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Blackbox (Finally) Updated
mpeg4codec writes "OSNews reported earlier this month that the lightweight Blackbox window manager has been updated to 0.70. Among the new features are EWMH compliance, anti-aliased fonts, unicode support, and backwards compatibility with previous versions' styles. Of course, it brings you all these new features (well, some are optional) while retaining its small binary size, small memory footprint, and short list of dependencies. I for one think it's about time."
Too bad that Fluxbox has already killed it off.
hello dear sirs my name is jamesh i are india (bihar) can u guide me install red had linux 9?
So I went over to the screenshot site (second one from the bottom) and was under-impressed with what they had displayed. I said to myself, "Self, this looks like any other WM." To which I replied, "Yep."
I guess you could say I was crazy, but maybe I'm missing something here. What does this offer that other WMs don't offer?
And it just occurred to me that "small size" is not really a big selling point. Maybe if this was on a 486 with 8 megs of RAM, memory footprint would become a big deal, but if I'm running a system with an actual window manager, not to mention a window server like X, the least of my worries is lack of memory.
The link was useless.
I mean unless it's perfect...
:-)
Not yet, but it's approaching it
I think the Free Software crowd is becoming jaded with continual release after release after release. Does one need to keep on adding features just to attract attention? Does one need to purposely introduce bugs just so there's an excuse to cut a new release in six months?
Sometimes you just have to realize that the software is done. Finished. Completed. That software is Blackbox.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Yet another freaking window manager for Linux. Why not improve on the existing ones instead of trying to fill bogus niches.
First of all, this is an update. So, they did improve on an existing one.
Second, different people have different needs/preferences for WMs, hence the wide variety. IMHO the variety is a strength not a weakness.
nil
I realize that the preferred technique of debate here is a flurry of ad hominems followed by a couple slippery slope arguments and wrapped up with a huge leap of logic. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Well, yes, actually there is something wrong with it. By automatically labelling anyone who doesn't agree with you as "a knob" or "astroturfer" or some other epithet, you automatically end any rational debate. Maybe after several dozen posts it may be useful to end a debate with a well-formed insult, but to start off the debate by denigrating anyone who doesn't agree with you is hardly a recipe for enlightenment.
This kind of thing happens so much on Slashdot that I guess it's just considered the norm. How sad it is that this chance for rational discussion of WM merits (and your post actually does have some good points about the merits or lack thereof of Blackbox) into a name calling match.
Make that, "Fluxbox and Openbox *were* much better than Blackbox anyways!"
Blackbox just released, and those features they noted as being added really *are* cool. In the lightweight WM market, it really is a penny-ante game: No one can add too much, because that makes them not lightweight. Blackbox caught up a lot of ground in this release and could take back its crown with relatively little trouble.
The people who built the later cathedrals in the rennaiscance were of the same opinion. Backed by incredibly wealthy patrons and a surplus of masons, they laughed at earlier era's notions of simplicity. The least of their worries was running out of ink on the blueprints, or running out of tasks for the artisans to perform. "More curliques!" was their battle cry.
And thus they invented Baroque. It's a nice style, if you're into that kind of thing. But it's hardly a universal aesthetic.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
If I get what you mean, I'd have to disagree just out of my own personal tastes.
s cr eenshot3.jpg
Having the capability to change window borders AND then system controls as seperate entities is a huge improvement over Windows singular theme configurations.
If I want a southside window border, but end up finding a better gtk theme that blends better for my eyes.. then by all means I'll use two different themes. An example is here:
http://thetao.sourceforge.net/_screenshots/yang
The option of being able to use identical themes for window borders and controls is the point. We need to keep that option avaliable to people who enjoy mix-matching themes to fit their tastes better. Granted, blackbox handles things a bit differently, but if you want a unified manager then maybe blackbox just isn't the proper choice?
And it doesn't have all the hideous widgets from Gtk based WMs. They sure are ugly.
Au Contraire! My favorite Window Manager, XFCE, shows how a GTK+ Window Manager can be created while still looking beautiful.
I originally chose XFCE because it had low memory requirements and had much of the same polish that existed in CDE. At the time, neither KDE or GNOME had both features. (I'd go as far as to say that GNOME had neither.) Since I first started using it, though, XFCE has become more attractive and even more polished with time. It probably won't run as well on a 16MB P120 as the original versions, but it would probably give GNOME and KDE a good run on a 64MB machine.
FWIW, I do like how far GNOME and KDE have come. GNOME can feel very pleasent to work in, but only if the distro preconfigures it correctly. The default installation is crap.
