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fvwm Turns Ten
Some Old Dude writes "fvwm, F* Virtual Window Manager, is celebrating its 10th birthday in a few days. This is the window manager I used when cutting my Linux teeth back in the last millennium, and the one I still use today (after trying many newer ones). If it's been a while since you've seen what fvwm can do, check out its features and screenshots."
fvwm and tvwm are two great window managers espiecally when you're cutting edge gnome/kde/fluxbox/etc... refuses to work, and you just have to get something done graphicly. I know i've fallen back on them more then once. That coupled with the fact that they're so damn small, keeps them on my my small hard drive.
After trying out kde, gnome and xfce, I went back to fvwm and couldn't be happer with my current setup. The only thing on my desktop when I login is a single xterm. I can launch anything I need from there, but I also spent some time to customize my root menu (right-click on desktop) to give me quick access to the apps and scripts I use the most (including xterm -- I forgot to put that in their the first time around... didn't notice it until I accidently closed my one and only xterm -- oops!)
I seem to remember that X didn't work too well on machines without a maths co-processor. You had better have had a 80387 in your 386DX or else X would grind to a halt everytime it wanted to scale fonts.
Lets stack FVWM up with its contemporary, Windows 3.0 and then see who runs home crying.
FVWM had the 3D look of Motif without the awkwardness of OpenLook and because it was just an X Window Manager it avoided the OS integration of MS Windows.
Newer GUIs like WindowsXP and Aqua, GNOME, KDE, etc. move beyond the window manager concept to the entire visual user experience.
The pager in FVWM is the epitome of how a pager should be.
FVWM was the first WM I ever used (on SunOS back in the early 90's). I absolutely hated the pager, but I didn't know how to turn it off. After about 2 weeks of it, I can't live without it now. All of my boxes, OSX (VirtualDesktop), Windows(JSPager), Linux(crappy KDE pager), they all have one now. But, none of them even come close to fvwm's.
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To this day, I can't part with that file - don't even know if it still works in the latest version. I haven't used fvwm in 2 years, but I know that file is in my $HOME on every linux box I work on... just in case.
nostalgia...
Here's the one I'm using right now: .fvwm2rc file .png image in Opera 6.12, and press the "F11" key for fullscreen. On a 14" monitor, it will appear as if you are actually running fvwm, with this file, and you can say "Hey, I formatted your HDD, put Mandrake on it!" Only thing, none of the buttons work, so the joke comes to a quick end for the observant.
.fvwm2rc on the internet, I have to say that this is not my latest .fvwm2rc, as working on these is somewhat of a hobby and I'm always trying to improve it.
.fvwm2rc for a user account:
my
Here is a screenshot:
screenshot for above fvwm2rc
Here's a neat trick: Put that
Like most folks that post their
Here is a
click here
That one gives an entirely different-looking setup, designed for those who do not have root access. As you can see, I like what fvwm can do, and try to learn more about it when I can. Examples posted on the internet help a lot.
Perhaps you missed the part where it said that fvwm is still being actively developed? It's getting steadily better and better, IMO. Not to say that some of those other choices aren't perfectly nice too, but fvwm is a lot nicer than it was "back then", and it's still, pound-for-pound, one of the best tradeoffs for size vs. power, IMO.
As for those others being more modular, say what? Fvwm is modular almost to the point of insanity. That's what helps keep it so lightweight. Only the modules you actually use get loaded.
Now, for configuration, I'll freely grant that you have a point. Fvwm still has some of the most baroque configuration around. It's not for the faint-of-heart. And for this reason, I rarely recommend fvwm to anyone. But I already configured it just the way I like it, and I see little or no reason to use anything else. I keep trying all those others, and they keep coming up short on my personal feature requirements list. (My second choice, if they pried fvwm out of my cold, dead hands, would be windowmaker, with blackbox a close third.)
I don't agree. I like the Unix desktop at its most Unixy - clean, efficient andminimal. No need to waste pixels catering for an idiot when this desktop is the interface for a computer professional. But if I wanted to waste some pixels, and I have in the past, I'd waste them on stuff that looks cool to my aesthetic, not what looks reassuring to some marketer trying to soothe the average user.
