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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.
Looking at their homepage (assuming you still can, as this is an early post), it looks as if nothing's been updated since November of 2004. The new version is available on the download page, though you'd think they'd post something to the effect of ".70 is now up" right on the front page.
I can only assume these cats are looking to keep a low profile, or to keep a static homepage that they never have to touch.
Nuances of their site design and motives aside, I'm enticed to try this out.
Ignore the rantings above. Poster is an idiot.
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!
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.
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
Well, Blackbox is a little different. First off, Blackbox is a window manager. KDE is a DE, hence the DE in the name. KWin doesn't really get all that many bugs. It's had a total of about a thousand in three years, about one a day. And most of those didn't matter.
It is also important to note that I have never had BB crash. Never. I don't use it anymore, I use KDE. However, when I ran BB for about a year, it never crashed. I occasionally got bothered with having to add everything I wanted manually and having trouble configuring it, but there weren't any 'bugs', just wishlist type items. BB really has been stable basically forever because it has always had an extremely precise goal that was well scoped from the start.
And as for this not mattering to many users, BB is one of the landmark WMs, truly. Just look at how many people use the BB forks. It's one of the all-time favorite WMs out there, and even today, after all this time, is the best looking. It definitely is newsworthy when BB gets a new release.
"... no rush to upgrade... "
Normally I'd agree. In this case, blackbox being as lightweight as it is, and having very little in the way of external dependencies, I went for the upgrade as soon as I saw it. Not a mistake per se, except that almost none of the stock styles work properly (read: invisible menu text, font/border/margin sizes changing wildly). Fortunately, one of the stock styles still worked well enough to navigate. I drilled through the new wiki site to find the 'full example' style for 0.70 and dropped that in. The second unfortunate turn is that the full example also has the invisible text problem. After about an hour of tweaking and paring down it was usable, but the whole experience leaves me with, "yep, you're right to hold off on this one."
Of course, it's possible that there are some conflicts with old (0.65) files on that box...
Let S_n = {nst+us+vt : s,t in Z \ {0}, u,v in {-1,1}}. For all n in Z where |n| > 2, Z \ S_n is infinite... right?
I like how I can use Blackbox for windows and use the same themes.
:)
http://www.bb4win.org/news.php
People walk up and seem me using rxvt from cygwin and bb4win and they dont realize im in windows, till I open Exchange.
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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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.