-notification-0.12, and
librsvg-2.57.0
Installation of Openbox
Note
If XORG_PREFIX is not /usr,
tell gcc about it:
export LIBRARY_PATH=$XORG_PREFIX/lib
If you only installed the Python 3 PyXDG module convert one of the
scripts to Python 3:
2to3-3.12 -w data/autostart/openbox-xdg-autostart &&
sed 's/python/python3/' -i data/autostart/openbox-xdg-autostart
Install Openbox by running the following
commands:
./configure --prefix=/usr \
--sysconfdir=/etc \
--disable-static \
--docdir=/usr/share/doc/openbox-3.6.1 &&
make
This package does not come with a test suite.
Now, as the root user:
make install
This package creates three .desktop files in the
/usr/share/xsessions/ directory.
Two of these are not appropriate in a BLFS system, so prevent the extra
files showing up as options in a display manager. As the root user:
rm -v /usr/share/xsessions/openbox-{gnome,kde}.desktopCommand Explanations
--sysconfdir=/etc: This option puts
Openbox's configuration files in
/etc/xdg/openbox instead of /usr/etc/xdg/openbox.
--docdir=/usr/share/doc/openbox-3.6.1:
this puts a few files in a versioned directory in
/usr/share/doc.
--disable-static: This switch prevents
installation of static versions of the libraries.
Configuring Openbox
Config Files
/etc/xdg/openbox/autostart,
/etc/xdg/openbox/menu.xml,
/etc/xdg/openbox/rc.xml,
~/.config/openbox/autostart,
~/.config/openbox/menu.xml and
~/.config/openbox/rc.xml
Configuration Information
Openbox's right click menu can be used to
launch programs. The menu itself is configured with 2 files,
/etc/xdg/openbox/menu.xml and
~/.config/openbox/menu.xml. To make changes to the
menu, copy /etc/xdg/openbox/menu.xml to ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml and
edit it:
cp -rf /etc/xdg/openbox ~/.config
~/.config/openbox/menu.xml can be edited with a
text editor or you can install
Obmenu (requires
pyxml
and PyGTK-2.24.0).
To have icons in your right click menu requires installing
imlib2-1.12.1 before you install
Openbox. To set an icon for an entry in the
menu edit ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml and add an
icon to the <item> tag like this:
<item label="Mplayer" icon="/usr/share/pixmaps/mplayer.png">
Many other aspects of Openbox's behavior are
configured with ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml such as
what keybindings are used to launch programs or which mouse button
launches the main menu.
Details of the theme that Openbox applies to
window decorations are configured in
~/.config/openbox/rc.xml. You can get a list of the
available themes with the command:
ls -d /usr/share/themes/*/openbox-3 | sed 's#.*es/##;s#/o.*##'
Starting Openbox
To automatically start openbox when you start
Xorg:
echo openbox > ~/.xinitrc
If you want to set a background image to your desktop you can use
display and launch it from ~/.xinitrc just before
openbox:
cat > ~/.xinitrc << "EOF"
display -backdrop -window root /path/to/beautiful/picture.jpeg
exec openbox
EOF
Or if you like a bit of variety, put a selection of images in a folder
(in this example, the directory ~/.config/backgrounds) and choose one at
random each time you xinit:
cat > ~/.xinitrc << "EOF"
# make an array which lists the pictures:
picture_list=(~/.config/backgrounds/*)
# create a random integer between 0 and the number of pictures:
random_number=$(( ${RANDOM} % ${#picture_list[@]} ))
# display the chosen picture:
display -backdrop -window root "${picture_list[${random_number}]}"
exec openbox
EOF
If you like to have the numlock key set when you start Xorg, install
Numlockx and add that to your xinitrc. Another useful
application is dbus-1.14.10:
cat > ~/.xinitrc << "EOF"
. /etc/profile
picture_list=(~/.config/backgrounds/*)
random_number=$(( ${RANDOM} % ${#picture_list[*]} ))
display -backdrop -window root "${picture_list[${random_number}]}"
numlockx
eval $(dbus-launch --auto-syntax --exit-with-session)
lxpanel &
exec openbox
EOF