As part of my exploration into light weight window managers with a default Windows user interface, I also took a look at icewm - http://www.icewm.org/. Version 1.3.7 is in the repos; I downloaded 1.3.8 from their site and built from source. There is also a theme package in the repos (I dodn't bother with it) and a package named icewm-lite - don't know why it's "lite". If installing from the repos, you may get a /usr/share/xsessions/icewm.desktop file; I had to make my own.

Once everything is installed and you log in for the first time, you're greeted with a fully functional Win95 looking desktop. The default configuration files ( http://www.icewm.org/manual/icewm-8.html ) are located in /usr/local/share/icewm; if you want to change anything, copy the contents of that directory to $HOME/.icewm and fire up your favorite text editor.

The main configuration file is the preferences file. If you have configured fvwm before, the syntax of this file will look very familiar - I get the feeling that icewm is a fork of fvwm written in C. If you have never configured fvwm before, this file will look a bit intimidating; but it's well commented and the configuration options are pretty self-explanatory. Most of the configuration is a matter of uncomenting the desired option and answering yes or no (0 or 1). The default key bindings and theme are also in this file.

The other configuration files to be concerned with are keys (key bindings), menu (the default menu), and toolbar (launcher buttons for the taskbar). All are pretty straight forward to edit, and the IceWm Manual page on the home page is well documented - however, the FAQ page on that site looks to be a little depricated. For some reaason, icewm did not install a man page (or installed to some odd location) - hopefully, if you install from the repos there is a man page as well.

In addition to the main icewm (and icewm-session) programs, there is icewmtray - a system tray; and icewmbg for setting the background on the desktop and provide some transparency support. Both those apps need to be started before icewm in order to work - my starticewm file:

#!/bin/sh

xset s off &
xset b 33 &
xsetroot -solid "#140C0B"
xmodmap "$HOME/.Xmodmap"
xrdb -l "$HOME/.Xresources"
urxvtd -q -o -f &
(sleep 2s && icewmbg) &
(sleep 2s && icewmtray) &
(sleep 2s && nitrogen --restore) &
(sleep 2s && wicd-gtk --tray) &
(sleep 2s && "$HOME/bin/ConkyIcewm.sh") &

# And last but not least we start the window manager.
# Because it is the last app you have to run it with ''exec'' before it.

exec icewm-session
Not sure what the difference is if you go with icewm or icewm-session - both worked fine so I didn't search for an explanation.

Edit - found it in the icewm FAQ - if icewm-session is used, then icewm will use a startup file when you log in. Create the file "startup" in $HOME/.icewm and edit it like you would the openbox autostart file. Remember to make it executable.

There are a bunch of themes for icewm on box-look.org - simply download one to $HOME/.icewm/themes and extract the contents. The icewm menu auto updates so the new theme will appear in the theme entry. The default theme defined in the preferenes file is color based; the included themes and thmes on box-look.org are pixmap based. If you have good skills with gimp, you can make a pretty decent theme; otherwise you're kind of stuck with a retro Win95/98 or Fvwm look. The home page for icewm has a detailed page explaining how to create a theme, and each theme has a default.theme file that can be edited to tweak any contributed theme you decide to go with.

The boxy fvwm look is fine with me, but one thing I didn't like is that the size, padding, and relief of the taskbar is hard coded - a lot of the pixmap themes appear to be using gradients to hide this little annoyance. The height of the taskbar is, in part, determined by the width of the pixmaps used and setting the IconSize options in the preference file.

IceWm is pretty light on resources - comparable to jwm, fluxbox, fvwm, and has it's own taskbar, toolbar (launchers), systemtray, clock, and a few taskbar plugins to monitor memory usage, cpu usage, battery, and network.  If you don't want to go that route, icewm plays pretty well with tint2 and conky; however, the internal logout command for icewm treats tint2 and conky as open windows and prompts you to save their contents before exiting. You can work around this by making a key binding and menu entry for the vsido-exit command.

You can also edit the preferences file and change -

#  Command to start logout
# LogoutCommand=""

to

#  Command to start logout
LogoutCommand="vsido-exit"
but that work around still shows a prompt asking if you want to exit before running vsido-exit.

