More than 1.5 years has past since the last release of the BlackBox window manager, and its development seems to have stopped. However, based on the latest version of BlackBox’s sources, FluxBox was born. The FluxBox X11 window manager fixes a number of problems found in the original BlackBox and it introduces some new GUI concepts like the use of the tabs along with the addition of some more tradititional functionality like iconbar, keygrabbers and more.
FluxBox Extends the BlackBox Window Manager
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
The reason BlackBox hasn’t been updated in years is because it hasn’t needed to be. BlackBox was brought to perfection, and it’s so simple that it doesn’t need to constantly improve its feature-base to compete with other WMs (unlike KDE/Gnome/E). However, it can’t hurt to have more choices for WMs, as long as FluxBox won’t beat out BlackBox for placement in Mandrake’s standard distro.
So the bugs were part of the perfection too?
Backbox is nice, nice and simple. Its simpleness is what makes it nice and what makes it look good. It reminds me of the Beos desktop, simple clean nice. I don’t kno wwhy people would want to look at something as ugly as KDE, I swear it gets uglier with every new update.
I agree with aleksandr in that, its not necessary to go overboard with things, ala KDE, etc. Granted, those types have their uses as well. I myself prefer simplistic things. IMHO, acceptance of *nix has more obstacles than the WM or Shell (for those windowites) as it were. Instead of doing overkill on the WM’s, why not put some effort into the configuration tools, and other apps needed.. my guess is because its not as glamorous (i’d rather write a wm too personally).. but that’s my .02.
nivenh
I will leave a TURD in your MOUTH with my BALLS on your FOREHEAD!
I disagree. While I applaud the effort, what I think is unnecessary is yet another window manager that makes no real effort to innovate. Nothing here is new. PWM has tabs. Other WM’s have similar or identical features. When too many products become too similar, there might as well be one choice.
Where I feel that the Linux community fails is computer-human interaction. There are genuine innovations in other areas, but when it comes to the interface, all we get are bloated copies of Windows. Why is that? I don’t know if anyone will argue against the elegance and efficiency of the Unix commandline. Yet the available options for a graphical interface are clunky and unwieldy. The CLI has either small tools that do a few things well and work together, or larger applications like Emacs that are extensible and flexible. Should the graphical interface not reflect the same qualities shown in the commandline?
As entrenched as GNOME and KDE are, I wonder when we’ll ever see a new interface paradigm. One that actually matches the Unix ethos. I hope so.
the tabs thing is great!
hopefully this can be borrowed by KDE etc to help keep desktops tidy.
Fluxbox is not intended to take the place of blackbox, or any other WM (or desktop environment[tm]). Basically it started because Fluxgen (athour, founder of fb) wanted some additional features for blackbox…then it kept on going.
It’s true that there isn’t very much innovation involved, we simply implement what we liked from other window managers (most notable; PWM).
Yes, fluxbox is just yet another window manager…to me that is not a bad thing…i like being able to have lots of options. And to me fluxbox is just the right thing.
I think fluxbox i great.
As skypher just said, fluxbox is not created/developed to take the place of blackbox, it is created becouse Fluxgen and alot of other persons missed some functions in blackbox. Blackbox is a very great wm, so why not modify it and make it as you like when you can?
Thing that blackbox miss, that fluxbox got:
Ability to use the keyboard to do things.
PWM-like tabs, becouse THIS IS GREAT.
Mouse-wheel-support, both to change active-window and to change desktop.
Also, i think the gnome-support is great in fluxbox… maby it still got some buggs, but hopefully it will be fixed in future releases.
GO FLUXGEN!@#
All guis are the suck. Did I said that console is elite? and fuck you.
*sigh*
the quality of postings in OSN has definately decreased since OSN news started to appear on /.
I guess it’s impossible to keep a nice site “to ourselves”
If you weren’t such a zealot and opened your eyes, you just MIGHT be able to spot the irony. If not, check out http://ear.wox.org/elite-HOTWO.txt and you might get the point. Fluxgen is a friend of mine (as is skypher), and this is something we usually say on IRC when we play around.
