Fluxbox CE, resurrected

The Fluxbox Community Edition produced releases for Linux Mint 5 “Elyssa” and Linux Mint 6 “Felicia” and it became quite popular among Linux Mint users. But in 2009, due to personal circumstances Shane Joe Lazar, the maintainer of this edition, had to focus his attention elsewhere and so the Fluxbox CE was discontinued. During the release cycle for Linux Mint 7 “Gloria”, no Fluxbox edition was released.

Kendall Weaver recently stepped up from the community and worked on a new Fluxbox edition of Linux Mint. We had a conversation and I got the opportunity to test his preliminary ISOs. Today, I’m happy to welcome him within the development team as the new maintainer of the Fluxbox Community Edition.

His vision of the Fluxbox edition is a bit different and he’s interested in replacing some of the most popular software in order to make it even lighter. He’s already started to interact with the community on the forums and he will be getting the help and support of the development team.

I’d like to thank Shane for the work he’s done on this edition and the help he’s giving at the moment. I look forward to see how this edition develops and I hope you’ll enjoy its upcoming releases.

42 comments

  1. Dear Mint Development Team;
    Please, I beg you please put the (PARTITION EDITOR) back into the Mint program menu. Mint (5,6, & 7) had it and it was great. But Mint 8 (Helena ) doesn’t have it. I and a lot of other people found it to be very useful. Many people that I know came to mint because of it, and then learned Mint’s other merits then stayed with it.

    The Partitioner in the (installation) is not nearly as flexible as the (PARTITION EDITOR) program. this is in size change.

    Please Put the (PARTITION EDITOR program) into Mint-8 from Mint-7. Also please make the other partitioner (the installation one) be as flexible (size change) as the (PARTITION EDITOR program).

    Your Great Mint Fan,
    Bill Skir

  2. gr8 too hear…LOVE all linux mint distros hope to also see a new xfce in future! thanks for all awesome work on the linux os out there!

  3. Splendid.

    They are all Mint but what each developer and desktop brings is always unique and high quality.

    From the post and the addition to the team it seems that the Flux to be has impressed the team so I look forward to it.

    Well done Kendall.

  4. I don’t use Fluxbox, but I still want to thank Kendall for stepping up, and taking on the responsibility of maintaining this edition. Kudos to you Kendall!

  5. Just make it this time different than XFCE with fluxbox window manager – that was simly rubbish — take a look at crunchbang – thats the way to go!

  6. Welcome Kendall

    Just one request:

    I will need mint4win to install the Fluxbox Edition inside
    Windows Vista or 7 – Seven

    Need to replace “Felicia” 6 version

    This topic does not appear on my firefox(es) start page(s).

  7. Hello Kendall, and many thanks for joining the development effort! ๐Ÿ™‚ Although I use the Gnome (main) version of Mint, I’ll be happy to have the Fluxbox edition especially if it’s lighter, because on various occasions I have to assist people with older hardware and a Fluxbox edition would greatly help.

    For rescue purposes you might consider a partitioner, a partition backup/cloner, Samba networking tools and why not an antivirus, even if it gets old by the day – at least a few months old definitions are better than none, such as a system with an antivirus compared to one without it. Of course, this is only my wish, not something that everyone would need, but adding such tools will add quite some value to the Fluxbox disk, because Linux Mint would also gain a rescue CD on top of a low requirements variant of this distro.

    Cheers! ๐Ÿ™‚ We’re waiting for it. ๐Ÿ™‚

  8. rock on good got to have all versions and i love to see competition sorry about the personal stuff i hope you all here have a awesome xmas and holiday season in general at least i know a gift that cost nothing testing many linux os systems lol

  9. Excellent news – looking forward to seeing the next release, and to using it !
    Please include a broad spectrum of WiFi card support !

