2014: The year in screenshots

These are the very few screenshots I took in 2014. I change my desktop much less frequently than I used to when I started documenting this, seven years ago, but it still serves as a good index of my thoughts and moods of the past year.

Savitar is a Thinkpad X41, running Debian Testing, with Openbox and Gnome 2.30 (still!). It is the computer I use for most of my work, and its looks have changed very little since 2012. Varuna is a Thinkpad X60, with an external monitor, running Linux Mint Debian edition. I generally use Openbox on it (with several Xfce components) and occasionally Pekwm. The second desktop setup, with the Groove themes, is the one I used for most of 2014.

Varuna

Openbox 3.5, with the Laza-mod themes.

Openbox 3.5, with the Groove themes, and the ported AestheticGroove icon theme.

Pekwm 0.1.17, with the Fawn Gtk and Pekwm theme, and the Children of the Earth icon theme.

Savitar

Gnome 2.30.2 with Openbox 3.5.0, still using the Erthe themes and ACYL icon theme.

2012: The year in screenshots

This is my fifth annual screenshot review, recording my changing aesthetics and moods. Early in the year, I moved back to Gnome (with Openbox, of course) on my laptop (Savitar, a Thinkpad X41), and in November began using MATE on my desktop (Loka). Early in the year, for a few months I also returned to Pekwm, a wonderful little window manager I hadn’t used much in the previous year. I also played with Awesome for a short while, but that window manager, however much I like it, remains more of a distracting novelty for me than an productive work environment.

As you can see below, I’ve mainly used dark themes this year (and particularly the Erthe themes), and have changed my setup a lot less often than I did when I started posting these annual overviews.

Both Savitar and Loka still run Debian Testing (Wheezy), though Savitar’s is far from up to date (as should be obvious from the Gnome 2 screenshots below).

All my Openbox and Gtk themes (including those that I merely modified) can now be found on github.

Savitar

Gnome 2, with Openbox, using the Erthe themes, and the AnyColorYouLike icons.

Openbox 3.5, with the Dandelion Openbox and Gtk theme, and the nuoveXT-1.7 icons. The desktop background is a painting of the Six Gosvamis of Vrindavan.

Gnome 2, with Openbox, using the Erthe themes, and the AnyColorYouLike icons. The desktop background I found here.

Loka

Pekwm, with the Infinity Pekwm and Gtk theme, and the moblin icons.

Pekwm with the Royalty themes, and the AnyColorYouLike icons.

Openbox 3.5, with modified royalty themes and Somatic icons. The dock holds bbdock, bbpager, lal, and docker.

Openbox 3.5 and XFCE 4.8, with the Erthe themes, and AnyColorYouLike icons.

Awesome 3.4.13, with the Eidolon themes.

MATE 1.4.2 with Openbox 3.5, using modified Laza themes and the Gnome-Noble icons.

2008: The year in screenshots

Probably more for my own amusement (especially in a year’s time) than for anyone else’s, and in an attempt to document the evolution of my aesthetics, I here give a summary of my own 2008, in screenshots.

The wallpapers I use for my desktops generally reflect my mood, and have some special significance for me at the time. What follows is therefore not just a collection of screenshots, but a reflection of what has been on my mind the last year. Not all the screenshots I’ve taken the past year are here. I’ve left out the odd desktops (like this one or this one) that didn’t last very long.

The screenshots are arranged per computer, roughly chronologically. Yantra is my main computer, on which I do most of my work. Grantha is the computer at my office. Mitra is the old Dell Inspiron 2500 laptop I wrote about earlier.

Most of the screenshots are of Openbox, which I started using in early 2007 (if my memory serves me well…). By the end of 2007, I discovered Pekwm and used that window manager almost exclusively for a few months in the beginning of 2008. In the summer, I started experimenting with Awesome 2.3, which became the standard window manager on one of my computers (mitra), and which I use frequently on another (yantra). All of these screenshots are of Debian or Ubuntu systems. Early in 2008, grantha still ran Windows XP, but that now runs Debian Testing (lenny). One of the early mitra screenshots may be one of Arch Linux, which I had installed on that laptop for a few weeks when I just started using it.

