hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr0374.txt

Episode: 374
Title: HPR0374: TiT Radio - Fluxbox 001
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr0374/hpr0374.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-07 19:23:06

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Hey everyone, this is Monster B and you're about to listen to TIT radio from People You Trust.
This is TIT.
Welcome to TIT radio, the only show in Hacker Public Radio with super cow powers.
This is episode 1.
Let's meet our round table of TITs.
Hey Art.
Good evening everybody.
How's it going?
You're dead!
You finally got him.
Chad.
Screen's inside the patient.
Dan.
What are you doing?
Jay Lindsay.
Hello.
Clot 2.
Hello.
Peter 64.
Get eyeing at timely.
How you doing?
I forgot.
Jay Lindsay, you're Jay, man, right?
You guys keep changing your names.
Snack Machine B.
Hey Art.
330.
Howdy, howdy.
Zoke.
How you doing?
And Mrs. Zoke.
Hello.
Hey John, names as well.
You know like Zoke's most or something?
I don't know if you want to.
I really do.
I'll give you a real good bloody nickname in a second Zoke.
Hey, are you going to get sent to the bin?
Yeah.
Oh come on Peter, I've got to hear it now.
No, I kind of lean the bin agent.
Monster B, can I be referred to as NAD on this show?
What's the name?
Did you say NAD?
Yeah, NAD.
It's my name backwards.
Okay, okay NAD.
All right.
That's a pretty good name too.
Speaking of booby bin, we better pick the...
We're going to change the name from the digital dragon slayer to the sheriff.
Because apparently people didn't like that name.
Now Klaatu, you have the option to opt out if you want to.
You want me to take your name off the wheel?
Yeah, since I was at last time, I'm taking off.
All right, let me spin the wheel.
Wow, that's loud.
All right, J-Man.
Are you excited?
Yeah, I'm really excited.
Does he get to where it's goat stuff?
Yeah, let me put it on.
I didn't poke you today.
No, it's really nice.
All right, today's topic is flux box.
Well, just to case, somebody's listening for the first time,
or doesn't know what flux box says.
It's a lightweight window manager for X that was based on black box 0.61.1.
It's built using C++ and it's licensed under the MIT license.
I thought it was GPL, didn't you?
It says MIT license.
Yeah, I can't use a GPL too.
I don't know everything's GPL.
I wish you'd get about the other licenses.
And I guess X is licensed under the MIT also.
Yeah, it was developed at MIT, X was.
As far as I know.
And what we learned from the last TOLPS show is that it was actually done before they had PCPIP kernel support X was just a little plug for TOLPS.
Very nice.
Yeah.
I thought you were talking about flux box for a second.
I was like, I don't remember bringing up flux box in my life, though.
I said, but you're actually using flux box.
Besides myself.
It's an AC machine and a monster bee.
Yeah, I've got an open use of it since David Abbott on Linux Christ.
He did a really good podcast on it and W bar.
And Dave Yates did one around the same point.
What's that I use in the back team?
I just stopped using it.
I used it about a month and a half ago.
I used it up and on.
We're using Kitty4 now, aren't you, Chad?
You're all up and there.
I use Kitty4 work and I'm using open box at home.
So what's the big difference between open box and flux box?
Like, I know open box sort of got popular with crunchy old, crunch bay, all of a sudden.
Yeah, that's what I'm using crunch bank.
I'll tell you what killed it for me with flux box is I would make a configuration change for my desktop.
And when I restarted the machine, it would go away.
And I know that that can easily work around, but it killed me.
Like any kind of menu change that I would make, if I restarted the machine, it would go away.
I've never heard of that before.
What was happening, you know?
You could figure out why.
That doesn't normally happen.
No.
Really?
What were you using to make your changes?
The flux box configuration file for the menus on the, you know, when you right click on the desktop, the menus.
Did you have some kind of auto configuration thing going on?
I was using the Linux Mint flux box.
His home director was read only.
That's why.
No, it would not, it would not stay after a reboot or would not stay after you did like a restart of flux box or a reconfigured flux box.
Either one.
Oh, interesting.
But you know what's funny is, when it first happened to me, I tweeted slash identity about it and someone was like, yeah, that's the way it is.
And you need to do this work around to make it stick.
So I thought that was just normal.
So you guys are freaking me out of there.
Yeah, that's never happened to me.
I can figure out how I like it and it stays like that.
So for instance, if you want to add Firefox to your right-click menu on the desktop, you can just go in and edit the comp file.
And when you restart, that sticks.
Correct.
Well, just a frag.
What the flux box?
There's a matter of interest, Chad.
But why wouldn't you just assign Firefox to a key combination?
Well, that to me is the beauty of flux box.
All your applications that you use most of the time you put in your key file.
Like in my art scene that I've been running out for about four months, I've never bothered to set up the menu because you just don't need it.
Well, it's the same way with open marks, I guess, so that's why.
The thing is, as I was already used to open marks, so the tiny little things that frustrated me about flux box, I guess, just kicked me back over to flux.
But apparently, they were unheard of.
Yeah, I went to the trouble initially of setting up the menu.
And of course, you can run that.
What flux box generate menu scripts that automatically does it anyway.
But after a while, once you get your key set up, probably you just find yourself never bothering to use a menu anyway.
I tell you one thing I did love about flux box was, and this sounds so trivial, and you probably all make fun of me or this too.
But just the ability to click on a window and tap it to another window.
So, my Identica Wibber bar was the same as my pigeon bar.
You know, because I could just take a pigeon and drop it in, and all of a sudden they were taping windows.
I agree with you, I love that.
Yeah, that's one of my favorite features of it, too.
In fact, I'm going to do it right now.
Oh, yeah, right onto my X-Chat.
Good.
Now I've got your face looking at my chat.
It should stay there.
I need to put, I'm going to replace my wife's face with your face on my desk.
Oh, you're not listening.
That is a beautiful thing, though.
Every window manager should have that feature.
Is KDE coming with that?
I thought I heard something.
Maybe as far as I know, you can't do it.
