PCLinuxOS and Blackbox
From Sy
| This effort has been moved into psylos |
PCLinuxOS + Blackbox > PCLinuxOS and Blackbox
This is accurate for PCLinuxOS 2007
Contents |
[edit] Installing and configuring
- Blackbox/installation -- includes bbkeys install instructions.
Post-install:
- copy .blackboxrc to ~/
- copy Minimal blackbox style to ~/.blackbox/style
- copy .xinitrc to ~/
[edit] Helpful programs
- for regular users
- download bbkeys source, compile and install it.
- then copy .bbkeysrc to ~/
- fbpanel for basic features: minimize all, applications, KDE-compatible tray, standard menu, clock.
- Copy Fbpanel/configuration to ~/.fbpanel/default
- If you miss having a menu, then just right click on any window edge.
- I use gmrun as an application launcher, bound to control-alt-r with bbkeys
- I don't like the way it matches past items though..
- you can still run kdesktop if you wanted. Weirdo.
- kdocker lets you launch any application with a companion system tray icon (if you have a tray, like fbpanel provides)
- for advanced users
- Devil's Pie for window matching & acting just like the KDE window actions, except heinously difficult to configure.
- wmctrl allows one to control windows from the commandline. See wmctrl examples for my advice.
- xosd -- x on screen display -- is used for on screen display.
- It could be useful for people who want visual feedback for hotkey commands.
- onscreend uses xosd in a more useful way. Hey, wouldn't it be cool to have USB or other hardware events paint a message on screen? Yep, it would be.
[edit] Notes
- Strangely, I don't need a tray if I run 'dcopserver_shutdown' and then 'dcopserver' - tray-only applications begin launching in their own little window. It's quite handy actually. But to make good use of this, I'd have to force these windows to get the heck out of the way. wmctrl could be used for that. But then I'd have to somehow have the wm not have maximized screens step over that area.
[edit] Ideas
- desktop environments
- desktop image
- change the background image
- customize the desktop image per-desktop
- auto-shuffle the background image over time, just like how KDE does it.
- Launched with an hourly cron job perhaps?
Possible with bbbm [1] which uses bsetbg.
Maybe also workable just with bsetbg but it doesn't allow files with spaces in them. I could copy the file to a temporary filename and then bsetbg it and delete the file afterwards. That works.
I'm not going to pursue this, because I don't want to waste memory by loading a big image.
- other stuff
- ksystraycmd (comes with KDE) can put anything in the tray.
- alltray can put anything in the tray.
- http://projects.l3ib.org/visibility is a pager thing.
- Startup notification would be nice to see.
- [2] - but this is a lib, and would be used in the applications themselves, I believe. Hrm. How does KDE do it?
[edit] To do
- the 4/5 button-clicking on my mouse seems to have gone away. =( I have some research in mouse but boy is this rough stuff.
- kill kdm to use .xinitrc properly again.
- well.. I can't. =/ apt-get remove kde-kdm-Dark2 -- this just gives an error in kdm. =/
- more bbkeys customization (.bbkeysrc)
- universal placement of the config files so that other users on the system can use them. i.e. overwrite the PCLinuxOS default locations.
- Play with the genmon.c fbpanel plugin to display random stuff -- display the date next to the clock.
- kmix should start minimized. I see no switch to do it. Maybe I should force it with Devil's Pie? I can do it quite easily with wmctrl now that I understand it. Or I could just use kdocker.
- pipe hotkey actions through xosd. At the least I could easily spit out the current app name when the hotkey is pressed.
- Create an fbpanel time/date popup which would show an xdialog with 'cal'
- figure out blackbox snapping when resizing.
- figure out blackbox snapping to fbpanel.
- Maybe if I use wmctrl to manipulate it, it would appear like an application with a border?
