Salix 14.0 + Openbox

Yeah, doing openboxing a third time, now on Slackware - after Xubuntu and Debian. I was kinda interested how this one might differ... Openbox is not stock for Salix (and Slackware), and Slacks' repos are not as big by far as Debian ones.

As it appeared, installing Openbox itself went quite as usual, with slight differences. But some pre-install preparations almost drove me nuts. Whole process took twice as long as in Debian.

1. Pre-installing things:
Let's start with simple.
- Nitrogen for wallpaper, with slapt. No problems. First I had a plan to use Spacefm as desktop manager (and wallpaper-provider) - but Spacefm somehow prevented Conky from starting.
- Conky, with slapt, no problems.
- Volumeicon, with slapt, no problems.
- copied session-exit-script from my Vsido install, once again. And as later was seen, it worked without a hitch.
- Also installed wmctrl (slapt) and xdotool (from source), without problems.
Now, not so simple things.
- Tint2 - available through Sourcery. Only thing I had to install before was Cmake. Then it compiled and worked... unfortunately it wasn't SVN-version (no launchers). Then I went and took source from Tints' home. Made, installed - and found that it's the same one - no launchers.
After some digging around I found this. The writer, by the way, is the same guy who makes Vsido. So thanks, Vastone, for all good things. Tutorial worked like a charm, and I soon had nice patched SVN version of Tint running, with launchers and all.
- Compton (sweat, blood and tears). Not available in repos at all, have to get the source from Comptons' home and compile. List of dependencies is quite long, as we know...
What was surprising that only missing dep in Salix was libconfig. Even asciidoc was already installed! But the joy was short-lived - libconfig also has to be searched out from web. My first attempt to install it was unsuccessful. Thing appeared to exist, but pkg-config refused to recognize it. And Compton refused to make, citing missing libconfig as a culprit. Apparently I had unwittingly brought home a where-libconfig...
More searching in web and I found other and better place to get it. Differently of the first one, it was already compiled for Slack.
So I only had to run  
sh doinst.sh (and replace user/lib64 in this file with /usr/lib64, otherways it couldn't find folders, as install-package was not in root).
Then I checked, somewhat fearfully:
pkg-config libconfig --libs . It's not there, then
echo $PKG_CONFIG_PATH, and path appears to be wrong (compared where libconfig.pc really is, then
export PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig (that's my conf, of course). Anyway, after correcting the path, libconfig was found AND Compton was now happy to make and make install too.
As for now, I used exactly the same start conf as in debian install. Works alright, no tearing observed yet.
Edit | When installing libconfig, I was yet such a moron that I didn't know of SlackBuilds... Correct way, of course should have been to run: libconfig.SlackBuild, and then installpkg libconfig...gz. But I leave this example of stupidity to be - as there are some useful hints how to check and correct library paths. Also - there are ready-made binaries available in slakfinder.org :) |

2. Installing OB, a lot less dramatic part:
Main packages for Openbox - openbox and obconf - are available with slapt, as is lxappearance. There are also obmenu and some other helpful stuff to take - but I didn't bother.
slapt-get -i openbox obconf
Logout and login to fresh openbox session.
Right-click menu was bizarre, consisting mostly unexistent items. Those what did exist, refused to open.
Back to Xfce, copy Openbox conf files to .config/openbox, add some quick (real) links to menu, back to Openbox. Now things (real ones) in menu opened ... so, I presume that the first time rebellion was because of lack of confs in user folder.
Still, 90% of this default menu was taken out of thin air. Fancy. I should have used dmenu to generate something more valid. Well, I forgot to install it.
One more surprise was that xfce4-terminal is named as 'Terminal'. Bloody why? Couple of more minutes down to drain when investigating why terminal 'does not exist'...
After that it was usual copy/paste of various confs, fixing this and that, 2 hours lovingly pimping the menu, and removing couple of last unwanted apps. Everything seems fine and working. Checked also .xsession-errors - nothing of interest there too, only gtk stupid deprecation-drivel.
Now, if I happen to finally succeed in compiling Medit, then the situation could be called a bliss.

