Openbox

[rolf]

Yes, there are some mysteries. I love the animations in cairo-dock but find I'm too used to seeing the full-width kicker-plasma I've used for so long in KDE. It's easier to see what's going on, push the cursor right to the functionality I want, make one click or read the mouseover, easier than what, so far, I do in Openbox. So, after looking at google, I installed the avant-window-navigator and awn addons. That gave me something familiar but the weather applet couldn't connect, network error, and it kept flashing a warning box and the panel was still on top of my maximized windows; the windows didn't load above them. I see for a long time new Openbox explorers asking for a way to put the KDE panel there, including how-to for the KDE3 kicker.

Probably, there is some way to click a logout for changing users, reloading profile, etc. and reboot/shutdown is just so simple in KDE, even providing for reboot automatically to a different grub menu entry. C-A-Bckspace gave me a quick and dirty logout,in but this left ksnapshot and knotify in a panic, grabbing 100% cpu (as in KDE) and I had to SIG 9 them. There's got to be a better way. Another weirdness I experienced, logging back into KDE, the cairo-dock and avant panel were right there at the bottom, along with the KDE panel. I found they were new items in the KDE autostart list, which was simple to disable, but not what I expected.

I did get ksnapshot working through rc.xml Thanks for the learned guru solutions. Openbox can be very spartan or can feature some really cool animated graphics that appeal to me. With time, it could be possible to get the functionality I've grown to want in KDE, even all the sound notifications for different actions that, along with animations, make me feel like my IT dollars have been well-spent.
For now, I need to wait for another chunk of free time, take a little rest.

[viking60]

II have noticed that dock behaviour in KDE too, after having installed the dock in Gnome! I got tired of it so I deactivated it in Gnome but in KDE it poped up sometimes several layers on top of eachother. It is eiter a cairo or a KDE thing.
And I have to admit that the stuff you can do with it in Mandriva is rather limited. It is fully functional after having pulled in some external resources. And in fact the snap/tile function we have integrated in it, is better than in Gnome or KDE.
But things like transparacy do not work perfectly. In Arch I have integrated a terminal in the wallpaper! It Looks good and i can do any CLI work in it, here we will have to settle for the traditional window.
But so far we have managed to get all our menus up with a right-click anywhere on the desktop,
-we can integrate eye-candy and fireworks and extra functionality with cairo-dock
- we can assign any key we want to pretty much anything
-we can autostart whatever we want in one single file and besides cairo-dock, it stays local because we have copied the config files to ~/.config/openbox

The possibilities to customize this thing are endless - and we like that, but it comes with the prize that you need to know what you want; like setting the print screen solution as discussed above.

You do not have to remove KDE or Gnome to use it, and chances are that you will log into openbox more often since it is kind of adictive.....

[viking60]

I just Implemented sound control and notes on my tint panel and I made the panel and the Icons bigger!
So you can drop cairo-dock completely and still see what is going on. You can make it as big as you like!

[rolf]

Ok, that looks a little more familiar. I see the clipboard, which is vital. Did you make some xml editing? I'll look into this. Maybe someday



thanks!

[viking60]

Yes I did alter ~/.config/tint2/tint2rc

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# Panel
panel_monitor = all
panel_position = bottom center horizontal
panel_size = 94% 40  <------- This will make your panel thicker I changed 30 to 40
panel_margin = 0 0
panel_padding = 7 0 7
panel_dock = 0
wm_menu = 1
panel_layer = top
panel_background_id = 1


I
But you can do it in GUI with the command tint2conf or tint2wizard I always forget when I switch between systems so I prefere the file.

To increase the size of your icons:

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# Task Icons
task_icon_asb = 70 0 0
task_active_icon_asb = 100 0 0 <-------I changed it from 70 to 100
task_urgent_icon_asb = 100 0 0 <--------  dto
task_iconified_icon_asb = 70 0 0

I also set the taskbar to multi_desktop instead of single_desktop. It makes my open windows on other desktops visible on the panel

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# Taskbar
taskbar_mode = multi_desktop <----------------
taskbar_padding = 2 3 2
taskbar_background_id = 0
taskbar_active_background_id = 0

Do not alter .defaults.tint2rc alter tint2rc
I also made the panel autohide by setting it to 1 under autohide - you will find it in the file...

[rolf]

Great! TYVM

[viking60]

I noticed that the config looks slightly different in the mandriva installation - it is even easier there you only have to fint the line

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panel_size = 94% 60

And alter "60" to your liking.
While you are at it change the single taskbar to multi taskbar (you will probaly want open programs on other desktops to show on the panel). Make a copy and play arround - you can do a lot with that file.

[viking60]

Regarding the problem that Cairo-dock turns up in KDE too: This will fix it:

Code: Select all

rm ~/.config/autostart/cairo-dock*

And then add

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cairo-dock &

to your ~/.config/openbox/autostart