I've been an xkbset user for a long while now (I'd estimate at least since 2001). I'm someone who can't stand two things when working with laptops:

• 1) I hate it when they don't have a 3rd mouse button (for all my handy-dandy copy/paste goodness under X)
• 2) I hate it when they have all these damned unused keys all over the keyboard (Windows key, Internet Explorer key, email key, "arrow clicky on an abstract pull-down menu key")

Well, the wunnerful thing about Linux and X is that I could remap those useless keys to more useful functions. Couple this fact with the powerful fbkeys in Fluxbox, and I can set up some pretty useful combinations.

For example, in every laptop I've had thus far there's been a useless Windows key down on the left of the keyboard between the CTRL and the ALT. This is as good a place as any for a middle mouse button, so I've always remapped it with some variation of the following:

xkbset m
xkbset exp =m
xmodmap -e "keycode 115 = Pointer_Button2 Pointer_Drag2"

(Obviously, keycode 115 has to be changed when that number isn't valid)

Anyway, everything's been hunky-dory for a while now and I've been a content and happy beaver... At least, until sometime this last week....

I've been crazy busy lately, and haven't had much of a chance to get on here and make posts (ranting ones or otherwise :-) but today I had one of those "Wow, I'm lucky to be alive and living in such times" moments (these moments are increasingly frequent as I'm getting older) as I was using Fluxbox.

For those who don't know, I've been using Fluxbox as my primary window manager for at least five years now. I originally tried it out simply because someone suggested I take a look at it. I had tried Blackbox previously and hadn't been too impressed with it, however Fluxbox's window tabbing was such a radical rethinking of the desktop meme that it hooked me almost instantly.

Fluxbox received a lot of good press around the time I tried it out, and many would consider that time its heyday. While mentions of Fluxbox online seems to have faded over the years, I personally know it's used a lot by many people (over half of my friends online use it exclusively). Because of this, I feel it's high time to mention it online again- To thank the Fluxbox dev team for their years of excellent work and to try and proselytize for it a teensy bit.

All you have to do is look through my screenshot archive. There you would see my progression from early Gnome usage, to my KDE era, to my love affair with IceWM, and finally my landing on Fluxbox 3 years ago.