http://www.osnews.com/story/7774/IceWM_-_The_Cool_Window_Manager Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:56:12 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It's nice to hear something about IceWM.

I've been using IceWM for many years now. Gnome and KDE simply kill the performance of my laptop computer. But IceWM runs quite snappy and does everything I need it to do as well as look nice.

Daren Thu, 22 Jul 2004 18:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > Gnome and KDE simply kill the performance of my laptop computer.

I think the correct question is "what performance?". :-) Thu, 22 Jul 2004 18:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I have been using IceWM for years, here's another example of a theme: http://www.massassi.com/etc/desktop.png Thu, 22 Jul 2004 18:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Yo, dude, your desktop wallpaper is great, but your desktop toolbar is hideous! Lol, what gives? Thu, 22 Jul 2004 18:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? ok,i like that icewm theme of saberworks, but i've just browsed a few screenshots and it doesn't look sexy :-(

of course, when performance is at stake, one can still consider the console. i use the console UI with great pleasure. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 18:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Some weeks ago I switched from GNOME to IceWM! So far it's pretty nice (small & fast), but I'm still looking for a Nautilus replacement. Any hints? Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? @ saberworks: just forgot to ask.. which theme do you use? Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >Any hints?

Go with FOX's PathFinder! Really-really fast! (but not 100% developed). Email me if you need hints on how to enable AA support on FOX apps and how to have similar colors with your gnome apps.
http://www.osnews.com/img/7694/Screenshot-2.png Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'd recommend ROX-Filer (http://rox.sourceforge.net ). It's not much like windows explorer, but it's much lighter than nautilus and supports both thumbnails and desktop icons. It's also been updated much more recently than the DFM program that the article spoke of. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I had the latest ROX completely nuking my share-mime info gnome 2.6 needed, so I am weary of it now. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I built IceWM a few days ago but gave up on it: the font display was obviously worse than the Gnome I was considering replacing. (Yes, I use the antialias compile option.)

Also, on the issue of icons on the desktop: Why Not? Why waste usage of 90 percent of the screen? Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Also, on the issue of icons on the desktop: Why Not? Why waste usage of 90 percent of the screen?

Hey, it's not forbidden to have icons, it's just not the job of a window manager. Think UNIX! Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Also, on the issue of icons on the desktop: Why Not? Why waste usage of 90 percent of the screen?

The taskbar takes up 5%, and the windows take up the other 95%. There's no use for desktop icons. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Also, on the issue of icons on the desktop: Why Not? Why waste usage of 90 percent of the screen?

Right now I can see maybe 5% of my wallpaper which makes it difficult to get at any desktop icons. Why waste the screen with icons that will only be covered up by applications you actually use? To get at icons, you have to minimize everything or arrange your windows around those icons. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'm still looking for a Nautilus replacement. Any hints?

X File Explorer is fast -- goes well together with a fast window manager. ;-)

http://roland65.free.fr/xfe/ Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Yeah it's so cool that IceWM is so small etc. etc. But when I'm told to build my own menu from scratch (no success with the few tools which should do this semi/automatically), I say "thank you, ma'am" and go some other way. No speed is going to save a WM from the lack of such basic functionality as far as I'm concerned.

It's the 21st century! Hello! Thu, 22 Jul 2004 19:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? If you really want an unobtrusive window manager, try OpenBox. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 21:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I recently gave IceWM a try. Nice, although I think I'll stick with WindowMaker... Thu, 22 Jul 2004 21:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Doesn't turning over almost all of your visible screen space to a pretty picture acknowledge that the window manager is nothing more than a glorified program launcher? I really don't care if it is the "Unix way" or not, or if icons are covered by other windows. The space is there waiting for effective use to be made of it. Perhaps icons don't represent the best approach, but surely not using the space at all is counterproductive. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 21:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Um, how about multiple windows opened over it? The wallpaper is there so you can take ss's and send them to friends...
Also, wallpapers can provide contrast against the windows to make the windows more readily identifiable. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 21:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Try EmelFM2, I still use it quite a bit even though I'm using GNOME now, it's great. http://freshmeat.net/projects/emelfm2/ Thu, 22 Jul 2004 21:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Go with FOX's PathFinder! Really-really fast! (but not 100% developed). Email me if you need hints on how to enable AA support on FOX apps and how to have similar colors with your gnome apps.
http://www.osnews.com/img/7694/Screenshot-2.png