And one more thing: heh
eYE bET yEW pHEARZ tHE fUCKING tR0UTZ!@#
http://ear.wox.org/elite-HOWTO.txt <– SysAdm, here is the correct url. *hrm*
Nice HowTo
you should’ve posted the link in first post though
regards
Why? It’s much more fun to see if any of the usual idiots respond with some lame attempt on holy war first. And for the record, I DO think guis suck, heh
You don’t have to understand the workings of an internal combustion engine to drive a car, If you DO want to, fine if it makes you feel better. If CL zealots made cars they’d still have solid tyres and a man walking in front waving a flag. After decades of computing are you still using punch cards and valves or have you progressed to Germanium Diodes?
“SysAdm”, grow up. Swearing is not something people wish to read, and the only point it proves is that you still haven’t finished puberty.
“Heh”
I agree with Charlie..I dont want to see this site going as low as slashdot.
Swearing isnt acceptable on an community site, it may impress your friends but it wont impress anybody on here.
And SysAdm, the whole thing about command lines…have you ever tried to do any real work with a computer instead of creating warez and being all elite??
Whats happened on here, there is a couple of stories where the slashdot crowd seem to have invaded.
Has AOL been sending out free discs to schoolchildren or something.
deny connections where the referrer is slashdot
Swearing or not swearing is not the issue here. I posted a “funny” remark to amuse Fluxgen and skypher. And of course some cybercop(s) have to respond and start lecturing. And as far as swearing goes, just don’t read unmoderated forums if you find it so insulting that you get high blood pressure or similar physical responses from it. No matter where you go there will always be someone more rude than yourself around.
And that swear was again directed towards fluxgen and skypher. Grow up and solve some real world problems instead of getting all worked up about some innocent/ironic/childish comments on the net.
heh
About my “maturity” (or lack thereof); I’m 29, married and have 2 kids in the house. I just find it amusing to act like a moron on the net. Especially when I get responses like these 🙂
!@#
heh
God help the Gene pool.
Simbad,
I don’t know about god helping it, maybe evolution (not starting a fight). But I think the problem is that we have stopped making toys you can get killed using. That is we’re not letting the dumb kids kill them selves off. So they are living to pass on their genes. Deadly toys serve a purposes. If your dumb enough to eat something or put your head in it or through it maybe it’s for the best.
heh
Skypher et al,
I didn’t mean to down the project (it’s a great piece of work). Mostly I was venting about the overall sad state of the dominant GUI’s available for Linux/Unix. I realize that many hours of work were put into each project, but I don’t feel that either one offers a truly compelling reason to change over from Windows or MacOSX (or even just using a WM like Fluxbox by itself). Am I the only one who feels that KDE and GNOME are not the answer?
There will always be a place for projects like Fluxbox. Fluxgen has polished an already great WM into a better one, and he deserves credit for a job well done. But there is a need for interface projects that try something new too. For some reason, innovation and new ideas in this area are rare, and that saddens me. I just think there is a need for exploration.
It could be that I just don’t know enough WM’s. Can anybody suggest other WM projects besides the mainstream options (Sawfish, Afterstep, etc.)? Maybe some really obscure ones? Projects like Ion (though not new, but still different from most of the others) give me hope.
I got my hands on a personal computer for the first time in 1979. Shortly after that, I fell in with a “bad” crowd. We started hacking the phone company. We started hacking TymeNet and CompuServe on local university computers. We were boys behaving badly.
And, for the record, we had girlfriends _and_ we got laid when we wanted to.
One thing we never did was leave stupid, profanity fueled messages on public forums. For that matter, we didn’t even do it on private forums. There was occasional, well placed use to get a point across.
For example, SysAdm and their ilk come off as fucking script kiddies.
The quality of hacking has dropped like a lemming over the past 15 years. What people like SysAdm have failed to realize is that quality hacking is a phenom comprised of two axis: The quality of the hacking displayed, and the personal quality displayed in it’s use. The failures of the last 15 years are the direct result of the erosion of the second axis I mentioned. That is why the Web is increasing ghetto-like year after year.
