openbox

Standards-compliant, fast, light-weight and extensible window manager. Works standalone or alongside desktop environments like XFCE, GNOME, or KDE.

Why this build?

Debian 12 and Ubuntu 26.04 both ship openbox 3.6.1 — the 2015 upstream release, unchanged for a decade. The NetLinux build is made from netlinux-ai/openbox for both suites, and adds:

Snap layouts — hovering a window's maximize button pops up a grid of layout templates, in the manner of Windows 11. Each is a miniature of the monitor split into zones; click a zone and the window fills that part of the screen. Six layouts ship by default: halves, thirds, two-thirds + third, half + two stacked, quadrants, and top/bottom.
Configurable zones — a new <snapLayouts> block in rc.xml controls the hover delay and lets you replace the built-in templates with your own <zone> rectangles, given in percent of the monitor's usable area.
Multi-monitor aware — zones are measured against the monitor the window is on, minus any panels or docks reserving space on it.
Both suites, one commit — every push rebuilds for bookworm and resolute together, so Debian 12 and Ubuntu 26.04 stay on the same feature set.

Compared to the distro package

	Distro openbox 3.6.1	NetLinux build
Zone picker on maximize button	—	Yes, on hover
Built-in snap layouts	—	6 templates
User-defined zones	—	`<snapLayouts>` in `rc.xml`
Maximize horizontally / vertically	Yes	Yes
Upstream release	3.6.1 (2015)	3.6 branch, current tree
Suites	per-distro	bookworm + resolute

Package details

Version	3.6-844netlinux1~bookworm1-1
Architecture	amd64
Component	main
Suites	stable (Debian 12) and resolute (Ubuntu 26.04)
Download	openbox_3.6-844netlinux1~bookworm1-1_amd64.deb
Upstream	openbox.org
Source	github.com/netlinux-ai/openbox

Install

sudo apt install openbox

Note: the distro ships version 3.6.1, which apt sorts above this build's 3.6-844netlinux1, so a plain apt install openbox will prefer the distro package. To get the NetLinux build, pin it:

sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/netlinux-openbox >/dev/null <<'EOF'
Package: openbox
Pin: release o=NetLinux
Pin-Priority: 1001
EOF
sudo apt update && sudo apt install openbox

Or install the .deb directly with sudo dpkg -i. The download above is the Debian 12 build; the matching ~resolute1 build sits in this same pool directory and is what the resolute suite serves to Ubuntu 26.04.

Using snap layouts

Hover the maximize button and hold for a moment; the layout grid appears below it. Move onto a zone to highlight it, click to place the window there. Any keypress, a right-click, or clicking elsewhere dismisses it.

To change the delay or define your own zones, add to ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml and run openbox --reconfigure:

<snapLayouts>
  <enabled>yes</enabled>
  <delay>400</delay>
  <layout>
    <zone x="0" y="0" width="50" height="100"/>
    <zone x="50" y="0" width="50" height="100"/>
  </layout>
</snapLayouts>

Listing any <layout> replaces the built-in set entirely.

See the main page for repository setup instructions.