I’ve been using the same themes on grantha and mitra for months now (see the last screenshots for both). The themes on yantra tend to change more often, though I’ve been alternating a lot the last few months between the Children of the Earth themes and the Mythos theme.

I’ve had a lot of dark desktops this year, and have used a couple of dark Gtk themes often (Royalty, Mythos and Eidolon). It really is very pleasant on the eyes, especially at night, even if not all websites go well with it.

For all of you with a slow internet connection: know that this is quite a lengthy post, with more than 40 300×225 thumbnails!

Using different Gtk settings in different sessions

As is probably clear to the reader of this blog, I mainly use two window managers: Pekwm and Openbox. Both look very differently on this computer, though. My Openbox session is dark blue and purple; my Pekwm session, on the other hand, looks orange and black.

Up until very recently, the first thing I often had to do after I logged into either sessions, was to edit the .gtkrc-2.0 file and (re)set the appropriate Gtk theme settings. I have suggested elsewhere to use both the xfce-mcs-manager and the gnome-settings-daemon to avoid clashing themes between sessions, but I prefer not to load these daemons.

Here is my current solution. First, I created two new gtkrc files that contain the Gtk settings I use in Openbox and Pekwm: ~/.gtkrc-2.0.Openbox and ~/.gtkrc-2.0.Pekwm. I then added the following line to my (auto)start file to overwrite the default ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file with the gtkrc file for Pekmw/Openbox:

For Openbox:

cp /home/USERNAME/.gtkrc-2.0.Openbox /home/USERNAME/.gtkrc-2.0 &

For Pekwm:

cp /home/USERNAME/.gtkrc-2.0.Pekwm /home/USERNAME/.gtkrc-2.0 &

And voilà! No more Gtk settings that conflict with the Pekwm/Openbox theme or wallpaper. This solution is probably very obvious to many, but perhaps some of you will find it helpful. This will, of course, also work if you use Openbox and a destkop environment (as separate sessions); just uncomment everything your custom Gnome/Xfce gtkrc file (as above), so that its daemon can set the themes properly.

Focus an application instead of re-launching it

Do you often end up with a cluttered desktop where you have several instances of the same application running? You need quick access to a particular application (often a file manager or terminal in my case) and instead of looking for the current open instance you launch a new one. After a few hours, you notice you have 4 terminals running and three Thunar windows, where one instance of each would suffice. If you often end up in a similar situation, despair no more!

Vaughn Dickson posted a very handy script on the Openbox mailing list and his wiki that either launches an application or gives it focus if it is already running.

I have modified the script a little and created a second one for Thunar. In my version, it moves the open instance of Thunar or the terminal to the current desktop (rather than moving me to the desktop where that window currently is running). You can find my Thunar script here, and my Terminal script here. If you would like to open a new Terminal/Thunar window if there is none on the current desktop, instead of moving the existing window to the current desktop, replace the last line of the script with $terminal_exec & or $thunar_exec &. Note that you need to have wmctrl installed to use this script (it should be in the repositories of most distributions).

Make the script executable (chmod +x path to the script) and assign a keybinding to it. I bound these two scripts to the keys I normally use to launch the xfce4-terminal and Thunar (Mod4+F3 and Mod4+F4). It speeds everything up enormously, since I no longer have to wait for the application to launch (or go looking for it among my open windows).

Thank you very much, Vaughn! This is a great tool 😀

A comparison of four window managers

Judging from the search engine terms that show up in my WordPress dashboard, a lot of the visitors to this blog are searching for a comparison between either Fluxbox and Openbox, Openbox and Pekwm, or Pekwm and Openbox (search terms such as Pekwm vs. Openbox, or Openbox vs. Fluxbox are rather common).

To satisfy the desires of my dear readers, and to help those who want to know more about some window managers, I have therefore created the following table comparing four very popular window managers (or three very popular ones and one that I happen to like a lot :-)): Icewm, Fluxbox, Openbox and Pekwm.

Icewm, Fluxbox and Openbox have a wide user basis, and a very loyal following. Pekwm is a lesser known window manager that deserves more attention. I mainly use Openbox and Pekwm, and occasionally Icewm.

