How to setup Openbox on a minimal install of Debian
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- Опубликовано: 20 авг 2024
- In this rather lengthy video, I run through how to get a basic openbox session up and running on top of a minimal install of Debian. I show the programs that I usually install, how to install them from the command line, how to setup an autostart file for openbox, how to edit the tint2 panel, etc. Hope you guys enjoy!
Referenced in the video:
www.debian.org...
gitlab.com/dwt1
In this video, I installed as root (su): apt install openbox obconf obmenu lightdm pcmanfm iceweasel leafpad lxterminal nitrogen tint2 menu lxappearance compton synaptic gnome-backgrounds mate-backgrounds
EDIT: I also installed a couple of things off camera...the most notable program being "xorg".
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This has to be the most informative video I have seen to date on setting up a custom desktop environment. You have just taken my Linux/Debian knowledge to the next 5 levels! Keep these great videos coming. Subscribed!!
Much appreciated!
Same. I was having trouble installing an AMD graphics driver on an old laptop with Linux Mint so I wondered that if I start at the base of Debian then it would help me learn Linux better. My Windows experience began with DOS, so it makes seems logical to start here.
Crazy - only 170 MiB of RAM usage on my laptop. Great! This laptop Im using only has 928 MiB, so Windows is slow as molasses, but this guide has really turned this laptop from useless to somewhat useful. Thanks for the video
Wait only 928 MB? That's abysmal. Was it from 2003 or something?
@@mayravixx25 It's a D430 laptop. Really bad specs, and very old. It was designed to run Win XP
@@bricks7000 Ah, ok.
I have the same laptop, and it runs like a champ
I had 101mb ram usage idle with compton
I know this is an older video, but it’s very informative. Thanks DT
This was great. Thanks! I was looking for something like this that's built on top of a bare-bones Debian install. Really educational.
Thanks, Caspar.
You had me laugh when you said "I'm not dig'in it" regarding lack of wallpaper, very thorough, but, fast...still a good job!
thank you. my first real lightweight desktop. never tried using openbox/i3 looks confusing but with this video, im starting to understand stuff.
Wow. I'm gonna do this tonight. Already have Debian and XFCE. Gonna set up Open box. This is a super review. Thank you very much.
I'll perform a minimal Debian installation when the Buster comes without a DE.
Man.. this is a step up on my way with linux.. just did my first custom machine, guess what... works! Finaly i am undestanding how all these pieces comes together to create a desktop environment. Easy to understand for non english speakers
I'm doing this on a vintage Pentium III PC running at 450 MHz and it's taking about a hundred times longer than your video. It's amazing to think how much these machines have speeded up in the past twenty years!
For someone new to this world this is sooo extreme. It's insane! And wonderful! Thank you so much for the video. Sorry for the mistakes.
Thank you Derek! Very well done. OB is pretty great. I really enjoy and appreciate your delivery and knowledge. More of these types of videos on you channel would be awesome.
I have to say I was doing the minimal install debian and openbox without lxde before wathcing this video.
But I did not know that it could look this good.
Thank you
5 year old video, I still think I learned a lot. I realize Debian has made some changes in the interim, but very interesting nonetheless. I will do more research before attempting to install Openbox on a modern Debian. My main goal is to end up with a back up server. I've set up a Debian server in the past, but it was not on a minimal install, since I did not know how to accomplish that at the time. Still, the server worked well (24x7) for about seven years. I like to have a minimal desktop on the server, but I don't need all the office or multimedia stuff. In fact, I would not even care about a task bar or wallpaper, just a file manager and text editor as far as gui goes. Openbox seems like a good fit for me. I now have a old Dell rack server running trueNAS scale. I'm very happy with trueNAS, but now I want to use Debian on a old Lenovo workstation as a backup solution. I'm interested in CasaOS, but we'll see. Thanks!
Thank you for this video; it is such a vast amount of information on setting up Openbox. I really love watching your videos on WM's. One thing I'd love for you to add to your videos is after login to go straight to terminal and type in 'free -h' to show how much memory it is using after login. I prefer to go by 'free -h' over a GUI screen or even htop for the most accuracy.