Yeah, exactly.
Is that what we talked about on Linux?
Thanks for you can group tasks.
Is that what they meant?
Maybe.
No, this is a little different thing.
That's from the task manager, yeah.
They're talking about doing it in fluxbox, the windows and so on.
There's actually grabbing window and combining windows.
You can't do it in King.
Oh, yeah.
You can do it.
You can do it.
In fluxbox, you do it with the middle mouse button.
That's what you're talking about in black.
Exactly.
That's exactly right.
Yeah.
You can do it with, and actually, Jeremy told me about this.
You can do it with Compass if you configure it.
So it is available in other windows managers.
But fluxbox makes it nice and easy by default.
Do you guys know how to...
I've been looking around trying to figure out how to do it.
How do I auto-group like...
Like I said, I start up Firefox, and then it automatically starts up,
like G-Potter, XChat, and a few other things all together.
Is there a way to do that?
I guess they call it auto-grouping.
Oh, so if you open one application and another application,
they're always grouped together?
Yeah.
I didn't know you could do that.
It's probably in a config file somewhere I would imagine.
Yeah, in the old fluxbox documentation,
there's a how-to on how to do it.
But it's no longer...
You know, they say they refer to the new fluxbox wiki,
and there's nothing in there about it.
Or I can't find it yet.
Was this under the group's configuration file?
It could be.
I guess I'd have been replaced by the apps configuration file,
so grouping now occurs under apps.
But it is still possible to do it.
But you're talking...
Well, yes, it is.
But you're saying when you fire up Firefox,
it would fire up a couple other applications too,
at the same time, and group them all together in the tabs.
Yes.
I don't know.
Let me try it.
Because I know in the apps, you can specify a group
that they should all be grouped together when...
But I thought you had the start-each-one individually.
Let me try it out for you.
Well, that would be perfect right there, even.
You know, if the automatically group together
when I start-each-one,
even if I have to start-each-one by itself,
I'm looking at the wiki now,
and that might be something you have to start individually,
but...
Yeah, according to fluxbox.org,
there's apps file.
But you do the application specific parameters
and all the group things together in all manner of things.
All right.
You know what I did?
This is what I demonstrated,
and this is how it's been working for me.
In my apps file,
I set up that Firefox,
whenever I launch it,
appears on the second desktop.
Now, if you're not familiar with the apps file,
there's a specific...
Look, it's read the wiki,
but there's a specific naming format that you have to use.
And part of that naming format,
you get from the WM,
the window manager underscore class variable for X-PROP.
There's a command on the wiki page for the apps,
describing it that will pull that information out for you,
of whatever windows execute it.
So, for instance,
for me to get Firefox to appear on the second workspace,
the name for that is Navigator,
with a capital-in.
It's not Ice Weasel,
it's not Firefox,
but it's Navigator with a capital-in.
Now, every other window that gets started off of that
is called,
Dash-WW-Browser.
So whenever I click on a link
in X-Chat,
it would bring up a new window on Firefox,
but it would put it in the same workspace
as the X-Chat was,
and I didn't want that.
So I created a group under the apps file
that group everybody named X-W-W-Browser
and Navigator together.
So whenever I click on a link in X-Chat,
now it comes up on the same desktop as Navigator.
But they're not tabbed together,
which the Wiki doesn't go into a whole lot of detail
as to whether or not...
But it's okay that they're not tabbed together.
I would rather tab together myself,
but you know,
that's my preference,
but it's hard to say what
you can actually do
beyond the other group.
I don't know.
I'm actually going to see if I can get it tabed now.
But I do.
I do like the way that the new one
or I think what is version 1.1 now?
Fluxbox is that.
I do like the way it tabs things together now
on the title bar.
Do you guys remember before I used to have
the little tabs up on top of your window?
I think that was like the 0.9 or 0.09 release.
You know, it is a lot cleaner now.
I don't remember.
I don't remember,
because back then I didn't use it that much.
I think you could move them
to the side of the window
or to the top of the window
where we wanted to.
Yeah, you can move the tabs pretty much
on any side of the window
that you wanted to.
How does the tabs work on the other side?
I've never had them anywhere else,
but on the top.
Does that muck with anything?
I mean, I really never used the tabs.
The couple times that I did,
I mean, it didn't really bother me
and it didn't do anything with the apps
as far as changing anything,
how it normally would be.
No, but I mean like when you
full-screened out,
does it still like account for the tab
on the side?
You're a bunch of bloody
shillest nights.
The little tabs anyway.
What are you?
You're the main's way.
Like, you don't have any tabs on your screen.
Hey, that's not a call for, man.
Must have been putting them in the box.
Okay.
We don't put it with crap around here.
Ten minutes.
Okay.
I thought that was,
this is a positive experience.
It's not one that we're dragging each other down.
I'm ashamed of Peter.
That was just uncalled for.
Send out with Dan, don't worry.
Well, you know another thing about the apps files to be aware of.
Is this through me at first?
If you want stuff to launch on a specific workspace,
realize that they number workspace
is starting with zero,
not with one.
So even though like workspace,
one is called workspace,
one is actually workspace zero.
Is that had thrown me at first?
Am I the only one that removes all the other workspaces?
I think so.
Yeah.
You only have one desktop?
Yeah.
I know.
Yeah, you want to make it like windows?
No, it's because of my ADD.
When I stick windows on other workspaces,
I forget about them.
I'll have like 15 instances of Firefox running
and wonder where all my RAM is.
See, that's where you need to bring in things like FBPager,
which show you what's on the desktop.
Again, where did you find that app file?
It's in dot-fluxbox.
If it's not there, you could just create it as APPS.
It has a specific...
Yeah, I thought you had said you created it.
No, I was just looking in...
Where's it in Etsy, right?
No, it's in your home directory.
Yeah, in your home directory.
If you don't have a dot-fluxbox,
mine had a setting for FB run in there to begin with.
Well, since you brought up the FB run,
I mean, that's a pretty useful little tool.
You probably have to install that separately, don't you?
