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How to Install Mabox Linux⚓︎

Summary⚓︎

I had been putting off installing Mabox Linux for some time now as my Manjaro setup was working for my needs. While there were a number of things that were no longer functioning for one reason or another, I had come to truly love my setup and didn't want to part with it.

The setup hit a wall in January when I could no longer update the OS without breaking large swaths of it. This was due to a significant number of Python updates that came from upstream. While certain things worked, others came grinding to a halt and would no longer function.

It became clear that I could no longer continue with this setup without either never updating it again or living with a largely broken OS.

Since Mabox Linux is a respin of Manjaro Openbox, I decided it was time. I backed up and made note of as much as I could prior to wiping it out.

The following is a high-level overview of the installation process.

Installation⚓︎

At the time of this writing, the current version of Mabox Linux is 22.02 Herbolth. The ISO was downloaded from the Mabox Repo. Once downloaded, I flashed it to a flash drive using Balena Etcher.

The installation was straightforward and I was up and running within ~10 mins.

Configuration⚓︎

After the first run, the Mabox Welcome Screen came up and offered some basic actions such as:

  • Update system
  • Install additional kernel
  • Install popular applications

There are certain things that came pre-installed that are nice to have, but I decided not to use. Some of these are:

  • Conky
  • Side panel menus

Status bar⚓︎

The main panel is Tint2, which is a great panel and incredibly useful without much additional configuration. I decided to use it, but to keep it hidden at the bottom of the screen in favor of Polybar at the top.

Some of the themes that contributed to my Polybar build are as follows:

Themes⚓︎

One of the nicest things about using Mabox Linux is that it comes with pre-configured themes using the BLOB Theme Manager from BunsenLabs. This made it very easy to configure my system with the Dracula theme.

The only modification to the stock Dracula theme I made is to the icons. They can be found in the following repo...

https://github.com/m4thewz/dracula-icons

Additional Configurations⚓︎

I've made additional configurations that pertain to my workflow, such as keybindings, default applications, terminal configurations, etc. These can be found in the Configurations article.

References⚓︎