Get Rid Of That Bloated Desktop Environment And Install Openbox
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- Опубліковано 29 сер 2024
- So you're tired of that heavy, bloated desktop environment. And you're ready to go "window manager only." But tiling window managers seem too intimidating or too complicated. Well, one of my favorite window managers is actually a floating window manager called Openbox. In this lengthy video, I will install Openbox on Linux Mint and show the basics of getting started.
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I actually got rid of those minimal window managers and installed KDE.
I use tiling window managers, but what does the term bloating desktop environment suggest? These bunch of youtube nerds are a way crossing their limits now. That's why people say, linux sometimes doesn't appear welcoming at all. Those who use gnome or kde are being targeted of using desktop environment, the work needs to be done. These bunch of youtubers just have to configure tiling window managers because they don't have any other work.
Anonymous User on the other hand you watch those videos, so I guess you had nothing to do either.
I honestly think those minimal wm dont stay very minimal when you start making them a bit more functional. I used awesomewm for like 6months but at the end of the day I realized I was just makin it hard for me thats just my workflow i guess
@@anonymoususer5402 I just want to minimize the space used by the utilities and packages itself, so I could just use extra space for development. Always looking for that
@@anonymoususer5402
( Btw T was tinkering with WM and other stuff before his channel becomes a thing, it's certainly his passion. )
And what nonsense dude, it's like everything, it takes few hours to configure at the beginning then it gives you an efficient workflo, which REALLY help you make the work done, especially when you are a developer, I've never spent less time on configuring ( and distrohopping ) than now that I'm using Arch + i3 .
No one told you to wmhope everyday.
I'm not sure if you guys realize that windows and Mac OS users could use the same arguments you use against twm against you ?After all they bought a piece of hardware and never touched anything to make it work, that's far more straightforward than what you did :)
Freaking awesome find for a 58 yr old (banging my head against the wall) 1st year learning Linux
...finding great rewards...THANK YOU..!
as Crapple/Loogle/dirty windows are a waste of time unless you like artificial search results, ball & chain, propitiatory products.
Openbox is very minimalist, which makes me love it.
I've come to the conclusion that openbox is the only proper WM
Openbox is a clean open desktop it's brilliant
Next: Compositors are bloat, run everything in the framebuffer instead.
Next all the de and wm are bloat, use only the kernel
@@jezzackk3453 Indeed, userspace is bloat.
@@thijshaker6451 the kernel is bloat don't use the pc
@@jezzackk3453 Strongly agree! :-)
@@jezzackk3453 I run encyclopedia Britannica_paper-1966.Heavy but no bloat. If you run out of toilet paper it multi-tasks Qt well.If you tear pages and wadd them up itl'l pop the kernels, CAUTION
KDE is still the king for me, got too used to it
Same. Tried XFCE recently, to find out it has HIGHER memory usage than Plasma, with less features.
@@BlackSpineHorror Increasing bloat and more sluggish performance seems to be a common feature with new releases of distros.. I'm certainly finding Mint 20 Cinnamon not quite as brisk as Mint 19.3 Cinnamon.
What about LXDE/LXQt? That's the one in considering at the moment
@@alvarojneto if you like the look and feel of it, go ahead, but for me they are inferior to KDE at least for what i do for my customizations
@@fossware if you are a ubutnu user i can see that being true, if you use any other you would know why kde is more than awesome,clean,fast despite you saying its bloated, i put it on vm's a d old pc's with no problem at all. Definition of bloated, slugish mess, is GNOME for me but feel free to correct me
I took the call to action you made about a month ago to try awesome fulltime, it really changed my workflow, i realized wm really makes you more productive mainly because full DE have a lot distractions where you are clicking on things everywhere and animations happens, then I tried to go back to XFCE, its still my favorite DE, but window manager only really have its advantages, congratulations you converted me to a AwesomeWM user.
Maybe in the future I will try openbox as well...
Yah, usually people go to Openbox and then to a tiling window manager. Since you are on Awesome stay Awesome. lol. I'm using i3wm and I really am enjoying it. I installed Manjaro XFCE which is very good and works very well for me but I can't stay away from i3wm on my other computer.
