firefox 89.0 fixes

This webpage has some tips for dealing with the newly released Firefox 89.0, for those who aren't happy with the changes: https://www.askvg.com/tip-restore-compact-mode-density-option-in-firefox-customize-window/

My favorite is to simply use the following about:config fix to set the Firefox window to "compact mode", getting rid of some wasted space at the top:

browser.uidensity = 0 -- change to 1 (for "compact mode")

 

 

For Fluxbox users, if the Firefox window doesn't render correctly in Fluxbox (happened to me in one of my Arch installations), the Restart Fluxbox tool fixes it for the current session only. For a more permanent fix, use the following about:config settings:

gfx.webrender.all = false -- this was the default

gfx.webrender.force-disabled = false -- toggle to true to fix window in Fluxbox

To completely disable the new "Proton" look, toggle the following from true to false:

browser.proton.enabled

browser.proton.modals.enabled

browser.proton.doorhangers.enabled

browser.proton.contextmenus.enabled

 

browser.proton.places-tooltip.enabled

Then restart Firefox.

 

looking more attractive

Visitors to the MX Linux website might be pleasantly surprised by some recent developments:

Yep, MX includes Fluxbox on their main isos along with the default Xfce, and now there's also a KDE iso! Kinda makes me a bit nostalgic for the old Mepis days, when I mainly used KDE.

For more info about available MX Linux downloads, see: https://mxlinux.org/download-links/

I took a look at MX's Fluxbox setup a few months back (https://monksblog-malspa.blogspot.com/2020/05/fluxbox-in-mx.html), but it seems that there's been a lot of work done on it since then. Check out the latest announcement about it, here.

I haven't look at the KDE spin yet. It might be a nice option for some users, if choices like KDE Neon, Kubuntu, and Debian w/ KDE Plasma aren't enough.

simply stable plus openbox

From https://head-on-a-stick.github.io/: "SharpBang (♯!) GNU/Linux is a live ISO image that can be used to install a pre-configured Openbox/Tint2 desktop running on Debian stable."

I decided to take a look, and downloaded sharpbang-buster-backports-10.5.0-amd64.hybrid.iso. When I booted into the live system, I found a clean, simple Openbox setup:

 

Some of the apps/packages included: Thunar, Gparted, Synaptic, Galculator, Mousepad, Firefox ESR, mpv Media Player, gmrun, htop, ranger, tint2, UXTerm, rsync, and obmenu. Here's a shot showing the nicely-arranged right-click menu:

 

The SharpBang project appears to provide just about everything I want/need in a live session, without including too much other stuff. I think the idea was for something along the lines of the old CrunchBang project. I took a look at the /etc/apt/sources.list file; no surprises there:

deb https://deb.debian.org/debian buster main contrib non-free
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian-security buster/updates main contrib non-free
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib non-free
deb https://deb.debian.org/debian buster-backports main contrib non-free

Great job here by "Head-on-a-Stick"!! Here's the github page: https://github.com/Head-on-a-Stick/Sharpbang

 

 

worth the wait?

BunsenLabs Lithium was finally released yesterday, over one year after the release of Debian 10 ("Buster"), which Lithium is derived from. The release announcement can be found here at the BunsenLabs forums.

I downloaded the 32-bit iso (651 MB) -- instead of the full, 64-bit iso (2.1 GB) -- wrote the image to a flash drive, and booted up. I wanted to check out the live session from the smaller image even though a note at the installation page at the BunsenLabs website says, "Using the 64-bit ISO is recommended, as the CD-sized ISO has been surgically reduced in size."

Post #3 in the forum thread mentioned above contains package lists for the full image as well as for the smaller image. Some of the apps/packages included as defaults on the CD-sized image: Dillo web browser (no Firefox), Thunar file manager, GParted, Ristretto image viewer, Evince document viewer, Mousepad text editor, URxvt terminal emulator, and mpv media player. BunsenLabs, of course, ships with Openbox as the default window manager instead including one of the standard desktop environments.

I felt that the CD-sized image would be great for doing a Lithium installation, but its live session was not quite what I would have liked it to be. I'm guessing that the live session from the 64-bit image is more polished. The CD image booted fine on 3 out of 4 of my laptops; I'll keep it on my flash drive as it looks like it could certainly be used for emergency purposes, and for just playing around.

The default Welcome window contains some important information to read before proceeding:

The BunsenLabs website: https://www.bunsenlabs.org/

And, the BunsenLabs page at DistroWatch: https://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=bunsenlabs

fluxbox iconbar trick

Fluxbox has no way for changing the order of the list of windows on the iconbar. The most recently opened window always shows up last on the list. I like to have the windows organized by workspace; if I have one app running on Workspace 1 and something else running on Workspace 2, for example, I want the window on Workspace 1 to show up first on the iconbar, even if that app wasn't the first one started.

