On my EEE 1000HA I am now running the Gnome desktop manager with the Fluxbox window manager in place of the Metacity window manager. 

The first question is why. 

I am a Gnome fan and I run the Gnome desktop not that there is anything  wrong with KDE but Gnome fits me better.  I like the Gnome desktop and while I have tried other desktop managers and other window managers I keep going back to Gnome.  However when I have tried both Fluxbox and Pekwm I found several features that I really liked.  The two features I liked the best was the ability to group windows together and to shade a window.

Let me explain  what grouping a window is.  Grouping windows together is similar to using a tabbed browser.  When you group two windows together they create one window and the title bar becomes like a tab and to move between the two programs you click on the title bar and the program with the focus fills  the window just like a tabbed browser.

The other feature I like is the ability to shade a window.  Shading a window makes the window disappear while the title bar remains visible.

I wanted to bring the these features to Gnome then I realized I could.  When you run Gnome you are actually running Gnome a desktop manager and Metacity a window manager. To bring the features of Fluxbox to Gnome all you need to do is to replace Metacity with Fluxbox.  Here is how to do it.

1. Install the Fluxbox window manager with your preferred package manager.

2. Open the file ~/.gconf/desktop/gnome/session/required_components/%gconf.xml

 It should resemble the following
<gconf>
<entry type="string" mtime="1226369905" name="windowmanager">
<stringvalue>metacity</stringvalue>
</entry>
</gconf>

3. Change the value between the stringvalue tags for windowmanager with fluxbox

The following example would change the window manager to fluxbox

<gconf>
<entry type="string" mtime="1226369905" name="windowmanager">
<stringvalue>fluxbox</stringvalue>
</entry>
</gconf>

 

3. Save the file log out and log back in and fluxbox should be running.

Things you will notice.

1.  The Fluxbox toolbar is missing.

2.  Window title bars don't match your Gnome desktop.

First the Fluxbox toolbar is there it is just hiding underneath the bottom Gnome panel.  I moved my trash icon from the bottom panel to the top panel then deleted the bottom panel and used the Fluxbox toolbar to manage my workspaces.

The desktop should work fine at this point but probably is very ugly.  I use the human theme for Ubuntu so I installed the human theme for Fluxbox to get a uniform look.  I did tweak the fluxbox theme so the fonts were not as large since I am running this on an EEE PC.  I also turned off bold and shadow on the window titles for a softer look. I also set the toolbar width to 100%. 

My EEE PC still looks like a standard Gnome desktop but now has the ability to group windows along with  other fluxbox features.