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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."
I was surprised to find twm when I installed X11 on OS X.
They released a new version today QUOTE: http://freshmeat.net/projects/fvwm/ The changes in this release are as follows: All single letter variables are deprecated, and multiletter variables are provided. The NoWarp menu position hint option works with root menus too. WindowListFunc is executed within a window context, so a prefix "WindowId $0" is no longer needed in its definition, and it is advised to remove it from user configs. FvwmEvent executes all window related events within a window context, so PassId is not needed anymore, and all prefixes "WindowId $0" may be removed from user event handlers.
Idiot.
Unless all of the choices suck.
Life in Orange County
What does F* stand for?
Nostalgically twm would be more cool. fvwm, fvwm2, fvwm95, icewm, sawfish are the 'other' window managers. The big ones are kde and gnome and friends.
So tonight I will celebrate by switching from icewm to fvwm for a day.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I forgot to buy it a gift. I'm so screwed.
and a catchy name too. It really rolls right off of your tongue about like a sawblade. ;)
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.
F* yes! Happy F*'ing birthday! (The BSD devel made me do it).
Really, thanks and congrats to the developers of this great WM: this was my first Linux non-CLI, and it remains my favorite.
If a man's character is to be abused there's nobody like a relative to do the business. -Thackeray, William
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!)
REAL men use the console. For those forced to use those silly window gadgets by their PHBs, there's NAWM: Not a Window Manager. Non-reparenting, non-eye candy, pure window management functionality and nothing more. Check it out.
In a real emergency, we would have all fled in terror, and you would not have been notified.
my hypercard stack "Escape From The Dark Cassel [sic]" turned 12 today... can we celebrate that too?
Here's some food for ya !
How to explain FVWM to a troll ?
In the good old days, when THE distribution was something you downloaded as floppy images, when a 386 DX with 16 megs was considered a nice machine (with your file server being a 486/33), when you had a Minix FS and hex-edited your boot device on your boot floppy, in those old days you did not want a *huge* window manager.
But after downloading the slackware X series of floppy disks, you wanted SOME kind of WM.
And yes, it was cosidered a bonus to open an xterm without the system starting to swap.
Can your stomach take more, little troll ?
--Pat / zippy@cs.brandeis.edu
<AOL>Me too</AOL^>
"Mouse? Oh, you mean the thing I use to figure out what xterm I want to type in."
(Cripes, even the FVWM screenshots on the almost-slashdotted page look almost too glitzy for my tastes ;-)
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.
or tab completion, or inline editing, etc... Real men use SysV R3 /bin/sh on an old Wyse 60. For a real trip, try the Mashey Shell (predates the Bourne Shell).
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
This is like a "Happy friggin' birthday" greeting. "It's your birthday, here's the Slashdot effect for your birthday." And they can't effectively return the gift if they don't like it.
________________________________________________
suwain_2
The author might have forgot what his acronym stands for but some people remember the original announcement.
There are 2 kinds of people in this world: Those who write in decimal and those who don't
I'll wager you never had fourteen shipwrecked mariners tossing about in it, or never been used to plug up a leak on a ship.
And if you'd quit pestering him about how ugly his fonts are he'd actually get that thesis done.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
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.
Twm probably has some nostalgia value amongst people who rolled their own X11 back in the day, but fvwm used to be the default for most Linux systems, so it's got plenty of nostalgia value of its own. Plus, it's still going strong; twm is all-but-dead, while fvwm still has a large community of enthusiastic users and developers. Including me. I keep trying out all these newer WMs, and they always seem to be missing some essential feature that I've come to depend on over the years, and/or they're massive, bloated monstrosities that don't do noticably more than my old workhorse.
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.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
(rant)
Why on earth did RedHat take FVWM out of its distrubution? Like many long time Linux users, FVWM has been my window manager for years. It's small, fast, flexible, and infinitely configurable - with three CDs of space for RedHat 9, you'd think they'd be able to find a couple of megs for FVWM. Even their "switchdesk" utility still wants FVWM as an option.
Taking FVWM out of the standard distribution is just plain dumb, not to mention insulting to many Linux users. How many years was FVWM the default window manager for RedHat? I've been using FVWM for years on RedHat, but now I have to change to a more "modern" window manager because they can't spare 3 megs on their distribution CDs? Grrr.
(/rant)
"Good people drink good beer"
Fvwm was nice back then. But even if you want a small, light-weight window manager, there are probably better choices than fvwm these days: Oroborus, Blackbox, IceWM, Ion, to name just a few. Their code tends to be cleaner and their configuration and code tends to be more modular.
Finally. After 10 years of being written by illiterates, it's about time.
Well, I use FVWM. It is my WM of choice, and I like it a lot. It is small, it is (very) fast, it is scriptable, it does not look nor act like a Windows knock-off (though you can probably make it, both, of course). And I use it on fast machines, mind you, it's not that I couln't use KDE. It's just that I like plain X + FVWM better.