@@riseabove3082 thanks for the replies! Im new on this and I was thinking of trying more stuff out, but now I think I will stay awesome and dive more into lua
What I like about openbox is how configurable it is. Like it's name, its a box where you put the things you want to your own liking.
Now, we need it adapted to Wayland.
Your openbox menu theme is lovely. I've been using it for a year now (Arch/Openbox/dt-dark-theme) but where you have white text on the unselected and selected items, I changed mine to white on black unselected, and black on green selected. I find the black text on the green background much easier to read. Thanks for a great theme Derek.
I would probably choose XFce (or Mate or LxQt) if I need a minimal, but functional, customisable, and fast DE.
Openbox isn't bad, but this is too much tinkering for a DE to make it usable for daily use.
However a preconfigured distro with Openbox could be good, because it saves time.
If you have time and energy to tinker around, this is a really good and customisable DE, but it's definitely not for everyone.
Hey DT! Hey DT, don't you know that ctrl + a in terminal takes you to the start of the line, ctrl + e goes to the end of the line. Hey DT, in this video I saw you scrolled with arrow keys and just wanted to inform you. Hey DT, take care DT, bye DT!
DT,
Apersign is really called an ampersand. Being an old printer guy, it bothered me when you said ampersign! Great video, though.
Wtf. Fastest unsub in my life smh.
I'm going to start calling them "ampersign" from now on.
@@SlideRSB XD
Ampersand is for running the program in the background btw. Just if anybody is asking himself.
On debian based systems you should install the meta package build-essential that will get the C/C++ environment setup as well as getting the usual make tools like autoconf and automake.
Hi there are lots of video on video on this channel related with window manager.
It would be nice to create a video listing all things needed for using a wm with all the tools in some organized manner
- wm
- compositor
- launcher
- setting up panel
- setting up tools in panel like audio, network, session manger, date time , system info
- init process
-
He's spoken about all of this in various videos but yes it could demystify minimal twm to those who fear them
@@heroe1486 you are right and I have seen lots of video on this channel too. However, there are people exist how don't have that much knowledge for making is as fancy as in the videos. I am on that journey too, and feel like quitting after some try, may be time constraints is also a issue.
However, you are making such interesting videos to I thought of sharing my view on how to make the content more useful and inspiring to people not much knowledge.
If one understand what take a Desktop Environment like thing to be built from scratch. From last weeks in wm journey, I found that there are 2 important aspect for it. What things I am using from DE and what are components needed for doing those stuffs.
So if there are some playlist or paid courses where these things are explained and what are alternatives (at least 2) then it would be better according to me.
So a beginner can get started and more and more people will start getting benefits from this awesome channel.
Openbox was my first favorite! I loved how fast it was, how simple it was, and it had just what i wanted. Im not a computer wiz for editing and programing, but i like the simple "real" work platform without distractions.
Crazy timing! Just tried out Manjaro KDE yesterday and considering switching from i3 to KDE
17:58 "sudo pa-"
Ceritified arch linux user
Great video, mate. I'm also a Linux user and I have learned a lot watching you. I'm starting to get into WMs little by little, and for now, I find openbox more interesting than other similar ones. Something that I found remarkable: you speak in a way that people who don't speak English natively can understand perfectly, without the help of subtitles. Besides, you explain everything, you go step by step, you don't leave anything to chance: brilliant. I'm subscribing right now. Greetings and best wishes from an emerging channel from Uruguay.
nothing makes me feel safe like DT telling me to hit enter
Thank you Derek for your continuing support!
Just installed xmonad as per one of your previous videos and, well, it's different for sure. It's my first time experimenting with tiling wm's although I no longer consider myself a noob. I've just always been biased against anything that looks outdated to me. I was always annoyed by the seeming tendency of everything linux looking old. I mean most modern computers today can easily handle even the most bloated DE these days without any lag or not enough leftover RAM.
