ROX - ParabolaWiki

# ROX

Summary
ROX is an attempt to bring some of the good features from RISC OS to Unix and GNU/Linux. This article covers its installation, configuration, and troubleshooting.
ROX uses the GTK+ toolkit.
Overview
The Xorg project provides a free software implementation of the X Window System – the foundation for a graphical user interface. Desktop environments such as E17, GNOME, KDE, LXDE, and Xfce provide a complete graphical environment. Various window managers offer alternative and novel environments, and may be used standalone to conserve system resources. Display managers provide a graphical login prompt.

From ROX Desktop | ROX Desktop:

  ROX is a fast, user friendly desktop which makes extensive use of drag-and-drop. The interface revolves around the file manager, or filer, following the traditional Unix view that 'everything is a file' rather than trying to hide the filesystem beneath start menus, wizards, or druids. The aim is to make a system that is well designed and clearly presented. The ROX style favors using several small programs together instead of creating all-in-one mega-applications.

From About ROX | ROX Desktop:

  Traditionally, Unix users have always based their activities around the filesystem. Just about everything that's anything appears as a file: regular files, hardware devices, and even processes on many systems (for example, inside the /proc filesystem on GNU/Linux).

  However, recent desktop efforts (such as KDE and GNOME) seem to be following the Windows approach of trying to hide the filesystem and get users to do things via a Start-menu or similar. Modern desktop users, on Windows or Unix, often have no idea where their programs are installed, or even where their data files are saved. This leads to a feeling of not being in control, and a poor understanding of how the system works.

  The ROX Desktop, however, is based around the filesystem. Its core component is ROX-Filer, a powerful graphical file manager which, in addition to being a popular filer in its own right, provides a couple of extra features which allow it to solve the above problems...

### Pacman

The package, though it doesn't seem like it, has the desktop stuff with it. Install it with:

    pacman -S rox

## Usage

### File manager

To execute rox, simply type:

    rox

### Desktop Environment

You need to run rox before your window manager. Here is my line, using openbox as the WM

    rox -b Default -p default ; exec openbox

### Mounting with static mountpoints

Rox supports mounting and unmounting devices in /etc/fstab, simply by clicking on the mount directory. For instance, you can create a directory /mnt/cdrom, and set up an fstab entry like so:

     /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom auto noauto,user,ro 0 0

Clicking on /mnt/cdrom will now automatically mount whatever data disk is in your first CD drive.

### Mounting with pmount

Static mountpoints in fstab are obviously somewhat inflexible; mounting two USB sticks at once, for instance, would require fstab entries for both USB sticks. Fortunately, Rox lets you create custom right-click menu entries for files, including device nodes in /dev. Thus, you can use custom menu entries that invoke the pmount and pumount commands to mount and unmount drives.

To do this, install the pmount package, then open up /dev in Rox and right-click on a block device node (e.g. /dev/sr0). Enter the file menu and click on "Customize Menu." A window will appear in which you can create files that will invoke the necessary commands. Create, and then make executable, the following files:

mount.sh:

    #!/bin/sh
    pmount "$@"

umount.sh:

    #!/bin/sh
    pumount "$@"

You will now be able to mount device nodes to appropriately named directories in /media, and unmount them as necessary, using the new menu entries. For convenience, you should probably also change the mount and unmount commands in Rox's configuration (under "Action Windows") to "pmount" and "pumount"; this will let you unmount devices via the mount directory's right-click menu.

## Acknowledgement

This wiki article is based on ArchWiki. We may have removed non-FSDG bits from it.
Category:

- Desktop environments