Openbox vs XFCE? (Page 1 of 7)

There is no noticeable difference between both openbox or xfwm, both are fast and efficient, small memory footprint, performance wise, perhaps openbox is slightly lighter. The difference is on behaviour and philosophy.

Xfce brings more friendliness and gives a more full-desktop experience. More automation, utilities, plugins, eye-candy and a better overall integration complete the whole package. Openbox is only a window manager, very light and efficient but requires more "manual" configuration and extra utilities.

Now, you could compare LXDE to Xfce. LXDE has less utilities and plugins than Xfce, not as eye-candy and less features (matureness) overall. It all depends on what compromise you want. For example, you may compare lxpanel to xfce4-panel, pcmanfm to thunar, lxrandr to xfce4-display-settings and so on...

Openbox with the right utilities, tint2, gmrun, etc., like current #!, is very nice and very light, but not the same desktop experience. So, you'll have to ask yourself what do you want. Or try both and choose

Last edited by jotapesse (2010-03-01 15:38:14)

Check out a CrunchBang 8.04 Live CD... it has both Openbox and Xfce desktops, so you can do a true "A/B test" with the same kernel, applications, etc.

I like Openbox much better.

I've tried Zenwalk, Xubuntu 9.10 (wich is faster than 9.04), and I'm not impressed.

This is my subjective view.

Openbox is faster, configurable, simply like it better.

Regards!

Openbox may be a bit lighter in memory usage though both are snappy.

For features Xfce does have more GUI tools though I still prefer Openbox. I like that its menu and WM features are very customizable.

It would be no surprise that I prefer Xfce at the moment For me the configurability of Xfce and its ease of use outweigh any speed benefits that may come from using Openbox. This is especially the case if Xfce is run without the Xfce goodies meta plugin package (I only run a  couple of extra plugins). I'd be interested as to how Xfce performs with older machines as I run fairly recent hardware and in this scenario the speed difference is negligible.

Ditto.

I'd also add that it may seem like corenominal and I have collaborated on this approach to using Xfce. In reality we both just started using Xfce about the same time and happened to set it up just like our old openbox setups. When we shared our results there was a weird synchronicity

It  's difficult to pinpoint what it is in Openbox what I like so much. Trying XFCE I just missed things. Openbox has that ultimate simpleness and straightforwardness.
The keyboard use which makes it really fast and snappy.
I miss in the comment of oms and core about xfce what they like about it, except configurability and ease of use.
But why is that an issue for you who keep tinkering all the time?
What are the problems there in Openbox?
LXDE is very interesting too. Lxpanel solves  a lot  problems with openbox for newbies.
I probably lose my interest in Crunch if it turns away from Openbox.  Despite the ease of use out of the box.
I tried Crunch and Slitaz because of Openbox, not for looks or something.

I think I understand why you might think that I tinker all the time, but in reality, I do not tinker all that much. My Openbox session remained pretty much the same for a good few years, with the exception of playing around with different panels. My main issue with Openbox, if I have one, is not really about Openbox, it is about the lack of a _solid_ compositor to use with it. I have always had stability problems with xcompmanager. Xfce solves this, its built-in compositor is rock solid with regards to stability.

Now, I know that some people may think it a little extreme to swap window managers because of a compositor, but when you consider that the both Openbox and Xfce are comparable in features, it does not seem overly extreme at all. As I mentioned previously, the only thing I really miss from Openbox is the menu system.

No, missing  a function you like is a good enough reason for me.
Amazed though, never had such problems  (and not now too writing from a installed madbox-openbox version with no transparency problems). But didn't experiment with it much as transparency is not really interesting  me.

Lubuntu uses openbox. http://lubuntu.net/ and http://lxde.org/lxde

Last edited by pablokal (2010-03-01 21:42:01)

My personal preference for a production environment (i.e. not a rig just to play with) is XFCE. Performance wise, I notice no real difference between it and Openbox on my machine, and it comes with more built in tools and simple GUIs that small changes that need to be made can be handled a little quicker (for me).

There is also an element of ease of use. Somebody completely unfamiliar with Linux can sit down and muddle through XFCE with minimal issues. Openbox has a steeper learning curve, in so much as it is considerably different in scope than Windows.

I like the concept behind LXDE, but think that it still needs some work to be brought up to the level of either XFCE or a set up Openbox. The best I've seen so far has been the LXDE spin of Fedora 12, and I am not normally a fan of Fedora.

^ Xfce, has a right click dynamic menu. Easy to maintain but can also be customised to some extent if needed.