Logging in with OpenBox gives black screen

[DirkvdM]

When I log in with OpenBox, all I get is a black screen and a mouse-pointer. Right-clicking gives some options, but none that seem to solve the problem. One solution I read was to do Ctrl-Alt-F3 en then Ctrl-Alt-Del to restart, but that didn't solve it either.

[MALsPa]

That's normal. You have to set Openbox up when you use it for the first time. You'll need to install a panel to use (I've used pypanel in the past, using fbpanel now), and something to handle wallpapers, like feh, and so forth.

Some info here:

http://urukrama.wordpress.com/openbox-guide/

http://openbox.org/

http://icculus.org/openbox/2/

[MALsPa]

I did have a bit of a struggle figuring things out the first time I used Openbox, a few years ago, but I kept decent notes, and things went a lot more smoothly the next few times I installed it. The last few times, I had installed LXDE to try out, but ended up using Openbox (which comes with LXDE) instead, because I like Openbox better (although LXDE seems to be improving quite rapidly).

[DirkvdM]

Thanks for those links, but I'm a simple user, not a computer expert. I've been at it for 2 hours now and I still haven't a clue. I can figure this sort of stuff out, but it takes way too much time. For example, yesterday I spent the whole day editing fstab until I finally got most of my harddisks to mount on startup. A whole day to do something that should have taken just a few minutes in the Disk Utility. And it took 'only' a day because I made a bit of a study of it a few years back. I simply don't have the time for this.
Btw, it would already be a great help if there were a bunch of commented-out examples in menu.xml.

During my search for a better Linux I came across one version of OpenBox that I liked, which worked 'out of the box' and I could configure with gui's. I think that was with Ubuntu. Is there no way to get it to start up in a workable environment like that? If not, I'm afraid OpenBox is no option for me.

Oh, there is also a start menu item Other > Openbox session (note that I also use lxdm). But that doesn't seem to change anything. For example, I still can't rearrange the start menu items, just one example of what I would like to do.

[Roin]

Arent there GUI tools like:
obconf <--?
Just one example, Mint comes with GNOME by default and has quite a few nicely setup Community Editions (LXDE; Fluxbox, KDE) and if you arent willing to learn howto setup OpenBox dont use it.
BTW our fellow dev and IRC operator ikey once wrote a nice howto for setting up a Linux enviroment with OpenBox:
http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=34554&p=199224&hilit=OpenBox+ikey#p199224
It is split up in 3 parts, enjoy reading .

In kind regards,
Roin

[MALsPa]

I'm a long way from being a computer expert, too, but I did have time to go through it. But if you don't have time, you don't have time.

Openbox is great, but if you have to set it up, it requires learning some things. Well worth the little bit of time it takes to learn to use it, in my opinion.

There is no Linux Mint Openbox Community Edition, of course.

I think there are a few Openbox-based distros out there, like CrunchBang Linux. Maybe that is what you're looking for.

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distri ... crunchbang

[jim90272]

I took a look at the OpenBox documentation, and decided I just didn't have the time to read all of it. So for me the question was how to get rid of the black screen so I could use my computer again.

After a little research, I found that at the bottom of the login screen, there are three icons, one of which shows the label "Session". I clicked that icon, and chose MATE from the list that came up, and then clicked "Change Session". I logged in, and voila, I was back to my normal desktop. I then used the Software Manager to uninstall OpenBox.