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."

Comments

Anniversary release

[gleather]

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.

Choice is good...

[SpaceCadetTrav]

Unless all of the choices suck.

Mummy?

[GauteL]

What does F* stand for?

Re:Mummy?

[Anonymous Coward]

[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

Re:Mummy?

[krumms]

Mummy what does F* stand for?

It stands for 'fuck' - what do they teach you in school these days?

Oh man

[Anonymous Coward]

I forgot to buy it a gift. I'm so screwed.

birthdays

[bongobongo]

my hypercard stack "Escape From The Dark Cassel [sic]" turned 12 today... can we celebrate that too?

Re:why didn't this window manager die LONG AGO?

[McSnarf]

Aaah ! A troll !

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 ?

Featherweight

[Newtonian_p]

The 'F' stands for Featherweight. It was called that way because it was originally less ressource intensive than twm (tabbed window manager) on which it is based.

The author might have forgot what his acronym stands for but some people remember the original announcement.

well, there are probably better choices now

[73939133]

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.

Why FVWM matters

[crucini]

A lot of folks seem to think that Windows represents the pinnacle of GUI aesthetics, and that everything else (except Apple) should try to copy it. These folks look down on fvwm as "not even as good as Windows 3.1".

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:

1. They aren't trying to be "as good as Windows 3.1". They're in a totally different space. Just because they run on PC hardware now doesn't mean they partake of the PC mentality. These WM's can be configured from minimal to maximal, but at maximal they express a strong aesthetic that's quite different from consumer OS's.
   
2. Forget about "user friendliness". Real WM's are delicately balanced between aesthetics and efficiency, leaving little room for user-friendliness, which means accomodation to beginners. Let beginners use Gnome/KDE if they're unwilling to learn, or learn the real stuff if they're willing. More importantly, real user friendliness requires the WM to know things about applications, the machine, etc. I prefer my WM ignorant and agnostic - a mere conduit for my actions.
   
3. Don't judge them by how they "look". They don't look like anything - they're quite user-tunable, which is half the fun. The screenshots only give hints of the scope of customization. The feeling of running a desktop that you built is completely different from the feeling you get looking at someone else's desktop.
   

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.

Sorry, thanks for playing

[appleLaserWriter]

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.