I have written a detailed tutorial on installing Artix with Openbox and i3. Because I could not find any Artix Forum then I have posted it at the Antergos Forum. Here would be the better place for it. Unfortunately the depressive black graveyard design of this webpage and forum is quite a strain for the eyes. Therefore posting a long and detailed tutorial over here does not make any sense.
Why did the Jedi turn to the dark side?
If you are interested in my tutorial, please go to the Antergos forum:
https://forum.antergos.com/topic/7737/antergos-openrc-openbox-i3-based-on-artix-a-step-by-step-tutorial
(https://artixlinux.org/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=20.0;attach=43;image)
To to those who are disgusted by the terrible and almost unreadable startup screen of the Artix-isos. Don't let it turn you off. Artix is much better than it looks like. Its functionality is really good. And with little efforts you can even make it look nice, light and friendly.
A lot of people find darker themes a lot easier on the eyes. I guess whoever set up the forum was one of them.
No, I don't like dark themes but the other devs wanted a dark one.
That's it. Dark is beautifull.
Another yes for dark
Like the dark theme, but other options would be nice as well. GNU/Linux and especially init-free minded folks like options. Right?
FYI, you can choose to use a light theme at My Account -> Look and Layout -> Current Theme - Change Theme.
Thanks, I found this two days or so ago, but there had only been one option. (There are two now.)
UPDATE: There are 7 themes now. Much better, thank you. May I suggest an option with an adjustable colors?
A black and 6 white themes go into a bar...
I like dark themes but black and bright is a bit irritating still. I use openbox and without downloading 1GB of themes the only functional one I use is Atwaita-Dark. The problem is that colors within the theme can only be customized through LXDE and what creates a functionality problem is that mozilla stuff on some non-funky pages the comment boxes are black with black letters. So you have to copy and paste stuff on those boxes (like simple forms to fill) which is crappy. If you block system colors and customize mozilla you end up either downloading stupid themes or white with black letters.
This is not specific to artix though, this is lxde/openbox crap you face everywhere. You get wonderful small packages and have to download GB of theme/icon stuff to make them functional and dark.
My favorite bgrnd is dark hazy blue green with text that is a hint of yellow/orange off of white. I can read and write all day.
The other advantage with dark themes it keeps a big screen cooler during the day. The brighter it gets the more energy the higher the heat. Plus if you like working in the dark too there is less contrast with the surroundings. Like a Faraday basement under the barn ;)
Peace!
Thank you for this thread, I was really struggling to read the forum with the default theme and wasn't aware it could be changed. I have now changed it!
Just out of curiousity:
1) Why openbox along with i3? Isn't i3 enough?
2) Why pcmanfm and not spacefm (i know that's about the sex of angels, eventually, but, frankly, i was used to use long time pcmanfm but since a while i substituted it by spacefm and i find it way better, now ... )?
PS. It would be nice if there were (is?) a good and working instruction how to transfer - hopefully completely - an existing i3 manjaro installation. I like that one a lot and would only prefer a more coherent and less intrusive daemon management ...
@ fairnet
Openbox is my favorite because of obmenu. i3 already was on the repo, so I have kept it as tilting supplement and in case, that an upgrade might break openbox.
Yes, SpaceFM would be a much better choice, because it does not need the troublesome gvfs. But unfortunately SpaceFM is not included in the Arch repos.
The limited repos are the reason why I do not use Artix (or Arch/Antergos) anymore. I had a hard time to install QGIS, GnuCash and some other stuff from the AUR and have failed to update these packages.
I use antiX now (SysV – Openbox & i3 & SpaceFM), based on Debian sid with Siduction repos added. So far it has been very stable and I have got competent support in antiX and Siduction forums. All the software that I need is in the repos.That makes it much easier to administrate the system, even though Debian & Apt is less KISS than Arch & Pacman. So I am very pleased by my antiX-Debian-Siduction-hybrid.
Oops. In the manjaro repos it is ... (that's not so far from arch, i'd presume ;) ).
