Using Openbox as window-manager on Linux

Posted by Rakesh under Howto, Linux /GNU, Technology

For many years I have used GNOME on my Debian linux laptop. For some months I have been experiencing poor ‘interactive performance’ under heavy system load with GNOME (a desktop environment). When the system is largly idle the gnome desktop feels fast and snappy, and
interaction is very immediate. However, when I start a heavy background process, CPU utilization shoots to 100% on both CPU
cores (which is good!), but my whole desktop becomes sluggish i.e. under heavy system load, the gnome desktop keeps on responsing
nicely but not as it should be.

As I need lightweight system. So, sfter some investigation I decided to try openbox, and am now using it as my default window manager on a desktop PC running Debian 5.0 (Lenny). It works well both with the gnome session manager (choose openbox from the session menu when you log in) and without the session manager (using just the ’startx’ command and a startup file in ‘~/.xinitrc’ to start up the windowmanager and a few clients). It is lightweight, very fast, very robust, and very tailorable that includes:

* Minimal overhead, which makes it ideal for lightweight systems, older hardware or speed demons;
* Few dependencies, which again is appealing to lightweight or minimal systems;
* Mouse-wheel scrolling of the desktops, for quick access to multiple workspaces;
* A customisable right-click menu and customisable keybindings written as XML files;
* Piped menus, where the output of one menu script is piped back into the Openbox menu and used in another (imagine the possibilities!);
* Plenty of themes, which are all customizable through text files;
* Multi-head Xinerama support for dual monitor output;
* And above all, SPEED.

To understand what Openbox actually is, it’s important to know the difference between a window manager and a desktop environment.

A window manager is the program which draws on your screen the “box” in which the program is run. A window manager controls how your program window works, looks and acts. It decides what window decorations to use and gives you a way to move the windows, hide them, resize them, minimize them and close them. It controls what buttons you push to do those things, and what keys you press to make those things happen.

On the other hand, a desktop environment minds the entire desktop. It provides a taskbar, a system tray, a login manager, additional menus or perhaps screensavers and desktop icons. It might include a file manager, a text editor or some other accessory programs, too.

Openbox is a window manager, not a desktop environment. Openbox is only responsible for maintaining the windows you open on your screen — nothing else. That means installing Openbox won’t give you easy menu access to wallpaper options, a taskbar or system panel, or most of those other doo-dads. It does, however, give you a framework to build incorporate other programs that do those things — and usually with a greater degree of freedom over the style and interface.

Openbox can be used alone, without a desktop environment, or it can be used to replace the window manager in a complete desktop environment. Either way is acceptable.