Over at DistroWatch I asked Anti if he thought that Fluxbox or Icewm would be more beneficial to LXDE than Openbox. He told me a couple here had wondered similar and to join in and see what happens from the discussion basically. __{{emoticon}}__

So, I've done a little reading regarding all three and their comparable strengths and differences as well. I've also just installed M-8 Base and LXDE. What I'll do next on my end is change LXDE's config to use FB instead of OB. Then copy the config file so I can easily switch back and forth between the two for checking out the comparison.

I personally believe that although OB can be ehanced by many external applications FB has some definite strengths over OB, especially in regards to aesthetics/appearance. That can be said for Icewm as well.

Anyone else have any ideas, thoughts, what strengths or weaknesses either of the two would bring to LXDE in place of OB?

Keep your stick on the ice...

Landor

From the standpoint of simply using the window managers, Fluxbox and IceWM are both very light, flexible, and well tested out. Openbox is also a lightweight window manager, but I am not sure if it is quite as solid as the other two window managers. When it comes to replacing Openbox with either Fluxbox or IceWM, I'm not sure about that. I am pretty sure that you ought to be able to do it, but I do not know what kind of issues that you may run into when you try it.

John (ou812) is one of the ones who has experimented with many different moving parts; he may be among the best to comment on this when he checks in. There may be some others here who have experimented as well, though I am not quite sure who has and who hasn't.

I know that Eriefisher has done a lot of work customizing his system for an XFCE environment, but he is quite knowledgable in general, so he may have some opinions as well. Perhaps we'll get surprised by many people having some ideas and opinions on this and we can all learn from the experience - I hope so. I wouldn't mind experimenting and trying out various different parts myself.

Hi Landor and welcome to antiX.

I hope others will join in this thread and offer their opinions, suggestions.
Personally, I think both fluxbox and icewm offer enough without needing lxde, especuially icewm as it is implemented in the full antiX version.

For the base version, I have received a request to base it on icewm rather than fluxbox, and to include the antiX goodies such as the control centre. Now, I really want antiX-base to be a 'starting-point' for users to build up from which is why only fluxbox is included and a few apps.
I don't really want to make it bigger than it is as some users may not want the antiX stuff, preferring a closer to Debian install. but with less hassle.
I'm thinking, instead, of having an antiX option in the meta-installer that would install the customised icewm as used in the full version and the antiX control centre.

Back to lxde, if thare are some gurus out there, please post so that the lxde option in the meta-installer can be improved upon.

Just a few thoughts....

I can't really help much on the"Techie" side of things, but for what it's worth, i started out kind of liking FB but"REALLY LIKING!" OB..... That was a few years ago. Since then, i've floated between the two quite often in various different guises (OB + GNOME, Plain OB, LXDE etc) and although i still really like OB, i now LOVE FB!! __{{emoticon}}__ (Complete turnaround)

I once thought that OB was faster, but after the latest antiX release, i just can't say that any more. FB is also (for me anyway) a heck of a lot easier to hack to my own liking, than OB has ever been. (Not that OB is hard, just that FB is easier.) FB is also maturing nicely and is just as small & tight & fast as it ever was. It's also got loads of different options that can be changed from within the manager itself, and once again it's not that hard to do. OB on the other hand, has relatively few things that can be changed and even those that can, are done by using Obconf, which is (AFAIK) not a built in part of OB, but a separate utility?

Both look good (In differing ways) and both are fast. I use Linux Mint quite often, and use OB as the WM with GNOME.... works great, and is way way faster than Metacity. I didn't know that FB could also be used in this way otherwise i would have tried that also.

