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.
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