So, even though icewm is light on resources,  fully functional on it's own, and fairly straight forward to set up, after going through all the steps to get it configured the way I wanted, my personal preference is just go with jwm, or fvwm to get a Windows-like user interface.

Icewm ,      fluxbox and fvwm for comparison -

           



 

Was setting up tint2 as a pager of sorts -



one issue I'm having is getting larger icons. I tried setting different panel widths and paddings, but the icons weren't expanding in the vertical. Am I missing something obvious? I was trying to get 48x48 icons.

Edit - never mind, figured it out.

Pertinent section -

task_maximum_size = width height
        width is used with horizontal panel. width = 0 to get full taskbar width
        height is used with vertical panel

was misinterpreting how that worked.

At least none of it needed batteries -



I don't want to see another Lego for 6 months - 

Been checking out bspwm - second time I've tried it, put a little more patience and effort into this time.

It's a tiling window manager written by an arch linux user - check out the dedicated thread

There are two programs to install - bspwm itself, and the program to define the key bindings - sxhkd - both available from the github linked in the op of the arch thread.

Here is a good HowTo for installing on a debian system (it's in the aur for you arch users).

First time I tried using bspwm, I tried it with xbindkeys because sxhkd wasn't working for me (and a couple #! users) but following that HowTo fixed whatever was messing me up - dependency? Using xbindkeys was causing some issues with other window managers on my system, so go with sxhkd. Two other recommended programs - dzen2 and dmenu.

There is a bit of a learning curve - particularly with the default key bindings - to understand how the windows get manipulated, so read the man pages for bspwm and sxhkd before logging in for the first time. After learning some basics, and setting up some key bindings you're comfortable with, manipulating windows becomes pretty straight forward.

Like most tilers, it has it's default layout - the binary space partitioning was why I checked it out in the first place, it's unique. But, window partitioning can be manual as well - reminiscent of musca window manager for any that have tried it - so it's really easy to get open windows into the layout you want.

Some screenshots -



Panels do work with this window manager, but I'm not sure I got them set up correctly - got the panel started, but it is "always on top" so a portion of the active window disappears beneath the panel. Don't know if that's the default and can be changed. One way around it is to set the:

bspc config window_gap
in the $HOME/.config/bspwm/bspwmrc file to a value that leaves the panel uncovered, but there is only one setting for left, right, top, bottom, and space between open windows so a setting of 20 to clear a panel will leave a lot of unused screen space.



The default panels are defined by some pretty impressive bash scripts and require dzen2 be installed.

The conky in the screenshots is a regular conky with:

own_window no
Rules can be set up so that windows float by default (xine in the screenshot) and open on a particular desktop (9 virtual desktops by default).

All in all, a good, usable window manager that doesn't take too much effort to learn the basics. Hopefully, the project continues. This single post can't really do it justice, read through the arch thread to get an idea of what can be done with this wm; or watch the screencast (link at top of page) -- http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/1m0ea1/arch_bspwm_why_bspwm_watch_this_screencast_and/

My youngest - she turned 2 today:

The Settings Editor of Xfce indicates that the key binding -

<Control><Shift><Alt>Right
is the binding to move_window_right_key.

I assume this means that the active window a bit to the right when this key binding is used, but I get no result (8C is entered in a terminal). Anyone else having this issue with Xfce?

Also, anyone have a key binding for incrementally moving the active window in Xfce?

cwm is one of those minimalist window managers - no window decorations, but good key binding control. Configured in the $HOME/.cwmrc file; good man pages for cwm and cwmrc. The default window manager for OpenBSD, I believe:



it's pretty good if you like minimalism - just under 100 MB memory idling on VSIDO, or for those occasions when you don't want to be distracted by eye candy.

get the source code from git:

git clone git://github.com/chneukirchen/cwm.git
I haven't used it in a couple years because the aesthetic can be easily duplicated in fluxbox, fvwm, openbox, or tiling wm's like i3 and dwm - all of which have much more functionality, but I'll confess this is the wm I used to train myself to use key bindings for window management instead of the mouse.

You can use a mouse - the default mouse bindings for window movement/resize are the same as fluxbox, and it is conky and panel friendly - tint2 anyway:



that is conky piped to dzen2 - similar to dwm or spectrwm in the first scrot, regular conky window in the second.