Fluxbox - A Fast, Simple and Easy to Configure Window Manager

If, like me, you had pre-conceptions about Fluxbox being an old-fashioned window manager that nobody uses any more, think again!
Yes, it's default configuration is ugly, but the same is true of most window managers. Where Fluxbox differs though, is it is child's-play to tweak and configure to your own taste.
All configuration is done through simple text files and in a short space of time you can set up Fluxback so that it acts and behaves like any other more modern window manager, and with less fuss.
Personally I'm blown away by Fluxbox and wish I'd looked at it years ago. Give it a spin, you won't regret it.
I hope you enjoy the video :-)
If you enjoy my channel and/or find it useful, you can support me in a number of ways.
1. If you would like to become a Patron, my page is here:
/ oldtechbloke
2. If you would like to order OTB merchandise, I now have a Spreadshirt shop and a Teespring shop:
shop.spreadshirt.co.uk/oldtec...
teespring.com/stores/otbs-sto...
3. if you want to buy me a beer, I've now launched my new website and you'll find a PayPal button for that very purpose:
www.oldtechbloke.com
If you chose any of the above options you will be helping to keep the channel going and I am extremely grateful.
You can also join me on the following:
To join LBRY please click the link below. As a disclaimer, I will earn LBRY points if you use the link so thanks for the support
lbry.tv/$/invite/@oldtechbloke:8
To join the OldTechBloke Facebook group click here:
/ oldtechbloke
To join the OldTechBloke subreddit click here:
/ oldtechbloke
To view my GitLab repo:
gitlab.com/OldTechBloke
Ramble On!

[@mmjackk667]

His voice is really soothing and relaxing. I think he could do really well on his own radio show, or maybe voicing over cartoons.

[@SwiatLinuksa]

Thanks for that! Nice to see something other than only distro test. Cheers!

[@LinuxUnderwear]

Heh, says who 🤭

[@dwaynearthur1476]

Sir , your Audio is EXCELLENT!!! 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽🔥🔥🔥🔥😎. Keep up the good work !

[@talldarkstrangerpr]

This is one of my favorite window managers in Linux. Light, onubtrusie, and highly configurable. Thanks so much for this one!

[@genkiferal7178]

for those trying to figure out antiX OS: only zzz-Fluxbox allows for custom icon themes. Loving Fluxbox. Needs more dark themes, though, and need to know how to download styles. I upgraded and one of my favorite green styles disappeared. I think antiX core with zzz-Fluxbox on a VM and/or flashdrive would be the perfect fast portable OS. Anyone have a cloned VM of that already? I want it, please.

[@rmcellig]

Hi Steve!! This is a FANTASTIC video. I LOVE window managers like openbox, JWM, fluxbox etc.... So simple, fast and easy to configure. I love working in this type of environment. I don't care if it's old school, new school, ugly or beautiful. If I can get my work done efficiently with a rock solid foundation like debian, I'm fine with that!!👍😀. Well done!!!

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks mate

[@NOPerative]

Just getting back into Fluxbox with FreeBSD then this video drops. Neato!

[@RobBoudreau]

A blast from the past. I ran Fluxbox for a while back in I think it was 2001 or 02, didn't stay with it long. Was a big E16 user back then, just liked the look and the bells and whistles of E16. Great video Steve. Fluxbox is a nice alternative I think for folks who want the minimalism of tiling window managers, but not the tiling. Easy to configure and solid as a rock. Cheers!

[@OldTechBloke]

Cheers Rob

[@zaugitude]

Ha! Me too on both. I had not thought about e16 in a long time. May have to look at the current incarnation, although I understand it is a total rewrite, but maybe that is good 😃

[@zaugitude]

It is actually very easy to edit the menu, the syntax is immediately obvious. Being able to comment out entries and rearrange them as well as make your own categories makes manual editing very worth your time. Edit: alt right mouse drag to resize the windows from anywhere inside; beyond the obvious, it can be useful making large screenshots, etc. 👍

[@krzesimirchrzastowicz4833]

I use MX-Fluxbox 21 as my daily driver. I think Fluxboxwm+Tint2+Rofi+Lxappearance is one of the most configurable quasi-DE you can imagine. The syntax of config files is really simple, you can edit every menu entry, you can even ascribe your custom menus to your Tint2 buttons. The system starts up using less than 400MB RAM and it is a really good solution for older machines. The only problem is that some windows work really well with composition managers, like compton or picom, but some others (eg. Thunar, Firefox) cause several glitches. That's why I think to have a better user experience it is sometimes much better to use gtk2- or qt- apps with Fluxbox rather than gtk3-ones (eg. PcManFM or PcManFM-qt rather than Thunar).

[@genkiferal7178]

good to know. thanks. I am trying to build the perfect antiX zzz-fluxbox for a VM that I can use on a flashdrive, but figuring it all out is a pain in the butt.