And it does have some cute features. I have impressed a couple of friends with FVWM's "stroke" thing, starting apps and controlling audio volume and stuff, by drawing shapes on the screen with the mouse---though I must say that I don't really have much use for that, save for showing off.
I wonder why is that so many of you regard mass adoption as something so desirable that justifies turning a first-class Unix system (oops, hope no SCO spies are reading this) into a bad Windows clone. Or even a good one. I just can't see the point: if a user needs something Windows-like, well, there is Windows already.
If I were to say what to do, I'd have people stop wasting time cloning Windows, and use it to make Linux a better Unix. And as for GUIs, I'd like to see a good GUI in the Unix style. Like, say, apps with hybrid command line/graphic interfaces. Graphic pipelines, perhaps? Or if you have to copy it, something in the NextStep/OSX style (last time I checked, GNUStep was nowhere near usable). I don't know.
But then again, neither me nor you nor anyone can make Linux developers do this or that; everybody is free to choose what to do with our Linux-hacking time. Fortunately.
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...
You say that like the majority of WMs for X11 *are* good looking.
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.
By definition a DX has a built in math coprocessor. The SX series was a DX chip with the built in CoProcessor disabled so Intel could sell a math coprocessor add on chip.
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.
1)It was good enough 8 years ago.
.fwm*rc file
2)I've got nothing better to do than fuck with my
3)My desktop doesn't look enought like ass yet.
4)I've only got 12M of memory.
5)What the hell X only holds up my xterms, and mozilla.
IANALBIPOOGL (I am not a Lawyer, but I play one on GrokLaw.)
~Phillip
I find VTWM suits my needs better.
;-)
If you're going to go lean and mean, why not go all the way?
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
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.
This was thirteen years ago, mind you. I was 3l337 just because I was _using_ the RT, nevermind there wasn't jack shit installed on it except CADAM
Clickety Click
I am also a user of FVWM, but I have heard of Enlightenment which is now calling itself a "desktop shell". I don't know much more than that but it sounds like something that would interest you. It is definitely very configurable and pretty.
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.
So ugly...can't...concentrate.
Well, you got me there, but still, just because many X11 WMs are poster children for bad taste and color blindness, doesn't mean fvwm should be kept on life support. Pull the plug already and let this brain damaged embarrassment to the *nix community die.
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.
Because people want it to.
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.
Real men eat pancakes in the morning, fart in bed, dress in women's clothing, and hang around in bars.
Ok, I don't eat pancakes, fart in bed, _or_ hang around in bars. What was that about clothing?
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
(Bonus points to those that have mucked around with X11 enough to know what greyweave is).
Huh? You mean you can put images on the root window?
Hmm... it's seems like you don't neen even FVWM then, just run the naked X server!
Less is more !
"Nostalgically twm would be more cool. fvwm, fvwm2, fvwm95, icewm, sawfish are the 'other' window managers."
Actually, I think twm would be an 'other' as well. I believe the original window manager was xwm.
http://www.plig.org/xwinman/others.html
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
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
Especially when you try to pronounce it.
I've heard attempts at putting every imaginable vowel sound between the letters in FVWM, and never with good results.
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'
You seem to have a hard time understanding the difference between a window manager (fvwm) and a desktop environment (gnome).
This isn't fair. I'm Jewish, I didn't get in on the worldwide Jewish conspiracy. I'm an atheist, I didn't get in on the evil atheist conspiracy. Now I don't get in on the Gay conspiracys either? Life just isn't fiar.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I think you're missing the point.
fvwm and friends are not designed for or typically used by lusers. They are intended for and used by people who are in control of their machines and know how to manage them. If we don't like the icons or the window decorations, we'll just change them. My personal favourite, wm2 , does not provide any icons at all, and the only way to configure it is to hack the source and recompile. But it's elegant and it doesn't get in my way.
Yes, so it wouldn't suit everybody. Who cares? I am not everybody, and one size does not fit all.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
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)
How? and Why? The command line is there for a reason. It's easier to construct arbitrary commands and handle a lot of options with a command line. Say you're using something like cdrecord. Do you really need a GUI? type $cdrecord image.iso and let 'er fly. If you need a special option, is it easier to page through a bunch of tabs and checkboxes, or / through a man page? I'd say it's easier to / through a man page, plus once you know what you're gonna use, a simple wrapper script will do it every time.
And when you hide the CLI, how are you going to implement piping? How can you use conditionals and variables? You can't do this simply in a GUI, and that's why the CLI is so powerful. Do a little bash scripting, and you'll soon be using for loops and &&, and $() on the command line. If you think the CLI is just "left over", you don't really know how to use it.
Someone on slashdot said, "The difference between windows and linux is not that linux lacks a decent GUI, but windows lacks a decent CLI." I totally agree. I don't know how windows users get by without bash. With tab completion, history, wildcards, grep, sed and dozens of other command line tools, I can move, view, and convert my data faster than a windows user could traverse a graphical directory tree to find the same files. Think about it, with a CLI you press the buttons and it happens. There's no looking for anything. It may be a bit confusing at first, but it's faster in the long run, and you can do things the interface designer never intended or imagined.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!