It was included on my adebian install.
Yeah, and they came with my art install tool.
It was already mapped to...
Yeah.
It was even mapped in the FB keys for all the F2.
Yeah.
Like it would be in Nome, Arcadee,
Yeah, there is a dot-fluxbox in the home.
Yeah, if there's not an app file in there,
you can just create it.
But it's a specific syntax that it uses.
Yeah, you're right.
FB run is part of Fluxbox, my mistake.
And you should have...
If you're running Ubuntu or Debian,
you should have the app file.
Does FB run in there?
What's FB panel?
Can someone take a step back and tell me why I should run Fluxbox on first place?
Does all the cool kids are doing it?
Other than that?
Right way, I guess.
That's the big common thing.
You know what I like about it is because it doesn't really get in your way when you're...
Like when you're just trying to work in your terminal a lot,
and you just kind of want to launch applications and have them open.
But you don't really want like,
I don't know, the whole desktop experience.
You just kind of want more direct contact with the application.
That's how I kind of feel about it.
I kind of like it about that.
No, Fluxbox is for the chronically dissatisfied geek.
Somebody who has to tanker with their system continually.
FB WMs like that too.
One of the big reasons to use Fluxbox is it's very low resource-intensive.
So you can put it on machines that are P2s and P3s and still have a decent experience.
I ran Fluxbox on a Pentium 1 and it ran like gold.
I think I read somewhere that the RAM footprint of Fluxbox was like a hundred megabytes at the maximum.
There you go.
Yeah, I think...
I'm running around a P3 right here.
750 megahertz B3.
Yeah, when I deal with that...
I've got a 550 cellar on that comes to a complete crawl with Fluxbox on it.
Runs great with XFCE.
Is there something wrong with your system?
Well, not really.
I found XFCE runs great on it, so that's what I run.
You tell them ads.
I love having choices.
Amen to that.
Simplicity for the user.
People who like to customize their desktop.
It's low requirements for hardware.
Very big reason.
Is that the top three?
The chronically dissatisfied geek.
And no point in putting them in the box.
Yeah, that's the best thing is no desktop icon.
I put it on just to learn about it.
I mean, I'm new at this and it's a big learning experience.
Yeah, you know one thing about that.
It was one of my early window managers as well.
And you really get into that.
It's into the realization that Linux is all plant tech.
You know, for some reason it's so direct in Fluxbox.
Because you open up a menu, you can big file,
and you enter your application that you want it to launch,
or show up in the menu.
And then you save the file, you go back out to your little desktop,
and the right click, and voila, there's the application to just now added.
I mean, it's just so cool.
And that starts to trickle down into the rest of the system
and it starts to realize, oh, everything on my system is just a plain text file
that I can open up and edit.
That's an entire thing.
It's kind of cool.
It is, because I mean anybody can download,
know, you know, like a bunch.
To me, Ubuntu doesn't really teach you anything about Linux.
I'm not going to get into the discussion.
Again.
Sorry.
Oh, I mean, I agree.
But that would take the show into a different direction entirely.
Well, say, and for people that are running Ubuntu,
you could just as easily go in and have to get FluxBox and, you know,
restart X, and choose it in your GDM,
and it's like a totally different experience.
Yeah, I did that.
And also, I mean, I have a mint running on one of these other boxes,
and I did it on that,
and like the mint set up better than the other one, so.
I tend to slightly disagree that running FluxBox,
well, learn you more on the Unix platform
than running Cnome or KDE.
But be fair.
You're right, in a sense, that if you run like Open Solaris,
or I guess, well, no.
What does freeBSD come with these days, or do you get the choose?
Do you get the choose?
Yeah.
So I guess it depends.
But for sure, you're going to get used to configuring.com,
take files, faster, with FluxBox, or OpenBox,
and things that have the letter-weight windows managers.
You might not be for the person who's just diving into it, though.
It's probably better for the person who got used to something easier
and now wants to move forward.
Wouldn't you say?
Yeah, or the person that likes to dive into it first.
Yeah, yeah.
Say, and that person should run FluxBox on top of a Flakware.
There's a whole heap of config files then.
Or Gen2.
Yeah.
Well, just so you know, I downloaded Flakware.
I got Slackware running, and FluxBox will be on their next to dry.
Yeah.
I mean, the content of my...
Go ahead.
I'm sorry, Art, continue.
Well, I was just going to thank you for helping me get it set up in Flakware.
You are welcome.
FluxBox is not a desktop environment, just to be sure people understand that.
It doesn't have the level of integration and features that Genome or KDE do.
But it's a very...
I gave this product before, very unintrusive window environment that is that elegant
and can really provide you with some nice little high-candy and configuration capabilities
to set your desktop the way you would like to have it set up.
Right, which hopefully is the reason why people are going away from the other plates
and coming to Linux because they want to configure their own desktop.
Or they want to be able to change this and change that the way they want it.
And even if you don't dig changing it, just knowing that you can, a lot of times, means the world.
When it comes to proprietary operating systems, you can't change it.
And for the longest time I ran Linux, I didn't want to change anything.
I just wanted it to run and wanted to get through my day.
But just knowing that I could wasn't incredibly awe-inspiring.
Well, 330, it's just like you're talking about going to the Goodwill and finding old computers.
I mean, that's the perfect thing. Well, I mean, I have five or six of them around me right now.
Then I have all kinds of stuff on them.
And you know, this is how you learn.
And when you learn, you can teach somebody else how to do it.
And that's how it all multiplies.
Hey, and those computers aren't going to do well in a landfill.
So dumpster dive to your heart's content.
But if you're into that geeky kind of stuff, it's just to try out different window managers
to alleviate from the standard GNOME trade-e.
It can be a fun and exciting experience because I find it interesting to see how you can essentially provide the same functionality, but in different ways.
I mean, you have flux box, which is very similar to open box and black box.
And you have something like window maker, which is very different.
FBWM, which is different.
And enlightenment, which is, you know, there's just all interesting unique ways to provide similar functionality.
And to have that kind of flexibility is exciting.