Make and install Compton

Compton compositor is a good thing to have when there is no 'native' compositing, ie - you are using something like Lxde or Openbox. Without compositing there tend to be tearing when scrolling in browser or when playing videos.
After installing it - you should also try to get your Comptons' starting parameters correct/fitting. And it's very adviseable to have most current version of Compton (the one that can use glx backend).
Whole process was quite baffling and mysterious for me - and even more baffling was that ultimately the thing worked and tearing disappeared...
For help, advice and tutorials - first look into Comptons' page, then Crunchbang forum and Arch forum + wiki. AND do: 'man compton' somewhere, if possible - it shows all available parameters and their meanings (version of man is also here).

Now to business (Debian Wheezy netinstall + Openbox, Nvidia GTX 560, proprietary drivers).
How I did it:
It's markedly easier in Xubuntu (+Openbox) than in Debian Wheezy Openbox ... Means - you can download & install for Ubuntu using ppa.
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:richardgv/compton - but it doesn't seem to be the latest version. But you can't get Compton from Debian stable repos at all and I am not sure about sid... (Vsido came with Compton - and/but it's oldish).

## How to make and install:
One conversation (about installing) is here. Worthy advice is how to avoid installing asciidoc. Other - to use xcompmgr deps: apt-get build-dep xcompmgr - didn't work for me ... I got zero results. So, no advice...
Anyway, to get real fresh version, you have to download tar, unpack, and make.
There are quite a lot of dependencies. List is here.
Almost all packages have to be with ending '-dev'. AND - as 'm4he' in Crunchbang forum said - do not bother with (last one) asciidoc - it's only for make install. Simply copy 'make'd compton file to /usr/bin/ without make install. Especially if taking account that I have never managed in Debian to 'make docs' (step before 'make install'). The same has  not been problem at all in Slackware - so it's possible alright.
Just as an example, what I had missing (additional deps in brackets): libconfig-dev(3), libdrm-dev(2), libdbus1-dev, and nvidia-support (why?).
Edit, feb 2014 | Happened to install compton in fresh Wheezy netinstall... a lot was missing, of course, and the last one took some googling (write down what you did last time!). Conversely, if you get (Debian!)
... fatal error: GL/glx.h: ...
then this is missing libGL and means: libgl1-mesa-dev
One more thing: If you changed kernel and/or especially Nvidia binary driver, and have now strange artifacts in your desktop (missing pieces, transparencies etc), then recompile your compton. It probably helps. | edit
Then, after getting all deps, 'make' agreed to make... with 4 warnings when finally making it. Most curious is that the result works. Being totally n00b in make-things, I have nothing meaningful to say about those warnings ...
'Errors' usually mean terminated 'make' - and then you have to read-and-understand what might caused it. And then fix it.

## We have now 'compton' executable file in folder where we ran 'make'.
Copy the file to /usr/bin/, test it - type 'compton' in terminal. When shadows appear around windowses, it works. Then add to your autostart:
compton --backend glx --vsync opengl-swc --paint-on-overlay --shadow-exclude "! name~=''" --config ~/.compton.conf &
'shadow-exclude' part goes together with part in .compton.conf
In my case:

# Exclude shadows
shadow-exclude = [ "n:e:Notification", "n:e:Conky" , "g:e:Tint2" ];
shadow-ignore-shaped = true;

Quite simply - this excludes shadows for some (your chosen) objects.
Edit 28.06.2013: If having inactive window transparency is a problem for some app (Gimp!), then add to the same conf file a line:
focus-exclude = [ "g:a:Gimp" ];
and Gimps' various popup-menus doesn't make main window transparent anymore! Other apps can be added here too, comma-separated.
PS! This feature is newish - so your Compton has to be relatively new. Edit ends.

And for good measure - here is my current (March 2013) Xubuntu+Openbox start line (older version of Compton (no glx!), tearing still occurs, but in lesser extent):
compton --paint-on-overlay --dbe --vsync opengl --shadow-exclude "! name~=''" --config ~/.compton.conf &

By the way - some parameters exclude each other - so, when experimenting, start your compton from CLI and see if there are errors.
You shouldn't be surprised if procedure described here does not work for you. Compton is one of those things that has about million advices in web - most of them wrong. Search and try and try again.
PS! Might take a look also here: Salix, Openbox - making Compton there.