Openbox, the one-way window manager

16 Replies

This thread mostly speaks for itself — Has anyone ever been able to leave Openbox for good?

I can concur with the poster’s thoughts. No matter what window manager I use, I always end up rearranging it to make it closer to my Openbox setups. XFCE? Needs to be less pudgy around the corners, and needs an easier right-click menu. IceWM? Looks better without the taskbar, and IceWM-lite is just about right. Fluxbox? Too … Fluxboxy.

And really, how do you resist screenshots like these?

On the other hand, there are a few people who claim to have left OB for tiling window managers. I don’t think I’ll ever be one of them, but it’s hard to be sure some times. The screenshot arena sometimes tempts me. … 😐

16 thoughts on “Openbox, the one-way window manager”

  1. devnet

    I agree 😀

    [url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/9396034@N03/2226977132/][img]http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2017/2226977132_737a42b15c.jpg?v=0[/img][/url]

    Hope bbcode works 😐

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  2. jonathantan86

    Couldn’t resist commenting. 🙂

    I switched from Openbox to IceWM mainly because I can use Win+Space to bring up a launch dialog box which comes up almost instantaniously or instantaniously (on Openbox I have to bind it to gmrun which takes about a second to load). The Thinblack theme (the old one, not the new one) looks quite good on IceWM.

    Also, IceWM has bindings that allow you to position a window at any screen corner, side, or the centre (Win+Numpad 1-9). Not sure if Openbox can do that.

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  3. Justin

    heh, I went from xfce to openbox to evilwm to xmonad. heh, BUT, openbox is great because you can use it to guide people away from a DE without losing any functionality.

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  4. shearn89

    I’m one of those that left OB for a twm – in this case Awesome! I love the tabs, and the way i can control where windows appear really easily. Plus, i do a lot of cli stuff, rarely using a gui for anything nowadays… A tiling window manager is the easiest way to control 3 or more terminal windows at once!

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  5. maximegb

    I like openbox, but i like icewm better. I found its taskbar really useful.
    Icewm can look good too see my last theme and i’m currently working on patch to remove bevel in the taskbar.

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  7. king.pest

    I always had a similar problem with switching from fluxbox to openbox. Why leave fluxbox if it works well? The screenshots are nice, though:)

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  8. aaron.brown

    I actually started using Openbox because of your blog! As for the actual question, no, I haven’t been able to switch. I’ve tried others. Many are very nice, but I always go back to Openbox.

    aaron

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  10. James

    *waves*

    I can’t *stand* how Openbox won’t respect panels/taskbars.
    (Try it yourself! Launch a 3rd party taskbar and position it at the top of the screen. Unlike IceWM, XFCE4, and Gnome, Openbox doen’t prevent you from accedentally dragging a window’s title frame under it. Quite annoying to have to constantly have to alt-drag the window out.) I open a ton of windows, and alt-tab just isn’t enough (though skippy was a step in the right direction).

    I went from Openbox to IceWM. As I upgraded from one machine to another, I went to XFCE4, and now Gnome with Compiz-Fusion.

    I dunno. I just got tired of poking at config files and tweaking things. It’s not that I can’t, I just have better things to do with my time. Convenience and integration are large motivators.

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  11. Dr Small

    I’m an openbox user addict myself, and switched from IceWM several months ago. I used to love IceWM because I could make it look like XP, Vista, Windows 2000, and all sorts of stuff. Eventually, that got old, and I settled with Openbox. I use Pypanel with it too, a great combination.

    I’ve tried wmii since then, and just can’t leave my perfect openbox setup. Sooo perfect. But I can’t get Openbox to work on Ubuntu (on the laptop) because the system freezes (literally freezes). I wish I could, though.

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  13. ScriptDevil

    I used openbox. I switched to evilwm. Then came wmii. Finally I am married to xmonad!

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  15. magerlab

    i like openbox very much
    use it even without any panel( or sometimes with tint with undecorated windows)

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