Please note that this table is not an indication of the most versatile, most developed or ‘best’ window manager. If a window manager lacks a feature, it may have some different strengths. Openbox, for example, does not support pixmap themes, but its theme options are the most complex and elaborate theme options of these four window managers (which makes creating themes for Openbox so much more fun!). Some features may also be primitively implemented: Pekwm supports dockapps, for instance, but its harbour is not very well developed. Nor does this chart provide an exhaustive list of features for these window manager. Icewm, for example, has a number of unique features that are not mentioned in this table (such as an email indicator and some system monitoring tools for the taskbar), and a lot of the basic features of window managers are left out.

I created the table so you could easily find out what each window manager can or cannot do. Choose whichever window manager you like best. Using one over the other doesn’t make you superior. 🙂

There is a reasonable possibility that this table contains some errors. If you find any, please let me know. If I can think of more categories, I’ll add those later.

	Icewm	Fluxbox	Openbox	Pekwm
First release	1997	2001?	2002	200?
Last stable release	1.2.34 (27-12-2007)	1.0.0 (08-10-2007)	3.4.7 (17-04-2008 )	0.1.6 (28-05-2007)
Language	C++	C++	C	C++
Based on	—	Blackbox	originally Blackbox	originally aewm++
EWMH standards	partial	partial	yes	partial
Panel	yes	yes	no	no
Support for dockapps	no	yes (slit)	yes (dock)	yes (harbour)
Native wallpaper support	yes	yes	no	no
Alt-tab dialog	yes (vertically and horizontally!)	no	yes	yes
Command dialog	yes (in taskbar)	yes (fbrun)	no	yes
Xinerama support	yes	yes	yes	yes
Native (fake) transparency	no	yes	no	no
Pixmap themes	yes	yes	no	yes
Multiple workspaces	yes	yes	yes	yes
Viewports	no	no	no	yes
Add/remove workspaces	no	no	yes	no
Usable screen edges	no	no	no (in git version)	yes
Strut support	no	no	yes	no
Right-click desktop menu	yes	yes	yes	yes
Configurable client menus	no	no	no	yes
Keyboard shortcuts in menus	yes	yes	yes	no
Dynamic menus	no	yes	yes (pipe-menus)	yes
Additional custom menus	no	yes	yes	yes
Icons in menus	yes	yes	only in client-list-menus	no (only in client-list-menu of git version)
Grouping/Tabbing of windows	no	yes	no	yes
Opaque moving/resizing	yes	yes	only resizing	yes
Minimize window to tray	yes	no	no	no
Hide windows	yes	no	no	no
Tiling	yes (vertically and horizontally)	no	no (GrowTo… actions)	no (‘MaxFill’ actions)
Per-app settings	yes	only grouping	yes	yes
Configurable key bindings	yes	yes	yes	yes
Chainable keygrabber	no	yes	yes	yes
Configurable mouse behaviour	Some in the preferences file	yes (in keys file)	yes	yes
Session management/ Autostarting applications	yes	yes	yes	yes
Confirm logout	yes	no	yes (3.4.7)	no
Shutdown/reboot control	no	no	yes (3.4.7)	no
Graphical configuration tools	plenty	Fluxconf, Fluxmenu	Obconf, Obmenu	no

Orange and Black

To my surprise I have been using the same desktop setup (wallpaper, themes, icons, fonts, panels, etc.) for nearly two months now. Though I have occasionally gone for very different colours or a different window manager, I generally returned quickly to Pekwm and the following setup:

This environment turned out to be nearly perfect for my needs. It is aesthetically pleasing but not distracting. There are no icons at the bottom (or top) of the screen attracting my attention, and all the colours go well together, even with OpenOffice, the application I rely on most for my work.

The wallpaper is Golden, by Miemo. The Pekwm theme is a slight modification of Mire v2-orange by Lyrae/Thrynk. The Gtk theme is my own creation, though it is heavily based on MurrinaSunshine. The fonts are Arial Rounded MT 9.

