FluxBox in Antix 17.2

[Chriske]

Hi guys,

Someone suggested installing FluxBox on my little eeePC to speed up things a little bit.
The past few hours I've been busy browsing through all the Antix17.2 menu's to see what"s on board and found out that FluxBox is standard installed on Antix. Just activated it.
Question : does FluxBox need to be tuned, or just use it as is..?

Thanks,
Chris

[dolphin_oracle]

I use it pretty much as is. check out my video on customizing....https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW57dCedVQo

[PPC]

Hi!
I'm the guy that talked you into installing antiX and trying FluxBox, Chris.

You can use it out of the box, but I had some small customizations to make my life easier:
1- Made the "windows" key call the menu
2- Made the bar near to 100%, deleted the extra desktop windows I don't use, added a "Menu icon" (it's just a ugly arrow, but clicking it makes the menu appear. I'm formatted to do that after many years of clicking a "Start menu icon").
3- made the "Print Screen" key call the screen grab application I sometimes need
4- Because it's a netbook with a tiny screen, I choose to auto-hide the bar.
5- For more efficient use of the RAM, I went to a Fluxbox only DE, no icons on the desktop. Because the version of Fluxbox that comes with antiX does not allow to add launch icons, I choose to edit the menu and added my prefered apps first
for Example I have: Terminal, SpaceFM, Firefox Quantum, Google Chrome and Libreoffice Writer and then the regular menu. In 2 clicks I can run any of those applications, or in 3 keypresses: WindowsKey, DownArrow (keep pressed to go down) and Enter
6-I did some minor visual tweaking, changed the icons, etc, etc, etc...

P.

[PPC]

redacted

[Chriske]

Thanks P.

Great bunch of guys here.
hard to believe that there is always someone prepared to answer 'novice questions'.
Same on the Mint forum. (All my other PC/Laptops are running Mint.)
But I suppose that's the Linux-guys 'attitude' not..?

Thanks a lot
Chris

btw it's only a few months now that I run Linux, Antix only yesterday. Never regretted it for a second, much to learn here...

[Buck Fankers]

>> (All my other PC/Laptops are running Mint.)

You may want to try to replace one of the Mint ones with MX. Especially the slowest Mint computer. I was very surprised how much faster is MX in my case.

[PPC]

@Chris:

Only now I had the time to look up most of my changes on my Flubox, i'll leave the instructions here, for you, or anyone interested (maybe myself, when I need to reinstall :-))

Quick Personalization of Fluxbox:
Fluxbox on antiX does not come, out of the box with a graphical way to make changes, so you have to use the C.C. ( Menu - Control Center - Desktops - Edit FluxBox). This opens up the text editor with several tabs, each referring to the relevant parts of the configuration Menu, Keys, etc.
It looks strange if you used to the, now almost standard, way of graphically editing your options, but it's not that hard to master the way this works...
[Note: to apply instantly any of the text file changes to Fluxbox mentioned here use the Menu - exit - restart session]

1- Adding your favorite applications to the start of the menu:
I start with the hardest thing on the list ... It's a easy thing thing to understand, once you get the hang of it.
If you want to know where the programs you installed are, open your file manager and navigate to "usr/share/applications" and get an idea how to start the desired program... The icons usually at "usr/share/icons".
If you manually installed any app (like I did with Firefox Quantum (see below, I installed it in my home folder), it's easy to know the application and icon folders location...

You have to edit the "Menu" text file.
In the line after [begin] add the application you want using this formula:
[exec] (Name_of_the_Application) {command_need_to_run_the_application} <path_to_the_icon_in_png_format>

Note: make a backup of the changes you make to the "Menu" file, they may get undone if the menu changes (ex: after you install an application)... there's away around that, I believe, but I'm too lazy to look for it. If the menu changes, I just paste my changes back in the start of the file...

