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-43.0 or lightdm-1.32.0,
and would like to be able to choose Fluxbox
at the login prompt, create a fluxbox.desktop
file. 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-43.0 or lightdm-1.32.0 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 imlib2-1.9.1 is not installed
to allow other image formats.
cp -r /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.