Running fluxbox on debian squeeze at the moment. I think, the day i first found fluxbox i have loved it since, no matter how many times i install gnome, or kde or whatever, i always end up going back to fluxbox.

- Tiny, Minimalistic, 4-5 config files can manage everything. My .fluxbox directory is 624KBs, and that includes styles, backgrounds and pixmaps. talk about small. It does what it does, and does it very well. and it does nothing else. With fluxbox, you keep the core desktop clean and fast, and then you can use whatever apps you want, smaller or bigger. Gnome/KDE/XFCE/LXDE have a totally different approach.

- Great looking themes (i.e. styles), which are also tiny.

- Ability to arrange windows (you can assign a shortcut for this Win+a), will tile all unminimized windows for the best fit. E.g. if you have terminals open, press win+a, and it will cover the screen with just those 2 windows, with 1 window covering top half, and the other covering the bottom half. Similarly, I redefine all the keys to my liking. I have tried many WMs, but few provide me the options, that fluxbox does.

- Tabs: they sure can come in handy. I use them a lot, when I have way too many windows open, like 20 xterm windows, Tabs+ workspaces, make life easy.

- Slit: I came from WindowMaker, so I felt at home with the slit and the windowmaker dock apps. I don’t use it anymore though, because it takes too much space (on netbook).

- Remember Window Decorations: fluxbox makes it so easy. If you want certain apps to not have title bar, border etc, then you can just define those in the apps file. I like no decorations on terminals.

Too bad fluxbox, is not being developed anymore, but really its a blessing in disguise, why would anyone try to add more code, to what already seems perfect. Gnome/KDE/LXDE/XFCE on the other hand like to add bloat and continue adding.

I was actually thinking about creating some monstrous concatenation of sed commands to convert openbox menu to fluxbox… well, at least I won’t waste any time trying to do that, then…

I miss most the feature of being able to create tabs on the title bar of any application. If I’m not mistaken, OB developers disdain this feature, they say it’s a circumvention for poor UIs on various applications, those are the ones that should have tabs, if tabs are to be needed. But what I used to find interesting was exactly the fact that you can have two different *programs* under “the same window”. I think it was the most original and interesting idea ever implemented in a DM or WM. I’m not sure, but I guess KDE4 has it these days. I’d hardly use it though, unless I can trim it down and customize to the point that anyone would think I’m using openbox or fluxbox without closer examination. And I don’t know if that’s possible.

I also liked the fact that fluxbox had a built-in toolbar/panel, which was better than fbpanel or tint2. I don’t know if there’s anything on OB that I’d miss in a stable FB. Perhaps pipe-menus, but I think it may be doable on FB too.

I hope pekwm evolves or even forks into something like FB used to be… it seems somewhat lighter, like OB, but with easier configuration files, like FB… but the last time I tried, some variables were lacking to have an ideal configuration on stuff like focus just by hovering with the mouse (you need a delay of a few msec at least).

“Awesome” is somewhat the opposite, regarding tabs-for-windows I guess… it may be quite good if you have so many monitors that you barely need to use windows, you use monitors instead…

I’ll check-out the “awesome” window manager. Thanks for notifying us about it.

@Jens,

Thanks for explaining the difference between Openbox and Fluxbox.

For those who are interested, visit blackbox window manager.