Anyway, summing up..... i'd love to have the options of both (The way it is with FB & IceWM at the moment) but if it had to come down to a choice, i'd still stick with FluxBox...... it's just the best. The right balance of everything. __{{emoticon}}__

EDIT: After having waffled on for so long, i suddenly realised that the OP was asking about FB or IceWM, and not OpenBox.... Duh!! Apologies to the OP. __{{emoticon}}__

I'd most definitely choose FB over IceWM also though.... IceWM is very very good, and looks really good in antiX for sure, but i just don't like it for some reason, and i can't even say what that reason is. It's probably an aesthetic thing, because it always annoys me that such a great WM (Ice) can have so many crappy themes and look so bad! (Apart from the antiX themes, which look very good)

Nuff said, apologies for the rant. __{{emoticon}}__

DJiNN

Nice review, DJiNN! I knew there were a few people here who have taken a look at a number of window managers. I'm sure that there are others who will want to weigh in as well.

IceWM was paired with lxde before openbox. I believe openbox replaced icewm because openbox isn't as complete as other wm's and therefore lxde would be a more natural choice (since it would round out ob quite nicely).

I have tried pairing fluxbox and icewm with lxde. I think fluxbox makes more sense: I just don't understand why you would use icewm + lxde when icewm is so similar. By using fluxbox you get the aesthetic goodies and the benefit of tweaking the environment through the right-click menu. But whatever you decide upon, it is a simple edit of a config file. I don't remember which lxde file needs editing, so please search for my lxde thread at mepislovers.

Also, you don't really need the full lxde. I'm building a version of antix using openbox, lxpanel, lxrandr, and a handful of other lxde components. The only drawback to this approach is that without a session manager you have to do a workaround if you want to use the quit option in the menu.

john

Hi John. __{{emoticon}}__

Just a thought about the above, wouldn't be easier & just as effective to install the LXDE meta package in to antiX and then just select the LXDE option at boot? Would that not give you the same results? And then it could be tweaked from there? Or am i missing something important here? (Apart from the fact that it's probably a very interesting thing to have a go at just for that reason alone.) __{{emoticon}}__

Regardless, i'm very much looking forward to seeing your OB antix. If it turns out to be anything like the IceWM that you worked on, it'll be pretty amazing!!

DJiNN

DJiNN wrote:Hi John. __{{emoticon}}__
Regardless, i'm very much looking forward to seeing your OB antix. If it turns out to be anything like the IceWM that you worked on, it'll be pretty amazing!

DJiNN

Yes, I have become quite a fan of John's creative artistry with window and display managers too.

I have no idea what you two are talking about. __{{emoticon}}__

I didn't know there was an lxde option available in the meta-installer. My bad. I tried installing lxde from the repos, but it pulled in way too many depends for my tastes. And I was not excited about the default look of the desktop. So I finally decided that it would better to start from scratch and build than to start from full and remove.

BTW, here is the mepislovers thread


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and there are some tips in my"rolling my own" thread in these forums that may be helpful.

john

djinn - long time no see. glad to have you back.

OU812 wrote:I have no idea what you two are talking about. __{{emoticon}}__

John, are you blushing? __{{emoticon}}__

I didn't know there was an lxde option available in the meta-installer. My bad. I tried installing lxde from the repos, but it pulled in way too many depends for my tastes. And I was not excited about the default look of the desktop. So I finally decided that it would better to start from scratch and build than to start from full and remove.

There's loads of kool stuff available in the Meta-Installer. The KDE Lite option is pretty cool, but so far i haven't been able to get the Gnome Lite version to work?? But yeah, i agree..... if you want a Light system with only certain apps etc, always better to"Roll yer Own!" eh? __{{emoticon}}__

BTW, here is the mepislovers thread


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Thanks for that John..... i shall have a look this evening.

djinn - long time no see. glad to have you back.

It's great to be home again John. You don't realise just how much you miss this place until you come back after a few months or so. I've got a lot of catching up to do!! LOL!!

BTW, have you checked out"CrunchBang"? Ubuntu based, OpenBox as WM and a very neat little distro. Nowhere near as snappy or responsive as antiX (it is Ubuntu based after all, which is both help & hinderance) but it's very complete with some great little tweaks etc.

DJiNN

Crunchbang is the next one I want to test. I am trying to find some tools that could work with antix. So I checked fluxbox mint. They may have a custom language app, although it's called gnome-language-helper - or something like that, which makes me think it's a gnome desktop app. They also use an xfce keyboard app. Perhaps crunch bang will have something interesting.