But I'm gonna keep xmonad for a while and try to get familiar with it. It definitely can have some advantages in terms of workflow, + it gives you the nice esoteric-elitist, hardcore linux feeling :) (still not sure if I actually like that, haha)
One thing I perhaps would like if possible would be to able to run both my fully-fledged DE concurrently with xmonad at a different TTY, just for the workflow thing. I've done a few experiments with that and have been able to get it partially working, but struggle with getting Xorg to run multiple servers (or screens?). I would greatly appreciate some tips on that.
Great videos though! Love them :)
I've tried gnome, xfce, kde. Now I've discovered open box, it's a lovely clean desktop, it's fast and it's light, my new daily driver. Open box is a revalation
I remember blackbox and fluxbox from my early years in Linux. Im on mate from oh so many years now, but I love it, its just what I need. 😃
Great review and installation video of OpenBox!
Lxappearance-obconf will add the obconf to lxappearance so you only have one place to go to change everything as far as appearance themeing.
note: u do not need a compositor, they can reduce performance but also add desktop effects, vsync and prevents windows trailing
Sometimes you do because without one i get screen tearing but even with one i need picom to use glx or else it gets worse
Installed openbox on my secondary Linux box, I like it, will have to play with the configs. Sure is snappy compared to cinnamon, but I am kind of set in my ways, but will give it a fair shake, you may convert me yet, thanks DT 👍🏻
The transwoman who created Openbox, Dana Jansens, is brilliant. My favorite window manager for X, it's incredibly powerful if you know what you're doing.
The DirectionalCycleWindows keybind "action" is pretty much the main reason I like Openbox so much. I kind of wish that feature was much more common on window managers. Instead of ing through 20 open windows, you can to the one you want... (and to MoveToEdge, GrowToEdge etc.
I don't know of any other floating window managers that can do that sort of thing (though maybe you could hack something together with wmctrl).
Thanks a lot for this video, it made me revisit Openbox (and fall in love with).
For me I had an issue where menumaker would hang after execution and not do anything so heres how you fix it:
1) follow the instructions up until it asks you to run 'make install' (don't run it)
2) do an 'ls' in the menumaker folder and look for an executable binary named 'mmaker'
3) you might have to 'nano mmaker' and change the shebang to use python3 instead of 'python'
3) run the mmaker binary from that folder like dt runs it in the video so 'mmaker openbox'
4) it should work
Openbox is just dated, and doesn't offer the same performance advantages it did in the past. KDE and Gnome have matured properly, to the point the difference is minimal even if RAM usage is higher despite being full fat DE's. At least tiling WM's offer a significant change to your workflow, something that might work for you.
Why did people stick with winXP for years after even Win7 came out? Why did people stick with Win7 until MS had to force updates to Win10? BECAUSE PEOPLE DON'T WANT "SIGNIFICANT CHANGE TO YOUR WORKFLOW"... they are not developers... they are making money with the computer....
Daniel Chapiesky as opposed to developers? Who don’t make money with the computer?
That's okay. I like dated.
IceWM does !
@JRPG W E E B why don't you just simply press the Superkey and use the up and down arrow keys?
Just to add my POV:
DEs are awesome if you want it to just work. All of them are really configurable as well! WMs are perfect if you are already familiar with Linux and want to make your perfect workflow they are what you want use.
I was legitimately frustrated earlier today that you did it have a new video on Openbox WOOOT
Awesome video content. I am beginner and needed to find proper teacher about gnu/linux step by step for starter tutorial. This work from minimal window manager is great learning path to see bigger picture how things works.
For example i did not know about parts in desktop environment. I tho bar is part of desktop environment but it is just separate program. Because of this helpfull guideline i understand system better.
Thank you for sharing knowledge
I would love to ditch the bloat but I just like things working right out of the box. 😔🤷
That is also what i want if I would change my distribution very often. But if it is not the case, it is worth investing a little time to configure Openbox, with the advantage you feel more "in control" of your system.