On point, no bs, and your voice is comfortable to listen to. Sub.
Thanks, P. Ricard.
Really good job. The attention to details and patience to explain everything is excellent.
Thank you!
Thanks, John. Appreciate that.
useful tip:
If next time you install openbox, you can spare many time, if you first install gmrun, rofi, or dmenu, or other application launcher, and create a keyboard shortcut to use it.. In that case, you don't have to open a terminal each time you like to launch an application.
Takler Tamás gmrun is nice! 👌🏻
I use synapse on startup. Love it. Very simple.
Thanks for this, DT. I've been wanting to become a patreon but 2020 has been rough.
I know it is pretty off topic but do anybody know of a good place to watch new movies online?
One thing I always do in an openbox setup is install rox-filer. This little file manager is so feature rich and when you invoke the pinboard it's awesome. Light, fast, very functional!! Can't beat that.😀
spacefm is good too, the Swiss-knife of file managers
As promised (in your livestream the other night) this night I installed a minimum Debian netinstall (testing/sid), and setup i3, polybar, rofi etc. So now I'm down to 1300 packages instead of the 3500 I had installed before. Just runs smooth. And I'm pretty sure the new nvidia 390 driver seems/feels more stable as the one before (375 I think). But this really is a great installation :)
Thanks very much.
It didn't go very well at my first attempt, since
1. I needed to find out how to install the graphics card driver, so I needed another tutorial for that
2. I could not get Xorg or Openbox to start because of error messages because I re-installed the Debian from the now-outdated Live Stick that I flashed in 2020. I could still use Terminal Apps, but not any GUI apps.
But after re-flashing the stick with the latest Debian Installer version 10.10.0 and re-installing Debian using this, everything went as smooth as in the video.
Thanks for this tutorial, installed mint 2 weeks ago and got bored real fast.Love this minimal debian.
This is great. OB is my first successful attempt to use a DM and actually configure crunchbangpp correctly. i3 was a bit too much to bite off but openbox hits the sweet spot thanks to this video.
7:26 Actually, if you want a true minimal install of Debian you should unmark all options in this menu. So, no print server, no standard system utilities (selecting this will lead to installing unnecessary stuff like exim mail server).
Are there any cons to not installing the standard system utilities?
@@albussd The only con is that you need to install (and configure) some necessary stuff like sudo or man or psmisc manually. On the other hand, you have little to no unnecessary stuff. With some experience and having apt-file installed, one can easily figure out which packages are necessary.
I have been looking around for an underlying debian or debian based distro for open box experimentation. I am not going to touch arch anytime soon. Saving this video for later. Nice walkthough
I have copied the compton script from another place. Super super like this lengthy video :) Very helpful. Thank you very much.
This was great. I recently tried out a similar minimal install of Ubuntu (net install), but ran into a wall trying to set up Openbox. I'm going to try the steps you show and see if that works for me. Thanks very much for this.
I know this is over a year old, but here's a quick note for anyone watching for the first time: If you leave the root password blank when installing Debian, it won't create a root account, but will instead add your username to the sudoers file, so instead of having to switch to the root user to make changes, you can prefix your command with "sudo". That's the most advisable way to do it because 1) when in the root account its easy to forget you're root and accidentally bork your system and 2) it's one less entry point for people with malicious intent.
Thank you for this great tutorial Derek. Very informative. I will install openbox on MX today. Thanks again
Hello Marc S ! Or you can try SalentOS in a VM or in dual boot.
Best regards,
Serge
Hi Serge. SalentOS look interesting. I will try it. Thanks
I have seen many vids on openbox; this is one of , if not the best one to date.
Now if we can only get one on the often forgotten ' fluxbox WM ' with some configuration love, that would be great.
Great vid -- Thanks
Great video Derek. I'm going to give this a try, if only because it's good practice in finding your way around the terminal and config files.