Someone came up with the script below. The idea is that it hides and redraws the active window, and moves the window to the end of the list on the iconbar. The script requires the xdotool package.

#!/bin/sh
# designed to be used with a keyboard shortcut
# in ~/.fluxbox/keys that could be:
# Control Shift Mod4 X :Exec /home/username/bin/move-to-end-of-taskbar.sh
xdotool getactivewindow windowunmap windowmap

This is not an ideal solution, but it does allow for rearranging the windows, so it isn't a bad workaround.

Source: https://bgstack15.wordpress.com/2019/09/05/rearrange-windows-on-iconbar-in-fluxbox/

Many thanks to "bgstack15" for putting this out there!

a new year, a new look

I recently added Fluxbox to my Arch setup, which I'd put in by using the Anarchy installer, as mentioned earlier. Xfce apps from the original installation are available in the Fluxbox menu, along with a collection of my favorites.

I'm using the tint2 panel (vertical, upper-left orientation, of course) instead of the Fluxbox toolbar. I got rid of the toolbar by de-selecting "Visible" in the "Toolbar" submenu of the configuration settings.

Also, I had to remove "systemtray" from the following line in the ~/.fluxbox/init file because tint2's system tray wasn't starting up with Fluxbox's systemtray running:

session.screen0.toolbar.tools:    prevworkspace, workspacename, nextworkspace, iconbar, systemtray, clock


And I added a nice, clean "exit" submenu section to the ~/.fluxbox/menu file.

    [submenu] (exit)
       [exit] (logout)
       [exec] (reboot) {systemctl reboot}
       [exec] (poweroff) {systemctl poweroff}
    [end]

I've been using Fluxbox for many years, usually as a second login session option to an already present desktop environment. That approach works nicely for slower, older computers; the DE's apps seem snappier when run under Fluxbox.

In my opinion, Fluxbox's manual page is the most important Fluxbox documentation, along with the related manpages listed at the end of man fluxbox:

SEE ALSO
       fluxbox-apps(5) fluxbox-keys(5) fluxbox-style(5) fluxbox-menu(5) fluxbox-remote(1)
       fbsetroot(1) fbsetbg(1) fbrun(1) startfluxbox(1)


Still, a web search can turn up lots of good info. The "official" Fluxbox website is at http://fluxbox.org/. Also see:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fluxbox
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fluxbox
https://wiki.debian.org/FluxBox

the latest from antiX

antiX-19 "Marielle Franco" was released a few days ago. Here's a shot of the default IceWM desktop:

antiX-19, based on Debian Buster, ships without systemd (for those who want to avoid that init system). This very lightweight distro packs lots of great tools, and it's a great option for installations on low-spec computers, or even simply for running live sessions from a flash drive. It's one of the speediest distros I've tried.

Four different window managers (IceWM, fluxbox, jwm, and herbstluftwm) are included. Users can switch between a few different variations of IceWM, fluxbox, and jwm from within the current session (Desktop > Other Desktops), which is convenient:

I didn't see an easy way to switch to herbstluftwm. Here's a link to a tutorial, for those who are interested: https://herbstluftwm.org/tutorial.html

Among the items I found in the menu were Firefox ESR, Galculator, Geany, MPV Media Player, GParted, Leafpad,  the LibreOffice suite, Mirage, muPDF, nano, qpdfview, rox-filer file manager, roxterm, SpaceFM, Synaptic, and XMMS. I also found a handful of antiX's own special tools (Applications > antiX), like the very useful Live USB Maker:

I thought it was an interesting choice to give antiX-19 the codename "Marielle Franco". She was a Brazilian politician, feminist, and human rights activist; check it out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marielle_Franco

For more info about antiX-19, see the release announcement: https://antixlinux.com/antix-19-isos-available/

buster lxqt w/ openbox

I've been running the Jessie-based BunsenLabs "Deuterium" on my "test" computer, patiently waiting for the Buster-based BL "Lithium" release. On a whim, I decided to take a look at Debian Buster LXQt to see how it might do on that computer.

I started out by downloading  debian-live-10.0.0-amd64-lxqt.iso and getting that onto a flash drive. The live session booted up on two of my machines, but I couldn't get into the live session using my "test" computer; booting with the Graphical Debian Installer option worked fine with that hardware, however.