And fun.
And the reason we were on Linux.
Yes, sir.
Oh, and fun is the keyword there.
Fun is the key word because why wouldn't, you know, if it's not fun, what's going to make you sin?
In front of this thing for, you know, three, four, five, six, I mean, lots of hours.
Ten, fifteen, nineteen.
In my mind, choice is the keyword.
Fun is cool, but choice is the big thing.
Because when you run Windows or when you run a Mac, you don't have a choice.
You can still have fun.
By God, I wish I still had my freaking games on Windows, and I wish I had easier video editing on Mac.
But choice is the real thing.
I want to be able to customize my desktop to any which way I want, and I don't want a corporate entity to dictate that.
Can I get a name in?
Hey, man.
Hey, John.
Good work.
Hallelujah.
Well said.
You should get a kiss.
Thank you.
Give him a kiss.
Oh.
Give him a kiss right on his slit.
Oh, man.
What?
I'm beginning to think that this is a useful conversation.
Thank you, Richard.
I agree.
I have a question about your split.
Now, what?
I want to make sure I get it right.
The slit is the correct word for it.
I want to make sure I get it right.
The slit is the tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.
It is the dock at the bottom.
It's not the toolbar, so to speak, but it is the dock that for any application that could be dockable, dock apps,
which were extremely popular under window maker.
I think window maker was window maker.
And there's another, there's another one.
G&U step was big on dock apps if I'm not mistaken.
You could dock application.
Is anybody used to plug space?
What's plug space?
I don't know.
It's a advanced desktop functionality to pure windows managers.
I don't know.
I just ran across it.
I have no idea what you're talking about.
Never heard of it.
Well, I'll see if I can put the link in the IRT.
All right.
Now, the tool, the slit usually goes over the side of the toolbar.
I was going to say that the flux base, you can add desktop icons, panels, dock app, start, start up,
and some wallpaper management.
You're most will use caddy.
You want to let shit?
Well, I mean...
Yeah, you just build a desktop.
Yeah, pretty much.
But I would assume that it takes a lot less resources than a full-fledged desktop manager.
Yeah, I mean, it's going to take up less resources.
And if you're looking to have the functionality and the feature set of a, quote unquote, desktop management,
then I mean that might be a way to go, especially if your system's really low on resources.
You've got an older machine.
I'm sorry for interrupting, Dan.
Continue on.
Oh, no, that's okay.
Now I'm interested in flux space.
What did you see this?
It's on, it's on.
Oh, I'm fresh, me.
It's on fluxbox.
It's on fluxbox.
Website.
I added on sourceboards, is where I found it.
That's the same thing, isn't it?
I'm fresh, me pretty much.
I just put the link in the IRC.
Anyway, what I was saying was down...
When you have the options under the configuration where you can have...
Where is it?
The slick menu.
What?
You're still talking about that?
Yeah.
What about the slick?
The slick?
I want to talk about the slick because they don't understand it.
Hold on one second.
What I'm saying is under work spaces.
You have an option for icons.
You guys see that for people who are using...
For app where is it?
It's not icons.
About toolbar.
I was working with this so many times and now I can't find what exactly I'm looking for.
Oh, under work spaces is icon.
The new work space.
No, that's...
Where is it?
All right.
If you go down to the work space and you right-click on the work space, I think it's where the option is.
One of the options.
Done, done, done.
I'm sorry for the people who are listening to this in their car.
If you just crash into a bridge and bobman for you.
This is terrible.
I'm sorry.
Icon bar mode.
That's what I'm looking for.
Icon bar mode has different options.
None, icons, no icons, work space icons, work space, no icons, work space.
What I have set now is just work space.
And what I'm curious is I've tried setting other things to like icons and work space icons.
But nothing appears for me.
And I'm wondering if that's because my panel is too...
I've set it to be too small.
Does that work for any of you guys having icons instead of application names on the work space?
Hey, let me change it.
Yes, no, maybe.
No, that does not work for me.
So I'm wondering what you need to do to get that to work properly.
I could have sworn someone sent me a screenshot where that was working.
Must have been.
Did you not send me a screenshot or something with icons and...
So I know what you guys are talking about that.
Okay, you see, I'm hearing myself talking.
It's throwing me off.
You know where the clipboard is and like the K mixer?
Is that the slit?
Yeah, that's the slit.
Any dockable app you guys can add to the slit.
Yeah, that's the slit.
You will find it the slit.
By default, it's all the way over on the right.
I'm talking about the work space.
Let's go ahead, I'm sorry.
Must have been.
Were you talking about down in the toll bar where the icons are?
Yes.
No, that's the...
That's the slit.
Okay.
That's the slit.
The slit is generally located in the center on the right hand side.
By default, it's hidden until you put a dock app essentially inside of it.
Clarification for anyone who just joined in.
We are not talking about a woman's anatomy.
We are talking about fluff spots.
Go ahead.
Thank you, Chad.
So there would be something like you would put like a CPU usage.
Right, like you can go to, I think it's dockapps.org.
And there's various things you can get.
You can get like system monitors, you can get weather...
Hi, Pao, I'm sorry.
Like, you know how you...
When you minimize Cape Power Save, it doesn't go down to the toolbar.
It goes into the...
Over near the clock in the slit.
Conversation does it as well.
But that's the...
You're telling me that's the system tray.
That's not the slit.
Um...
It's...
Yeah.
Instead of having a little hole...
Well, I'm mind it's over near the clock.
And you get just a tiny little icon.
But not all applications will do it.
Gizmo will do it.
If I was to now minimize Gizmo, it wouldn't go to the taskbar.
It would go over to the slit.
And all I would get is just one icon.
Cape Power Save does it.
Yeah.
Cape Power Save.
Yeah, that's the system tray.
The slit's a whole different thing.
No, the slit is just that little bit...
Isn't it where you get over there?
No, I don't know.
No.
Completely separate from the...
It's completely separate from the toolbar.
Are you running across the patch?
Yeah.
No.
You're running right now.
