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[From the fvwm faq:]

1.1 What does FVWM stand for?

A: "Fill_in_the_blank_with_whatever_f_word_you_like_a t_the_time
Virtual Window Manager". Rob Nation (the original Author of FVWM)
doesn't really remember what the F stood for originally, so we
have several potential answers:

Feeble, Fabulous, Famous, Fast, Foobar, Fantastic, Flexible,
F!@#$%, Flashy, FVWM (the GNU recursive approach), Free, Final,
Funky, Fred's (who the heck is Fred?), Freakin', Flawed,
Father-of-all, Feivel (the mouse from "An American Tail"),
Frungy (hey, where does that come from?), Floppy, Foxy,
Frenzied, Funny, Fumbling etc.

Just pick your Favorite (hey, there's another one!), which will of
course change depending on your mood and whether or not you've run
across any bugs recently. I prefer Fabulous or Fantastic myself,
although I often use F!@#$% or Freakin' while debugging...

Recently 'Feline' is becoming popular. Perhaps this has something
to do with the discovery that four of the six core developers have
cats (averaging 1.17 cats)? Miaow.

Know what? I found another one while stroking my cats: FEEDING :-)

Check this link:
fvwm-cats

[From the fvwm faq:]

1.1 What does FVWM stand for?

A: "Fill_in_the_blank_with_whatever_f_word_you_like_a t_the_time
Virtual Window Manager". Rob Nation (the original Author of FVWM)
doesn't really remember what the F stood for originally, so we
have several potential answers:

Feeble, Fabulous, Famous, Fast, Foobar, Fantastic, Flexible,
F!@#$%, Flashy, FVWM (the GNU recursive approach), Free, Final,
Funky, Fred's (who the heck is Fred?), Freakin', Flawed,
Father-of-all, Feivel (the mouse from "An American Tail"),
Frungy (hey, where does that come from?), Floppy, Foxy,
Frenzied, Funny, Fumbling etc.

Just pick your Favorite (hey, there's another one!), which will of
course change depending on your mood and whether or not you've run
across any bugs recently. I prefer Fabulous or Fantastic myself,
although I often use F!@#$% or Freakin' while debugging...

Recently 'Feline' is becoming popular. Perhaps this has something
to do with the discovery that four of the six core developers have
cats (averaging 1.17 cats)? Miaow.

Know what? I found another one while stroking my cats: FEEDING :-)

Check this link:
fvwm-cats

Fine. Flexible. Feline. Whatever the fuck (there's another one) you want. Why didn't you just check the FAQ (another one!)?

Looks like someone wants to use fvwm and the variety of themes with different looks and actions. Only window manager I've seen that can do windows, mac os (who would want that? *duck*) and CDE.

fvwm has had this functionality using libstroke since version 2.3.4 (2.5.5 is the latest release)

FVWM has supported gestures through LibStoke (apparently what wayV uses as well) for quite some time.

your prayers have been answered.

Iconization is a fairly fundamental and common window manager thing. I don't know how easy it is to configure something like sawfish to support this mode of operation, but it is generally the default for window managers like fvwm, twm, or even mwm. I would not be surprised if many modern alternate window managers supported powerful ways of controlling icons and iconification behavior; I know fvwm does.

I've just read the OSNews article on KDE3.1. The article isn't too bad, though much of the criticisms the author levels are things that I would classify as personal preference and not really fundamental design issues.

What really surprised me about that article was the user comments afterwards! The level of ignorance and arrogance shown by some of the users of the OSNews site is staggering and makes an average /. comment seem well balanced and informed by comparison.

They seem to have definitely had more than their quota of do-what-*I*-like users.. you know the kind; they never actually contribute to any project, not even so much as a bug report, yet they demand that all the developers should drop what they're doing and make the 'improvements' they suggest, which normally boil down to 'make it like whatever I'm already using, because I'm too lazy to learn something new!'.

I especially like this comment. It's another one of those X-is-crap(for reasons I'm not too sure about)-and-someone-should -do-something-better(though not me, obviously, because I know fuck all about what I'm talking about) comments. I'm not saying that X shouldn't be superceeded some day, but people that keep repeating this should really take the time to find out just how big and powerful(thus complex) X is, and maybe ask themselves why a community of so many good programmers has not replaced it, if it's such a simple and desirable thing to do?

Here's to Linux forging it's own path, and not trying to emulate everything that's already out there.

Incidentally, I'm a FVWM2 user, so I don't support either KDE or Gnome more than the other.

I don't like either one of them. For a fast window manager, I like the good old FVWM. Runs fine on my old P100.

KDE has come a long ways since its inception and I applaud the developers that have worked so hard to bring it up to this point. It offers a nice UI that's intuitive for users of either macOS or windows to get used to. And it's pretty.

