Re: worthless window manager

[Samuel Flory <sflory varesearch com>]

Kevin Colby wrote:
> 
> Whoa...  lots of questions.
> 
> Vic wrote:
> >
> > How do I run the setup tool for fvwm?
> 
> I am not personally aware of any, although there ought
> to be, since the rc file is fairly straightforward.
> 
> > I mean how is this wm setup?
> > With a script that I missed?
> > Or another thingy?
> 
> "Other".  fvwm (and actually, even enlightenment and kin)
> are actually setup by config files, often called rc files
> because config files in Unix are often named ".<productname>rc".
> Thus fvwm's config is in ".fvwmrc".  There is actually also
> a system-wide default rc file named something else too.
> "man fvwm" and/or "man fvwmrc" might shed light on this,
> and there are countless example configs on the web.
> 
> More modern window managers come with GUI front-ends to
> their own config files.  You used to just do it by hand.
> 


  FVWM under uses the rc files in /etc/X11/AnotherLevel.  It was quite
irrating trying to configure fvwm until I realized this.


> > I do like the fact that it runs fast.
> 
> fvwm also doesn't do a lot of cool things enlightenment does,
> but there is a price to pay for it.
>

  FVWM is fairly fast, however Enlightenment nearly as fast if you are
running a reasonable theme and not running gnome.  E suffers a bit from
it's themeablity as you can put complex pixmaps for window border,
buttons....  This will really slow down E on  machines with less than a
PII, and 128 megs of memory.   You can running enlightenment by putting
the following in your .xinitrc in your home directory:
exec enlightenment

(note you can access the root menu's via the middle mouse button.)

  You can find a large number of themes at e.themes.org.  I put together
a package of elightenment themes for the VA load.  (I was extremely
limited in the type and number I could choose, however.)

ftp://ftp.valinux.com/pub/software/VALinux/6.0.2/binary/VALinux/RPMS/Ethemes-1.0-0.i386.rpm

  A great light wieght window manager is blackbox.  I resently installed
it on a bunch of >30meg machines at a high school.  Where KDE and Gnome
were paging and swaping blackbox worked great.  It looks a lot better
than FVWM to boot.
http://rufus.w3.org/linux/RPM/blackbox.html
http://freshmeat.net/appindex/1998/06/13/897768106.html
 
> > Mebbe I missed the point of these things.
> > Are they strictly for *developers* purposes?
> 
> No.  Although developers certainly use them.
> 
> > Then they would be a good skeleton for experimenting
> > with inventing a new window manager and/or GUI.
> 
> fvwm is quite fast and solid.  That's why so many other
> window managers borrow heavily from its source.
> 
> > Like if the one who came out with that kde theme
> > that looks like the mac os was messing around with
> > the source of olwm and came up with it that way?
> 
> More likely he edited up a theme to look and feel like a Mac.
> If you know what you want, it's not that hard.
> 

  Both KDE, and E have themes that change their look and feel.  E holds
the title for being able change it's look and feel the most.  Take a
look at www.themes.org 



> > So conceivably someone could create an entirely
> > different wm or even GUI just by messing around with
> > the source from one of these wm's?
> 
> Source editing is only needed to change the wm at a very
> fundamental level--to change how it works.  If you want
> to merely change aesthetic components of the desktop
> (the look and feel), you can probably get what you want
> simply by playing with the config.  X window managers
> are _far_ more configurable than you would believe,
> orders of magnitude moreso than any MS OS.
> 


--
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Samuel Flory sflory varesearch com