Openbox vs. Fluxbox - What's the diff?

[Fryguy8]

What's the difference between these 2 window manages from a features standpoint?

[PlagueViper]

i would like to know this too, and which u guys like better

[Hayl]

Open box 2.x was originally based on the blackbox code, just like fluxbox. the main difference was that Openbox 2.x didn't have tabs, originally had better antialised font support, and had the key-grabber as a separate process rather than built into the main executable like flux. flux had some things such as slit ordering (controlling the order things load into the slit), automatic window grouping. The taskbar in Openbox 2.x behaved differently that the Fluxbox - most people who used Openbox 2.x turned off the taskbar.

The new Openbox 3 is a complete rewrite. It contains no blackbox code or code from any other WM. It still has no tabs and never will have them. It now uses XML based config files and a slightly different theming engine format. it was designed first to be stable and standards compliant (it complies with the opendesktop standards in every way (is a drop in replacement for Metacity under gnome). Openbox 3 has no taskbar.

Fluxbox is still based on the same codebase as before (blackbox).

the "why tabs in a WM suck" debate (http://www.nerdnest.org/~woodblock/2003/04/23/#tabs)

[sporkit]

oh...

so wich one is cooler?

[stoe]

i've used all three of the *boxes, blackbox for a short time, fluxbox for quite a while, and now openbox.

i moved away from fluxbox because of certain bloatish features being added like menu transparency, flashing junk, etc.

as mentioned above, openbox now shares no code with the other *boxes. In my opinion, the rendering engine in openbox is far superior, being both better looking and (in my experience) faster. the antialias font rendering is far superior to that in fluxbox.

the openbox code is much better written as well, easier to read, far less messy.

[sporkit]

hmm ill have to take a look at it. :)

thanks

[amgeex]

I used to use blackbox, and I liked it, but I wanted a lil bit of more eye candy, but at the same time I wanted liteweight, so I went to fluxbox. Ahhh... was it nice, I made my own menu, customized it with cool looking icons, overall goodness. Now I'm stuck with Explorer on WinXP.

Don't phear people, I'll be back on Debian as soon as I get my new comp (finaly!!). And when I get it running I'll try openbox. Sounds good stuff!! :p

[Dark Ninja]

So, I may be convinced to try out OpenBox. However, question:

I used to use Blackbox, but I couldn't stand it for the reason that it had NO support of any kind (with respect to quick keys/customized menus/etc). That stunk a lot having to setup a lot of extra programs to handle that.

Does OpenBox have these basic features, or is it something else I have to download and install? I always like getting something that is faster, but, not at the expense of making my life more difficult.

(In the meantime, I'm going to go do a little bit of research on the subject.)

Thanks!

[Ludootje]

Originally posted by Hayl
the "why tabs in a WM suck" debate (http://www.nerdnest.org/~woodblock/2003/04/23/#tabs)

As the URL you provided no longer works (404), here's the page, archived by the Wayback Machine: URL (http://web.archive.org/web/20030626002221/http://www.nerdnest.org/~woodblock/2003/04/23/)