Smaller the better , better things come
in smaller packs but it takes lot of efforts to make smaller delicate
items .
I am an Arch Linux user for many years
now and the simplicity of Arch has always fascinated me .But this is simplicity needs basic core
knowledge and unless you subject yourself to manual editing of
important files and make yourself familiar with commands in terminal
you will face lot more difficulties than you expect . Plainly
speaking Arch Linux is not a point and click Linux , it demands you
to know what you are doing and why .
Openbox obsessed me recently and I
refused to install and use available forks of Arch Linux with
preconfigured openbox since it goes against the will to submit
yourself to Arch`s simplicity as I mentioned above . Yes, I did
consult these Arch Linux + Openbox forks to see what is hidden
underneath the beautifully crafted desktops on these distributions
and I admit that I learned a lot.
Next place is #archlinux@freenode , lot
of devoted people are always there to help and I gained more core
knowledge about openbox on arch Linux . Worth mentioning here are
Arch Wiki and forum , they are loaded with information.
So after almost 2 weeks struggle and
efforts I managed to install and configure my openbox and I want to
put all those steps here stepwise .
1 . You are expected to know how to
install and configure Arch Linux core installation or else this post
is useless for you .
2 . You can install openbox with a
simple pacman command and for more help you can consult arch wiki .
3. I will just mention the main steps
I used to configure my openbox , there are many options , you can
choose whatever suits your liking and requirements.
a) Panel : I use lxpanel , I find it
easy to configure . You can use tint2 , fbpanel and even xfce4-panel
b) Slim : It is simple and it solved my
issue of mounting all the partitions on my system . You can simply
use startx , lxdm , lightdm , gdm-old or any other DM you like .
c) .xinitrc file
It should have these contents
#!/bin/sh
export BROWSER=firefox
export DE=openbox
exec ck-launch-session dbus-launch
openbox-session
d) openbox autostart file
It should have these contents
(sleep 3 && /usr/bin/nm-applet
--sm-disable) &
lxpanel &
conky -q &
volumeicon -b &
nitrogen --restore &
openbox-menu &
xcompmgr -CcfF &
e) openbox environment file
# Set system-wide environment variables
here for Openbox
# User-specific variables should be
placed in $HOME/.config/openbox/environment
# To set your language for displaying
messages and time/date formats, use the following:
#LANG=en_CA.UTF8
# To set your keyboard layout, you need
to modify your X config:
f ) “
/etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/55-myconf.pkla “ file
[Storage Permissions]
Identity=unix-group:storage
Action=org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-eject;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-detach;org.freedesktop.udisks.luks-unlock;org.freedesktop.udisks.inhibit-polling;org.freedesktop.udisks.drive-set-spindown;org.freedesktop.udisks.filesystem-mount-system-internal
ResultAny=yes
ResultActive=yes
ResultInactive=yes
Once you have all these settings as
mentioned above your Arch Linux openbox will work without any issues.
The rest of tweaking of the system is mainly cosmetic and you can do
it according to your taste and needs.
This post shows the core of everything
that works for me, it is not a replacement for Arch Wiki or forum at
all , but it works for me and I am sure it will work for everyone .
Best of luck and welcome to Arch Linux
+ Openbox !