This is the easiest way to see what the slit is.
Yeah.
Okay.
With distribution, are you running?
I'm on it.
I'm on it.
You know what?
Download any window maker dock app.
And fire that up.
And you will see exactly where the slit is.
Oh.
Okay.
Before we get too crazy here, guys.
Can someone give me in English what a slit actually is?
Well, it's not where the dock will actually be.
Two people love each other very, very much.
All right, Chad.
You know in KD-4, you have the panel at the bottom.
And by default and the upper right of you.
You know what?
In the space where you can put in different little dock applications.
What do they call them for KDE?
Plasma.
Plasma.
You know where the plasma is going by default?
Yeah.
That's essentially what the slit does.
But you can dictate...
Obviously.
I'm playing that fabric in here.
But you can dictate what goes in the slit in flux box.
Where is in KDE?
It's preset.
No?
I don't know if you could really put anything but dock apps or something like GK Relem in the slit.
Oh, that's just about it.
Yeah.
I just put to the screen shot in the IRC for those of you that are on the call or anyone that's listening.
If you look in the screen shot in the center on the right-hand side, that is what the slit is.
Now, technically, I have a system tray embedded into the slit.
But that's where it generally would be located.
It's just another section that you can drop different applications into.
And not all applications will do it.
Most of them, if you look at the documentation, they'll say, you know, if they will, most do not.
But like Dan was saying, apps for window maker or IWM, anything like that, GK Relem too, will allow you to put them into the slit.
So they're on your screen, but it can be auto-hidden.
You can change the assortment and that kind of thing.
That's what I want to know, I did.
What do you have running in the upper left there?
In the upper left on the screen shot.
Yeah.
That is a...
That's a CPU or basically a system stat thing, kind of like Conkey, that you could basically tell what you wanted to have in mind.
To have them there.
Yeah, and you get it up there is my question.
Well, I kind of cheated.
This was back in say 2001.
This is actually a Windows machine that you're looking at?
Oh, no.
Oh god, that's it.
Bit of booby bugs.
I just got a flux box.
I just felt my slick and flux box.
But yeah, to be honest, I started with...
There's a black box clone for Windows called BB for Win.
And there's all sorts of different offsuits, mods, whatever you want to call them from that.
But it has the same exact functionality system setup that black box or flux box does.
And a lot of the different themes or the styles that you see will translate back and forth to the different systems.
And I generally don't...
So how would you go about getting that?
In like flux box or black box for Linux or Unix system?
Yeah.
They don't have it available.
What you're seeing on the Windows system is actually...
It's a plug-in.
But if you want to pay $135, you can get Windows 7 and I guarantee you'll be able to run it.
No, I can't because I don't have enough power in my machine to run it.
And I'm not pulling up the landfill just to buy Windows 7 now. Come on.
I hear you.
So the truth is that the flux box runs on Windows.
This is where we're coming to.
Wait, wait. I'm getting confused now.
No, the screenshot that I put up is...
It's a black box clone for Windows.
I put the screenshot up to show what the split is.
Oh, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean if that makes sense.
No, that's cool.
Sure, why don't you want to confuse things with you?
No, why not?
I'm bloody more confused now.
Yeah, well, the split is confusing, you know?
Because we're meant, right?
And all men find the split confusing.
It's bred into us.
And every time you put split on the screen, it's like holy crepes.
What are we supposed to do?
Nobody understands what you're supposed to put in it.
Nobody understands when you're supposed to put something in the slit.
All we know is the slit is confusing.
What would you put him in the loopy box?
You're crossing the line, man. You're crossing the line.
I'm not crossing the line. What are you talking about?
What's box?
I did the thing that scared me about full expires was two things.
I didn't know how to configure my box.
And the split would not configure.
Oh, okay, get him out of there.
Amateur bastards.
Yeah, I must say you spoke well on that one.
He's in the loopy box.
So we bring up the fact that a flux box doesn't really tie you
to either GTK or QT apps that you can mix them together.
And it'll all seem like one put together system.
You mean like every other desktop environment on Linux?
Well, sometimes when you put QT apps in Gnome or GTK apps in KDE,
they get kind of wonky.
But if you see everything similarly, it should just run.
I know Dave Yates complained about that a while back on a lot of Linux links.
Can anybody hear this?
Listen.
There it is.
Are you there, Dan?
Yeah, I heard it.
What was it?
That was Dan.
I'm in front of the fan.
I just couldn't hear anyone.
Is it still there?
Not now.
Turn off all together.
Oh, it's going to kill me.
Hold on.
Can you hear it now?
No.
Okay.
No, where were you saying 330?
I couldn't hear a word you said.
I was just talking about how with flux box,
there aren't really too many predefined applications.
So you can pretty much drop any app you want in there and it's going to seem like it fits
because you don't have any preconceived notions of what should be there and what shouldn't.
The only applications that come with it are the exact something that you have there by default.
Next term, I think, is that filled in when you install it?
None of that's part of flux box.
That's part of X.
X, yeah.
But if you configure the menu, that's typically what you'll get.
If you just install flux box and then do that.
So, smack machine, are you going to give us any tips on theming?
Yeah, I like to see Mom with a towel and I'll really run my dish up.
Well, you have some things, right?
On your website.
I'm sure you didn't mute him.
No.
That last one he gets.
That's a bloody beautiful.
Oh, Maul and Jill, I have to send a bad one.
He's done.
That's for sure.
Okay, here seems fantastic.
Yeah.
Bridget.
Too bad he wasn't here.
Of course, if you do want to customize flux box, customize.org,
forward slash flux box is a good place to go and start looking style.
What was the address?
It's customize.org, forward slash flux box.
Has a lot of styles and stuff over there.
Cool, I didn't know about that site, Peter.
I may have learned it from Dave.
I think it was episode 63.
He's been customizing flux box long time ago now.
But if you go back and listen to that, he's got a favorite theme.
I did use it a lot of time.
A lot of months and a really nice food.
I can't remember what it's called.
Another website is called bark-look.org.