I copied tazlocale and tazdialog to /usr/local/bin. It seems like tazlocale gets a list of available locales and updates /etc/locale.conf, but for some reason I only see english when I log out/log in. Hmm. If we can get it to work, it would fit in very well with antix. And slitaz has some other nice tools as well.

john

Hi, guys just registered. Thanks Anti for reading my posts from Distrowatch for a IceWM+AntiX CC (but not"full") option. Meta package selection is fine.

As for what DE/WM etc to use. I don't really have an opinion, but one of the unique points of AntiX atm is that it is *the* IceWM distro; we are the main representatives of that WM, which otherwise is considered archaic and obsolete looks wise.

sertse wrote:Hi, guys just registered. Thanks Anti for reading my posts from Distrowatch for a IceWM+AntiX CC (but not"full") option. Meta package selection is fine.

As for what DE/WM etc to use. I don't really have an opinion, but one of the unique points of AntiX atm is that it is *the* IceWM distro; we are the main representatives of that WM, which otherwise is considered archaic and obsolete looks wise.

I would have to agree. I think what we have is that hard core tweakers and enthusiasts may go for Fluxbox, because it is light and configurable, but thanks to John's great work and the artistic help of a few others, we've demonstrated that IceWM can be a great environment as well. Given that IceWM is a bit more hospitable to those who, at least right now, have not become expert tweakers, I think it makes great sense to have IceWM as the default window manager, and that is something that I have been advocating. At the same time, the presence of Fluxbox is a great idea because it is extremely flexible and configurable, and therefore the domain of those who are enthusiasts who like to mess around with their systems - and that also represents another population with antiX.

Finally, there are those who take antiX as a core and completely transform it, guys like Eriefisher, who has created his own XFCE based system, and John (ou812), who is always experimenting with something. With a bit of thought, I think that antiX can continue to accommodate this diversity in community. antiX base is for guys like John and"Erie". IceWM is for the newcomer, who may not be all that adept at messing with stuff yet, but has an old system that was designed for Windows 98 or maybe the first rev of Windows XP. That person needs something simple, yet lightweight. IceWM does it. You could throw JWM at it instead of IceWM, but to me, I think we have already conquered that technology with IceWM, no need to start over.

Though we can, and I hope we do, have some offshoots, and maybe even build a small, creative series of antiX derivatives that we share, I think that the antiX core is the right starting place. While there are several other great, innovative distros, some of whom are able to have a smaller footprint than antiX, at least for me, antiX is at the sweet spot, still small enough to be worth using as a Live CD or USB driven system in a pinch, but capable enough to be used as an every day system as well, and flexible enough as a base to be transformed, as several of us have done, into whatever we want.

Personally, I have not mastered or remastered any software, but I've had plain antiX distros, full blown antiX distros that morphed practically into a sidux-like system, and a number of variations in between. I like having that kind of flexibility, and I use each of them for different reasons and purposes. I hope I am not alone and that my thoughts on this agree with a number of others. I like where anti has gone with this very much!

Greetings, From"Soggy" West Michigan, guys and gals!

I have to chime in with my experience and preferences. I am running AntiX 8.0 Full, and although IceWM has a nice look to it, I just cannot get over how much I enjoy using Fluxbox. I like having the short-cut keys file so easily configured.... not to mention how FAST it is running on my eeePC 1000He. I just cannot find anything I don't like about Fluxbox. I have run AntiX since 6.0 on several laptops, and desktops, and am impressed by its stability and speed. The guys at work wondered why I installed Linux, and don't just use WinXP on the lilttle netbook. Then I show them how long XP takes to come up, and start Firefox, and stop grinding away on the hard disk. I then fire up AntiX (With preload enabled), and I am running the desktop, with Iceweasel running in under 1 minute! And that is with AntiX installed on an 8GB SD card! They are beginning to understand, I think....

Regards, and thank you again, Anti-

Greg Schippers