STARTFLUXBOX(1)

✨ STARTFLUXBOX — the fluxbox manual, but make it cute ✨

okay bestie, welcome to startfluxbox(1), straight out of the Fluxbox Manual 💖 this is the lil script that gets your whole fluxbox era started. no cap.

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🌸 NAME 🌸

startfluxbox — literally just: start a fluxbox session 💅

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

startfluxbox

that's it. that's the whole vibe. one word, no flags, main character energy ✨

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so startfluxbox is a script, and what it does is run the file ~/.fluxbox/startup. and if that file doesn't exist? it just generates one for you. iconic behaviour honestly, it's giving "I got you babe" 🫶

you should be launching startfluxbox from your ~/.xinitrc if you're a startx girly, or from ~/.xsession if you're running a display manager like xdm. that's the whole thing fr fr.

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💖 FILES 💖

• ~/.fluxbox/startup — this file holds all the commands that should run before fluxbox starts. the initial version it makes for you comes with helpful comments for beginners (yes bestie, they wrote them for us 😭💕). and yes, it also starts fluxbox itself.

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🔥 EXAMPLES 🔥

the default ~/.fluxbox/startup looks exactly like this, no cap:

#!/bin/sh
#
# fluxbox startup-script:
#
# Lines starting with a '#' are ignored.

# Change your keymap:
xmodmap "$HOME/.Xmodmap"

# Applications you want to run with fluxbox.
# MAKE SURE THAT APPS THAT KEEP RUNNING HAVE AN ''&'' AT THE END.
#
# unclutter -idle 2 &
# wmnd &
# wmsmixer -w &
# idesk &

# And last but not least we start fluxbox.
# Because it is the last app you have to run it with ''exec'' before it.

exec fluxbox
# or if you want to keep a log:
# exec fluxbox -log "$fluxdir/log"

okay so the important part: apps that keep running need that & at the end, and fluxbox is the last thing you run, so it gets exec in front of it. do not skip this, I'm begging 🙏

now. if you wanna start applications after fluxbox (like, post-launch glow-up apps), you can change that exec fluxbox line to something like this:

exec fluxbox &
fbpid=$!

sleep 1
{
    xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr -fg white -bg black &
    ipager &
    gkrellm2 &
} &

wait $fbpid

so what's happening here: xsetroot, ipager, and gkrellm2 all get started after fluxbox — and it gives fluxbox 1 second to startup first, because we're polite and we let the queen get ready 💅✨

want even more details on what else you can do in this script? go check sh(1), or the documentation for your shell. iykyk 🐚

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

the author of startfluxbox(1) is Han Boetes <han at fluxbox.org> 💜

and this manpage was converted to asciidoc format by Jim Ramsay <i.am at jimramsay.com> for fluxbox-1.1.2 🌈

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🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

• fluxbox(1) — go read it bestie, it's the whole point 🦋

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⭐ AUTHOR ⭐

Jim Ramsay <i.am@jimramsay.com>

• Author. (yes, just "Author." — we love a minimal legend 😌)

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🌸 okay that's the whole page, you ate that. now go start your session and slay 💅

startfluxbox.txt — 08 February 2015 — that's the date, that's the file, that's the era 🎀