Fluxbox

Fluxbox 🔓 is an easy and fast X11 window manager based on BlackBox.

Prerequisites

• Internet connectivity, unless the packages have been pre-fetched into a local cache.
• A non-root user account.
• The community repository must be enabled.
• Set up eudev.
• Install and configure D-Bus. without D-Bus icons and keyboard shortcuts may be missing.
• Install appropriate Graphics driver drivers for your hardware. Without graphics drivers, errors are likely to occur.
• Install Xorg

Installation

Install fluxbox, xterm, and terminus font.

# apk add fluxbox xterm font-terminus

xterm is needed so you have a way to access the terminal in X. There are alternatives but this is the classic. Terminus is needed because without any fonts, you will not be able to see any text in Fluxbox.

Configuration

acpid

If you installed your Alpine Linux as a VirtualBox or VMWare guest, you might find it handy to be able execute an ACPI shutdown.

# rc-update add acpid

Set Fluxbox as the default Window Manager

$ echo 'exec startfluxbox' >> ~/.xinitrc

Start X

$ startx

Edit the flux settings for your user by editing the files located in ~/.fluxbox/. This directory is created after your first run of Fluxbox. The Fluxbox configuration details can he studied on the Fluxbox Help Page.

Note: The default menu (right-click on desktop) will contain options that won't work due to missing packages. The default configuration is minimal and most menu options won't work unless you customize and/or install additional packages. XTerm will work if you added the package in the first step, and you can use that to add additional packages.

See also

Fluxbox Help Page.