Beginner's Guide to Fluxbox

Gnome and KDE seem to be pretty straightforward and certainly seem to be the most user friendly in terms of getting setup and running quickly with anything the average user would want to do.

I am working on implementing Fluxbox on my current install of Ubuntu 10.04 and keep running into gotcha's that require a lot of time to research and then configure. In light of my experiences with Fluxbox, I'm posting a list of questions (much in the spirit of this question from stackoverflow.

Please list one answer per bullet item and then edit the question so that the link goes directly to the answer. And if you think of anything missing, please add it and then post your answer.

  • How to install Fluxbox?
  • How do I edit the menu?
  • How to lock my screen?
  • How to configure fluxbox to work with two screens?
  • How to configure my keyboard shortcuts?
  • How to enable automounting of devices?
  • How to install new fonts?

Recommend Guides / Tutorials

  • Ubuntu Forums Guide
  • Fluxbox Wiki

Solution 1:

How to configure my keyboard shortcuts?

To create keyboard shortcuts, edit your ~/.fluxbox/keys file with a text editor.

For details on the format of this file, see man fluxbox-keys.

Solution 2:

How to configure fluxbox to work with two screens?

To configure dual monitors, you can use arandr Install Arandr.

arandr

Solution 3:

How to install fluxbox?

To install fluxbox, simply install the fluxbox package from Ubuntu Software Centre:

fluxbox in Ubuntu Software Centre

Solution 4:

How to lock my screen?

To lock the screen in fluxbox, you need to install a locking program such as xlockmore Install Xlockmore.

Once you install xlockmore, the xlock command will now lock your screen. You can add this to the menu or create a keyboard shortcut.