It's got a bunch of themes and backgrounds.
And not that I would do this because this sort of,
if you're going to run flux box, you shouldn't use things like this.
But a lot of people put those, the dock bars like W bar is a very popular one
that looks nice when it's set up.
It's just an application launcher.
And like I said before, David Abbott did a really good podcast on how to set it up.
And he's got all the files over on his site too.
So people are interested in customizing their flux box.
Well, that's one place to work.
Question for your monster bee or anybody else using flux box.
What do you use as an option to shut down your system without having to go back
to the display manager, the GDM or KDM?
I'm just typing up the terminal and the power pulse.
What else is there?
Well, there's a couple options.
I mean, there's like little, I know there's an application called WM shut down,
which will do a shutdown for you.
But I just wonder if anybody had something similar?
No, I've been going back to the GDM and shutting it down.
You can add a whole thing to your menu, can't you?
You could, I guess.
You're just going to make sure you're part of the wheel group, I think.
The last name, God.
He did a really good, how to on setting up open box, I think.
But a lot of that, was it open box?
No, anyway.
It was open box.
Was it?
Yeah, but I mean, I learned a lot of stuff about flux box.
Just reading through that too, because a lot of stuff was pretty handy.
I say I've got open box on the same system I have flux box,
but I purposefully haven't configured it so that nothing runs by default.
That way when I'm having trouble focusing on one thing,
I can go into a window manager that has absolutely nothing.
So I'm, yeah, I'm not watching the time or fiddling with this, that, and the other.
Well, productivity fifth.
Although Peter, that's how you run flux box.
And you don't have a panel or anything.
Yeah, I've got the task part down the bottom, but I don't bother setting up a menu anymore.
The last screenshot I saw was just a blank, it was just a black square.
Well, I just have the auto, that bottom auto, hide because, yeah, I do very rarely use it.
I've just got used to using the key.
You know, just sending things to different windows.
And obviously you're controlled to click through your workspaces and send windows to different workspaces.
You could don't even think about it.
Since we're talking about minor configurations,
should we talk about how to add a picture as your wallpaper in case someone actually wanted to do it?
Um, yeah, well, that's what just FB set background.
But months to be, what did you say you have to install to do it?
Uh, it's called, yeah, E term.
E term, yeah.
Once you install that, it's FB set background, then just the file you want to install.
And the other one is the, uh, what was the root?
The one we're mucking around with the other day?
FB set root.
Uh, that's like colors for your background.
Yeah, I'm in the right box start-up script.
Yeah, folks, folks start-up.
They have that settings.
Yeah, there's actually a few ways you can do that.
Hey, we can hear you now.
Yeah, I don't know what happened.
I don't know what happened.
My trick comes as I get these re-start on me from the middle of the call.
So, yeah, you can use FB set root.
Good one.
There's also FB set PD.
FB set root will allow you to set, basically, background or background colors.
You can just have them as like a solid color.
You can use gradient.
You can do.
There's another section or another option called a mod.
This is essentially you have lines that are in the grid.
Yeah, that's exactly.
With the mod, the xy, is that the distance between the horizontal and vertical?
What's the xy for in that?
Yeah, that's a difference between the x and the y-axis.
As far as the actual line.
Yeah, distance.
Is that in pixel?
What's the xy?
Like if you go FB set root dash mod 7 base 12.
Is that 7 pixel horizontally in that 12 pixel vertically?
Is that what's the difference?
I would assume it's hexal.
I'm not really sure if there's all sorts of different types of measurements that could be using.
I've never actually looked to see what the actual measurement is.
I know I've used it on occasions.
Yeah, I suppose you just have a player around with it.
And with that gradient you're talking about, there's eight different gradients, people can use.
Like you can have cross-diagonal pipe, cross elliptical and rectangular and all that sort of stuff.
It's pretty cool. You can get some nice patterns.
If you enter that gate shit.
Put it back in the box.
That's the G-man's call.
Get rid of that offy.
And we've never figured out, what do we do if the sheriff is the one that's being the boob?
I think we should have a boat.
Mutiny.
Tough luck, buddy.
Tough luck.
Well, I'm the mayor at Booby Town, so I'll just take him out.
What's the mayor's chosen problem?
It's too bad.
Coal in the mob.
So is there anything flux box wise we haven't covered?
Because as everyone can tell, I'm mildly retarded when it comes to flux box.
Wait, did anyone cover the slit?
Oh, jeez.
Here we go.
Back in the box.
Get in your coupe.
I think the box has been thoroughly covered.
I don't know, unless you guys somewhat covered it when I jumped off the call there.
Does anybody go over, like, seeming or dialing as it were?
No, I really know.
I'm so glad you didn't say styling your split.
I think Dan asked you a question about seeming.
I'm going to send that one.
Did I?
No, I did.
Yeah, weren't you?
All right.
Sorry.
Okay.
Would you mind receiving the question?
It was a very simple question.
How do you theme and style flux box?
Well, there's a directory in your flux box.
A directory or home called style.
There is a system when you install flux box that's also generally set in styles that are included by default.
They are usually, I don't know, they might be in the user local share.
I'm not sure exactly.
But essentially what styles are or how you style is.
All the art is a text file.
And then there's declarations for each individual element of a toolbar of a window, your menu.
You can also do stuff with the background also.
Or at least you couldn't preview it first.
I think it might have changed that.
But all it is is a flat text file.
And there's a look around.
There are various tutorials on how to style flux box.
I was in the middle of writing one.
I don't know if I actually finished it or not.
But it goes and it goes and goes out.
Like what each option is.
The different gradient types you can do.
Because there's like, these different types of gradients that you can use.
What each element is and that sort of thing.
And then to select your what style flux box is using.
You click in your menu.
There should be an option under flux box and then style.
And there'll be a list of all the styles that are installed.
The system warms and anyone that you may have installed in your own style directory under your home.
I noticed on mine when I set the background color.
The next time I log in it, it didn't save.
Do I need to change a configuration file to make it stick?
Well, in older versions of flux box, it used to work fine.