In my case, the start of the Menu file looks like this:

[begin] (PPC)
[exec] (Terminal) {desktop-defaults-run -t} </usr/share/icons/Faenza-Cupertino-mini/apps/32/terminal.png>
[exec] (My Computer) {spacefm} </usr/share/icons/Faenza-Cupertino-mini/apps/32/file-manager.png>
[exec] (Firefox Quantum) {/home/PPC/firefox-61.0b14/firefox/firefox} </home/PPC/firefox-61.0b14/firefox/browser/chrome/icons/default/default32.png>
[exec] (Google Chrome) {/usr/bin/google-chrome} <//usr/share/icons/hicolor/32x32/apps/google-chrome.png>
[exec] (LibreOffice Writer) {libreoffice --writer --nologo} </usr/share/icons/Faenza-Cupertino-mini/apps/32/text-editor.png>
...

2- Add a "Start menu" to the bar:
Remeber it show as a arrow, not an icon, on the default Fluxbox that comes in antiX,
On the "init" text file look for the line with "session.screen0.toolbar.tools:" and edit it, adding "RootMenu" to it's start.

In my case, my "session.screen0.toolbar.tools:" line reads like this:

session.screen0.toolbar.tools: RootMenu, iconbar, systemtray, clock

3- To add Windows and PrintScreen Keys:
On the "Keys" text file add, anywhere:
Super_L : RootMenu #call the menu when you press the Windows/Super key)
Print :Exec antixscreenshot.sh # Take a screenshot

4- Configuring the bar to auto-hide and be full size:
This is the only configuration done via a graphical way:
Right click the bar, on a empty space and activate "Auto-hide" (nice option to activate in case you are using a small screen) and set "Dimension" as 100%.

Most of this changes will make Fluxbox look and fell more like a "regular" DE, without adding any weight to it...


P.

[Chriske]

>> (All my other PC/Laptops are running Mint.)

You may want to try to replace one of the Mint ones with MX. Especially the slowest Mint computer. I was very surprised how much faster is MX in my case.

Well, I might just do that... wait .... I will do that...!
I have Linux Mint 18.3 running on a P4 desktop 2Gb RAM not running very smooth. I was planning to swap Hd with SSD, hoping to avoid slow HD-access time. But I might just install Antix on these desktop(s).
When I see how 'fast' this little guy's running, well, installing Antix might be the solution...
But I see you mentioned MX. Before I did install MX on this eeePC and I was advised to try Antix, so I'm a bit puzzled here...

[PPC]

>> (All my other PC/Laptops are running Mint.)

You may want to try to replace one of the Mint ones with MX. Especially the slowest Mint computer. I was very surprised how much faster is MX in my case.

But I see you mentioned MX. Before I did install MX on this eeePC and I was advised to try Antix, so I'm a bit puzzled here...

Hi Chris: according to my experience: if you have a computer with 1 Gb of RAM or less, use antiX, if you have 2 or more Gb of RAM, MX is more usable on that machine.
In devices with small amounts of RAM and CPU power, antiX is sure to run smoothest. If you have large amounts of RAM/ CPU power, antix always uses less memory, but that does not make much difference (Example: if you have 8 gb of RAM, having a OS running idle on about 140 Mb of RAM- like antiX or well over 300 meg of RAM- like MX does not matter much).
I use antiX on my netbook and MX on my desktop (it has 3 Gb of RAM).
In short, antiX is always easier on your RAM, but lacks the bells and whistles that most people are used to on a desktop. For that, they can use the prettier younger brother MX :-)
MX is partly made from antiX- for example- once I had problem booting MX from USB, it booted but all I got was literally antiX default desktop and menu that then froze!!!
In a way someone coming from Windows can understand: if you have a low power device, stick with Windows 7 (it takes less resources), if you have something with more CPU and RAM, it runs both Windows 7 and 10 without problem. The same applies for antiX and MX.


P.

[Chriske]

Thanks again to clarify that out for me...
BUT... I do not need all these bells and whistles on my desktop or running in the background at all, never used it, not even in my Wintendo era. I need to work with a PC/laptop. It does not have to look fancy.
My computers just needs to go fast, as fast as possible..! That is all I want. And I will use any means to do that.
The only third party software I need to run on my computers is 3D-printing software and a CAD(drawing) program and a vector base drawing thing. A lifetime ago I did use CorelDraw, but I found a few other vector based tools embedded in Linux, capable of importing cdr(corel) files.
Me happy camper...!