Slackel 6.0.6 Openbox released with UEFI support

The Slackel project announced release of Slackel 6.0.6 Openbox, latest stable release of Slackware/Salix based GNU/Linux distribution featuring Openbox window manager.

Slackel 6.0.6 comes with several updated software packages and improvements. This release of Slackel provides live and installation images separately for 32 and 64 bit architectures. The 64 bit Slackel images can boot on UEFI enabled systems while 32-bit flavor support both i686 PAE SMP and i486, non-PAE capable systems.

A lot of improvements in Slackel-live-installer has been done. In Basic installation, wicd is fully functional as also pcmanfm in browsing network shares. Full multimedia support without having to install multimedia codecs while on live environment. Of course it is suggested to install multimedia codecs to your system after installation.

Updated packages in Slackel 6.0.6 includes Midori 0.5.11 web browser, Claws-Mail 3.9.2, Smplayer 16.4.0, Transmission 2.84, PCManFm 1.2.1, Pidgin 2.10.12, Gftp 2.0.19, Wicd, Openjre 8u91_b14, Abiword 3.0.1, Gnumeric-1.12.9, Exaile 3.4.5.

Additional package information is available in release announcement published in Slackel forum.

Download Slackel 6.0.6

32 BIT | 64 BIT

Download Slackel 6.0.6 Live

32 BIT | 64 BIT

Customizing OpenBox window manager

There are wide varieties of desktop environments available for GNU/Linux distributions. It is quite possible that none of these desktop environment matches our requirements. So there is a need to re-configure vanilla desktop environment.

A Highly Customized OpenBox Desktop. Courtesy : Manjaro

A tutorial published in zdnet portal explains how we can customize OpenBox window manager, which is by their own definition a highly configurable, next generation window manager with extensive standards support.

There are a lot of window managers available for Linux/X Window System installation. The Wikipedia comparison of X window managers lists at least 36 of them, for example. To start this discussion I will be looking at Openbox, because it is well known, widespread, and relatively easy to install. For these tests and screen shots I am using an Acer Aspire One 725, on which I have previously loaded Debian GNU/Linux with Xfce.

After installing openbox, I logged out of the Xfce desktop, and then on the lightdm login screen at the top right corner, I selected an openbox session rather than Xfce. I then logged in, which was amazingly fast (something like 1 or 2 seconds), but the screen that I got looked like this screenshot on the right.

Read complete tutorial in zdnet portal.