SysAdm: The guy who created FluxBox is a friend of yours? FluxBox sounded interesting, but given it’s associations, it is something I will neither use nor contribute to. And no SysAdm, you do not know the meaning of the word irony.
I’ve noticed the increasing frequency in appearance of the likes of SysAdm & Co. Having to wade through their droppings to participate in forums is tiring, annoying, and not worth the effort. Goodbye Eugenia, I had a good time.
Perhaps that is what SysAdm is after. If so, congratulations dickhead.
Who has said anything about being a hacker (or wanting to be seen as one)? I certainly did not. I just posted a comment for my friends amusement and some zealots go bonkers.
If you don’t want to use fluxbox because of some posting on a public unmoderated forum, fine. That tells more about you than about me. Have a nice day.
heh
As a long time blackbox fan, I must say that I’m impressed by fluxbox. The real seller was the builtin keyboard shortcuts. I’ve never been particularly happy with bbkeys, and I’ve had problems with it not dying along with X and then gobbling large quantities of cpu time. On the other hand, I haven’t kept up with the latest release so the problem might have been fixed by now. I think the tabs are neat, but, to be honest, I’ve disabled them. If there was an option to autotab applications of the same type, I might be persuaded to reenable them, but till then the seem more of a distraction than anything else. The other new features are nice for the most part, and even if I won’t use many of them, it’s nice to have the option. Anyways, if you like blackbox, give fluxbox a try, it really is just a little bit better.
>I’ve noticed the increasing frequency in appearance of the likes of SysAdm & Co. Having to wade through their droppings to participate in forums is tiring, annoying, and not worth the effort. Goodbye Eugenia, I had a good time.
What do you mean? I am not this person called SysAdm (if this is what you are saying). Our IPs are different as you can easily see. SysAdm IP address shows that he is a reader from Norway. I live in California. And I am not afraid to write my real name when posting anywhere.
Eugenia, I think Mike Nomad was trying to say is that people like SysAdm are making browsing this news site less than pleasurable and I have to agree with him a little bit, but I have no intention of going anywhere.
If only there was some way of stopping it, but I doubt it.
So if you were thinking he was having a go at you, he wasn’t!!
I think he was refering to the fact that your site has become infected with /. trolls. the thing that sucks is that you can not block all the IPs that some of these fellows use because they are dynamic and therefore would take you a long time to block all the IPs from a certain ISP, not to mention it would effectivly block all people from that ISP.
I guess your job just became harder….now you will have to remain vigelent and remove Troll posts
that realy sucks.
FYI I do not read slashdot. Occasionally I check it out if someone tells me that there is something interesting there, but mostly there is only static on such sites (quite a lot here too at times). Slashdot has been dead for quite some years imho. And furthermore, I am NOT a hacker (or hacker wannabe) as some seem to think. Some of us find it amusing to utter nonsense sentences similar to the ones coming from 31337 h4xx0r gr00prz wh0 kUmp|13z r00tsh311 k0d3z 0n 7h3|R s|4[K\\`4r3 b0x0rz.
I am so sorry for you guys who have nothing better to do with your time than to judge others based upon limited or no knowledge about those persons.
heh
The OSNews team (all four of us) is seriously considering for some time now of adding registration and some form of moderation to our comments sections. You would have to register in order to post (this way banning will be even easier
. We have not decided 100% yet, but as OSNews gets more and more hits each month and our reader audience is getting much bigger, we pick up some annoying people on the way. So, we may add registration and anonymous postings won’t be allowed anymore. But, we will see…
If you (SysAdm) are 29 and a father, then why do you feel the need to swear unnecessarily? Being a parent myself, I can’t see how you can really condone swearing. It, like violence, is simply a product of ignorance or blind emotion. Would you appreciate your kids swearing, even in the name of humour? No, I didn’t think so. The only time I really want to read swear words is when a strong point is being made (nope, your joke doesn’t qualify) or when I know it is going to be around (somewhere where it is an accepted regular occurance).