I really want to give pathfinder a try but looking on the fox sourceforge page, I can't seem to find it. Could you please provide a link. Also yes once I'm using it I'll definately want aa support in fox apps, so I'll follow up further if needed. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 21:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? check it out:

http://www.fox-toolkit.org/

is what you need. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 21:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Still GTK 1.x, I guess? Configurable by hand editing? (And no, various "control centers" are not a solution -- is it that damn difficult to make a context menu with "Settings" command for every configurable item and a simple GUI for changing preferences?) Why not XFCE4 then?

As for icons on the desktop, many people like and do use them... Give them the choice to use or not to use them.

PathFinder looks good, but it's Fox-based --> won't blend with GTK2 or Qt... Thu, 22 Jul 2004 22:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? For at least the 2-3 latest versions, there is no need to convert the PNG files to XPM. Simply use "foobar.png" as the icon name (as opposed at "foobar" only for XPM). Thu, 22 Jul 2004 22:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Doesn't turning over almost all of your visible screen space to a pretty picture acknowledge that the window manager is nothing more than a glorified program launcher? I really don't care if it is the "Unix way" or not, or if icons are covered by other windows. The space is there waiting for effective use to be made of it. Perhaps icons don't represent the best approach, but surely not using the space at all is counterproductive.

A window manager manages windows, hence its name. It draws the border around each window and handles events regarding said windows. Many window managers do support some form of program launching, but in my opinion shouldn't really be in the window manager. A seperate program should be responsible for that. Then again, I'm a purist when it comes to these things. If you want to do something with the root window, there are many other programs to do that, but it is not the domain of the window manager.

The window manager is intergal part of the X11 client/server architecture. You can't just do away with it as many people seem to not understand. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 22:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? @Saberworks:
I like your theme. Looks nice and simple.

@Russel:
I just installed Openbox last week. Its great and fast. I had to download fbpanel too because I really like having a taskbar to select open apps with which I didn't see one in openbox.

This article has got me curious about IceWM. I think the last time I used it was with a slack 3.x edition, or maybe it was a live cd I had. But its definitely been a while and I'm going to download and compile it tonight. Looks like it gives me all I want, a task bar and some quick launch buttons. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 22:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Could you explain how file associations work in PathFinder? Thu, 22 Jul 2004 22:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Isn't the screen itself a window?

I understand your position. But, my question remains: Isn't leaving 90 percent of your screen space to a nonfunctional piece of art a waste?

I am not willing to sacrifice capability to the purity of the Unix way. Frankly, it is irrelevant to me what a window manager is supposed to do. (After all, where are the UNix police?) Thu, 22 Jul 2004 22:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I went to http://www.fox-toolkit.org/ and indeed pathfinder is in the sections but it's under construction and nothing listed in the downloads.

Also, in the screenshots they show xfe which I have used and looks very similar to pathfinder. Is one a fork of the other?

Also, I don't know if this is just a result of not having anti-aliasing, but many fonts like free sans look horrible.

A last thing is the icon set. Is there a way to change them for fox to affect apps? For ex, I would like to modify the icon for folders in xfe.

Maybe I'll stick with xfe in the end if I can solve some things but I'd like to give pathfinder a shot, but can't seem to find much info. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 22:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Article - No wonder it's also known as the "impersonator".

This is all true but the author overstates that and understates that ice can look completely unique as well. I think this 'impersonation' actually hurts ice these days.

