TuxTraining

Fluxbox isn’t like KDE or Gnome in the sense that there’s a ‘desktop configuration tool’. To change the desktop wallpaper, for example. you’ll have to drop into a terminal window. It’s not hard, just different.

1. Get the image you’d like to use as your desktop wallpaper downloaded or otherwise saved somewhere on your sytem
2. Open a terminal window and use your favorite text editor to open your ~/.fluxbox/startup file.
3. Look for a line that starts with the command fbsetbg. If you see one, edit it to reflect the path to your new background image. If you don’t see such a line, make a new one as such (note: depending on your screen size you may see this as two lines, this should be one line in your startup file:
   

   fbsetbg -f /home/jon/.fluxbox/backgrounds/my_background.jpg

Another way to get this to set every time you start fluxbox is as follows by adding the command to the ~/.fluxbox/init file. Find the line beginning with session.screen0.rootCommand: and enter the proper command afterward ( fbsetbg -f /home/jon/.fluxbox/backgrounds/my_background.jpg ). You can also use the simplified command fbsetbg -l to load the last wallpaper loaded by fbsetbg, to avoid changing the init file each time you change your wallpaper.

Idesk is an app used to show icons on the desktop, which by simple or double clicking (according to users preferences) will execute a command. It’s used mostly to work with window managers. Icons can be dragged to the desired position on the desktop and that position will be remembered on next idesk startup. The formats supported are png and svg, though there might be problems with the last mentioned format so it’s recommended to stay with png.

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Fluxbox is an alternate to KDE or Gnome as a desktop environment, it’s extremely lightweight and minimal but sometimes a bit too minimal. I always find I need to add extra menu’s to the existing fluxbox menu’s to make accessing applications more of a snap.  Fortunately adding extra menu’s to Flux’s right click entries isn’t too difficult.

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