The icons are my own modification of the Area O (areo) icon set, originally created by the great Heylove. They were ported, (without heylove’s consent, I believe) to Gtk, but are no longer visible on gnome-look.org. I think they are still included in some theme archive over there, but can’t remember which.

I changed the colour of the theme to match my Gtk and Pekwm theme, and made a few other modifications. The original icons set used a single icon for all file types — very impractical! — so I’ve added icons for each mimetype, indicating what file extension they have. Since the icon set is also incomplete, I’ve added a few icons to have a more uniform style. I don’t own the rights to these icons, and have only modified them for personal use, so unfortunately I can’t pass them on (I am one of those strange people that take copyrights seriously :-))

The panel at the bottom of the screen is pypanel with netwmpager on the right. The applications running in the second screenshot are (clockwise, starting from the upper left corner): the wonderful file manager Thunar, Orage, Gmpc (my favourite mpd client, which is surprisingly light), and Xfce4-terminal. At the top of the screen you can see dmenu in action.

There are a few minor disadvantages to this setup. (1) I don’t have a system tray. I don’t want to use pypanel’s tray, as the icons don’t go well with the rest of the style. If I really want/need a system tray I generally load docker in the harbour, though I have learned to work without a system tray most of the time. (If there were a text-based system tray (ttm-style), I might try to integrate it into my desktop, but I don’t believe something like that exists). (2) I still haven’t figured out how to launch OpenOffice with the Gtk widgets in Pekwm (apart from ooffice –widgets-set gtk), so I still have to launch it from the terminal. “export OOO_FORCE_DESKTOP=gnome” works in .bashrc, but not in Pekwm’s start file.

I’ve heard the Ubuntu developers want to create an orange and black Gtk theme for the next Ubuntu release (8.10). If it looks like this, I won’t complain.

New application to change Gtk themes

PCMan, one of the developers behind the LXDE project, has just released a first version of LXappearance, a simple application to change the Gtk theme, icons and fonts when outside Gnome or Xfce.

The application is very straightforward. There is a tab to change the Gtk theme, one for the Icons and one for ‘Other’, which at the moment only allows you to change the toolbar style of Gtk applications (icons, icons and text, only text, etc.). It has a preview window which updates automatically when you select a different theme, but changes are only applied when you press the ‘apply’ button.

Here are a few screenshots of the application in action:

As far as I can tell, this is now the best theme-changing application available for window managers. Unlike its predecessors, gtk-theme-switch and gtk-chtheme, LXappearance can set the icon theme for you as well, and the instant preview of the theme is well implemented. You can also install new themes with it, though I admit I haven’t tested that yet. The only issue I’ve had so far, is that the icons and Gtk themes are not listed alphabetically in LXappearance (as you can see in the screenshot). I’m not sure what the logic is behind the listing, but it isn’t very handy.

Note that LXappearance overrides your ~/.gtkrc-2.0 file, where it stores the Gtk theme, icon, font and toolbar settings, so be sure to back that file up if you have some settings in there you’d like to keep. I also had to uncomment the icon settings I had specified in my ~/.gtkrc-2.0.mine file; for some reason they overrode the settings in ~/.gtkrc-2.0.

This is a great addition for those who use window managers without desktop environments, but want a light and attractive way to change their Gtk settings. I’ll be updating the Openbox guide soon.

Using dmenu in Pekwm and Openbox

During my recent stint with Firebox, and before that while I was trying out wmii, I’ve grown very quickly accustomed to dmenu. After only using it for a few hours, I fell in love with it: it is so convenient to launch an application when you don’t have your hands on the mouse; launch dmenu, just type a few letters from the application name, make sure you have the right app selected, press enter and your app shows up.

Unfortunately, Firebox is still too unstable to use as a primary window manager, and I haven’t grown accustomed to tiling window managers (yet?). So I began to wonder whether it is possible to run dmenu or something similar in Openbox and Pekwm, and – guess what? – it is very easy! (Why did I ever think otherwise?)