Buster LXQt ships with a standard desktop setup and a nice collection of apps, including Firefox ESR, Thunderbird, PCManFM-qt, the LibreOffice suite, Audacious music player, qpdfview, LXImage, and QTerminal, among many others.

I found xfce4-screenshooter in the menu along with another screenshot tool, ScreenGrab, which seems to be a nice app. ScreenGrab gets the job done, and also it stays open between screenshots, unlike xfce4-screenshooter.

Here's a shot of PCManFM-qt, which offers a nice, commander-style split view. I found some items in the Trash. How they got there is a mystery; I didn't intentionally put them there!

I added Openbox, installed a handful of other packages, and did a heck of a lot of tinkering and tweaking -- so much, in fact, that I didn't do a good job of taking notes on everything that I did, which is something that I'm normally very meticulous about. Debian Stable doesn't really give the user a great out-of-the-box experience, but it's excellent for the "do-it-yourself" user who wants to put together a nice, customized system.

A couple more shots of my Openbox desktop, showing QTerminal, ScreenGrab, my tint2 setup, and my Openbox menu:

I like a vertical panel along the left side. For Openbox, tint2 gives me just what I need. For the LXQt sessions, I was able to get a decent left-side vertical panel -- not perfect (I wasn't satisfied with the config options available for the LXQt panel), but it'll do.

As a former CrunchBang user and fanboy, my original plan was to stick with BunsenLabs (perhaps the best Debian-based Openbox distro out there right now) for this computer, and to do a quick-and-easy installation of "Lithium" once it came out. As things have turned out, I'm happy with this Buster LXQt (with Openbox) setup, even though it took a lot of work to get things the way I like them. The thing is that while BunsenLabs is better than "straight" Debian for installing and getting to work right away, I'm never quite satisfied with the default BL setup (same goes for any distro, really!), so either way I was gonna spend a lot of time tinkering and tweaking.

Seems to me that LXQt still needs more polish, especially when it comes to GUI configuration options, but it isn't so bad, overall. It's a decent solution for those who need a light-weight desktop environment for low-performance hardware.

excellent ob/fb info

For some very helpful info on setting up Openbox and Fluxbox, see Addy's Blog -- three articles to check out are "My Fluxbox Configurations", "My Openbox Configurations", and "Automatically Generate Openbox Applications Menu".

a little more about that shutdown script

So, what is gxmessage (which I wrote about earlier, here and here)? A description:

Gxmessage is an xmessage clone for GTK based desktops. Gxmessage pops up a dialog window, displays a given message or question, then waits for the user's response. That response is returned as the program's exit code. Because gxmessage is a drop-in alternative to xmessage, gxmessage accepts any option xmessage would, and returns the same exit codes.

From: https://trmusson.dreamhosters.com/programs.html#gxmessage

From your Linux system, if you have gxmessage installed, you should have access to the man gxmessage document. Or the manpage can be found online -- see: https://helpmanual.io/man1/gxmessage/. (Arch Linux currently has that same May 25th, 2015 version of man gxmessage.)

Looks like the earliest mention of a gxmessage script for logging out of Openbox was posted online at "urukrama's weblog" back in 2007 (see: https://urukrama.wordpress.com/2007/12/03/confirm-to-shut-down-reboot-or-log-out-in-openbox/). Here's the script back then:

#!/bin/bash

gmessage "Are you sure you want to shut down your computer?" -center -title "Take action" -font "Sans bold 10" -default "Cancel" -buttons "_Cancel":1,"_Log out":2,"_Reboot":3,"_Shut down":4 >/dev/null

case $? in
1)
echo "Exit";;
2)
killall openbox;;
3)
sudo shutdown -r now;;
4)
sudo shutdown -h now;;
esac

Well, that script used gmessage instead of gxmessage, and there are other differences compared to the script I'm using now, in Arch:

#!/bin/bash

gxmessage "Shut down the computer?" -center -title "Take action" -font "Sans bold 10" -default "Cancel" -buttons "_Cancel":1,"_Log Out":2,"_Reboot":3,"_Shut Down":4 >/dev/null

case $? in
    1)
        echo "Exit";;
    2)
        openbox --exit;;
    3)
        systemctl reboot;;
    4)
        systemctl poweroff;;
esac

Anyway, I think that the great Openbox guru "urukrama" should get the credit for coming up with the script. And, who is/was "urukrama"? Along with "urukrama's weblog", I found the following:

https://www.opendesktop.org/u/urukrama/
https://github.com/urukrama

testing netinstall

I did my 2nd Debian Buster (Testing) netinstall (I was gonna hold off on doing that, but found myself with some time to kill), this time going with Openbox instead of a full DE:

I added Fluxbox; in those sessions, I'm using the tint2 panel instead of the Fluxbox toolbar, so the desktop looks very much like my Openbox desktoop:

From what I can tell, the move from Testing to Stable for Debian 10 ("Buster") could happen any day now; everything looks great!

openbox shutdown, revisited

A few years back, I wrote about the shutdown script I was using in Openbox (see: "openbox shutdown"). Lately, I've been using a similar script, but with a couple of changes that make things simpler here.

