fluxbox freakout

[kmc77]

So I wanted to give fluxbox a try out. Downloaded. Unpacked. Configured. Make and make install completed without a hitch (I think). Everything seems to be ready. Now what? I can't figure out how to access it.

 

Am I overlooking the obvious here?

 

I swear, It's amazing I found the power button on my computer today.

 

Someone please have mercy on this poor idiot.

[Lord Kenneth]

Logout, choose session type as "fluxbox", login.

[kmc77]

Tried, but fluxbox is not an option.

 

I even booted outside of GUI and tried startx fluxbox with no results.

[liquidzoo]

There is a way to add it to your DM, I can't remember how. You'd have to tell us what DM you're using (kdm, gdm, mdkkdm) and we could better assist you there. To start it when you're outside of X (startx option) you need to create a file called .xinitrc in your /home/user/ folder. In that file, you'll really only need 1 thing:

 

exec fluxbox

 

You can add other things there. I will give an option of my .xinitrc on my desktop:

 

[DeathStar//liquidzoo]$ cat .xinitrc
#========KDE3-1=======#
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$QTDIR/usr/lib/qt3/lib/
export QT_XFT=true
export GDK_USE_XFT=1
enable_X11_numlock &
gnome-settings-daemon &
#(sleep 15; gdesklets) &
killall artsd &
acme &
artsd -F 10 -S 4096 -s 60 -m artsmessage -l 3 -f &
exec /usr/bin/startkde
#exec /usr/bin/startgnome
[DeathStar//liquidzoo]$

 

You can see that I start a bunch of other stuff in there besides KDE (the ones that start with # are commented out), but the idea is the same.

 

Anything you put in there needs to be before the exec fluxbox command, and they need to end with a space and an '&' (no quotes). That tells the system to run it in the background and continue loading the file. Otherwise one thing would start, then when you closed that it would move on to the next line and so on.

Edited March 30, 2004 by LiquidZoo

[kmc77]

I'm using GNOME, if that helps. I'd prefer to not have to start outside x, but will give the other method a shot just to see it. If you remember how to add it to DM please let me know.

[tyme]

are you using KDM or GDM for you desktop manager?

 

there's another way of going about this that you can do from in the GUI (all be it in a terminal) but the process depends on which DM you are using.

[Qchem]

Assuming you're using Mandrake, fluxbox srpms are available. If all else fails you could install the srpm and check out how the author added the KDM entry in their spec file.

[spiedra]

Easiest way would be to install an rpm. If you already added cooker to your sources, just use urpmi to install fluxbox. There wouldn't be anything else you would have to do to add it to KDM. It does it automaticaly. I've found with srpms like tars you have to manually add it to KDM which can be a little bit of a hassle.

Edited March 30, 2004 by spiedra

[kmc77]

I appreciate all the advice. I went over to the FAQ section and read up on URPMI. After setup, I used it to get flux box. Everything works perfectly now. If I had done this a month ago, I would have saved myself a lot of headaches. Switching from such a confined environment in Windows, I had no idea how usefull and helpfull something like URPMI could be.

 

I guess I should still learn how to handle the tar balls (I'm assuming that I screwed something up on my first try at installing Fluxbox), but at least now I know I can spend more time learning than chasing down dependent RPM's.

 

The more I use Linux, the more I like it.

 

Thanks for the help

[Lord Kenneth]

No wonder, I thought you had initially used URPMI.

 

Yes, URPMI is a wonderful tool.

 

I myself converted to linux not too long ago. I rarely boot into windows.

[william]

kmc, maybe this link

could be helpful in the future despite of being a red-hat link (it's unix!).