Hello RRW ! And if you want a good guide on it here it is: urukrama.wordpress.com/openbox-guide/
Best regards,
Serge
I also use Debian with LightDM, Openbox, Tint2, and some assorted LXDE utilities to fill in the gaps on any hardware that's between 5-10 years old. It'll happily run with only 2GB of RAM, maybe less. I personally prefer to just let PCManFM handle my desktop (including wallpaper setting) rather than have the Openbox menu.
Isn't this more fun than messing around with KDE settings? Thanks so much for doing this video!! Nothing against KDE at all. It's a wonderful desktop environment. I just prefer lean and mean. Thanks again 😀
Hello rmcellig ! You can have the best of both worlds with LXQt !
Redcore Linux, a spin of Fedora, GeckoLinux, Lubuntu Next, Artix or Slackel.
Each big family can provide you that DE.
After cold boot you should be around 200 MB of RAM !
Best regards,
Serge
Serge it's funny you mention lxqt because yesterday I installed sparky lxqt using openbox-generator. It's a wonderful distro!
Awesome walkthrough! This is just what I was looking for. I have to redo a clean debian-openbox environment for an old machine now that Crunchbang is long dead. Building it from scratch is much better, provided someone makes a guide as awesome as yours. This is so much cleaner than the specialized distros that are all hacked way too much in non-standard configurations.
Wow, pleasant surprise to see you here!
I think debian did stop doing "Iceweasel" -- Now it is "Firefox-ESR"
yup for stable
Great, it is a great tutorial to installing minimal anything on debian. thx.
This video changed my life! I've been curious about openbox but haven't had the guts until now. Great stuff, time to get rid of the bloat ;)
Had some serious problems getting wifi to work with debian, sadly. I'm traveling and simply don't have an ethernet connection available. Trying this on a Ubuntu Server 16.04 netinstall instead. ISO was 50mb or so. Wifi worked out of the box (with broadcom non-free drivers I suppose). Curious to see how this goes ;)
Yea, Ubuntu has the option to install those third party drivers. That really helps with wifi and graphics drivers.
Nice walkthrough, thanks.
Btw, you may have trouble connecting to wifi after install. Depending on your wireless card, the drivers are sometimes proprietary and Debian don't like that. You'd have to either get non-free repositories and drivers using ehternet cable or install a debian image with these non-free drivers _cd including firmware_
thx you very much for the time you put into this vid I have found it very interesting and even thou I have no programming exp. at all, I think, with your vid and what little exp. I have in Linux I will be able to put together an Openbox in Debian thx u again for your time and the great vid
high quality tutos.. great job
Very cool video! Thank you for the tour and instruction. :)
Hello eznix ! And the best guide on openbox is this one: urukrama.wordpress.com/openbox-guide/
Best regards,
Serge
Hey DT, Thank you, this is one of your best videos. I just found this, its great. Exactly what I was looking for. I've been looking for the same with ICEwm on Proxmox Debian Base 🤣 Will be watching a bunch, to understand to how to edit & personalize the menu. Now I think I can apply the info I learn from this setup video. Yay! U don't have to answer but do you play hockey?
Thanks for teaching me
I'm not sure, but xfce4-panel should work too, instead of tint2. The worst part is that It can consume by itself something like 150mb of ram. If you want less than 300mb of ram system, its not a good choice, infortunately.
loved this video ... wish recent videos are more like these videos.
Pro tip: Don't set any root password, and Debian installer will install and configure sudo(8) command for you. And at the same time lock root user from log in with password. Which is great, as that known user can not be used by a hacker to get into your machine. Then need to know your login name, as the first user created automatically will be set to the sudo group and able to run sudo(8).
Just wanted to note, su does not mean super user, it means substitute user, and if you leave the params empty it will substitute user for root by default.
This is how you can run commands etc. as other users, handy for executables owned by other users.
