Openbox

Last updated

Openbox Window Manager
Developers Dana Jansens, [1] [2] Mikael Magnusson [3]
Initial release18 September 2002;23 years ago (2002-09-18)
Stable release
3.6.1 [4]   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg / 1 July 2015
Repository
Written in C
Operating system Unix-like
Type Stacking window manager
License GPL 2.0 or later [5]
Website openbox.org   OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Openbox is a free, stacking window manager for the X Window System, licensed under the GNU General Public License. [5] Originally derived from Blackbox [5] 0.65.0 (a C++ project), Openbox has been completely re-written in the C programming language and since version 3.0 is no longer based upon any code from Blackbox. [6] Since at least 2010, it has been considered feature complete, bug free and a completed project. Occasional maintenance is done to keep it working, but only if needed. [7]

Contents

Openbox is designed to be small, fast, and fully compliant with the Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual (ICCCM) and Extended Window Manager Hints (EWMH). [8] It supports many features such as menus by which the user can control applications or which display various dynamic information. [5]

Openbox is the standard window manager in LXDE, and often set as the default for LXQt. It is used in Linux distributions such as BunsenLabs, GreenBANG, Lubuntu, Trisquel and Manjaro. [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16]

The creator and primary author of Openbox is Dana Jansens of Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. [1] [17]

Using Openbox

Openbox provides a right-click (or any other key-binding) "root menu" on the desktop, [5] and allows users to configure the way windows are managed. When a window is minimized, it becomes invisible. To bring windows up again, most use Alt+Tab ↹ or the Desktop menu, accessible by right-clicking. Or, sometimes, by middle-button-clicking. Extending Openbox with other small programs that add icons, taskbars, [5] launchers, eyecandy and others is common.

Configuration

ObConf, a GUI configuration editor for Openbox Obconf-2.0.3-3.png
ObConf, a GUI configuration editor for Openbox

There are only two configuration files, both located in ~/.config/openbox. They are named menu.xml and rc.xml. These can either be edited manually or with the graphical configuration tools ObConf and obmenu. [5] [18] [19]

All mouse and key-bindings can be configured. For example, a user can set:

Pipe menus

Openbox has a dynamic menu system that uses "pipe menus". [5] [20] A menu item in a piped menu system can accept the standard output of a shell script (or other executable) in order to generate a sub-menu. Because the script runs every time the pointer activates it, and as the script can assess environmental conditions, piped menus enable conditional branching to be built into the menu system.[ citation needed ] When the window manager is restarted, a static menu system as used on most window managers gets its layout once and will not have the ability to modify the menu layout depending on environmental factors.[ citation needed ]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Jansens, Dana (November 2007). "User:DanaJansens" . Retrieved 19 January 2015.
  2. ↑ Jansens, Dana. "Openbox Developer Dana Jansens" . Retrieved 19 January 2015.
  3. ↑ "git.openbox.org Git - dana/openbox.git/summary". openbox.org. Retrieved 25 August 2015.
  4. ↑ "Openbox:Changelog".
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
  6. ↑ GentooWiki (March 2008). "HOWTO Openbox". Archived from the original on 3 April 2008. Retrieved 7 April 2008.
  7. ↑ "is Openbox still being developed?". Reddit. June 2021. Retrieved 11 June 2022.
  8. ↑ "EWMH Compliance Document". Archived from the original on 31 October 2019. Retrieved 9 September 2009.
  9. ↑ LXDEWiki (September 2008). "LXDE Wiki". Archived from the original on 7 April 2015. Retrieved 28 September 2008.
  10. ↑ BunsenLabs Linux (December 2020). "BunsenLabs Linux" . Retrieved 17 July 2020.
  11. ↑ "Rolling-release (Linux Wiki)" . Retrieved 29 May 2014.
  12. ↑ Lavergne, Julian (October 2010). "Lubuntu Applications" . Retrieved 14 January 2011.
  13. ↑ DistroWatch (August 2010). "Tiny Me" . Retrieved 14 January 2011.
  14. ↑ "Trisquel Mini GNU/Linux". The Trisquel Project. Retrieved 7 November 2012.
  15. ↑ "Openbox window manager grows up". linux.com. 11 July 2007. Retrieved 30 October 2016.
  16. ↑ "Manjaro - Openbox - Stable". manjaro.org. Archived from the original on 14 December 2018. Retrieved 18 December 2018.
  17. ↑ "Dana Jansens". medium.com. Archived from the original on 30 October 2016. Retrieved 30 October 2016.
  18. ↑ Openbox project (June 2007). "ObConf:About" . Retrieved 7 April 2008.
  19. ↑ obmenu:Index , retrieved 28 March 2012
  20. ↑ "Openbox Wiki:Pipe menus".
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