  10. This is very good news. Fluxbox is underrated within too many distros, and it’s good to see Kendall take up the reins. Good luck to you, and I will be checking out the ISO when it’s ready. ๐Ÿ™‚

    Also, Merry Christmas to the Mint Team!

    *cues Jingle Bells*

  11. Good to hear, I’ve got a couple of old P3 Lappy’s that would work well on it. The older rev of Mint’s Fluxbox was just too heavyweight for them. I actually ended up going with Crunchbang, but would love to see Fluxbox on Mint ๐Ÿ˜‰

    Cheers

  12. This are great news. When I was using my Aspire One Daily (now I’m using a Timeline) I used XFCE editions of Ubunty or Mint. Fluxbox is even lighter, so for those with limited hardware, or those interested in maximizing system resources, this are great, great news. Thanks to all the team for bringing joy to us users all the year around. Merry Christmas, and, really, THANKS!

    Aspire One Ex-User from Puerto Rico

  13. stunning,….

    Just some weeks ago i fed my olยด Travelmate 292 with “felicia” and i like it a lot ! (think my NB alltrough)
    Now, wizza FluxboxCommunityEdition of Helena it will be up 2 date either , hmmmm… just hope donยดt havยดuhhh go to Troy 2 get it…. ;]

  14. Any word on if we can possibly get gParted put back into Linux Mint 8 or 9? I was displeased to see such a great distro without gParted included. Also, can we possibly get Openbox and PPC versions of Mint? I’d love to have a PPC version of Mint for my PS3. :3

  15. Greate news!
    I used the old Fluxbox CE as a home media server with a minimal GUI for some time, and I loved the performance! Looking forward to more Fluxbox action in the future!

  16. Clem,

    I second the request for GParted to be re-instated into the mint .iso.
    as a sysadmin I regularly use a live CD to modify partitions and as mint is my favourite I would rather use it.

    I have not actually checked yet but is this a mint only thing or has it been removed from ubuntu?

    Bill Skir Says:
    December 15th, 2009 at 4:48 pm

    Dear Mint Development Team;
    Please, I beg you please put the (PARTITION EDITOR) back into the Mint program menu.

  17. Well this is good news for sure.But until further developement of the Fluxbox edition i’m waiting for XCFE Edition of LinuxMint 8.

  18. This is great. I love taking dead computers and brining them back to life with MINT. I have given out at least a 7 copies to friends and fam. They always have old systems in laying around.

    What is the slowest system that mintflux will work with? Any idea of what he is shooting for? I know he is changing out software to get better efficiency. With the next version of flash supporting gpu computing, even older system will be able to run flash.

    That will be awesome!

  19. @ 16. Hey, Beemer,
    Helena does not detect my Floppy Disk (Yes, we still need it!) …
    What should I do? Thanx, fellow…

  20. kinda sux that gparted was taken out ? but hey….you can JUST USE THE OLD MINT for partitioning, or heaven forbid download gparted which has it’s own live cd. So many QQ’ers on the internet it’s sad… Grow up guys so what if it was taken out, there’s 101 other ways to get it and use it, so stop harassing devs who have better things to do.

  21. gparted does indeed come in Mint 8, but is uninstalled with ubiquity right after installing the system. Based on the volume of requests for a partition editor of some sort, I’ll set it up so that gparted isn’t automatically uninstalled.

  22. Actually what would be very nice is an install from boot instead of having to load up the desktop. Having to sit around forever to load up a full blown desktop from CD just to install is rather excessive.

  23. this is great News have used this edition in the past to get older machines to run a little quicker. Have missed having it.good to hear that it is back.

  24. Music to my ears! Many thanks Shane for his past work, and huge thanks to Kendall for stepping up to the challenge. I hope Firefox and VLC will stay where they are, as I consider them to be the core apps from a user perspective.

  25. can’t wail to try this new one out, i love mint 7 and hope you have kept up the good work but i am also thinking of getting a netbook and would love a mint version based on UNR is that in the pipeline??

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