What it happened is there used to be an option in the style file for a section called root command.
Essentially what root command was when the style file was loaded by flux box, it would execute whatever within that line.
Now, generally you would use something like fpset, pp, or fpset root.
Or I use, for instance, fp8 to set my wallpaper.
You would use that to set your background color as gradient or whatever wallpaper you wanted to use.
But what was happening is, I guess, some people were putting certain lines of code in there that would actually damage people's system.
So what they do is they actually disable that.
But there is a section under one of the config files to go in and change that.
Yeah, you're probably talking about the overlay file.
Yeah, I think it's either overlay or, well, that says that the style can't do anything with the background.
Let me think about it.
So whatever theme goes into effect, your settings in that file will override whatever theme it's set.
Right, from I'm thinking of this, there's a file under the, in your flux box home directory called init.
And the init has the actual flux box setting to self.
Where certain things on the screen appear is that kind of thing.
There's an option in there for, I believe, that root.
Kind of see if you find it.
If it's not in there by default, it can be added.
I don't know right what the line is, right at the time.
So you can set it to use the certain program to load the last background that was loaded automatically or to set a random one.
There's different options that you can do.
But that way it's the user themselves setting it.
It's not someone that's creating a style, putting it out there for people to download.
And then no one actually looking at the style itself.
I'm pretty sure we just covered why I don't run flux box.
Well, that's not necessarily just a flux box thing.
I guess I like being able to just, like click and put something on my desktop.
Windows 7 here I come.
Yeah, there is.
It's actually in the, in the end, that file is session.
It's screenbarrow.root command.
And that's where you can set for your background stuff.
So now that we've pulled everyone away from flux box, why shouldn't people run it?
Because we're going to be awesome.
Freaking awesome.
Because KVH does and that should be enough for anyone.
So here's what I want to know.
Here's what I want to know.
I want to try a flux box tomorrow.
Right, I'm not running flux box.
I'm running, I'm running canoes.
I'm running frickin' fedora and something.
How can I try flux box?
Let me answer this.
Let me answer this.
Yeah, before we started this, I went and downloaded flux box.
And in three minutes, I was up and running flux box.
How did you do that?
I did.
Sudo, appget, install flux box.
Cool.
So you're running a devian based distribution.
So on devian based distribution, you can just do a Sudo app to get install flux box.
And I would recommend everyone wants the hardcore.
They could try arch Linux with flux box, which is what our friend Chess Griffin has used and has loved.
And what else?
They even have it.
They even have it for Slackware.
Doesn't dumps full Linux as defaults?
No, they switched to Joe's window manager.
Ah, all right, they used to them.
Are there any other distributions?
They have a flux box.
And flux box meant knowledge can try, which I can now recommend whatsoever.
Are there any other distributions straight out of a box that used flux box?
So you don't have to install it?
How about flux Buntu?
Does that work?
I think it does.
Well, according, according to Mike Wicky in the Wild, the Slack CD.
Wal-Fix, Antex, Sabeon, Top of Linux, E-Loug, and Deep Part Live.
There we go.
And it says Dan's more Linux.
Oh, dance swallonics?
They changed.
It says live CDs.
Huh?
This is on the FluxBox wiki.org.
That's good to know.
It looks like FluxFund2 is a little behind.
They're still testing a four-row...
That's great.
Yeah, for Ubuntu 810 and 904 is experimental.
Then you have Mint, right?
Mint has FluxBox in it do now.
Yeah, if you just go to...
Yeah, just straight up Mint site.
They have the Flux version now.
There's a lot of places you can get it.
Yeah.
If you do like installing a Fedora,
and you want a lot of style,
there's a package of the tenor styles,
tenor.de, select styles.
There's a package of over 300 of them in the repo.
Two.
There's also two on the FluxBox wiki.org.
I mean, you have in your subcategories,
you got all your configuration,
how-tos, there's a ton of outdudes on there.
If anybody has questions.
You could always compile it yourself
on the source.
It's not that hard.
It's a way of real men do it, Chad.
Yeah, well, you know that's when I was...
I was to compile my kernel and compile FluxBox.
The way you're supposed to do this,
you go out to the package manager source,
and you download it from there.
Your repository, your distress repository,
sourceboard.
S330.
Don't bring that up.
The Rachel will start again.
That's why I stopped using a Sousa,
because I just couldn't handle the large repository on sourceboard.
Did you save your repository?
No, I'm trying to keep a clean chat.
You could try and put a repository in the slit,
but I don't know if it'll fit.
I did not say that.
Come on.
No, you don't know what else you could say.
Look what we did before.
Don't try and finger the slit.
Dan, if I get muted, I'm going to be good.
Well, actually, you should probably have a lot of the finger capabilities
disabled for security purposes.
Oh, you got a good one.
I'm a good friend then.
I didn't get mad at you.
Please like to travel.
What?
Is there honest commands?
Touch isn't that bad.
What?
What?
Which one do you think both of them?
Which one do you think both of them?
What about Zyke too?
What is wrong with you?
You're going to be mad.
Don't think I repeat it.
Do anything.
What did you do?
I think when did he have to do anything?
He's just pissed off that my four fathers
and his four fathers are going to Australia.
You finally worked it out.
Here's a question.
In the toolbar menu, what is the alpha thing?
It's such a transparency.
Well, I changed it and nothing happened.
You might have to take effect at home management.
There's another question that I'm fighting with.
When you edit the clock format, what does all of that crap mean?
That's the same as the date stuff in your terminal.
That's exactly the same.
We have to go look at the man page and look at the percent.
Whatever.
Oh, I wondered with a four-hour clock.
What if you're right?
24 and 12 hours.
Mine step is 12 hours, but it's still 24.
What have you got in here if you got to edit your clock format?
Question?
High, Colin, the same name?
Capilim?
Yes, Capilim.
Well, I haven't a clock, too.
I'm John.
Yeah.
The clock, too, did we not cover something that we should have?
Not that I can think of.
Well, I think there's anything we didn't say you can have
persuade a transparency, which isn't real.