It is sad that you find people objecting to vulgar language amusing. I’m not “cyper-arresting” you or anything. I just don’t appreciate your “moronic humour”. Labelling it innocent/ironic is just complete nonsense as well. How is swearing innocent, or ironic. Irony is you telling us to grow up.
We “cybercops” are simply regular readers of this website who do not wish to plough though immature and rude posts from people like yourself. Solve real world problems we will, but in the mean time please don’t lower the tone of the text we read.
Besides, I’m sure you could have made your quip to fluxgen and skypher without lowering the tone.
There are plenty of websites available on the internet where you can voice your swear words (http://www.hardforum.com/“>the , for instance) where people won’t object, rather encourage, swearing.
I’m no zealot, nor am I judging you. The puberty comment was simply a decent observation on the link between immature net-behaviour and age. I was just requesting that you aren’t rude on this website, in a slightly sour way. Saying that stupid posts are accepable because this site is unmoderated is no excuse either. Like I pointed out, there are places where swearing is accepted/wanted and there are places like here where a freedom of expression is given for intelligent discussion. I’m sure you don’t go to your local library and swear at people, or your local church. Then why do it here? Because you don’t have a face and there’s little we can do to stop you?
The one thing I will commend is that at least you will comment under your alias, unlike the pathetic form of life that wore the mask, “Clown Penis”. People like that the world can do without. As somebody said, god help the gene pool. Without darwinian evolution affecting us at the moment, too many of his ilk aren’t beaten to a bloodey death.
It’s not as if I don’t swear myself, just there is a time and a place and here and/or now is not it. Although I do object to those insinuating that slashdot readers are to blame for rude posts. I am a slashdot reader myself.
Eugenia, I think registration would be a good idea. I can’t see why most users of the website would object to it. (BTW, Congrats on the great website!)
As for spending my time doing writing all this, I happen to care about community web sites such as OSNews. People put a lot of effort into it, and it’s disappointing that measures such as registration have to be introduced in order to keep a respectable standard in the posts. Why people have to abuse free services is a mystery.
Just my .02c.
I really don’t understand why all of a sudden, people are going nuts over a simple joke that someone made, especially when they clarified it was a joke afterwards.
While I completely agree that most news sites have been infiltrated by trolls and useless posts…I for one haven’t lost the ability to simply skip over a post. The internet is all about freedom of expression…if you don’t want to see it, simply stop looking at it, and go on to the next thing. Just don’t try to tell someone they can’t, because you don’t think they should.
As for OSNews specifically, I would recommend the implementation of a rating system like Slashdot’s so one could browse above a certain level and avoid posts that one doesn’t like. Maybe even implement a swearing rating, if you object tot that kind of thing.
I like OSNews, and have been reading it since it started. I don’t think SysAdm has committed any sort of unpardonable breach of conduct (in fact, I agree with him) so I think we should all just chill out. If you don’t like what I have to say, well that’s your right and I suggest you don’t read any of my posts in the future.
I think the solution is simple:
“Sorry”
Trust me guys, this word works wonders, I know because I piss my girlfriend off on a regular basis.
I’d suggest flowers–but–something tells me this isn’t a code red situation.
cheers.
This has gone too far. Grow up and don’t make things bigger than they are. A joke is a joke even if it’s not to everyone’s liking. Sorry to the guys who got so terribly insulted by my joke. And I am sorry _for_ you as well. Cheers
heh
I, too, do not think that SysAdm has committed an unpardonable offence. I apologise if you found my posts to imply that. I was simply pointing out the needlessness of the crude nature of the “joke”.
A joke is appreciable only when in the correct context. And the context of your crude effort was that of an irc channel, of which this is not.
Yes, we can choose to ignore. But we cannot choose to ignore without first reading to realise it is to be ignored. And why should we have to? And do stop telling us to grow up, SysAdm. It is ironically “ironic” that you do. If you cannot take a bit of criticism then I suggest you do not read it.