Thanks DT, great video and explanation! I have been using Manjaro and then Arcolinux Openbox and still like it. Now onto Awesome with Arco, but your video clearly explains how and what. One point I'd like to mention: the memory usage of WM's. Cinnamon (which I really like) took about a Gig of memory. Openbox (with the same functionality..) brought it down to 400 Mb.Awesome is below 300Mb even. Since I have integrated graphics, an old i5 and 4Gb of RAM this really matters to me. I personally prefer a WM but it also gives a lot of new life to an 'old' computer.
I want to thank you for this video. Actually i'm a NomadBSD user with openbox pre-installed and customized, but i want also Mint with Ob. So this video is very useful to me. Thank a lot and forgive my bad english.
Man that was interesting. I used openbox years ago when Crunch-bang was a popular distro. When Crunch-bang went away, I used Semplice for a while until it started crashing on me. Now a days I use Feren OS because it seems to be really stable on my system. I remember there was a lot of learning curve to using open box, and I think that was the whole a peel in it that made it fun to use. I kinda want to go back to openbox, but like some many Linux users experience - you get burnt out from distro hopping.
Thanks DT, this video helps me a lot!
KDE is great for me now
Ewww 🤢. At least it's not GNOME.
@@minepro1206 when did you try KDE last time?
@@jozsefk9 A year ago I believe. The right-click menus and settings made no sense. Also, I was trying for a long time to get rid of some memos in my Desktop.
@@minepro1206 I haven't used KDE since KDE 4 replaced KDE 3. That's many years now. But few months ago, when Kubuntu 20.04 showed up, I tried it again. And it works better now than any other DE for me.
@@jozsefk9 GNOME is for the birds, I don't like KDE, XFCE is getting old and receives little support... I still use XFCE though but if it doesn't receive enough support in the future, I'll jump to Cinammon which is a great DE.
I dont know.. my xfce is great, i see no reason to change :/
Yeah! It depends a lot, but I would jump if I encounter some good theme for a Tiling Window Manager that I could feel comfortable to customize, but not now.
the man who love openbox
Hahah! My Linux adventure STARTED with Openbox (Fluxbox in particular) way back in the 90's!
I loved it! I'm actually considering returning to it with inspiration and help from your "Turn your WM into a DE" vid.
Because of you I got interest in linux
I love openbox I didn't know people still used it
Just a joke or for real?
@@lowrider298 I'm forreal
Have you heard of bunsenlabs and archlabs? If not you should take a look.
@@doxanthropos thanks for that information good to know there are distros still using openbox
I've played with different window managers, I've even tried sway on a vanilla arch install. I think I'm most comfortable on my stock Fedora.
18:29 When you rebuilt your menu with mmaker, you lost the top level menu and the icons. Is there a way to keep those?
Is there a DE that has true auto tiling capability? I like xfce but I have to tile the windows manually, that sucks.
I think my linux is bloated, i wanna switch to calculater.
Lol
See you later alligater
also bloat, jumpers and leds on breadboards is the only way to go
Abacus
@@sumnerd69 personally i just have a few hundred slaves with tablets who do my computers calculations for me and then send it back to my monitor
It's great for old computers. But if your system isn't overworking itself with a DE... No need to really go minimalist though.
The most based man on the internet, Linux Chad
Adam Hughes you’re definitely gay
Excellent Video. Just did a look at SparkyLinux Rescue Edition with Openbox. Think I may add Openbox on my Debian/KDE install. Thanks for the video.
i think getting xfce4 (without the apps) with just the panel is the best desktop environment. WMs are soo bad. time consuming to configure
Very good and nice tutorial, it made setting up arch linux way better.
do you actually need more than a terminal?
He does need GUI programs for video/photo editing purpose, browser on terminal is possible but would be a pain or maybe just not suited for what he needs
I will definitely try it when I get home.
And keep the black background
You can put the xrandr command on the first line of the autostart line.
Just what I need for my raspberry pi. Subscribed!
can you please make a video on how to customize a system from scratch like Archcraft OS.... like changable themes and its panel with media control
Nice introduction to OpenBox! I find that interesting sense I got away from Desktops and went with Window Manager's...
