Sparkylinux Openbox Does anyone know of a guide that I can read about how to make it work?

[LinuxUserSince2013]

I have an 18 year old computer that I still want to run linux on. SparkyLinux Openbox seemed to be a good choice. But the problem is I don't know how to configure it. I want a menu in the left hand corner of the panel. I want to be able to search for applications from it. I want to be able to have a clipman or clipman like on my panel like I do in xfce. I have been working on it in virtualbox all day, and can not get even a simple menu to work. Frustrated. I kinda hate window managers. But that is what I need to do.

I was trying the sparkylinux-8.0-x86_64-minimalcli.iso because I felt that I should do what I wanted from scratch. Because I'm trying to make it kinda work like xfce.

I installed the OS, and then just had a command line. I installed openbox and lighdm. Later tint2. After that I was completely lost for about 6 or 7 hours.

I'm going to try again only this time with sparkylinux-8.0-x86_64-minimalgui.iso, That I know already has a menu. But I still need the clipboard.

If you know of any step by step guide that would help me get started with openbox, that would be very helpful.

 

[MikeWalsh]

@LinuxUserSince2013 :-

Hm. 18 years old, huh? So.....2007-ish (or thereabouts). Fairly low resource, I would guess. Possibly an early dual-core? Not a lot of RAM, either...

We used to use Openbox in Puppy, but that was years ago. Hasn't been a 'thing' for a long time.....not for us, and the last time I used it must have been, oh....12-13 years ago? So my knowledge of the thing is very dusty.

Y'know, you could always take a look at 'Puppy' Linux. She was always intended to keep elderly hardware alive & functional. Just a suggestion, though; she's not everyone's "cup o' tea".

Others should be able to help with Openbox, if that's what you want to stick with.


Mike.

 

[LinuxUserSince2013]

@LinuxUserSince2013 :-

Hm. 18 years old, huh? So.....2007-ish (or thereabouts). fairly low resource, I would guess. Possibly an early dual-core? Not a lot of RAM, either...

We used to use Openbox in Puppy, but that was years ago. Hasn't been a 'thing' for a long time.....not for us, and the last time I used it must have been, oh....12-13 years ago? So my knowledge of the thing is very dusty.

Y'know, you could always take a look at 'Puppy' Linux. She was always intended to keep elderly hardware alive & functional. Just a suggestion, though; she's not everyone's "cup o' tea".

Others should be able to help with Openbox, if that's what you want to stick with.


Mike.

Hi Mike, Thank you for the comment.

I don't use Puppy because I need something I can install, and I don't trust puppy because it always runs as root. I know they say that is ok for that, but I don't think it is ever secure to run as root.

I have been using SparkLinux 7.8 XFCE on that 18 old machine. It works pretty good for what I do, but since things are getting heavier I thought it would be nice to try some Window Managers....

For years I wanted to get into Window Managers because they are extremely lightweight. I even thought about using them on my i5 and i7 computers. The reason why I love XFCE is because it is low on resources, which gives more computing power to the tasks I want the computer to do. Window Managers are even lighter. But the reason I haven't gotten into using them is because they are hard to learn. I know because I tried to learn from watching youtube videos and got lost multiple times. Then I started using chatgpt. I got to thinking maybe it could walk me through it. It helped me break a system. lol Thankfully it was in virtualbox.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

For a minimal install I'd suggest Debian network installer ISO (netinst)
Without desktop, completely minimal install is less than 1GB and resource consumption is very minimal.

You can then install windows manager or desktop of your choice however you want, depending on your choice this will add to resource consumption. XFCE is OK.

 

[LinuxUserSince2013]

For a minimal install I'd suggest Debian network installer ISO (netinst)
Without desktop, completely minimal install is less than 1GB and resource consumption is very minimal.

You can then install windows manager or desktop of your choice however you want, depending on your choice this will add to resource consumption. XFCE is OK.

SparkyLinux is Debian, and I want to stick with Sparky. Don't need to build debian from scratch. Besides I like the sparky repos.

I have installed Debian with the network installer. But it's been 2 years ago, and I don't remember how.

