PCLinuxOS beta1 with Openbox

Hello,

Since a few days I started to build a PCLinuxOS version with the desktop based on lightweight components : Openbox, feh, PCManFM, Tint2, and Openbox-menu (dynamic pipe-menus type, about which you will find links in the following lines).

The main PCLinuxOS development team and several members of the PCLinuxOS community work on setting up the next 2010 version, with an official version featuring KDE4, and community versions for each most used desktop environments, Gnome, Xfce, Lxde, E17.

This inspired me the wish to bring in a very minimalist version, based upon the tricky configurations from Calimeroteknik, and based upon mimas’s dynamic menus tool, a program that changes everything in the use of Openbox !

Here is a first sight on a few items which might be found in it next:

  • Dynamic menus (pipe menus)
  • key shortcuts ready to go
  • Some transparency
  • Ultra-light panel : Tint2
  • Wallpaper’s display can be done with PCManFM or with feh (here it’s PCManFM that allows for icons to be displayed on the Desktop), with feh you will get the possibility to have the background changing automatically…

Over all the Openbox lightness, and the famous toolbox of this excellent PCLinuxOS GNU/Linux distribution.

Now a small presentation, with a few screenshots… just a preview. In the first beta1 there is GDM login manager, not Slim, unlike in theses shots.

[nggallery id=6]

About shortcuts

Image 7 : Press W+w to display the desktops and the diverses programs launched

Image 8 : Ctrl+arrows left and right allow switching desktops.

Image 9 : Right clic on the desktop or on the panel, allows displaying the dynamic menus (also on Google code).

On the next images you can see a few programs among thoses installed : Sylpheed for Email, Sakura as main console (it provides with right clic menus as shown on the screenshot), Pino as a multprotocol client Twitter, Identi-ca and so on…

There is of course PCManFM as file manager, and Htop, to watch the processes ! You can start it directly from the menus : take a close look at the screenshot number 9. You can notice the light use on resources, compared to the programs launched, minimized in the panel.

On screenshot 15, you see the menus allowing to shutdown, reboot, logout, and suspend. Hibernation is not there, it’s on purpose. It may be dangerous for the system if used the wrong way. That’s why thoses who will want it will configure it later, after install. 🙂

To test this version

You will find the link on Mypclinuxos.com, at the link Openbox version.

Don’t forget, if you decide to test it, that it’s a beta build upon a beta1 testing version, and soon a beta2. Don’t plan on keeping it until the last updates, it might not work out.

To be continued…

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