Ngl, I might end up swapping my Linux distro on my current machine and use Debian for a minimal environment and run a custom Arch on the "production" machine. It was rather eye opening to see how easy it was. I need a nice GNome environment since my current machine is a touch screen. I didn't like the touch, but knowing that it is easy to build a rather lightweight environment and not much effort (well knowing what you're looking for anyway) is rather reassuring. Would love to see an update or a redhat version of this.
Good job, great audio.
Wonderful walkthrough, thanks.
Thanks for this! Great video!
jarkko korhonen Thanks!
Maybe do more vids about debian and openbox?
Debian and Openbox will continue to get alot of attention on this channel. :D
Good video! I wonder if you can give a run through on how to install openbox on updated Debian 10 and or Debian testing and give a run through on how to maybe add wayland support ... not sure if openbox supports wayland? But it would much be appreciated and also maybe show how to make openbox look nice and stylish while keeping everything minimal and low ram usage with recommended programs for everyday use for that :) just a suggestion but it would be nice to see! Love the minimalist route
Thank you for this tutorial. I'm going to do it with Fedora.
Thanks, Leandro.
Unfortunately I've failed on first attempt lol. I guess I'm missing some package to start X. Trying again tomorrow. Thank you.
You failed from the moment you installed Fedora.
ampersand means do not block, but run the program in background instead.
su stands for "substitute user", it defaults to super user though (i.e. user id = 0)
Great tutorial.
please show configuration for shutdown suspend and reboot from openbox
thanks for the tutorial
Мужик спасибо. На debian 11 работает тоже.
When I got to the installation of software steps, I kept getting the try with -fix missing linux error and trying all the fixes in the manual did not solve the problem. I either got denied permission to edit files or was asked to use programs that I could not install because of the try with -fix missing linux error. When I tried to reboot from a UBS to begin the process again, the USB was not detected so I had to boot it from grub, which worked after a few misses. Dd the process over again and had the same issue, Great video, but maybe this problem -and the solution- should have been incuded in the tutorial.
I did everything you did, but after installing i had no wifi connection after booting up the first time, but I had during the installer with non free firmware. I messed around a bit from reading online help sources but nothing would work for me. iwconfig command not found, iwlist command not found... Etc i just gave up after a while.
Thanks Sir
Appreciate your time.
Thank you
I just read your show notes that you installed xorg off camera. Was that the cause of compton not wanting to start up?
Good job on a detailed step by step installation.
I was trying to get compton working. Didn't work though. But I only spent a few minutes with it. This video took me over two hours to make so I was rushing through it. A google search for that compton error "gltextbuffer2d" or whatever it was...didn't return many results so I'm not sure what the issue was. But I deleted this virtual machine right after I made the video so I never went back to try to solve that situation (can't save too many of these VMs...takes up too much drive space).
What would you recommend in place of obmenu and leafpad? I tried doing this with a minimum Bullseye install, but I couldn't install obmenu or leafpad because they weren't in the repositories. Supposedly obmenu was taken out because something else it installs along with it was deprecated, and I can't figure out why leafpad got yanked.
Long story short, I couldn't get it done with Bullseye. Gonna keep trying to do it, though; I refuse to let Bullseye win.
I LOVE Mousepad. It can handle many emojis (as though you'd want that) and can handle Markdown somewhat. It has tabs and a find function, too. If you drag and drop from it from the internet, it takes away the formatting (which is convenient).
Geany and ghostwriter are much larger, but also in Debian repository. Geany has tabs and is an IDE, but ghostwriter is just cute as hell and very easy to sutomizer the color. it also can open markdown internal links to your other files.
Hello I will try to summarize the openbox configuration part and what I learn in this video (for myself in a couple weeks/years xD) :
First there are many things in a desktop :
-A window manager. There is floating and tiling window manager. Floating is when you can move your programs windows and tiling is when everytime you open a new program it takes automatically an optimised size. Openbox is a floating window manager(wm) and i3 for example is a tiling wm. Tiling manager is lighter.
> apt install openbox obconf obmenu
-a terminale. The black window that lets you do everything. There is many terminal, lxterminal or termite.
