Re: WINDOWMAKER-FLUXBOX

[David Muse]

On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 14:48:43 -0600
James Jones  wrote:
> Paul Morgan wrote:
> > This worked for me (from http://www.fluxbox.org/docs/en/faq.php#fedora):
> >
> > <quote>
> > The fedora distribution uses a different setup again. Instead of the
> > dm-specific locations, it requires session files to be in
> > /etc/X11/dm/Sessions.
> >
> > So, to get Fluxbox into its session menu, create the file:
> > /etc/X11/dm/Sessions/fluxbox with contents:
> >
> > [Desktop Entry]
> > Encoding=UTF-8
> > Name=Fluxbox
> > Type=Application
> > Icon=
> > Exec=fluxbox
> > You may need to put the full path to fluxbox in the Exec line if it is
> > in a non-standard location.
> >
> > </quote>
>
> I tried that. (Actually, since the files were all named <manager>.desktop, I
> named it fluxbox.desktop.) No luck; I'd choose a fluxbox session, log 
> in, and
> just get a blank blue screen with a mouse cursor (that did move around). 
> I had
> to ctrl-alt-bs out of X, after which I would get the nVidia driver 
> splash screen
> followed by the computer going into some sort of hibernation mode, 
> taking some
> keypressing to get out of and back to the graphical login.
>
> I noticed the *.desktop files had the execute bits set, and set them on 
> fluxbox.desktop;
> no change. I noticed that /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions had a Fluxbox file in 
> it, but noticed
> that, unlike the other files therein, it just exec'd /usr/bin/fluxbox 
> rather than doing
>
> exec /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession fluxbox
>
> analogously to the GNOME and KDE files in the same directory, so I made 
> that change.
> No difference.
>
> Finally, I figured I should try the directions exactly as written, and 
> changed the
> name of the added file from fluxbox.desktop to just plain fluxbox. Then 
> the login no
> longer displayed fluxbox as a choice for sessions.
>
> Any suggestions about what to do to let me use fluxbox would be greatly 
> appreciated;
> for me personally, it's just an experiment, but for the person who's 
> getting the
> 200 MHz Pentium Pro box I've had sitting around and put Fedora Core on, 
> having
> access to a lower-overhead window manager is very much worthwhile.
> James Jones

I use fluxbox as my window manager on Fedora Core 1.

Fluxbox has a problem with the locale-related environment variables
on Fedora Core 1.  Actually the problem is font-related.  It's complicated...
When you run fluxbox and just got a blue screen, if you wait a while (quite
a while) it will ultimately start up.  The solution is to set LC_ALL=C
prior to starting up fluxbox.

Create a .xsession file with the following contents:

export LC_ALL=C
    startfluxbox

(make sure startfluxbox is in your path)

Alternatively, if you're building fluxbox from source, you can
apply the following patch so you don't have to do the 
    export LC_ALL=C

diff --unified --recursive --exclude=CVS fluxbox-0.9.6/src/main.cc fluxbox-0.9.6-patched/src/main.cc
--- fluxbox-0.9.6/src/main.cc   2003-10-02 12:14:41.000000000 -0400
+++ fluxbox-0.9.6-patched/src/main.cc   2003-12-05 11:18:56.000000000 -0500
@@ -134,6 +134,8 @@
 }

int main(int argc, char **argv) {
+
+    setenv("LC_ALL","C",1);

std::string session_display = "";
     std::string rc_file;

Save the patch as lcall.patch in the same directory as the fluxbox-0.9.6
directory.  Apply the patch by running patch -p1 < ../lcall.patch from inside
the fluxbox-0.9.6 directory.

On the GDM login screen, select Session -> default
then log in.

If you want to use fluxbox as your gnome window manager,
add the following line to the end of your ~/.fluxbox/startup
file:

exec gnome-session

My ~/.fluxbox/startup file contains only the following lines:

fluxbox &
    exec gnome-sessioncd

You also need to copy /usr/share/gnome/default.session to
~/.gnome2/session and remove these lines:

1,id=default1
    1,Priority=10
    1,RestartCommand=gnome-wm --default-wm gnome-wm --sm-client-id default1
    2,id=default2
    2,Priority=40

This will prevent metacity from even trying to start.

Theoretically, all you should have to do is set
WINDOW_MANAGER=fluxbox in your .bashrc.  That should
cause gnome-wm to use fluxbox intead of metacity.  But,
the locale problem and the fact that fluxbox interacts strangely
with gnome-session make that solution unworkable.

If you want to use Fluxbox along with gnome and you like the Bluecurve
theme,  I made a FluxBluecurve style for fluxbox that approximates it.
Search for it at themes.freshmeat.net It includes another patch that makes
fluxbox tile pixmaps correctly.

Good luck.

David Muse
[e-mail]