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FVWM Developers Announce New Logo
taviso writes "In celebration of 'multiple virtual desktop window manager for the X Window system' FVWM's tenth birthday last year, the developers announced a contest to design a new logo for the project. The votes are in, and the winner has been announced. For some time the meaning of the "f" was lost, and 'feline' was one of many suggestions in the FAQ. The original meaning is described in a history of FVWM. FVWM is a remarkable piece of software - if you havnt seen some of the things you can do with it check out some of these screenshots."
Well FWIW, I've used a number of window managers in my relatively long UNIX history. I still remember TWM and MOTIF, and I had a WM-less desktop when it was all the rage at MIT. I've used pretty much all versions of GNOME and KDE, though neither for very long. I have used blackbox and its derivates, openbox, pekwm, pwm, vtwm, metacity, an obscure scheme based wm whose name I don't remember, alloywm, aewm(++), kwin, window maker, afterstep, evilwm, and a host of others whose name escapes me because they weren't worth remembering.
I tell you, nothing compares to the power of FVWM.
It lets you define multiple workspaces, all of which can have several virtual desktops where you can freely scroll around. Workspaces and desktops are created dinamically as you request them and deleted when you no longer need them, it is completely configurable to a point where you can open a console and talk directly to the window manager, changing the settings and interacting with the WM on-the-fly. It allows any focus model you could possibly imagine, it lets you load modules likes pagers, launchbars, and so on.
And that is only the beginning.
So basically, there are window managers (like.. fluxbox, which is impossibly popular among the crowd who only tried the KDE WM and fluxbox and decided fluxbox is the best thing that ever existed), and there are Window Managers.
I thought it was cool how no-one really knows what the F stood for anymore, and to make it stand for "Feline" just because some of the developers have cats? That's just daft.
If you can't get hold of whoever came up with the original name to ask them what it was you shouldn't make it up in their absence. They created and named the project and you should respect that.
By the way, FVWM's a good and very configurable wm. However, as a result of being so configurable it's codebase has to support loads of options and is big as a result. Personally I prefer the smaller window managers such as aewm and it's derivatives.
"A search for Window Managers on fresh meat brings over 400! yes, 400 window managers."
Ahh, but they're definitely not all window managers, they're just projects where the author has added them to the window manager category because it's (sometimes vaguely) related in someway and some people think that the more categories they list their project in the more hits they'll get.
"What is wrong with the standard K window manager on KDE? What is wrong with the Standard Sawfish Window manager with Gnome! This is the problem. The X11 designers should of FORCED an intergrated Window manager, like Windows and Mac OS did."
Open source is all about choice. Question: What would happen if (somehow) there was only one open source window manger for Linux? Answer: Everyone would fork it and change it to meet their requirements, and we would end up with a myriad of different wms, just as we have now.
People are different, and their working environments should be too. What next? - should we all use the same office suite so that the "average user" (whatever that means) doesn't get confused when he switches between them.