>apt install lxterminal
-then you need a login manager. It is what welcomes in a login menu at the start of your computer. There is lightdm and rofi.
>apt install lightdm
-a task manager. What is in the bottom of your screen. The program is tint2.
> apt install tint2
- a wallpaper setter. Like nitrogen.
>apt install nitrogen
-a file manager. What lets you explore the files in your computer without have to use the terminal and commands line. There is pcmanfm or thunar for example.
>apt install pcmanfm
- openbox doesn't have effects like window shadows. So you need a compositor. Like compton.
>apt install compton
-you need a simple editor like a bloc note. There is geany and leafpad.
>apt install geany
-to change gtk theme,icon theme, you can use obconf or lxappearance.
>apt install lxappearance
On ~ folder, you need to go to .config folder(hidden). Then create a openbox folder. In that folder create autostart.sh. That file will contain everything that start at the beginning of a openbox session.
You can have :
nitrogen --restore &
tint2 &
compton --config ~/.config/compton/compton.conf &
You need to create a compton folder on .config and a compton.conf file in the previous folder.
Compton.conf and tint2rc are config files that you can find on internet to have premade configurations.
With obmenu you can add new item when you right click on desktop.
Comprehensive and marvelous video
can you please tell me how do I do to connect to TV without opening a session on OpenBox
Because for now after installing TV version 9 on a Debian 7 wheezy
the only possibility to get connected from remote is to open a session on onpenbox
if the session is not opened I cannot connect.
But as soon as the session is opened, the connection remains even if I disconnect the session.
Regards
I have a question -- this one has been annoying me and I can't find a solution to it. Whenever I'm running just straight Openbox, I open, say, for example, a file manager with sudo privileges, it never follows my GTK or icon theme. What am I missing here, to make PCManFM or Thunar as sudo, Synaptic, etc. follow my theme?
Can you do an update of this for Debian Bullseye? I'm having trouble getting it to work.
very cool video but i'll stick with lxde then just using openbox; to avoid having to do all this extra work. :)
Thanks for this video. I've been stuggling with configuration over several distributions for my vintage PC system and this has helped me to get the system pared down to the basics. Question: how do you configure the screen size in this X Window System?
I believe the problem with compton had to do with missing GPU firmware... this is Debian, it won't install that non-free packages automatically for you.
Hey, thx for the great videos!
Im also using mini, Ubuntu with budgie but now i want to use small WM also, is there a way to make qtile work at startup and budgie work only when needed together ? without logging off
maybe it would be nice suggestion for video, have small footprint WM copying it to slow Laptop and when its on fast ssd or when needed running the full desktop with command
thx again :)
Excellent video Derek!! I love it so much that after installing to my HD, I would like to deploy to other computers. How would I do this? Create an image of the partition I have Debian Openbox installed to and then restore to a new partition on my other machines? What tool would be best for doing this? What would the process be? Right now I'm trying Gnome-disks on one of my machines. I'm hoping there is a faster way of doing this. Options?
Thanks so much!!!!
Just can't launch obmenu on cent os I even tried out obmenu-generator and nothing seems to work
How do you add battery indicator, volume, brightness, wireless indicator in tint2 panel?
Watching old dt not use xrandr is such a pain
In 2003-04 Debian install would take 9 cds. And it was a nightmare.m Only the "elite" could do it. It was more like BTW I use Debian ! From there to here. Some journey.
what ever happen to install a system without V M ????
When I press the [Login] button in lightdm, lightdm freezes.
Nevermind, Openbox already had a wallpaper and I thought that lightdm forze.
Hi I was searching how to use the bash to open applications using ssh with x and you can decrease the RAM usage to double digits, do you know this method? And also, can I just say that you created in this video a crunchbang distro or is there more technical steps to create a distro? I appreciate you videos, awesome content!
About applications that uses Java JRE. Does tear2 supports that? Its a wierd question, but I have installed NVidia and just with lxpanel I can open It. I will try latter to open it on Openbox later.
