I am not really into fancy effects on my desktop. I was using xcompmgr in Openbox for while to get some nice shadows, but eventually I got bored with them. I have enabled the fancy desktop effects on my Gnome desktop but I use Gnome nowadays very rarely.

My Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) desktop, testing effects.

I prefer simple and elegant. Which is why I have been using Openbox and occasionally Pekwm lately. At the moment I like Openbox more. They’re both very light weight window managers and easily configured for your needs. Openbox has few graphical applications that can be used to make right click menu (Obmenu) and configuring (Obconf) easier. In Pekwm you handle everything manually editing text-files.

Firstly Openbox (as well a for example Pekwm or metacity) is window manager. Window manager…

…is essentially the component which controls the appearance of windows and provides the means by which the user can interact with them. Virtually everything which appears on the screen in X is in a window, and a window manager quite simply manages them.

Source: Window Managers for X

But I won’t go deeper into window managers now.

I ended up using Openbox mostly because I wanted something lightweight and configurable and Openbox seemed the best option. At the moment I use Openbox alone. But you could use it also for example in Gnome instead of Metacity. I think it’s the best on its own.

My Openbox Desktop

Ubuntu (Hardy Heron) with Openbox. Applications: Audacious (theme: sny - wa by Johan Zätterström), Gmrun, Thunar, Gnome Terminal, gtk-chtheme, conky, Tint, Trayer. Openbox theme: slightly modified Arch.blue, GTK+ theme: BlackWhite, icons: ALLBLACK, wallpaper: Social Wallpapering

To keep things in order and aesthetic

I the beginning there was an empty dark grey screen. Very minimalistic, but though I love minimalism, I wanted little colour and action on my screen.

While I was quite capable to work without panel/taskbar and systemtray, it was easier to be with one. But to find perfect tools took quite long. At the moment I have Tint (I tried also Pypanel, fbpanel and perlpanel) and Trayer (I tried also Docker and Stalonetray). And I did accidentally find out that Tint is not tetris (the tint in Ubuntu packages is Tint tetris, the other Tint you have to compile youself). Anyway I like Tint (the taskbar) because while it’s very simple and text based it’s still quite configurable. My only problem with Tint atm is that though it should autostart (it’s in autostart file ) when I start Openbox, it doesn’t. This isn’t big thing, but it irks me anyway. Pypanel is my other favourite, but I like the simplicity of Tint more. Perpanel and fbpanel were just too much for my needs. To system trays, as said I tried docker and stalonetray but I had problems with right click so I ended up using Trayer which works perfectly for me. What I have been wondering though (I had same problem already with Gnome panel) is that why some partly transparent icons in system trays have black (or other colour) blackground . it bothers me.

For keeping desktop background pretty I have Nitrogen (sometimes I seem to change wallpapers more often than socks). To get Nitrogen restore the background when Openbox is started you have to set it in autostart file. There are other ways to set the wallpaper (for example feh), but Nitrogen has worked best for me.

I used Urukrama’s Openbox guide when I was first installing and configuring Openbox. And I still check it occasionally if I have problems. I recommend reading it if you’re interested to use Openbox.

My Openbox autostart.sh file

# This shell script is run before Openbox launches.
# Environment variables set here are passed to the Openbox session.
export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=gnome
#applet for network connectivity
nm-applet --nb-disabled &
# Auto-mounting drives
gnome-volume-manager &
# To set the background image
nitrogen --restore &
#Trayer and its appearance
trayer --transparent true --expand true --alpha 255 --widthtype request --SetDockType true --edge bottom --align right &
conky &
#Progs etc... starting automatically
(sleep 3 && pidgin) &
(sleep 5 && evolution) &
(sleep 7 && tint) &
(sleep 9 && gmrun) &

Useful resources

• Xcompmgr
• Openbox
• Openbox guide by Urukrama
• Short Pekwm guide in Ubuntu Forums
• PekWM
• MenuMaker
• Wikipedia - X Window Manager
• GTK+
• Window Managers for X

My desktop is now a lot cleaner and lighter (also prettier ) than it was when I used Gnome. I might later try CrunchBang Linux which seems really intriguing or maybe I’ll finally install Arch Linux. Especially latter would fit with what I want nowadays, simplicity.

I recently decided to try Openbox as my window manager and haven’t changed since then. Well I have still a lot to configure, but results so far have been very teaching. Anyway I wanted to present in this second post my Conky. Which is a very customisable lightweight system monitor for desktop.

I based my conky -code on this one line conky (by Lyrae). It includes a script which informs whether all packages are up to date or not. I’m not a Perl expert, so I don’t know yet if I was able to modify the script to work in Ubuntu. But at the moment Conky shows the time, mails (POP3), current song in Exaile, how long system has been on, net uploading and downloading, how many GiB I have used in my home folder, memory and CPU usage. To make it little prettier I used few special fonts to show the stars (Seeing Stars) and arrows (PizzaDude Bullets).

Hanna’s Conky and the code. I recommend checking the Ubuntu Geek for further instructions . If you want to use my code, you can replace the code in .conkyrc file (a hidden file in home directory) with mine.

Useful Links:
Conky (Conky variables)
Some conky codes can be found in Gnome-Look.org, write in search field conky. Check also for example this thread: Post your .conkyrc files w/ screenshots in Ubuntu Forums.

ps. A little hint for myself , make scripts executable, surprisingly things may start working

pps. Only 7 days till Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron !!!