How To Install openbox on Debian 10

Learn how to install openbox on Debian 10 with this tutorial. openbox is standards-compliant, fast, light-weight and extensible window manager

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install openbox on Debian 10.

What is openbox

openbox is:

Openbox works with your applications, and makes your desktop easier to manage. This is because the approach to its development was the opposite of what seems to be the general case for window managers. Openbox was written first to comply with standards and to work properly. Only when that was in place did the team turn to the visual interface.

Openbox is fully functional as a stand-alone working environment, or can be used as a drop-in replacement for the default window manager in the GNOME or KDE desktop environments.

Openbox 3 is a completely new breed of window manager. It is not based upon any existing code base, although the visual appearance has been based upon that of Blackbox. Openbox 2 was based on the Blackbox 0.65.0 codebase.

Some of the things to look for in Openbox are:

  • ICCCM and EWMH compliance!
  • Very fast
  • Chainable key bindings
  • Customizable mouse actions
  • Window resistance
  • Multi-head Xinerama support!
  • Pipe menus

There are three methods to install openbox on Debian 10. We can use apt-get, apt and aptitude. In the following sections we will describe each method. You can choose one of them.

Install openbox Using apt-get

Update apt database with apt-get using the following command.

sudo apt-get update

After updating apt database, We can install openbox using apt-get by running the following command:

sudo apt-get -y install openbox

Install openbox Using apt

Update apt database with apt using the following command.

sudo apt update

After updating apt database, We can install openbox using apt by running the following command:

sudo apt -y install openbox

Install openbox Using aptitude

If you want to follow this method, you might need to install aptitude first since aptitude is usually not installed by default on Debian. Update apt database with aptitude using the following command.

sudo aptitude update

After updating apt database, We can install openbox using aptitude by running the following command:

sudo aptitude -y install openbox

How To Uninstall openbox on Debian 10

To uninstall only the openbox package we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get remove openbox

Uninstall openbox And Its Dependencies

To uninstall openbox and its dependencies that are no longer needed by Debian 10, we can use the command below:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove openbox

Remove openbox Configurations and Data

To remove openbox configuration and data from Debian 10 we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y purge openbox

Remove openbox configuration, data, and all of its dependencies

We can use the following command to remove openbox configurations, data and all of its dependencies, we can use the following command:

sudo apt-get -y autoremove --purge openbox

Dependencies

openbox have the following dependencies:

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install openbox package on Debian 10 using different package management tools: apt, apt-get and aptitude.