First, you’ll need to install dmenu. You can download the source code from the dwm/wmii website and install that (‘sudo make clean install’ in Ubuntu). To launch dmenu in Openbox and Pekwm, I use the following command:

$(dmenu_path | dmenu -b -nb '#E0E9D0' -sb '#a6b38d' -sf '#070806')

This launches dmenu at the bottom of the screen (-b), with a colour scheme to match the Aeterna Openbox and Gtk theme. You can change the settings (everything that comes after ‘dmenu’ in the above command) to suit your preferences; read the man pages (‘man dmenu’) to see what options you have.

I have this bound to Alt+F3 in both Pekwm and Openbox (Alt+F1 launches the root menu and Alt+F2 launches gmrun). In Pekwm, I added the following to keys file:

KeyPress = "Mod1 F3" { Actions = "Exec $(dmenu_path | dmenu -b -nb '#E0E9D0' -sb '#a6b38d' -sf '#070806') &" }

To get dmenu to work in Openbox was a little more complex. If I added the above command to the rc.xml file dmenu wouldn’t launch (Openbox-Message: Failed to execute ‘$(dmenu_path | dmenu’)’: Failed to execute child process “$(dmenu_path” (No such file or directory) say the xsessions-errors.). I’ve tried adjusting the command in several ways, but couldn’t find one that did work, so I ended up creating a script to launch dmenu in Openbox. It is very straightforward:

#!/bin/sh
exec $(dmenu_path | dmenu -b -nb '#E0E9D0' -sb '#a6b38d' -sf '#070806')

I saved the file as OBdmenu in ~/.scripts, where I keep all my scripts, made it executable (chmod +x ~/.scripts/OBdmenu), and added the following to the rc.xml file

For Openbox, this is what I added in the <keyboard> section of the rc.xml file:

<keybind key="A-F3">
<action name="Execute">
<execute>/home/urukrama/.scripts/OBdmenu</execute>
</action>
</keybind>

Here is a screenshot of dmenu running at the bottom of the screen in Openbox:

The only downside to using dmenu in this way is that the applications launched by it don’t show up with their application name in your favourite system monitor, but as the command you used to launch dmenu (OBdmenu in my Openbox session, $(dmenu_path etc. in my Pekwm session). I have no idea how to get around this, but it is only a detail. Otherwise, dmenu is fantastic. It won’t replace my right-click root menu, but it is a great addition to any window manager.

Update: As Tami points out in a comment below, you can get around this problem if you use the following command to launch dmenu:

`dmenu_path | dmenu -b -nb '#E0E9D0' -sb '#a6b38d' -sf '#070806'` && eval “exec $exe”

In Pekwm, you can use this command in the Keys file, but in Openbox you’ll still have to use a script to launch dmenu (as explained above).

This should also work in other window managers, such as Fluxbox, or desktop environments like Xfce, though I haven’t tried it.

Using Pekwm’s screen edges

One of the great features of Pekwm is the ability to use the screen edges. Just like the desktop, you can click on the screen edges to perform certain actions. In the default settings, right clicking on the screen edges brings up your root menu, middle click on it and you see your client menu, left click on it and you will switch to the next workspace in that direction.

The beauty of the screen edges is that, unlike the desktop, they remain available when you have maximize windows or windows in full-screen mode. This means you can still use the mouse to call up the root menu (without setting a margin, as you would in Openbox), or perform other actions. I really hope this is implemented in one of the future releases of Openbox (and hope any of the Openbox devs is reading this! :-)).

Earlier I have written about how you can use the screen edges to semi-autohide the harbour, but their potential is much greater. I will describe two examples here, and hint at a few more uses .

Tilda

Tilda is drop down terminal. Though I rarely use it myself, it is a handy app if use the terminal regularly, but don’t want to switch to the open terminal whenever you need it: Just press a key (F1 by default) and your terminal window drops down from the top of the screen.