SpaceFM was in the Arch repros till it was depreciated, its now in AUR if you don't know this to get a AUR package in the Arch repro It needs to have enough votes that has now gone totally out the door, thanks to Arch spins using pamac octobi, not registering on AUR and not voting just fucking leeches that's all.
I did the move early from manjaro-OpenRC-i3 to Artix. It was smooth (somehow, nearly perfect) and I still using the same system without need to reinstall. At that time I missed some tools which were defaults in manjaro-i3 (some hooks and bash scripts); after a while I replaced them or transfer them to a personal scripts folder.
P.S. I do not know about the status of manjaro-i3 with systemd. I can not advice you!
What if you briefly make a change in your pacman.conf, put the manjaro reps in the very bottom, # comment out the real arch repositories, make a copy of the manjaro-mirrorlist name it mirrorlist-manjaro in /etc/pacman.d/ update (you probably still have the manjaro keys) get your i3 stuff updated, reverse the pacman.conf damage, you are done :)
wait, youre (ideally) supposed to register on aur and vote on things?
Yeah, there is an AUR pkg that lets you vote on AUR packages. On yaourt for example it lists how many people have used it and how many people gave a thumbs up. If you see a package that says 0 (0) then you better scan through the source before you compile it. Of course most people don't and just because it works they give it a thumbs up. It is the other extreme of debian where you have to know people to let you submit code for "future" review, and future is relative to who you know.
example: (look at mpv-git)
21 aur/mpv-bash-completion-git 8:3.3.16-1 (15) (0.83)
Bash completion for the mpv video player
22 aur/mpv-build-git v0.28.0.403.g59a04562b1-1 (26) (3.49)
Video player based on MPlayer/mplayer2 (uses statically linked ffmpeg). (GIT version)
23 aur/mpv-full 0.28.2-3 (9) (0.93)
A free, open source, and cross-platform media player (with all possible libs)
24 aur/mpv-full-git 0.28.2.r564.g11289d5238-1 (7) (0.15)
A free, open source, and cross-platform media player (git version with all possible libs)
25 aur/mpv-git 0.28.0_169_g7eb3427573-1 (183) (3.55)
Video player based on MPlayer/mplayer2 (git version)
26 aur/mpv-light 0.27.0-2 (Out of Date) (7) (0.00)
Free, open source, and cross-platform media player – with selection of features.
mpv on debian-buster/devuan-beowulf
mpv/testing,now 0.27.2-1 amd64 [installed]
video player based on MPlayer/mplayer2
since I mentioned the example in trying to compile mpv-full the pkg requires an older compiler library than the one we have so I had to link the new one
ln -s /usr/lib/libmpfr.so.6 /usr/lib/libmpfr.so.4
which you should remove after you are done
Greetings,
Since Antergos has been discontinued and the forum along with the post have been taken down, I would request you to share the post here if you do have a copy.
@Anaximenes
Unfortunately the tutorial file is on my PC with a broken mainboard. For me that is too much effort to search for an outdated file. I am sorry.
To get an Openbox desktop I suggest to use Artix-LXDE as a base. It uses Openbox as display manager.
You can find an excellent implementation of Openbox at Archbang. Just copy the '/.config/openbox' from there. If you choose the compact vertical tint2 layout and add the Plank dock, you will get a nice Openbox desktop. The wallpapers are managed by Feh. You may want an automated menu. Use obmenu to add a pipe menu. The command for that is:
/usr/bin/openbox-menu lxde-applications.menu
To my opinion the best ready to go Openbox desktop is on NomadBSD. But its system load is about the same as on the XFCE based FuryBSD. So Openbox is not really light weicht.
Be aware, that configuration tools like obmenu and obkey depend on python2. They will disappear, if Arch completely moves to python3. For this reason my next system will use XFCE instead. It can be configured to look, feel and function like Openbox. XFCE has a similar system load and all the configuration tools are on board allready.
JWM might be an alternative, if you are looking for a very light weight solution (i.e. as in antiX linux).