I replaced the sudo shutdown -r now and sudo shutdown -h now commands with systemctl reboot and systemctl poweroff, respectively. Not an acceptable option for systemd-haters, but oh well.

My ~/shutdown-script file in Debian Buster Openbox (again, this requires the gxmessage package) looks like this:

#!/bin/bash

gmessage "Shut down the computer?" -center -title "Take action" -font "Sans bold 10" -default "Cancel" -buttons "_Cancel":1,"_Log Out":2,"_Reboot":3,"_Shut Down":4 >/dev/null

case $? in
    1)
        echo "Exit";;
    2)
        openbox --exit;;
    3)
        systemctl reboot;;
    4)
        systemctl poweroff;;
esac

After making that file executable, I added a "shutdown" entry in my Openbox menu, using the ~/shutdown-script command.

The same script works for me in Openbox in Arch, except I had to replace the word "gmessage" with "gxmessage" in the script.

Nothing fancy, just a "Take action" message box, plain and simple:

openbox: dmenu, gmrun

I haven't decided which application launcher I like better between gmrun and dmenu. Here's a shot of my Openbox menu in Arch, with obmenu opened to show how I set up gmrun and dmenu menu entries:

But I also have keystrokes for gmrun (Alt+F2) and dmenu (Super+Space). From the "keyboard" section of ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml:

    <!-- Added by Steve -->
    <!-- Winkey+Space starts dmenu -->
    <keybind key="W-space">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>dmenu_run -b</command>
      </action>
    </keybind> 
    <!-- Added by Steve -->
    <!-- Alt+F2 starts gmrun -->
    <keybind key="A-F2">
      <action name="execute">
         <execute>gmrun</execute>
      </action>
    </keybind>

The menu entries are handy to have, but I normally use the keystrokes.
 

another arch setup

ArchLabs is very nice (see "ob-love!" and "...and, some fluxbox love"), but in the end I decided to replace it with "straight" Arch, adding Openbox and setting that up myself.

Later, I added Fluxbox. Here are a few shots of my Fluxbox setup in Arch:

openbox keybinds

The Openbox keybinds are set in the ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml file. There's a GUI app to handle this, called obkey, but you won't find it in the Debian repos (in Arch, users can get obkey from AUR).

Changes made with obkey are saved to the ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml file unless a different file is specified.

To add obkey in Debian 9 ("Stretch") Openbox, first I went to https://github.com/nsf/obkey. I clicked on the "Clone or download" button. Clicked "Download ZIP", then "Open with unzip (default)".

This gave me the ~/obkey-master directory, which I moved to ~/source/obkey-master. Then I ran the following:

$ cd ~/source/obkey-master
$ ./obkey ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml

That opened up the obkey GUI.

For my Openbox menu, I used the following command for starting obkey:

/home/steve/source/obkey-master/obkey

Here's a shot of the entry in the menu:

For a little more info, see: https://code.google.com/archive/p/obkey/

review and tweak

Here's a fairly detailed review of BunsenLabs 2.0 ("Helium"), done by Ordinatechnic: https://www.ordinatechnic.com/distro-reviews/BunsenLabs/bunsenlabs-helium-review

I have not yet installed Helium, but I'm still running BunsenLabs "Deuterium", which is like a point release of BunsenLabs "Hydrogen". Deuterium is based on Debian "Jessie" (now "oldstable"). I haven't tweaked the installation much. I'm using a left-side, vertical tint2 panel, of course:

The author of the review above talked a lot about the lack of a "dynamic" menu in BunsenLabs; I added the LXDE Activities menu (see http://monksblog-malspa.blogspot.com/2018/09/lxde-applications-menu-in-openbox.html) to Deuterium:

Ordinatechnic also described the dmenu app launcher (see: https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/). For more info about dmenu, here's an excellent article: http://www.adercon.com/ac/node/25. Also be sure to check man dmenu. dmenu can be installed in Debian as part of the suckless-tools package. Here's a shot of it in action in Deuterium, along the bottom edge:

That's a very cool app launcher. My entry for dmenu in the Openbox menu runs the dmenu_run -b command.

