¬ just serendipity 🍀 (not just serendipity)

Previously.

Today, the first thing I did was to create my openbox config folder. Next, I modified the autostart file. Basically all I had to do was to copy some of the contents of my startup file from Fluxbox (~/.fluxbox/startup) to this one. I only removed batterymon from it, since tint2 already has its own battery indicator.

Wallpaper #

So, let’s modify the default wallpaper. I usually go to http://wallbase.cc/ to choose a new one. The keyword “abstract” (or “abstraction”) is a good one. I searched for “keep it simple” and liked this one. To set the wallpaper, fbsetbg /path/to/wallpaper.jpg is sufficient. I’ve put this line in the autostart file. Another option would be to use feh.

Theming #

To set a GTK theme, lxappearance is a good start. It is a GUI config tool, so it should be pretty straightforward. I like the elementary OS one (for the iconset and the widget style). For the (mouse) cursor, xcursor-aero from the AUR is nice. For the fonts, I like Droid Sans (from Android). But I had to install gtk-chtheme to change it (lxappearance doesn’t seem to have this option). It is a GUI too. We could edit ~/.gtkrc-2.0 by hand too, but I find this unnecessary here.

Next thing was to search a theme for openbox itself. Box-look contains several ones. But hey, I’m using Arch, so let’s do it in the arch way. The package openbox-themes from the official repos is a good start. Also, I’ve found the obtheme utility from Xyne repo (it is in the AUR too). It is a python-written GUI, so it should be pretty intuitive too. Hit Control-P (or activate Theme > Preview Mode) then double click in each theme to have a taste of them. I liked a dark one called “Carbon”. I had some trouble with this program, not sure why. But use xkill if you ever need to kill it.

To effectively apply the theme, use obconf (available in the official repos). This is an amazing (GUI) tool. Actually, I found it better than obtheme. There are several options to tweak there. I like to enable the ‘focus window with the mouse’ behavior. It saves a lot of clicks sometimes. Another good tweak is to enable a margin of 1px size (for example, on the left).

Next I installed plank (the simplest dock you’ll ever find out there) from the AUR and moved tint2 panel to the top. You can do the latter with tint2conf. It looks a good rule to let its width be 99%, so there will be a tiny space on top left (or top right) corner, where you can right click to access the openbox menu (this could be achieved with a margin too, like I said before). You could enable the ‘autohide’ option from here too (I dislike it). I’ve also changed the clock format.

Menu editing #

Just to finish this day, let’s edit the menu. The first tool I’ve found for that was menumaker (in the official repos), but it didn’t look so intuitive. First, there is no such a “menumaker” command. The right command is mmaker. Also, there is no man page for it; but fortunately the Arch Wiki contains a little description about it (later I’ve found mmaker --help).

This looks sufficient for today.

Tomorrow plans #

• Add all of my openbox (and tint) configs to my Github. Maybe set a cron job to automatically update (push) them. I’m not sure if I will create a new repo or use my existing one, “dotfiles”. Also, I’m not sure how to link the openbox files to this repo. The easiest way I know to do that is to manually link (ln -s) all the files I want, but this is not much elegant.
• Create some custom menu entries (maybe with obmenu?)
• Read the Arch Wiki a little more.

I followed mainly the Arch Wiki and some recommendations on reddit and in the comments of my previous post to create this guide for day 2.