Tilda only appears with a keypress, though, so you’ll have to translate or simulate the keypress with a command. After much searching and asking, I finally found several ways of doing this. The easiest is by using xautomation. First install the application:

	sudo aptitude install xautomation

Xautomation allows you to control X from the command line, and consists of several applications. The one you will need here is xte, which generates fake mouse or key inputs. To have F1 pressed and released, you would use the following straightforward command:

	xte "key F1"

(A more complex way of doing this is by using xmacro as explained here)

Now you will have to bind this to a mouse action on a screen edge. Since Tilda is a drop down terminal, I prefer the upper edge (‘Up’) and add the following line to my mouse file (in ~/.pekwm) in the ScreenEdge Up section:

	ButtonRelease = "1" { Actions = "Exec xte 'key F1'" }

Reload Pekwm and whenever you left click on the top screen edge, Tilda will appear (provided Tilda is running obviously). If you would like Tilda to appear whenever the mouse moves over the top screen, use the following line:

	Enter = "Any Any" { Actions = "Exec xte 'key F2'" }

Skippy

The real reason I started playing with Pekwm’s screen edges was to play with one of my much-loved applications: skippy, a full screen task switcher

I wanted to see if I could create a Mac exposé-type effect: if I move my mouse in a particular corner of the desktop, skippy automatically launches and I get a miniature version of all open applications on my screen.

Using Pekwm’s screen edges and xte, this is fairly easy to achieve, were it not that skippy doesn’t actually work like it is supposed to in Pekwm. Skippy launches fine, but remains under the open applications. I’ve tried several things, and the only workaround I have now is to raise the skippy window with wmctrl, but even that is problematic.

If you haven’t done so already, install wmctrl first (sudo aptitude install wmctrl). You now need to get the id for the skippy window. To do this, launch skippy as usual and keep the window miniature windows open. In a terminal type “wmctrl -l” and you will get an overview of all running windows, like this:

	0x02a00001 -1    N/A N/A 
	0x01e00004  0 yantra Blank page 
	0x01a00003  0 yantra urukrama - File Manager 
	0x0240001e  0 yantra Terminal 
	0x01800002  0 yantra [pekwm-users] Skippy and Pekwm 0.1.6 - Opera 
	0x01600003  1 yantra System Monitor 
	0x00c00003 -1 yantra panel 
	0x01000001 -1    N/A netwmpager

The first column contains the window identity as a hexadecimal integer, the second the desktop number (-1 is a sticky window), the third contains the name of your computer, and the final column shows the window title. In the above list, Skippy is the first entry (where the title is given as N/A). You will need the window id of this (in this case 0x02a00001) to raise skippy automatically to the top whenever it is launched. Then open your ~/.pekwm/mouse file and add the following lines to the ScreenEdge section (choose whichever screen edge you prefer; I add it to the right one):

	ButtonPress = "2" { Actions = "Exec xte 'key Scroll_Lock'" } 
	ButtonRelease = "2" { Actions = "Exec sleep 1 && wmctrl -i -r 0x02a00001 -b add,above" }

I have configured skippy to launch when I press Scroll_Lock, so these settings will launch skippy whenever I middle click on the (right) screen edge. Replace Scroll_Lock with whatever key you have bound to skippy. The second line is used to make wmctrl raise the skippy window to the top a second after it is launched.

There are several important disadvantages of this workaround. First of all, skippy’s id changes with every session, which means you’ll have to edit the above entry at the beginning of every session. The second downside is that skippy won’t be raised if it first needs to take a snapshot of all open windows, as that takes more than a second. In such a situation, you’ll need to launch skippy twice.

Despite its limitations, I think this is rather neat 🙂 I am not sure who is to blame here – Pekwm or skippy – but I hope it is Pekwm because that would increase the chances that this problem gets fixed (skippy is no longer developed). If you know of a simpler way to go around this problem (or how to solve it!) please let me know.

Other uses

The potential of the screen edges is great, as you’ve probably guessed by now. Though the mouse has only a few buttons, you can combine those with modifier keys (Ctrl, Alt, Mod4), which gives you a few more options to use on the four screen edges you can play with.

Here are a few more ideas: use the screen edges to launch osdsh to display the time (osdctl -t 4), or the state of your laptop battery (osdctl -b “Battery Power”,$(acpi|cut -d “,” -f2|cut -d “%” -f1|cut -d ” ” -f2)), launch an application launcher like apwal, hide panels or taskbars like visibilty or tint that don’t support hiding (this will be a bit slower, no doubt, but it works), tile windows with tile, etc.