[@Danielddiniz]

Great video Steve. Fluxbox is definitely very nice WM. A spare when I don't have XMonad, Awesome and DWM.

[@OldTechBloke]

Lol you’re as bad as me. I3 dwm xmonad leftwm spectrwm qtile openbox

[@duduonyu5810]

Very good!!! Thank you for speaking English!!

[@testingstuff6111]

Nice and simple

[@danielhmorgan]

thanks! I may try this on Nixos on both desktop and Raspberry Pi

[@davidwayne9982]

I just have to say-- LOVE your videos--- nice slow style that I can follow easily!!! some of these guys on here know their stuff-- and can do it-- but they can't demonstrate correctly-- they go so flippin fast with the mouse flipping from one place to another so fast my old eyes won't have time to focus much lreess realize what they DID!!.. Anyway- THANKS..

[@cstephan7]

Please kindly make sure to share your Fluxbox dotfiles, especially that Arc-Dark-NORD(?) theme that you customized :)

[@supertouk]

I've loved fluxbox for years. I love fluxbox, especially on slackware. It may seem intimidating at first, but once you understand it, it's a very good window manager.

[@OldTechBloke]

I’ve just recompiled Fluxbox on my Slackware systems to support imlib2 so that it shows menu icons :-)

[@supertouk]

@@OldTechBloke Sweet. Another video coming? ;-)

[@OldTechBloke]

Do you think there would be much interest?

[@supertouk]

@@OldTechBloke For me, yes. :-) I use the standard fluxbox panel and have added a menu to it, but it's just the right pointing arrow. Being able to change it to another icon would be nice, not that I've tried to.

[@haplozetetic9519]

I'm not sure I ever tried Fluxbox. I went through a number of WMs in the early days and ended up spending a lot of time with Icewm. It was also quite configurable, and I made sure my config files were always backed up to avoid having to redo everything. The reason I haven't used it in a while is that some apps from KDE will not retain the KDE theme when run in other WMs.

[@mmaruszewicz]

I've been using IceWM for many years. I'ts simple and fast.

[@yomaldiaholson4577]

Your video has helped me decide that I can in fact use Slax, which uses Fluxbox. First time I booted it up, I did not like it. I'm used to XFCE as a DE and whatever they use as a WM, I've never used Fluxbox. I started looking around the Internet because I know pretty much every DE and WM in Linux is customizable and came across your video. I'm pretty sure I'll be fine with Fluxbox now and I'll take it as a challenge to customize Slax and blow someone's mind 😁 P.S. I know I can install a different DE and/or WM if I want, but I kinda wanted to use what's already there. Installing other DE and WM's is just unnecessary for me, especially when most of them are so customizable and you can make them look and act like each other. I need lightweight stuff to run off a persistent live USB, Slax gives me that so I'm not gonna tinker with too much root config if you know what I mean

[@chrisxdeboy]

If you like Haiku, you can put tabs on windows, but im not sure if you can do tabs only.

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

I don't see ya as closed minded at all. Just fixed at what you like. Lol I can see that they are somewhat the same I like the sound of it better :-P I can say I have never gave this a go at all and yes it is awful when first started like SpectrWm and the others. At least you get a bar with some function where alot of the other Wm's you don't get a bar at all... Lol You did a awesome job dressing it up. Myself I like the top bar in the windows with the "- and x" in the corner, just use to seeing them and with my 1/2 blindness it makes it easier for me to seperate the windows when stacked. The Tabing & sticky window thing is ok, I just would not use them... Lol Thanks OTB for the video as always! Cheers! LLAP

[@OldTechBloke]

Cheers Bruce 😀

[@derekr54]

I like the MX Linux version of Fluxbox and it is light and fast on my elderly dual core laptop.

[@7atab]

That moment 14:00+ when I realized that I'm watching my first tiling WM video ever🤡😂

[@LinuxUnderwear]

What can I say? WM that is perfect for people who actually do sth on their computers besides ricing 🤣 - fluxbox users rock as usual

[@charlietyran4375]

Mr OTB loved your vid on fluxbox i been taking a look at it and i do like it but could you do some more talk on it with a bit more detale how to use it as am starting out on a tilling.openbox and flux box is what i picked to start with ... and i do hope you and family doing well

[@chrissoskavounis4307]

Great video OTB!!! I have fluxbox as a second "DE" on my Mx linux laptop...i also use MX fluxbox on the raspberry pi 4 and works very well!!! You can have a look at it if you want!!! Thanks again for the video...

[@genkiferal7178]

great to know! Do they have an easy-to-install arm version? I tried forever to get the pi version of Debian on a Pi 4, but gave up after a few hours.

[@chrissoskavounis4307]

@@genkiferal7178 they do!

