FluxBox Recommendations for lightweight WM

B

balanga

I've just installed Fuxbox and whilst it fullfills the requirements of a lightweight WM there doesn't seem to be an easy way of adding menu entries.. I expected that if I ran pkg install emacs that emacs would automagically appear under Editors, but it doesn't unless I have overlooked something. Is there a similar lightweight WM which provides this option?
 
If I remember correctly there is some menugenerator (on other distr.) but I never rely on that, manual adding entry in Fluxbox menu is super fast, easy, and it will be done on Your way.

You can check how it is done on TrueOS, since (I think) Lumina desktop is Fluxbox based.
 
I've always run fvwm. Although it's rather involved in setup with a somewhat lengthy text based configuration, it's very easy to add menu items as the need arises. It's also highly configurable and easily accessible.
 
balanga, adding entries to x11-wm/fluxbox menu is as easy as opening ~/.fluxbox/menu in a text editor and adding the program in plain text. You just need to watch your syntax so you keep your beginning and ending markup in sync, can copy and paste from what's already there and edit to your need.

I have a standard menu that I save to use every time since I always install the same programs, but it's easy to modify by hand in editors/leafpad and needs to be done manually.
 

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balanga said:
I've just installed Fuxbox and whilst it fullfills the requirements of a lightweight WM there doesn't seem to be an easy way of adding menu entries.. I expected that if I ran pkg install emacs that emacs would automagically appear under Editors, but it doesn't unless I have overlooked something. Is there a similar lightweight WM which provides this option?
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It is an old post but anywhere:
https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~reinholz/freebsd/fluxconfig.html
 
I ultimately settled on cwm as my window manager. No titles, buttons or tray, I just ctrl-alt-M maximise each window (mostly) and alt-tab between them or use a 1 pixel gap at the top of screen to left, middle, right mouse click the desktop to show popup menus for the open windows, groups, programs.

To launch a program, alt-? and type the first 2 or 3 characters of a program name usually refines the list down to a single program (enter to run it).

My complete config is as below (I've set the < and > keys to adjust volume up/down).

Code: 
# .cwmrc
# 
gap                             1 0 0 0
ignore                          xclock
ignore                          xload
color inactiveborder            Black
color activeborder              "#494949"
color groupborder               "#01a252"
color urgencyborder             "#3d9751"
color selfont                   "#0034A9"
color font                      "#FFFFFF"
color menufg                    "#49F6F6"
color menubg                    "#333333"
fontname                        "News10:size=11:antialias=true"
bind-key CM-comma               "mixerctl outputs.master=-5"
bind-key CM-period              "mixerctl outputs.master=+5"
command "chromium"                            "chrome"
command "audacious"                            "audacious"

Once you forego all of the usual window manager decorations you quite quickly become accustomed to the speed/simplicity, but makes boring desktop screenshots.
s.png
 
It is in OpenBSD. There have been multiple releases and the latest, 4.0, offers a new menu module that is Coded in C, fast and lightweight. The python3 based module is about 4x slower and the lx module pulls in additional dependencies. Unfortunately, the new module segfaults in OpenBSD. I do not have a FreeBSD box at the moment.
The raw build instructions look pretty easy and are listed on the projects web site under "Install"
https://github.com/johanmalm/jgmenu/blob/master/INSTALL.md
If you get jgmenu running on FreeBSD, please communicate to the community on what it took.
 
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