Xfce4, LXDE, and Openbox
What I need is performance, eye candy is optional.
My primary desktop environment is Xfce, as it is more lightweight than GNOME, KDE, or Cinnamon (Mate is out of my choice), yet it has more goodies (plugins) than LXDE. But due to my 4-year-old laptop, I found that LXDE has better performance than Xfce significantly. I can run multiple heavy applications at the same time, especially Firefox and Chromium. Xfce performance drops when I run both applications simultaneously. Switching between applications is slower. If running with Skype at the same time, and doing some development testing, the performance drops drastically.
LXDE is even more lightweight than Xfce. That is why I used LXDE. The only drawback of LXDE is that it does not allow me to zoom the screen with Alt+Mouse Scroll. This is a crucial feature I need as a lecturer. In order to gain a better speed, I also have to sacrifice the wallpaper auto changing as in Xfce. Furthermore, configuring the LXDE is a little troublesome. Since LXDE is using Openbox as window manager, a lot of configurations depend on the Openbox.
Openbox configuration
To configure the LXDE Openbox, we can use the obconf to configure. It is actually editing the ~/.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml.
obconf also works on Openbox (window manager only). The corresponding file is ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml.
Hotkey configuration
LXDE hotkeys are depending on the Openbox too. We can use the obkey to configure the hotkeys. It is also editing the ~/.config/openbox/lxde-rc.xml or rc.xml.
Openbox right-click context menu
LXDE has its own panel (lxpanel). It allows to show (mostly) all the applications in the menu. However, if we right-click Openbox desktop area, the context menu does not show the installed applications. The application menu in the Openbox is actually written in the ~/.config/openbox/menu.xml. The skeleton file contains the hard coded applications.
There are several ways to show the menu items dynamically based on the installed applications. I personally use openbox-xdgmenu by adding something like this to the menu.xml,
[code language=“xml”] [/code]
menu.xml is also used by Openbox without running the LXDE. That means, if a user login with Openbox window manager instead of LXDE, it will use the same menu.xml.
However, this can be changed by editing the lxde-rc.xml (LXDE) or rc.xml (Openbox window manager only) to load specific menu XML file. As a result, we are allowed to have different menu.xml files, one for LXDE and one for Openbox (window manager only).
Autostart
Autostart is quite complicated. If using LXDE, Xfce, or Openbox, the application desktop files in the ~/.config/autostart will be launched once login. They can also be disabled.
However, LXDE also allows autostart through ~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart, where the LXDE is the default profile name. The autostart file is not exactly a shell script, but we can add the commands in this autostart file.
Though LXDE is based on Openbox, it does not use /.config/openbox/autostart file. If we login with Openbox window manager only, then **/.config/openbox/autostart** will be sourced (called) instead. This autostart file is just a shell script. As a result, we can use control structure like if-else. In order to run a batch of commands immediately, we can use the “&” to run the commands in the background.
There is another thing worth to know. If our display manager is LXDM or LightDM, it will source the ~/.xprofile. However, if we write our commands in the .xprofile, (I think) the commands will called before the DE is totally loaded. Therefore, the command like “compton” will not affect the Openbox. (Compton is an X window compositor, so that the Openbox will become compositing window manager.)
Openbox applications
Since Openbox is just a window manager, if we login with Openbox window manager only, there is no panel, wallpaper, volume control, etc. Therefore, we have to install the packages by our own. Besides that, Openbox does not handle graphical logout. However, we can install oblogout and add it to the Openbox menu.
I personally use the tint2 as the panel, feh for the wallpaper for both Openbox and LxDE (since I don’t use PCManFM), volumeicon for controlling the volume, compton to composite the window, and xscreensaver for screen saver. tint2 has the battery indicator and date time indicator. So, this is how my Openbox look.
[caption id=“attachment_1213” align=“aligncenter” width=“300”]
Openbox with Tint2[/caption]