And do not think I am insulted. You, even if you really tried, could not insult me as I do not know you. And neither feel sorry for me. I am expressing my opinion, as I am well within my rights to do. (And as are you.) You would do better to reflect a little upon yourself instead.
I am not going to get drawn into a flame war. ‘Nuff said. I will say no more.
bah, LWM forever!
Maturity is just a state of mind and age is just a number…
And i agree…Over the time that ive been on OSnews (quite some time now) I dont really want to see any swearing…I want to see serious discussions about the matter of the topic (meaning no childish remarks from a 29 year old).Me,im 17 and im ashamed of seeing some 29 year old act that way. God help you man…
Sorry for bad english:)
its ok, your only 17 🙂
I do find it sort of funny that we have a greater maturity level coming from a 17 year old highschool student than a 29 year old perfesional(?) who is also a father. yes, it may have been a joke, however, a mature person would have realised that the joke was done in bad taste when he/she began to get flamed. at this point a retraction should have been posted. One was not, and the flame fest went on.
I think many people (not nessisaraly on OSnews) need to follow MPX’s example.
Is it any good? Ive never even heard of it…
(BTW Bad english = Norwegian, and i finnished school a almost 2 years ago now
Is it any good? Ive never even heard of it…
(BTW Bad english = Norwegian, and i finnished school a almost 2 years ago now
Is it any good? Ive never even heard of it…
<A href=”http://www.boognish.org.uk/enh/lwm/“>LWM? Lightweight Window Manager
It’s funky. Supports everything you will ever need.
lwm is a window manager for X that tries to keep out of your face. There are no icons, no button bars, no icon docks, no root menus, no nothing: if you want all that, then other programs can provide it. There’s no configurability either: if you want that, you want a different window manager; one that helps your operating system in its evil conquest of your disc space and its annexation of your physical memory.
That paragraph has probably told you whether or not you’re the sort of person who can cope with lwm. Welcome to my world!
If people actually read the content of a site to guage the sort of discussions that go on, this wouldn’t happen.
That said, the link was pretty funny, heh.
I am not going to pursue this matter any further. I said I was sorry to the people who were insulted, and also that I am sorry for them. If people still have to go on they’lll have to do it without the one they are discussing. Maturity is not just how you present yourself, it’s also how you react to other people’s appearance and actions. ‘Nuff said. Have a pleasant life.
heh
😛
how is that for maturity 🙂
The eternal problem of public forum is teh signal to noise problem. Everyone complains that there’s to much noise and not enough signal. The problem being that people en mass can’t decide which is the signal and which is the noise. Which is why moderation and other such schemes are futile.
[Clown P.] *really really disgusting joke not remotely funny*
I like FluxBox! KDE and Gnome are icky.
[SysAdm] *insert tasteless joke here*
[People] BAD SysAdm!! Very BAD!! You are turning this place into SlapDash and taking the all public forums to HECK!!! And you’re immature.
[SysAdm] It was just a joke???!!! And I’m a grownup.
I don’t like FluxBox. KDE and Gnome are still icky.
[People] A really bad joke. And insulting to some, the swearing didn’t help, but not as bad as CP. You’re still immature.
Interjection: Inside jokes don’t work in public forums unless you either indicate its intended target (i.e. Private to Fluxgen & Skypher) or provide the context to make it funny. Then thou canst more strongly defend thy position.
[SysAdm] Oh come on…I was just having fun.
[People] Sorry, even though your post may be only a symptom of a larger problem with public forums, we must act quickly and with much paranoia until we can work out a better solution. You should be glad we take the time to correct and insult you, for we didn’t even bother with Clown P. You’ll have to take your “fun” elsewhere. Now say you’re sorry.
Then try other window managers. KDE and Gnome are not icky.
[SysAdm] All right, I’m sorry
[People] Better. You’re still acting immaturely.
Where’s the innovation?
[SysAdm] AAAAAACK!!!!!
[People]
Heh