I'll give that a try in my test VM of Mint 20... Lol
Thanks for the video!
LLAP
Setting up Openbox exactly like your old DE is painful and tedious, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth the work or getting used to. Openbox can do some awesome things. Sure you need a compositor, but the Picom config was easier to set up than setting my background with feh. Some people just dont like putting effort into their UI
If DT sees this: This Openbox video would have saved my behind a few months ago when I was first setting up my dotfiles for the first time. Compared to the ones you have done in the past, it really helps bring the most tedious yet simple things you need to do it first into focus.
I have to say this was a great video, I've never seen anyone install Openbox over Linux Mint before which makes this great. Openbox is nice but I feel i3wm is simpler but none-the-less a very enjoyable video to watch.
I recently tried that with the latest version of Linux Mint, and for some bizarre reason it didn't seem to find Python, so it couldn't build it. Any ideas?
That's only in LM, BTW; every other distro builds Menumaker just fine, if it doesn't already have it in their repositories.
I have everything correct in the autostart file yet my tint2 panel does not autostart but everything else does, what could it be?
I just became a regular OpenBox user a few weeks ago. I love OpenBox. I don't love Tint2.
Just use a cairo dock or even plank
Awesome stuff DT! But how can I do something like set the themes from the terminal instead of opening up a gui setting window?
What about Lxqt D.E? That one is rather lighteeight.
I really like openbox. I also really like notion. So I run notion, but on one workspace I run xephyr and run openbox within that. So I can use it for things like gimp and other software that doesn't work well in a tiling wm.
But then again I am also one of those guys who wants Linux to behave like Unix, and refuses to use systemd distros whenever possible and does most things from an xterm. But I realize that's not for everyone. But it works alright for me.
I don't think you've really given fluxbox a fair shake. use it for two months, get used to tabs (i love them) and the slit is pretty slick.. the only negative is maintaining the configure files, all by hand. BUT, they are simple, easy to understand, text files you can edit with ANY editor. No programming language knowledge needed... Anyway, mho and/or 2 cents worth of rant... lol
Openbox !!! I can not see much difference of installing it on Debian or other Linux distro. But so much lighter on my old laptop with 768 Mb RAM... Thank you for your previous videos of installing and configuring it.
768 mb of ram my god imagine opening a browser
@@linuxramblingproductions8554 Yeah, any nova days internet browser was a real pain for it, but finally this old laptop died about 3 month after I wrote this comment.
@@daisondt you could probably use a terminal based browser like links but it doesn’t matter if it died
@@linuxramblingproductions8554 I tried links, but didn't like it. You know, - ugly web sites, some limitations of functionality. No, not for me yet. With all my passion for minimalism, this is too much... too little, I mean. 😁
Got an error down below whenn tried to reconfigure openbox curently using lubuntu 22.04:
Obt-Message: Failed to open an Input Method
Has OpenBox been adapted to Wayland, or what window managers work with Wayland? Tired od distro hopping to find one to work with an old laptop. Going to have to build a Linux configuration myself. Reclaiming old systems has made this Linux move even more difficult, but in the end, it'll be worth it. Given the coming electronic-supply-chain squeeze, if it comes into fruition.
ampersign ? Nice video though. I think I'll have a bit of Friday evening fun having a go at this on a mint installation I have in Virtualbox.
Do you know if its possible to have a slideshow wallpaper on OpenBox? I can set it for 2 different monitors, but I can't figure out how to do a slideshow? If you know where I can look that'd be great... I just can't find any definitive answers on it.
OpenBox is one of my top 5 favorite WMs. Also, for the noobs, you should have added the xrandr command to the autostart file. This way the user doesn't have to open the terminal and execute xrandr every time. Just a suggestion to the new users out there.
xrandr -s 1920x1080.
You can put whatever resolution you want to use in place of 1920x1080. For example 1440x900, 1024x768, 800x600... etc.
That tends to happen in general. I think KDE also has the resolution issue. Problem with XOrg I think.
I settled on openbox back in 2012 as a refugee from the Gnome apocalypse
Perfect timing, thank you!
