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Installing🔗

Dependencies🔗

Compiling Openbox should be a relatively painless experience. You will need the following packages:

  • C compiler (such as GCC)
  • Libc library and headers (development package)
  • Xlib library and headers (development package)
  • Xext and Xrandr library and headers (development package) - optional but recommended
  • Glib-2 library and headers (development package)
  • LibXML-2 library and headers (development package)
  • Pango library and headers (development package)
  • Imlib2 (development package) - optional but recommended
  • Startup-notification library and headers (development package) - optional but recommended
  • XCursor library and headers (development package) - optional but recommended
  • Pkg-config

These should all be available through your distribution.

Dependencies in Ubuntu and Debian🔗

In Ubuntu and Debian, install the following packages:

  • build-essential
  • pkg-config
  • libpango1.0-dev
  • libglib2.0-dev
  • libxml2-dev
  • libxcursor-dev
  • libimlib2-dev
  • libstartup-notification0-dev
  • xlibs-dev
  • libxext-dev
  • x11proto-randr-dev

Note: 'xlibs-dev' is no longer available in in Ubuntu 8.04 LTS 'Hardy' repositories, but 'xlibs-static-dev' is.

If you want to hook in the Debian menu, you'll also want:

  • menu
  • menu-xdg

Dependencies in Fedora🔗

In Fedora Core 6 or Fedora 7, install the following packages:

  • gcc
  • autoconf
  • automake
  • glib2-devel
  • pango-devel
  • imlib2-devel
  • startup-notification-devel
  • libXcursor-devel
  • libXfixes-devel
  • libSM-devel
  • libxml2-devel

Building and installing the program🔗

Once you have the above dependancies installed, you are ready to build Openbox.

You can obtain the source code from github.com or as through tar archives (eg. linux from scratch):

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% git clone https://github.com/Mikachu/openbox.git

Run bootstrap script to obtain configuration scripts

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% ./bootstrap

Then run:

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% ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc
  ...configure detects the build evironment...
% make
  ...openbox builds...
% sudo make install
  ...openbox installs...

If you do not want to install to /usr, then you should use ./configure --prefix=<whatever you want> --sysconfdir=/etc --datarootdir=/usr/share. If you don't do this, the Openbox log in options will not be available, because they need to be installed to /usr/share/xsessions.

If the configure command fails and the reason is not obvious, you should look in the generated config.log file to discover the cause of the problem.

For 64-bit distributions🔗

When building Openbox on the 64-bit versions of Debian or Fedora, use:

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% ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc --libdir=/usr/lib64
% make
% sudo make install

For CentOS 5.3🔗

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# yum install automake autoconf glib2-devel pango-devel startup-notification-devel libXcursor-devel libXfixes-devel libSM-devel libxml2-devel gcc-c++.i386 gcc.i386

# ./configure --prefix=/usr --sysconfdir=/etc
# make
# make install

Tips for Developing and Using Openbox at the Same Time🔗

There are several ways of having two xserver sessions at once.

One of these is using Xephyr to create a nested window:

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% Xephyr -br -ac -noreset -screen 640x320 :1

And then running your second ammended openbox in this display:

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% DISPLAY=:1 ./openbox

(the line above assumes you're in the directory of where the openbox binaries lie)