[SOLVED] OpenBox with XP in VirtualBox

Question

Hi All
I'm hoping someone has an answer to this one. I'm in the process of switching from Gnome 3 to OpenBox. I'm almost there except for getting VirtualBox to work correctly in seamless mode.
If I login to Gnome 3 then seamless virtualbox works brilliantly but in openBox I get a sort of screen lag as though the graphics driver is running incredibly slow. VirtualBox works fine when it's not in seamless mode though.
Contents of .config/openbox/autostart:
xcompmgr &
# Restore wallpaper
nitrogen --restore &
# Start Devilspie to alter windows
devilspie -a &
# Start Main Panel
tint2 &
EDIT: I use Docky as a program launcher hence the need for xcompmgr. Devilspie I use to move NetBeans to the development desktop.
Thanks
Rich
Last edited by RichAustin (2011-11-06 12:36:23)

Answer 1

Unfortunately I don't think either xcompmgr or cairo-compmgr will work with virtualbox seamless mode.  I think seamless mode works decently with compiz and kwin, though in the past these have had problems as well. Seamless and compositing just don't mix well and unfortunately I doubt oracle cares about making it work with xcompmgr, which isn't even being developed anymore, so no fix likely to come from that end either.
You could either use docky uncomposited, it still works, just not as pretty, use another dock, or use compiz as your window manger instead of openbox.
Also you can move an application to a specific dektop in openbox rc.xml with
<application class="the class of the app you want to move*">
   <desktop>2</desktop>
</application>
So you maybe you don't need to run Devilspie, if you use compiz it also has features to control where applications are placed. There are also more application placement variables in openbox then just my above example.