KDE, OTOH, is more beautiful than ever. It's applications are solid, its installation easy, and its capabilities top notch. It's just too bad that they've never worked the kinks out of that "too much cluttered 3D" feel it has.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
....a Metacity theme that would work well on an 800x600 display. (it's a laptop, it's paid for, it runs Linux quite well with the exception of Metacity/GTK's insistance on using HUGE buttons)
FWIW, XP looks and runs fine. If I could just get the same sizing, this laptop would be rid of the Microsoft scurge. Believe me, I'm SO feckin' fed up with MS.
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
Remember, you didn't pay for this, so don't go disrespecting someone's hard work just because it doesn't update enough for you. There are people who like blackbox. And besides, it's just kind of a cool window manager.
Believe it or not, I really did enjoy using CDE on my old Sun Ultras. It looked terrible, but the overall feel of the system was extremely solid and pleasent to work with. My only real complaint with it was how Sun added features by kit bashing command line utilities and Java programs into the WM. Would it have killed them to write a proper volume control instead of using the immature JMF control? Not to mention the *need* for a Winzip type of archive tool.
:-)
Still, beggars can't be choosers, and CDE blew the hell out of early KDE and GNOME.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I keep seeing posts that complain that "Well, this is great if memory is a problem, but for me it isn't so here's a list of reasons why I wouldn't never use it..." Why post useful drivel like this? (Oh, right, slashdot...) If your machine can handle a heavy GUI, you're *probally* going to use KDE/Gnome (or maybe XFCE). If you use a computer that's less than 600mhz, you're probally going to use Blackbox, Openbox, Fluxbox, etc. Or, once again, maybe XFCE (It's sexy, isn't it? ;))
This is really great to see that they're trying to update the light WMs, while still letting them remain useful in the same way they (hopefully) will always be: A good way to revive old hardware w/o having to install Windows NT or 98.
So, I'm reading lots of comments here about how people have nice new computers with lots of RAM & fast CPUs, so they don't need to worry about memory footprint etc. I call BS. Just because you have good enough hardware to cope with bloatware is no reason to use bloatware. My desktop at home is an Athlon64 3200+ w/ 2 GiB RAM. It could handle any WM I choose to throw on it. I choose lightweight WMs (fluxbox, currently), and I will try the new blackbox. Not because I'm limited by my hardware, but because I prefer the clean design that is inherant in lightweight WMs. And I don't use or want many of the features and eyecandy in some of the heavier WMs, so there's no reason for me to use one, even though my hardware could handle it easily.
Now, don't get me wrong, if you prefer KDE or Gnome or Enlightenment or whatever over blackbox, then that's fine; but don't use "I have good hardware" as a reason not to use a lightweight WM. Say "I like X, which lightweight WMs don't have" and I will respect you. Disagree, likely, but I will respect your opinion.
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Out of curiosity, what do you use that RAM for? This is a serious question.
Hm. While I'm not refuting anything you've said about Blackbox, I would like to add that OSX is merely an extension of NeXT Step which is available as WindowMaker.
WindowMaker, as such, is a fairly light weight window manager in its own right and is famous for programmability.
So, whether you were trying to be harsh on the OS X or not I don't know, but do remember what OS X really is under the eye candy!
(On a side note, I personally think those Apple enguneers actually made OS X less usable than NeXT. I would blame Jobs, but I'm sure there's some half baked industrial design "guru" somewhere at fault.)
RAM? The main advantage here is that the files take up little *drive space*. This is optimal for something like a Live MiniCD/Flash drive distro that needs all the space available for killer packages.
Where do you get off saying something like, "I for one think it's about time"? Did you contribute even a single line of code to get it to this point?
Please show a little gratitude to the developers. They're volunteers, after all.
Fluxbox is a window manager. Gnome is a desktop environment.
Please stop confusing the two. You can, quite legitimately, use fluxbox as your Gnome window manager (though its support for Gnome desktop APIs is only in its early stages), so saying that "Gnome was just a pig" doesn't say anything about fluxbox and its comparative performance.
Metacity, on the other hand (Gnome's default window manager) may or may not compare favorably to Fluxbox (I haven't tried a bare Metacity to compare against), but in using just a window manager, you lose all of the benefits of a desktop environment: session management, cross-application configuration parameters, uniform high-level drag and drop, etc.
You may not care about these things, but they are the core of a modern desktop environment, and have NOTHING to do with what window manager you select.
E16 CVS has 69000 lines, is 650k, and links 11 libraries, which puts it as the largest on two of the three categories; yet even with all the eyecandy turned on, it still runs as fast as things like blackbox on my 266 boxen -- large size doesn't *always* mean slow :)
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment