Openbox basics and Dark_Exit theme release

It is time to release an Openbox theme. If you are still unaware what Openbox is here comes a short introduction from www.openbox.org

“Openbox is a highly configurable, next generation window manager with extensive standards support.

The *box visual style is well known for its minimalistic appearance. Openbox uses the *box visual style, while providing a greater number of options for theme developers than previous *box implementations. The theme documentation describes the full range of options found in Openbox themes.”

What the above essentially means is that Openbox is a very flexible window manager for a daily desktop usage. It is also very lightweight and has some great features like ALT+Tab keyboard browsing functionality for all currently opened applications.

To begin with Openbox usage you should install a tool called obconf alongside Openbox. You should be able to find openbox and obconf packages in great numbers of modern distributions.

Obconf

The tool obconf is an Openbox configuration editor which will let you  change themes and tweak other interface settings. You can access obconf by right clicking Openbox desktop which opens Openbox root menu for you.

Installing a theme in Openbox

Next we are going to install a theme for Openbox.

You can either store themes to a folder called /usr/share/themes (you need to be a root or a sudo to do that) or you can create a hidden folder called .themes inside your user’s home folder and put a theme folder in there.

Once the above is done you can open obconf and choose the newly installed theme from a list.

And finally here is a theme called Dark_Exit (GPL) which I made few days ago for Openbox

Dark_Exit

Download the theme archive from here: Dark_Exit.tar

Download the theme background from here: https://www.techtimejourney.net/?attachment_id=1213

Openbox does not feature a native way to implement a background. You can use programs such as feh to apply a background easily.  An example:

feh –bg-scale backgroundname.png

Autostarting programs

To get programs, like feh, started automatically with Openbox check the wiki: http://openbox.org/wiki/Help:Autostart

OR

do it with .xinitrc: https://www.techtimejourney.net/?p=622

If you are going to use .xinitrc method remember that you need to have an entry: exec openbox in the file.

 Alternative method to install Openbox theme

Just download the theme file below and open it. Obconf will then handle  the installation and the theme will end up to a folder .themes inside your home directory:

Dark_Exit theme file