I proved to myself that I can not configure openbox by myself. If I can't run openbox, icewm, or fluxbox, cause I can't configure them, then for sure it would be a waste of my time to build an entire debian system from a net installer.

The point of this discussion is to see if someone can help me learn how to make openbox work for me. I may need to open a new discussion just about openbox. I can't be fooling with too many things at once. Openbox is more than complicated enough!

I'm going to try and use sparkylinux-8.0-x86_64-minimalgui.iso It comes with Openbox already configured. But there is a couple of things it doesn't do for me. So my next post will be to see if we can fix that.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

SparkyLinux is Debian, and I want to stick with Sparky.

I think it's time to get your hands dirty and start experimenting, learning, reading docs, noting things down etc. cause various online tutorials are rarely 100% up to date and also rarely address all issues one may have.

My policy is to dump everything that doesn't work well or is missing essential features, and for this reason rarely experience issues.
Time to be open for changes and focus on functionality rather than look and feel.

 

[LinuxUserSince2013]

I think it's time to get your hands dirty and start experimenting, learning, reading docs, noting things down etc. cause various online tutorials are rarely 100% up to date and also rarely address all issues one may have.

My policy is to dump everything that doesn't work well or is missing essential features, and for this reason rarely experience issues.
Time to be open for changes and focus on functionality rather than look and feel.

Sir, I have been running linux since 2013 on 4 computers and have got my hands dirty plenty of times. I decided I'm not following your suggestion at this time.

 

[LinuxUserSince2013]

I made a video about an issue I ran into with sparkylinux-8.0-x86_64-minimalgui, which runs openbox. I can't open a terminal from thunar. And I want a clipboard on the panel at all times. I don't know how to do these two things in openbox.

 

[CaffeineAddict]

I made a video

You certainly need to right click on menu, select "settings" and then configure some desktop options to have personalized experience.

If there is no setting for something you want then that's the limitation of your DE, nothing you can do about it other than getting another DE.

 

[The Duck]

Here's Sparky Linux Wiki.

start [Sparky Wiki]

wiki.sparkylinux.org

These may be useful.

Help:Getting started - Openbox

Openbox Window Manager

openbox.org

Openbox - Debian Wiki

wiki.debian.org

 

[KGIII]

In this case, I think it's best to help the OP with their question instead of suggesting alternatives.

There are times and places where suggesting an alternative is a good idea. That's usually when the thing they're trying to do is an "XY Problem," or your own experience has shown that the problem is unsolvable with the tools at hand.

To give a 'real-world' example, if someone asks about fixing their Ford, the answer is not 'buy a Chevy'. The correct answer is the one that helps them solve their actual problem.

But, if someone comes in with a question about using a supported version of Windows on a 32-bit computer, the answer might be, 'use Linux'.

 

[LinuxUserSince2013]

In this case, I think it's best to help the OP with their question instead of suggesting alternatives.

There are times and places where suggesting an alternative is a good idea. That's usually when the thing they're trying to do is an "XY Problem," or your own experience has shown that the problem is unsolvable with the tools at hand.

To give a 'real-world' example, if someone asks about fixing their Ford, the answer is not 'buy a Chevy'. The correct answer is the one that helps them solve their actual problem.

But, if someone comes in with a question about using a supported version of Windows on a 32-bit computer, the answer might be, 'use Linux'.

Thank you for saying this. Linux is very complicated and there is no end to learning it. That is why a person needs to be able to walk through it, one step at a time. In my case I have a working OS, I just needed to be able to get openbox to do what I need it to do. I think I accomplished this, by using another AI tool called Lumo. I already use protonmail as my main email provider, and Lumo is apart of the same company. I thought why not try it because I just needed someone or something to show me how to and what config files edit for openbox. Lumo did a very good job at this. I feel that I got enough of the bugs worked out of my virtualbox install that I can now go ahead and do a full install on real hardware. Using the same config files from the virtualbox install I should be able to make the install on real hardware work the same. Once I can start using openbox on a regular basis, then I'll learning it better. But I always need something that can get me jump started. It seems Lumo did that for me.

 

[GatorsFan]

Have a look at - https://wiki.sparkylinux.org/doku.php/sparky_obmenu?s[]=openbox

Sparky Linux with Openbox -​