Setting up FluxBox on FreeBSD

FluxBox is an extremely lightweight window manager for X.org. It is based on BlackBox, but has several extra features built in. This tutorial will take you through the basics of installing FluxBox, setting a style, configuring your menu, and how to back it up and save your settings.

Installing Fluxbox

Installing Fluxbox can be done from the ports with the following commands.

# cd /usr/ports/x11-wm/fluxbox
# make install distclean

Once the install is complete add the following to the end of your .xinitrc file.

exec fluxbox

This needs to be the last command that is run.

Creating Menus

To open the fluxbox menu right click on the desktop. Menus follow this format:

[submenu] (MENU NAME)
[exec] (ITEM NAME) {COMMAND}
[exec] (ITEM NAME) {COMMAND}
[end]

An example of a menu for terminals with eterm and wterm would have these in the fluxbox menu (~/.fluxbox/menu)

[submenu] (Terminals)
[exec] (Wterm Blue) {wterm -bg blue -fg white -tr -sh}
[exec] (Wterm Green) {wterm -bg green -fg white -tr -sh}
[exec] (Wterm Red) {wterm -bg red -fg white -tr -sh}
[exec] (Wterm Orange) {wterm -bg orange -fg white -tr -sh}
[exec] (Wterm Clear) {wterm -fg white -tr}

[exec] (Eterm 20 Purple) {Eterm --buttonbar=0 --trans 
		--shade=20 --tint=purple -v -f white}
[exec] (Eterm 20 Gray) {Eterm --buttonbar=0 --trans 
		--shade=20 -v -f white}
[exec] (Eterm 60 Gray) {Eterm --buttonbar=0 --trans 
		--shade=60 -v -f white}
[exec] (Eterm 60 Blue) {Eterm --buttonbar=0 --trans 
		--shade=60 --tint=blue -v -f white}
[exec] (Eterm Clear) {Eterm --buttonbar=0 --trans
		-v -f white}
[end]