ROXDesktop – fast, user friendly desktop

Last Updated on October 18, 2022

The ROX Desktop is a desktop environment, a lightweight alternative to GNOME or KDE based on the ROX-Filer file manager. It is inspired by the user interface of RISC OS.

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 favours using several small programs together instead of creating all-in-one mammoth-applications.

Software included:

  • ROX-Filer – a fast and powerful graphical file manager for the X Window System.
  • OroboROX – a lightweight window manager for the ROX Desktop.
  • Archive – an easy to use program for creating and extracting file archives.
  • ROX-Session – a simple session manager.
  • ROX-Lib – contains shared code used by other ROX applications.
  • Edit – a simple text editor with:
    • Unlimited undo and redo.
    • Interactive searching.
    • Powerful search and replace, with full regular expression support.
    • Syntax highlighting.
    • Spell checking.
    • Show changes from saved version, or from a previous backup.
    • Bookmarks.
    • Word wrap.
    • Drag-and-drop saving.
    • Supports UTF-8, allowing free use of characters from all languages.
  • ROX-All – a single archive containing launchers for most of the ROX applications.
  • AddApp – allows additional applications to be easily installed.

Internet

  • Beluga – a wireless connection manager.
  • DownloadManager – download manager for Fetch, limiting the number of simultaneous downloads.
  • Fetch – acts as a download handler for ROX-Filer.
  • ROX-Samba – uses fusesmb to mount Samba shares as local directories and browse them with ROX-Filer.
  • Ratatosk – a simple Jabber client.
  • Postal – an applet that checks multiple accounts for mail.
  • WiFi – a wireless quality monitor applet.
  • Launch – provides facilities for launching URLs.
  • Mail – applet which provides mail/no mail notification by its icon and also serves as a launcher for your preferred mail client.

Graphics

  • RAWThumbnail – ROX-Filer helper to generate thumbnails for the Canon RAW files (*.crw, *.cr2) from a Canon digital camera.
  • Picky – an image viewer which displays PNG, JPEG and GIF images.
  • ComicThumb – generates thumbnails for comix archives (cbr, cbz, cbt).

Audio/Video

  • AlgoScore – a graphical environment for algorithmic composition, where music is constructed directly in an interactive graphical score.
  • Jammin – MPD playlist randomizer.
  • mplayer-rox – wrapper around mplayer.
  • Mp3Ogg2Wav – a small rox utility to convert .ogg and .mp3 files to .wav files.
  • Ripper – a CD Ripper/Encoder:
    • FreeDB/CDDB access.
    • Editable track, title, genre, etc., even after CDDB fetching.
    • Simultaneous rip and encode.
    • Supports many command-line ripper and encoder programs (e.g. cdda2wav, cdparanoia, lame, oggenc, etc).
    • Allows album art to be saved as .DirIcon.
    • Configurable library (file and directory) patterns.
  • Volume – a Panel Applet that puts a popup volume control in your panel. It also functions as a Mixer application.
  • MusicBox – a Music Player which features:
    • MP3, OGG, Flac, WAV support.
    • ESD, Alsa, OSS support.
    • Album Art display.
    • Drag and Drop adding of Songs, Directories of songs, and Playlists (m3u, pls and xml).
    • Shuffle play (with cache so you don’t replay songs too frequently).
    • Seek control bar to zip to specific parts of any song.
    • Volume Control.
    • Playlist filtering.
    • Translations: de, fr, it, es, pt_BR.
  • VideoThumbnail – a helper program for ROX-Filer which provides images for video files.
  • Album – converts collections of MP3 files into an application directory that will play the files using xmms.

Monitoring

  • SysBars – show CPU load etc in bars on the panel.
  • WiFi – a wireless quality monitor applet.
  • HddTemp – a front end to “hddtemp” daemon showing temperature of hard drives.
  • Lithium – a battery status monitor applet.
  • System – process and disk monitor.
  • NetStat – applet displays the current network activity.
  • Mem – applet displays the current memory usage and the current swap space usage.
  • Load – applet displays the load average of your system.
  • Tail – displays the contents of a text file, updating as the text file is updated.
  • FreeFS – monitor free space on a file system.

Miscellaneous

  • XDGSupport – creates SendTo items for .desktop files.
  • ROX-Trasher – Trashcan application for the ROX Filer and Desktop.
  • Thumbs – simple thumbnail manager.
  • XAttr – view or edit extended file attributes.
  • Execute – GUI to run programs by command / run programs as different user.
  • roxunzip.sh – shell script that unpacks lots of archives.
  • Trashcan – a trashcan that complies with the freedesktop-trash-spec.
  • ROXTerm – like gnome-terminal without Gnome baggage.
  • Depend – utility for checking dependencies of other ROX utilities.
  • Rubbish – a very simple rubbish bin.
  • Trash – a unified trashcan application for ROX.
  • ROX-thumbnailers – generates thumbnails for ROX-Filer using various thumbnailers.
  • RoxISO – create and burn data CD images.
  • Memo – alarm clock and reminder list.
  • Contacts – a Personal Information Manager.
  • AppFactory – automates the creation of ROX wrappers for non-ROX programs.

Configuration

  • Screensaver – control screensaver settings with ROX-Session.
  • XDGStart – edits XDG autostart entries.
  • Autostart – Freedesktop.org autostart manager.
  • Font – font selection and smoothing configuration.
  • Appearance – GTK and Icon theme configuration.
  • Time – sets time and date.
  • XPlanet – pinboard backdrop application.
  • Resolution – change screen resolution dynamically.
  • Mouse – mouse configuration applet.
  • Keyboard – keyboard configuration applet.
  • Gamma – set the gamma correction for your screen.
  • MIME-Editor – change the rules for guessing a file’s type.
  • Wallpaper – can be used to place an image on your desktop background.

Development tools

  • Zero2Bundle – create self-contained bundles from a Zero Install feed.

Educational

  • Reinteract-ROX – a system for interactive experimentation with Python.

and more…

Website: rox.sourceforge.net/desktop
Support: Guidebook
Developer: Hundreds of developers
License: GNU GPL, LGPL, BSD style

ROX-Filer is written in C and Python. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

Return to Lean Desktop Environments

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