Don't set a root password. Setup your user and you get sudo installed bij default. what's not the case if you choose a root password.
How can you set up icons?
i noticed that you skipped over what you had to type ton install gcc and the headers. when I tried it, I used build-essential, like I would have in Ubuntu. Would build-essential install the linux-headers as well?
Curious, without a Taskbar like tint, how would you restore a minimized window?
tint2 is clickable, it's not just a statusbar. so you can click on the icon/label for the minimized window and it would restore it.
For your issue with Compton ~ autostart.sh has trouble interpreting tilda's (~). You should always type the full path to the directory in conf or bash script files. See if that works. I replicated this on my machine and the line below works.
Try this line in your autostart.sh:
compton -- config /home/debian/.config/compton/compton.conf -b &
agree, you have to add -b to compton command to run in the background
Hello DT ! It seems strange that there is no #!/bin/sh for your autostart config file and I didn't see you made it executable by typing chmod +x autostart.sh
For the compton error glFramebufferTexture2D did you enable 3D acceleration in the VirtualBox settings ? Try unticking that checkbox and see if you need to enable 2D acceleration. Another possibility would be related to libpng or libraries for images. Did you install them ? Do you have any program to handle the colours ?
Best regards,
Serge
Good catch on the #!/bin/sh. I didn't need to add the .sh extension to that file. Should just name it "autostart" and not "autostart.sh". My mistake.
Good video :) but why only 360p I can't see anything distrotube lol. 480p or 720p at least man come on haha , it's no prob tho just messing with you :p
Should be in 1080. It is on my screen Just checked on my phone...1080 there too. If you watch the video a couple of minutes after it goes live sometimes it is only available in 360 because the video is still processing.
DistroTube oh yea I forgot about that, I watched it when it first showed up. My bad haha :p
25:07 no you dont need. openbox allreay. all you need is mouse menu. if you want it be light weight. thats all ou need
34:58 so linux. for 1 thing you need do 2 things and 2 difrent thing drive it. what about 1 program to do that all theme.
just things you gotta sacrifice for modularity
36:36 yes apt install *
even ubuntu wallpaper. ubuntu is just theme right xD
How loud is the clock in your room? 😆
Hello, Derek.
It's a very nice guide for a newbie like me. Thank you for that video.
But there is an issue - I can't get to your account on github. Does it still exists?
Can you share your configuration files some other way? Also I've seen folder on github with some python scripts in video.
Could you share that stuff too if possible? Forgive my english - it is not my native language.
Thanks in advance.
No, I moved to gitlab.com: gitlab.com/dwt1
There also was "python-scripts" repository on your old account (27:34). Can you add that one to your new account on gitlab? Description of that repo seems very interesting to me.
No, I don't have those scripts anymore. No worries though. It wasn't that interesting. A few simple python scripts I saved from me first learning python (really basic stuff).
Hi Derek. Did your sound work out of the box when you did this install. I'am asking because I'll do a similar install with i3-wm, and wonder what I'll have to do to get sound working...
I never did any kind of sound check. I did this install on camera and then immediately deleted that VM. But sound usually works out of the box. You may want to install the Pulse Audio volume controller so you have a graphical way to adjust mic/speaker levels.
Thanx - I'll try that...
pavucontrol seems to be the right tool for me...
To answer myself: It did just work out of the box after installing pulseaudio :)
we no need to install XORG ? or other display driver sir?
please respond
Why did you have x ?
Nice video, but installing packages as root is just wrong
also, just remember that this video was recorded on January 6th. (y'all know what I mean)
I can't install leafpad, I've seen that i have to install snap first? Is ir right?
Take gedit instead. Its avaible on debian and is a good text editor. =) Gnome sometime bring us some good things!
You have to go to bed on time
Dark circles are very dark, bad for health
39:02 thats others call distro. but still its just debian. dont publish it and change name
How do I create a show desktop button to add to my tint2 panel? I remember doing this a while back but forget the procedure. Thanks!
For now I am using the Windows key followed by D.