If you want to understand the "real" window managers, like fvwm, Afterstep, etc., realize three things:
I don't like CDE very much, but CDE is clean and technical-looking in a way that Windows isn't. Almost everyone would happily go from CDE to KDE or Gnome, but I'd feel some loss of Unix flavor.
(I've ignored the fact that fvwm works with Gnome - you could have the fvwm coolness and the Gnome user-friendliness, I guess.)
I'm currently running fluxbox at work and AfterStep at home. I like a lot of what I see in the fvwm release - it seems the good window managers are converging and adopting the best features.
I know there will always be a small group that thinks as I do, but I'm afraid we're not communicating very well. Tons of newcomers are pouring into Linux, and most of them have only seen Microsoft Windows. Therefore they're inclined to view the desktop through a Microsoft lens, even as they criticize Microsoft.
I don't like Microsoft software. I find it disgusting from concept to execution, from GUI aesthetics to file formats. I don't want anything on my machines to look like that.
80386 DX was a full 32 bit chip
80386 SX was a 386 DX with 24 bit memory bus and maybe a 16 bit data bus
For faster time to market, the 80386DX could work with an 80287 *or* 80387 math-co. There never was a 386 with built in FPU.
When Intel introduced the 486, everything changed:
80486DX had a built in FPU
80486SX had a built in FPU but was disabled (maybe due to poor QA rating)
80487 was an 80486DX with alternate pinout to fit in the "487" slot. Upon insertion, the 80486SX is disabled
80486SL was an 80486SX with some power saving features and lower clock speeds
80486SLC was a cyrix chip that had 16 bit data bus, 24 bit memory addresses, and no math co. It performed somewhat better than a 386SX but was cheap and drew little power. It was popular for notebook computers.
80486DX2 was the first clock doubling CPU
80486DX50 was a rare 50 MHz cpu with no clock doubling
80486DX2-66 / DX2-50 were clock doubling CPUs
80486DX4 were clock trippling CPUs
Then there were a bunch of pentia.
These days I have a salary and can afford to have nice pretty computers:
In my primary work area I have a powerbook (With OSX) and a Gentoo Linux PC (Strictly KDE not Gnome). Looking at those screenshots reminds me how much the Linux community has advanced since those 'hobbyist' days. I think we owe it to ourselves to have desktops that are both functional AND pretty.
Anyway Gentoo Linux includes FVWM even though that distro is less than 2 years old!
Fvwm is what Microsoft THINK all UNIX(y) computers still look like!
I need multiple virtual screens. Other than that, I probably could get most of the functionality I want out of twm with a well-written .twmrc. Looking at the man page, there are a lot of useful functions that aren't available unless you customize. For example, I use the fvwm equivalent of TwmWindows frequently; I didn't realize TwmWindows existed because you can't get to it in the default configuration.
It is when they decide to go online, access $FAVORITE_SITE and find it down for some reason. And really, reliability is something people should see as the rule rather than the exception from their computers.
The majority of people can get by with pre-packaged software and the point-clicky equivilent of "redhat-config-packages". But all the ugliness on the back-end with Makefiles is what ensures it'll still be portable and usable many years from now after the prepackaged stuff is obsoleted by some newer packaging system.
When one considers the horrors of "driver disks" and "driver installation", Windows doesn't have much to brag about in the hardware department, nor does it allow me to swap out an x86 chip for a PowerPC one, for example. Macintosh-quality hardware ease is to be aspired to, but it'll take better hardware standards for that to arrive.
I can type much faster than I can point & click, and I'd wager most other people can too. What we need is not the removal of the command line but rather the update to it. What we really need is a system that allows GUI elements and command-line elements to work seamlessly such that novice users won't be confused and expert users won't be crippled by slow interfaces.
And quite frankly, all the current user interfaces have a long way to go before the needs of all users can be satisfied.
Ita erat quando hic adveni.
Its lean, its mean and everything'll be fullscreen,..
Here is a screenshot taken from this editorial
let me put it to you this way, i don't even Own a mouse on this computer.
shortcuts for browsing
GNU/screen for copypasting
Granted, no speak man nor info == no wm for harry,
But i'll even recap the *entire* 00:05 of 'info ratpoison' in a 2 second blast:
apt has it, emerge has it,... whaddaboutyou?