Later, I added a keystroke for dmenu by adding the following lines to ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml:

    <!-- Added by Steve for dmenu -->
    <keybind key="W-space">
      <action name="Execute">
        <command>dmenu_run -b</command>
      </action>
    </keybind>      

With that, Super(Winkey)+Space starts dmenu.

I'm not sure how long I'll keep Deuterium, but the current "oldstable"should be good thru mid-2020, I'm guessing. And BunsenLabs Deuterium definitely ain't broke, so... (lol).

lxde applications menu in openbox

In Openbox, I like to set up a "static" menu by editing the ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml file manually or by using the obmenu GUI. But I do like the "dynamic" LXDE Applications menu that's used in SalentOS (website: https://www.salentos.it/); I decided to try adding that  to a couple of my other Openbox desktops.

I found helpful information in post #2 of the "Dynamic menus on BunsenLabs - a comprehensive guide" thread at the BunsenLabs forums (here's a link: https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=3387).

In the shot below, the LXDE Applications menu is added directly above the Debian menu; this is in my Openbox desktop on a Debian Stretch system that had KDE Plasma installed first (note the KDE apps in the menu):

I had to install the lxmenu-data and openbox-menu packages, then I edited ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml, adding the following just above the <menu id="/Debian"/> line:

<menu execute="openbox-menu lxde-applications.menu" id="apps" label="Applications"/>

Saved the file and did a "Reconfigure" in Openbox for the changes to take effect (might be necessary to Restart Openbox as well).

I followed the same steps for the Openbox desktop in another Stretch installation (this one has no desktop environment installed, though), except I also added the lxappearance and lxappearance-obconf packages in this case:

This gives me the "dynamic" Applications menu from LXDE as well as the "static" menu entries that I'd already set up myself (under the web browsers, file managers, utilities, etc., submenus). That's more of a menu than I really need; if I get around to it, I may trim things down and go with a simpler menu like what I'm using in SalentOS. Here's a shot of that Openbox desktop:

another fluxbox trick

I don't know how to add a "Show Desktop" button to Fluxbox, but I found that it's possible to set up a keystroke that will do the same thing. I added the following line to my ~/.fluxbox/keys file:

Mod4 d :ToggleCmd {ShowDesktop}

After saving the changes to that file, it was necessary to select either "Reconfigure" or "Restart" from the Fluxbox menu. Now, the Mod4 + D keystroke ("Mod4" being the "Windows" key on my keyboard) toggles the "ShowDesktop" command.

january shots

A couple of wintry views of my Openbox setup in SalentOS 2.0 ("Neriton"):

depends on how you're looking at it

From Dedoimedo's conclusion in his review of BunsenLabs Deuterium:

...BunsenLabs Deuterium gives us a lightweight setup, it truly is that, but on any moderately decent hardware, the advantage goes away, and in its place, you get the horrible ergonomics of Openbox, which is simply not suited for any reasonable, modern work.

Hardware support is mediocre, the installation process is quirky, it's very hard to customize the desktop, network support is average, and in the end, you need to invest energy to achieve something you get out of the box with any other desktop environment. There's really no justifiable reason for that. Perhaps Deuterium will appeal to a small base of users, who want the flexibility and simplicity of Openbox, but for the vast majority of people, it's a hassle.

So much in fact that I gave up. There wasn't anything cardinally wrong with the distro. But it's like walking into a store, seeing something, and then you move on, because there was no magic. Something like 2/10. Well, maybe next time. Or perhaps a different desktop environment.

https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/bunsenlabs-linux-deuterium.html

 

That's about what I'd expect from him. I really have no issues with this review. It's a matter of perspective; BunsenLabs is not the kind of distro he'd like. I doubt that he'd like anything that shipped with only Openbox.

Earlier in the review, he wrote, "Why is the would-be panel called Tint2? How's that relevant?" I smiled when I read that; I don't know where the name "tint2" came from. tint2 is unlike any other panel I've used. It's probably my favorite panel, though.

 

This line really sums things up: "Perhaps Deuterium will appeal to a small base of users, who want the flexibility and simplicity of Openbox, but for the vast majority of people, it's a hassle." He's right, of course. It's a distro for the Openbox fan -- a user who knows what to do with Openbox, one who stashes away old Openbox config files for later use, and one who doesn't need a so-called "modern" desktop.

 

It's for somebody who understands that Openbox is not a desktop environment, but rather a window manager that can be used instead of a desktop environment.

A user like me. He rates it 2/10; me, I give it a 9. :)