Things that don't get much press, though, are the fast and efficient windowmanagers that, IMO, are able to accomplish a lot more. What about fvwm2, a completely customizable and scriptable windowmanager. Or ion, recently published on slashdot. The folks that worked on windowmaker also have done a great job.

All in all, I think that the developers working on KDE have done a stunning job, but it's equally amazing that new linux users aren't exposed as much to the "choice" that makes the linux operating system what it is. I switch windowmanagers every so often, and each of gets things done in its own unique way. I think the cake goes to fvwm for its efficiency, though. Too bad it doesn't get press because it's not as "pretty" as other wms out there.

Alt-TAB doesn't cut it. I've mapped the numeric keypad into a directional focus moving pad. Hit 7 and the focus moves to up&left to the next window, hit 6 and it moves right. I know of only one window manager to do this: FVWM with the `Direction' function.

The first day that I had my UltraSPARC 10 at work I tried to use CDE... I hated it. I found that it was simple and quick but it wasn't very intuitive. So, off to FVWM.org I went. And I've been happy ever since. I've played with Gnome and KDE on various platforms - they are definietly pretty but they take up way too many resources.

(I don't know much about WM development, but...)

Honestly, the only two window managers that I ever felt comfortable with are fvwm (v2 if you like) and twm (didn't find a really good link, but it's standard on NetBSD systems, so you all know what I'm talking about right?). All other managers are just visual fluff that eats memory, occupies the palette, and slows the computer down.

There has been some other really great ideas during the last few years, like the pwm and wm2 (and its sibling, wmx) window managers. They simple, easy to configure, and does NOT rely on tons of extra libraries.

Someone else here was talking about environments, but I just can't see why you would want an extra "environment" on top of the perfectly usable standard Unix environment that's already there... Also, some of them comes packed with applications tailored especially for use within that particular window manager, which in reality turns each "environment" into its own, well, distribution. One can devote a separate CD for GNOME or KDE applications and support libraries, many of which just duplicates the function of already existing Unix commands. Sometimes I think someone ought start a KDE/Linux distribution just to spare everyone else from having to download that extra CD ISO.

Then again, we might be talking about different audiences here. The teenagers might need cool "environments" to get lured into using GNU/Linux, and that might have a positive effect in 5 to 10 years. But I wouldn't be very surprised if the adoption of GNU/Linux (or any other of the free Unices for that matter) by desktop users would be slowed down by offering a vast amount of conflicting graphical environments.

I think it would be a good idea to correct the bugs and stabilise the already existing window manages, maybe even to unify some of the more similar ones. You can make most of the more configurable managers look like each other anyway.

All that you need is some xterm windows.

The IS folks' workload tripled overnight as the Linux newbies got stuck trying to figure out why the KDE/Gnome desktops were so illogical.

Well, then it's not the user's fault, not linux's fault, but the installer's fault. You can make linux look and behave almost identical to windows. As proof I would like to enter this screenshot of an fvwm desktop with the right theme applied to it. Add to that the themes to make gtk and qt look exactly like windows, and you have yourself a windows duplicate. Only better.

Try FVWM if you're inclined.

I've been using FVWM in X (those who don't know what I'm talking about probably don't need to know what I'm talking about) for as long as I've been using UNIX systems, and that would be six years now. I've never stopped tweaking my config and every now and then I have to hack something, too.

The environment is very good now, but it's not perfect. And nobody else would be able to use it efficiently, because it grew with me.

Daisy-loving Ai

I am quite fond of fvwm2; others like WindowMaker or AfterStep. If you have a slower computer, blackbox is very good. Be aware that with any of these, but especially fvwm2 or blackbox, you will feel as though you've gotten a processor upgrade. Everything is faster. Part of this is the lack of Gnome/KDE stuff running. Part of this is that these window managers are significantly faster than E or kwm.

Personally, I'd like to try out sawmill. It looks neat, and it uses Lisp to control everything. Pretty cool.

• I'd like to see more Gnome compliant window managers. Choice is a good thing. I feel like Oliver Twist actually, "Please Sir, Can I have some more?" :-)

And to all those good wm developer souls: It is vitally important that MORE window managers become compliant. One of the X cornerstones is what you get a lot of choice. Don't let the advancements of KDE/Gnome limit our choice of window manager! :)

# Key keyname Context Modifiers Function

Key F11 A SCM WindowList

F11 is the hotkey, A is the context(any), SCM is the keys that must be held down to activate the hotkey. This example is a shift-control-meta-F11 chord. Finally, when you press this hotkey it executes the function "WindowList".

You can use any function you like, especially all the functions that are normally mapped to mouse actions. You do not have to remove the mouse actions. I forget the syntax, but there are functions that will shift the focus to next or previous, which is twice as good as alt-tab in Windoze.

You can find more documentation at www.fvwm.org. It's just a matter of taking the time to RTM and figure out what you want your hot-keys to do for you.