/configure, make, sudo make install

Yah, that describes what I have been up to in the past few days.   I have been meaning to play with OpenBox.   Finally, this week, I broke down and acutally installed OpenBox via Synaptic.  Since then, it's been download, un-tar, compile and install little utilities and stuff.   When I was not downloading, I was busy trolling through config files, tinkering with xml and otherwise learning a lot about my system.   Overall, that is a good thing.    

What has resulted is a lightweight (unless I use some Gnome or KDE app) and quite powerful desktop that actually looks pretty good (IMHO).   It's taken a bit of work as some apps had to be added in some fashion (such as a shut down script.  Hello Python!) however I have just about all the the stuff I used in a typical Gnome desktop, just not the heavy dependencies.   

Already, I am getting quite used to the OpenBox way of doing things.   I had to load GNOME a couple of days ago for one of my housemates.   The first thing I tried to do was right click to get my OpenBox menu (which was not there of course).   Overall, Openbox is much easier to theme than Metacity (the default Gnome window manager) though it's graphic effects are not "as fancy".   However when it comes to functionality, OpenBox blows Metacity away.   Nor do I need the full Gnome desktop to do what I want.   

I may upload my Openbox theme in the future as it's close to done (other than a bit of tinkering).   My GTK theme is further away as there is some nagging issues that need to be addressed (though they are not critical).