This is awesome, can I reverse my present environment and start over using this? Every few months I have an issue with linux that screws up my workflow and it's frustrating as hell.
Hey! thank you for your videos!
Is openbox the new version of fluxbox? (yep, I'm old)
i reccomend using archlabs or archcraft those two distro comes with openbox as their main windows manager.
Comments are bloats.
Why don't I have any icon in the menu? Can you please tell me..
Has openbox not been updated in 7 years? Thats the most recent date I see on the website.
yes indeed seems OB is really not updated for several years. Maybe devs consider this product is sophisticated enough not to touch it. But you said 7 years !! WOW, very long ago.
If it ain't broke don't fix it :)
Nice might try this on my xubuntu but can we go with sakura terminal instead for default terminal for openbox? Very minimalistic terminal think would go good with it
I dont think openbox comes with a terminal emulator of its own and anything is better then xterm
@@AbduleeFtw Will see, thanks for the info, ill try go with sakura, honestly never used xterm so have no feedback for that one
I cannot deal with that start menu and mousewheel zoom.
Is there a better window manager than openbox that actually has a start menu with search feature?
I tried Jigmenu on openbox but that menu doesn't have search.
Bad premise. Linux desktop environs aren't bloated at all. All that is there, the user put there. The OS installer did not install it as in windows. If it is bloated, you did it.
umm i know it's a bit late but, it's not exactly true because everyone can decide what bloatware is on like any system and most of the things that come pre-installed not always needed for some users so they are called bloatware and because of that a window manager is a better choice for the people who really want to decide everything and everything about their desktop.
Awesome! just watched the entire thing and I love the way this looks, may try it out on my main system. If you havent already, you should walk through setting up the awesome window manager.
Debian based systems usually install build-essential.
Very cool man, ty and ty for the opening line very good info to have been learning alot still harder for me idk why. Unless its cause of the weird cmds
hi
thanks for all the support that you provide me with
can you updat us on how to install it on fedora 37
Do not use Openbox. Use Awesome which can be floating or tilling!
Hi Thanks for such an informative introductory session on Openbox Can you make video 📹 on Fluxbox Customization as well
Idk, I honestly think that anything configured in XML (even partially) is a particularly good idea.
why not use lisp instead?
Why xml i would rather have stuff always configured in bash or python if needed
Hey, Derek! Would you breakdown LXQt? I was looking for the most lightweight DE.
Qt is nice. Xfce is arguably better due to it's ease of setting keybindings
Great video!
have Linux Mint xfce and PopOS, which one would run OpenBox best with all its customization?
Debian testing
I'm using Manjaro i3 installed through Architect and I think I'll keep it
@Alexander Glavan I know right? But instead of starting with a minimal DE iso, I go with a full i3. I install it through Architect because I can easily set fish as default shell and rEFInd as bootloader
@Alexander Glavan I think if what your lookin for is a very standard arch install(like manjaro's straight forward install and not much customizibilty) you can just use a script like archfi and just install arch like manjaro and skip installing the desktop just get xorg and install awesomewm and stow your configs....
@Alexander Glavan i also think manjaro has a community iso of awesome
@Alexander Glavan pain in the ass ? Could be done in 30 minutes with the wiki..What exactly did you doing "difficult" ?
Fantastic video Derek!!! Unfortunately I can't use Ubuntu 20.04. it doesn't have obmenu which I love using so I use MX19 instead which has everything I need. I'll install openbox etc... again which I always do when installing a distro. Beautiful environment for me to work in p!us I have all the mx tools!😀
There is a obmenu that uses python3. I can't remember the github site right now but thats what I use.
@@adamsinger77 thanks!!😀
I think Polybar is better than Tint2. Especially if you have polybar-themes installed. But that's just my opinion.
I would love to create my own desktop with a simple window manager and a panel, but I suffer from an hdpi monitor.
Sadly that is still a problem on Linux.
Stopped using any status panels on my system, completely.
They just take precious horizontal space, and it's quite easy to work without them.