I take it.
Right.
Or you can not hardware, color, edit, or whatever.
Yeah, that's right.
Or you can install ex-comp manager,
which I just had to ask Jay Lindsay what it was because I've forgotten.
And then you can do real transparency.
Yeah, that's what I meant before.
Yeah, the hardware and cellaration.
You could get a card.
I know you could dig the transparency, but after a while,
it just kind of gets kind of old from me.
I don't even bother with it anymore.
Well, I think that's the way I find a full desktop environment now.
That's why I like clockspots so much.
It just does the job, and it does nothing more than what you want it to do.
Whereas Katie and I,
I just don't need any of that stuff anymore.
Yeah, I know what you mean.
As much as I like snacky screenshot,
and I'll use his wallpaper for a couple of days,
or get sick of it, and I'll go back to just a black one.
Tell me, sit and look at your wallpaper.
Oh, what's that?
Mindful area.
Mind says, make awkward advances to women, not war.
Okay, one thing with flagspots.
When I start with TV,
it becomes the wallpaper.
And then you work over the top of it.
So I usually have the news or something down is the wallpaper.
Oh, cool.
Yeah, I think you'll put screenshots of that on that.
Oh, no, I don't have one on either of those.
I have a question.
If you right-click on the toolbar,
there's an option that says on-head.
What does that mean?
Which monitor do you want the thing to be on?
Oh!
It's like Dan.
I suck.
I didn't know that.
What's maximized over me?
That means when your window maximizes, it can go over the board.
Yeah.
After the stopping.
Okay.
So you're on a roll.
What this iconify?
I mean, a highlighted window.
I think I'm trying to put it on your desktop.
Well, sorry.
I mean, it says iconify.
Yeah, but I clicked on it before nothing happened.
That looks good.
You didn't have mine.
This is here tonight, though.
Yeah.
Now you're the sheriff.
It's going to be amazing.
You guys prefer to make your own menu over generating one?
Yeah.
I barely even use a menu, so I don't even bother with it.
I do everything from FB run.
Guess what?
I just did.
I generated a menu.
It's pretty cool.
Not that I'll use it.
I don't know if this is an absolute thing, but when I felt black boxed,
the menu was pretty well set up the way I would set it up if I was doing it myself anyway.
I think that's kind of an interesting thing.
I gather there must be some little app out there that does auto-generating things
for flux box, but like on certain systems.
Do that.
Right.
A bunch of that's come with flux box generator menu anymore, but used to.
You actually have to go and find the power ball and do it right around with a bus for a while.
Where with art, you've just built in.
It's like where I think it was built in.
Yeah.
That's where it's built in.
Yeah.
It's the one that I created.
It was not.
It's auto-generating.
There's also an application called menu maker.
It's kind of like an universal filter for known KDE,
black box, open box, black box.
It does them all.
I don't know what all systems it's available for.
If it's not for, you know, whatever distro you're running,
I'm sure you could find the package and compile it.
It wouldn't be that much, but I know I have an installed on my art machine.
Yeah.
There's another one called the flux box xdg menu.
And I like it better.
It seems to make a cleaner menu than the other one does.
It's laid out in a similar manner that you would find in other window managers.
Are you guys still there?
Yeah.
Wow.
There's a bunch of noise, and I didn't hear nothing else.
We're almost out of time, so.
No!
We got to play with Winslet.
We got some feedback from last week.
And it probably got our last good feedback after this other disaster.
Why was it a disaster?
Oh jeez.
The noise?
Nobody in the chat room liked it.
All they did was complain.
They liked it.
They liked it.
You better have to edit it.
All right.
Listener feedback.
Our first listener feedback is from Bob Belk.
He writes in.
Just wanted to drop you a note to say that I like the format and content of the new show.
Keep it up, Bob.
Thanks, Bob.
Our second feedback is from subgeniusd.
Hey there, Monster B.
We're right out of the gate.
Another nice Monster B podcast project.
I'm using an informative with many of the usual suspects.
Peter 64 is a hoot.
As usual, and I hope next time you can actually get into the discussion of video editing, he mentioned.
And he also sent in a few links.
Since Art talked about Command Line Foo, he sent in a couple more that are similar.
I'll put these in the show notes.
The first one is ShellFoo.org.
Actually, it's Shell-Foo.org.
The second one is blog.commandlineconfoo.com.
All right.
Pretty cool.
Thanks, subgeniusd.
And I just got another email from DailyDay.
Says, you mentioned in your first episode a link that could paste the results of LSPCI-N.
And it would tell you which module to load.
You said the link would be in the show notes, but I can't find it.
Thanks.
And keep the show coming.
It's great.
Daily.
I have to look into that.
Check the show notes again.
I'll try to get something in there for you in the first episode's show notes.
All right.
That was pretty cool.
We got three feedbacks.
Because I made a mistake on our last episode and said that the email address was...
It wasn't right.
It's actually feedback at titradio.info.
All right.
Once again, thanks for the feedback.
Our next show will be on June 13th.
At 11 p.m. on DDP Hack Radio.
And you can chat with us over at irc.frino.net.
Hatch Lennox Cranks.
And we use that chat room during the show.
And also the Southeast Lennox Fest is on June 13th.
And you can find some more information over at SoutheastLennoxFest.org.
And looks like this is going to wrap up the show.
I'm going to play this out with a song.
Let me find it real quick.
It's the Open BSD 4.5 release song called Games.
And I've never tried Open BSD.
I always wanted to.
I think I tried like every BSD flavor out there.
And probably my favorite so far is free BSD.
But I'm definitely going to check out Open BSD.
I mean, just their artwork and everything's really neat over there.
Well, here's the song.
And I'll put the link in the show notes.
And I'll talk to everybody next time.
And thanks for joining me.
Bye.
Say it.
All right. Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night. Good night.
Good night everybody.
Good night everybody.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Thanks!
parole
You
Good night.
Good night.
You
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Then
Good night.
Uh-oh.
Ahem.
Good night.
Stay
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
Good night.
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