Obamenu v2.0 – Making openbox more useable

It’s been a long time since I posted anything computer related on this blog.

For example, this blog still thinks that I’m writing an IRC client in Java (I’m not, I’ve been building one in python for a few years now).

However, this post is about Openbox, part of of my long-standing hunt for a pretty UI. Openbox allows me to just build it as I want it, which means that I can make it as pretty, or as ugly as I like. It just takes work.

On the few occasions I’ve tried openbox (a WindowManager with ageing code), I’ve found that the automatic menu has been lacking somewhat. The automatic menu is produced with a tool called Obamenu, which has been stuck at v. 1.1.7 for nearly 5 years.

As there was no repository that I could find on github to fork this version from, I set up a new repository, and very quickly moved it to v2.0.0.

You can find a link version 2.0 of obamenu here.

Hopefully that will help out others that are struggling with the old obamenu.

Things that are already new in V.2.0.0

• Configuration is now saved in: ~/.config/openbox/obamenu.ini
• Icons now use the default GTK icons if icons in it’s usual search path can’t be found
• It now properly ignores .desktop files that are not meant to be used in menus.
• It now launches flatpack software
• A bug in 1.1.7 that meant that sometimes the menu items didn’t do anything (Because the execute command was wrong) has (as far as I can tell) now been fixed.
• There is a roadmap going forward of many changes to this menu on the GitHub.

Hopefully, that will save people a whole bunch of time and hassle.

Thanks,

~BX