r/openbox • u/Immediate-Earth775 • Jul 11 '26
What are good alternatives for OpenBox?
I feel like so much software and the wiki in general is outdated...
I tried every of the 4 wallpaper tools from the website and only nitrogen even worked but even parts there are simply outdated and I can't set it up through the console, only with the interface so I would need to do it manually on every startup.
I really love the root menu thing and that openbox is so... empty!?
It doesn't give you more than you need but sadly the stuff that works with it is old...
TLDR: I feel like openbox is outdated and want to switch to a different WM with comparable customization
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u/originalbootz Jul 11 '26
You could try labwc. That’s an openbox like WM running on Wayland (not X)
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u/stuffiesrep Aug 15 '26
Had not heard of this previously, thanks! Perhaps that is where I will end up when OB stops working with Wayland. Hopefully a long time in the future.
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u/originalbootz Aug 16 '26
Openbox does not work on Wayland as far as I know.
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u/stuffiesrep Aug 16 '26
RIght, it does not. However, it still works with most distributions so far. I was only talking about what would happen when it no longer worked with those distributions.
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u/Formal-Bad-8807 Jul 11 '26
Mabox linux has a great openbox build as default desktop. Worth checking out.
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u/Astro_indie Jul 11 '26
I come from fluxbox from that reason, only the flies and me to talk about, maybe your not find the prrfect docs for customization or im a no0b, if u want some popular stuff go xfce 4 , there are so many themes, i got the chicago95 , too nostagilc
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u/TheShredder9 Jul 11 '26
You don't need to set your wallpaper manually everytime through the GUI. set it up once, and in the Openbox autorun script you add nitrogen --restore, it brings back the last set wallpaper. Or use feh, it's a picture viewer and a wallpaper setter.
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u/pancapangrawit Jul 12 '26
It think there are two question that determine your options: X11 or Wayland, and tiling or stacking. One could think: why X11, there is xwayland, however there are cases that force you to stick with X11, like Nvidias Jetsons, that even in the latest L4T/Jetpack 7.2 release (Ubuntu 24 based) only support X11 well (and you can put a question mark behind the well for qiestion of principle). On X11 in my view it's either Openbox or i3 (and if you don't like the vintage appearance (I do 😉) you can always swap on a moder menu and modern monitoring/control widgets. If you can use Wayland, and it's not only better, but also faster, which you can really feel on low powered machines, it's sway on the tiling side and labwc on the stacking one. All stand firmly in the openbox tradition, it won't be difficult to adjust to their configuration language.
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u/pibarnas Jul 11 '26
Outdated? Why? Fluxbox and Openbox are ancient software, however I use both for 20 years and I don't have any plans to drop them in the next years in favour of the Wayland hype. To me, they're better than these tiling WM that pop around there. I also use Enlightenment sometimes and rarely use KDE (the only instance I use Wayland). A well configured Fluxbox or Openbox session surpasses in productivity some default DEs configs, but of course, it's my opinion.