Very recently I’ve made a drastic change from using Gnome as my main DE (desktop environment) to using Openbox, which is just a WM (windows manager). But why? I really do love Gnome, I’ve been experimenting with Openbox and found out how much I like it more than Gnome. Gnome is my second favorite right now, as I’m still learning Openbox, for the most part I understand most everything.

What I like so much about it though is the ability to make your desktop as you would make your own DE. What do I mean? Openbox is just a windows manager, and a menu, with a set of hot keys, you make everything how you like it, and I mean everything. From the menu, which took me 3 hours to custom fit my applications, to what kind of panel you want, and everything in between. I chose fbpanel for what kind of panel I use, and I adore it, sooner or later I’m going to make some fbpanel styles and put it on my wordpress. I’ve got a few ideas in my head and I’ve came up with a Mac-like theme, which looks exactly how I would have my panel setup in Gnome.

The bottom line is that Openbox isn’t as resource intensive as Gnome is. Openbox is very stable and rock solid, and the fact that I can run mIRC with wine under Openbox flawlessly doesn’t hurt. (yes I know there’s xchat, and irssi, but please understand that I’ve grown up in IRC with mIRC. I know someone will thinks this )