[@genkiferal7178]

@@chrissoskavounis4307 yay!!! thanks

[@---Ferran---]

It was a pity you didn't show the fluxbox files with an editor with dark mode set.(f.i. nano or vim) nevertheless it was a great video and i think i could to able to install Fluxbox and configure it. Thank you.

[@5wm562]

Have you tried Ctrl+m to be rid of the title bar?

[@OldTechBloke]

No actually

[@ipshitshaha7244]

How to install Fluxbox on Ubuntu or Debian server? How did you use Arc theme? Loved it, its my favorite theme.

[@OldTechBloke]

There’s a GitHub page with the Fluxbox arc dark theme. Just drop the themes folder from that in the styles folder github.com/son-link/fluxbox-arc-dark

[@genkiferal7178]

In the future, can you please do some close-ups when showing detail? Even a few photos of close-ups would be helpful.

[@genkiferal7178]

antiX "tiling" is control+ 1 through 9. xfce can be set to, but I use a mod key + arrow keys for that - if I use it at all. Tiling that doesn't use exact measurements is often a waste of screen space, because you get a bunch of blank space in text files (including terminal and web browser) on the righthand side. Anyone know how to set exact sizes for various windows - and have it remain that way every time - on antiX's Fluxbox ?

[@replica9000]

One hack you could try to have no (or very little) title bar and still merge windows would be to edit your theme file. Set window.font: sans-0, and set window.title.height: 4 (or something just big enough to grab with the mouse)

[@genkiferal7178]

I see we both use Debian. If you have any great Debian videos, please make a playlist. So many videos are Ubuntu or Ubuntu Mint. Or Arch.

[@rodneymitchell5957]

fbmenugen is not available on Debian, I use Menu Maker instead, no icons alas.

[@OldTechBloke]

Just compile it from source

[@zeocamo]

love you videos, i wish you stop burn my EYES .. with the write editor, can you please set a dark theme? thx

[@xyicoc]

Hi, how to change prefered language in fluxbox?

[@OldTechBloke]

Fluxbox isn’t a lnguage

[@rmcellig]

How do you open all windows centered?

[@OldTechBloke]

I would have to Google that mate, sure it’s possible though

[@OldTechBloke]

Found it. Use the apps file app] (name!=gimp) [Position] (WINCENTER) {0 0} [end]

[@andremagalhaes664]

Great video as always OTB! Can you talk about Legacy machines (32bit)? Some Distros support 32bits like MX Linux, Antix Linux, Q4OS Linux, Elive Linux, Bodhi Linux, SlitaZ, Slax, Tiny Core Linux, Puppy Linux (Slacko, Bionic or BusterDog). And there's a project to maintain Arch Linux on 32 bit (ArchLinux32) that caught my attention and seems nice and a review of it would be great!

[@OldTechBloke]

Only problem is I don’t have any 32bit hardware

[@andremagalhaes664]

@@OldTechBloke I have 2 laptops and one notebook. Notebook Asus EeePC Intel Atom 1.6 GHz 2GB RAM (32bit), i tried several but stick with AntiX. An old laptop with only 512mb RAM (32bit), i have Puppy Linux (BusterDog). My main laptop is an HP Pavillion, AMD 8, 2.00 GHz quad-core, 4 GB RAM (64bit), in it i have dualboot Windows 8.1 / Manjaro Linux. I test the distros in VM VirtualBox first in my main laptop even tho it's not a powerfull machine, still i test some these lighter distros in VM very well.

[@bradleystevens9833]

Nice video Bloke. Mabox is an Manjaro(arch) based openbox, I rather enjoy. Check it out, if you haven't. *edited thanks Brian*

[@Blessed2bFresh]

I'm pretty sure I'm using a highly customized openbox on Mabox.

[@bradleystevens9833]

@@Blessed2bFresh yes you are correct.

[@Blessed2bFresh]

@@bradleystevens9833 Isn't it a wonderful distro? I love it

[@bradleystevens9833]

@@Blessed2bFresh if I were more comfortable with cli, it'd be my daily. 👍

[@johnp.johnson1541]

He says "old 1990s windows manager" as if that is a bad thing. LINUX is an old 1990s kernel based on an old 1970s operating system.

[@sntshkmr60]

Real video starts at 2:11. Thank me later.

[@Beryesa.]

"Simple and easy to configure" video: 25 minutes Can't relate 😅

[@OldTechBloke]

Really? Too much for you then. Better stick with a DE

[@Beryesa.]

@@OldTechBloke idk, sway was enough for me after a minute of configuration

[@mmjackk667]

Gnome is a much better, more capable, modern Stacking Windows Manager, popular enough to get updated regularly. You can't go wrong with Gnome, if, for some reason, you like stacking windows managers.