Guys,
Just another follow-up for those of you that have experimented with some of
the lighter weight desktops like openbox, icewm, blackbox, fluxbox, e16, etc..
For those that like a panel at the bottom of the screen, then tint2 is a well
thought-out surprisingly polished panel, task manager, and systray that comes
with battery monitoring, clock/calendar (orage works great as the calendar)
and a few other tidbits.
It's packaged for opensuse and the default settings work fine out of the box.
All you need to do is add an entry in the desktop init script starting it and
other than tweaking the colors and appearance for your preference, you are
done. Below is an example for setting it up on openbox.
The init file for openbox that you need to edit is
~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh. At least for me, I have found placing your
applications right after the "Preload stuff for KDE apps" seems to work the
best. This is the section from my autostart.sh. In addition to tint2, I have
included the other apps I start when openbox starts just as examples of what
else you can start here to add a few creature-comforts to the desktop:
# Preload stuff for KDE apps # (I just included this for context)
if which start_kdeinit >/dev/null; then
LD_BIND_NOW=true start_kdeinit --new-startup +kcminit_startup &
fi
## DCR added items
# load the tint2 panel
if which tint2 > /dev/null; then
$(which tint2) &
fi
# give the tint2 panel a second to settle
sleep 1
# start the network monitor
if which knemo > /dev/null; then
$(which knemo) &
fi
# start sound
if which kmix > /dev/null; then
$(which kmix) &
fi
# start screensaver (configure with 'xscreensaver-demo' or click settings on
start)
if which xscreensaver > /dev/null; then
$(which xscreensaver) &
fi
# start basket minimized to the systray
if which basket > /dev/null; then
$(which basket) --start-hidden &
fi
# (also just included for context)
# Run XDG autostart things. By default don't run anything desktop-specific
# See xdg-autostart --help more info
DESKTOP_ENV=""
Then just log out and log in to openbox and the tint2 panel along with any of
the other apps you want loaded when the desktop starts should be running. The
only other thing I do with openbox (or any other desktop that doesn't have a
default "run" command), is to add one using either bbrun from blackbox or
fbrun from fluxbox as the Alt+F2 keyboard shortcut. Both work fine. For
openbox, just edit ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml and add the following keybinding:
<!-- Keybindings for running applications -->