Cheers!
Thijs
Because Gnome isn't too swift with Cygwin/X11 on a Celeron 400 running 98SE* (hell, it doesn't even run!) Fvwm, keep on crankin'!
... and fvwm.
*-Mum's computer. Mine runs OpenBSD
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
Then this guy I didn't know said "I wrote that". I stopped dead in my tracks, my jaw dropped on the floor, I rewound my mental tape of what I had been saying, played it back to myself, and asked incredulously "You wrote the HyperCard Smut Stack??!" He said yes, and proceeded to tell me all about it with pride. It really made his day for somebody to bring up his baby out of the blue like that.
The guy who wrote the HyperCard Smut Stack is none other than Chuck Farnham, who is notorious in the San Francisco Bay area as a demented radio personality on Alex Bennett's "Live 105" morning radio show. "Yes this is the guy who puts food all over himself and lets people eat off of him."
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
The server that runs fvwm.org lives in my office, and it didn't start smoking or anything. Outbound bandwidth peaked at 13.7Mbps at 7:30PM CDT. CPU load never got above about 10%. I never saw any refused connections but if I had known this was going to hit /. I would have rebuilt Apache to handle more than 255 at once.
Hmm... it's seems like you don't neen even FVWM then, just run the naked X server!
Less is more !
My CS department has an old (at least I hope so) version of fvwm as the default WM with a particularily horrid colour scheme. I've heard the reason is to force the students to delve into the config files so avoid going insane.
I stole this Sig
My first experience with Unix-esque systems and X-Windows was in 1993 when I started college. At the time my choice was TWM or FVWM. FVWM was clearly the more advanced option and one of the more advanced window managers at the time. (CDE looked advanced, but was more of a hassle than it was worth.)
Since then I've tended to be lazy and taken what I was given, stuck with whatever was the default. As a result I spend a long time with Enlightenment followed by SawFish/SawMill. I've dabbled with a number of other window managers.
Then last year (2002), I took a job back at my old university. The default was still FVWM! And while FVWM had matured, it remained instantly identifable. I hadn't used it in five years, but it came back instantly. It felt right. Sure, it lacks classy menus, but the configuration file was easy enough to use and let me set things up how I wanted. Most window managers are determined to stick the various window management buttons where they want them. FVWM makes it easy to stick them where I want them. It's a minimal WM, I don't run any of the modules except for the pager (to switch between virtual desktops) and the IconMan, a very minimal list of windows on each desktop. My desktop is spartan and I've discovered that I really like it.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
I found fvwm2 to be the most "productive" window manager that I have ever used, by which I mean I didn't feel crippled or second-guessed by it, and it left out poky special features. twm was just a little too barebones for my liking. motif sucked. The most useful (for me) feature of fvwm2 was their pager.
I use KDE2 on Linux (yeah, I know it's old), and I've played a bit with the others. For me, they aren't as "facilitative" as fvwm2. Actually, even Aqua (I do most of my stuff on a Mac, now) doesn't cut it. The old Mac OS 9 GUI was better in that I could modify it without too much effort to suit the way I worked.
This is a tautology.
I think fvwm2 is the best window manager and I'm really happy to see this thread. ... I think that's it.
I think that window manager/desktop must have the following features:
* ability to start xterm instantaneously
* pager which shows windows and their titles
* flexible configuration in an editable file
Now I know that there are some newer wms which can do that as well, but I think fvwm was the first one which offered this and I see no reason to switch.
I passed the Turing test.
The virtual desktop can be panned across, and you can set the physical desktop *anywhere* within the virtual desktop space, so the physical desktop isn't just constrained to be on coordinates in the virtual desktop that are integer multiples of the physical desktop size. AFAIK, none of the other more recent window managers have ever incorporated this idea, but it's far and away the feature I liked the most about it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
For the first year of my PhD I was stuck with a sparcstation 5 on my desk (32Meg ram, processor like a fast 486). It ran CDE and it was just too painful for words.
Installing FVWM gave me a faster, more usable desktop that kept me from going insane until we got the budget to buy a new computer (which unfortunately runs win2K, but I guess you can't have everything)