Article - dfm

I agree with those who mention rox. dfm sucks. At least rox has its uses besides just doing icons. But icons aren't necessary. @Eugenia - like Anonymous mentioned, xfe is based on the fox toolkit just like pathfinder and is much better (IMO). Might want to give it a shot. Also emelfm - (@Intangible - the developers of emelfm2 miss the point of emelfm - simplicity, just like ice and just like slack). For those who want a glitzier explorer-alike, there's Endeavour2. Of those, only rox does desktop icons.

Article - converting pixmaps.

As Patrice Lvesque said, not necessary, but if they're not 'ice format' so to speak, you do have to specify the full path, unless the path is on your ice icon path (preferences file) and even then you have to specify the full filename. Beats conversion, though. While I mention the preferences file: there's another optional file, prefoverride, which is great for keeping themes from clobbering settings especially important to you.

GAIM, xmms, gkrellm:

The author mentioned some but missed some (can't be exhaustive, I know.)

gkrellm.Gkrellm.fMinimize: 0
gkrellm.Gkrellm.tray: Exclusive

This keeps you from accidentally minimizing gkrellm and, best of all, puts it in the 'systray' like area. Bring it to the top with a click, lower it with another, and keep it out of your way generally. There are more winoptions, of course.

Article - Graphical configuration tools. Don't like 'em... don't use 'em.

Amen. Ice's third party graphical tools are lacking and who cares anyhow? The text editor of your choice is the best interface and ice's files are so powerful but so simple that it's *much* faster and quite a bit easier to just edit the damn file.

Excellent article on an underappreciated wm overall. I really liked it. The preceding are the only quibbles I had - great stuff.

That said, I think I've switched from ice. *g* I was a longtime flux user, then switched to ice for a long time. Not a thing I dislike about ice but somehow got wanderlust. I'm posting from pek at the moment. Still, more people should know about ice and be more concerned with usability than eyecandy and be a little patient even if they do think eyecandy's the most important - ice doesn't look so hot out of the box but can be made really nice.


@Pete - right click properties fill in boxes, if it's as I remember - like xfe.

@Anonymous - Pathfinder is *in* the fox library download - it's a demo of the library and comes with, along with a calculator and a text editor and so on. Just build the lib and get the apps. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 22:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Yeah it's so cool that IceWM is so small etc. etc. But when I'm told to build my own menu from scratch (no success with the few tools which should do this semi/automatically), I say "thank you, ma'am" and go some other way. No speed is going to save a WM from the lack of such basic functionality as far as I'm concerned.

It's the 21st century! Hello!

Check out MenuMaker:
http://menumaker.sourceforge.net/ Thu, 22 Jul 2004 22:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? It takes me 5 minutes to configure mine with iceme (ice menu editor) and that includes the taskbar icons. what gives? Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Besides the speed, does this thing have any pratical advantage feature-wise over the competition? It doesn't support desktop icons, which is one strike against it Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Is there a way to increase the fonts' size in the bars and menus? uff, they are pretty small. Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'm a happy icewm user, it's not as "ui-nice" as gnome but it actually leaves RAM for your apps, and has nice features like ie: alt + F11 fullscreens the window. _any_ window, I mean, that's the real place where fullscreen should be not just in 4 or 5 apps

I use the console as "file manager", no desktop icons (desktop space was made to be occuped by windows not having to minimize things) and i like taskbars. Also, it can load KDE-compatible tray icons

In short: simple and stupid, as i like Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Besides the speed, does this thing have any pratical advantage feature-wise over the competition? It doesn't support desktop icons, which is one strike against it "

Probably, not for you.

It's a no-nonsense wm, i like it, i can do anything that i used to do with those other 2 bloated behemoths. I got my icons on the taskbar (bar in auto-hide), the main menu only contains what i need, i got the time, the date, a net and cpu monitor that comes by default, and speed. What else do you want? I don't need eye candy, little birds in the desktop; icons on the desktop? i already got icons in the taskbar. Screen pictures in the background that are gonna be covered 5 seconds later by the apps? Puleeze! Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I want that leaf wallpaper where can I get it? Thu, 22 Jul 2004 23:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? since I've used this fantastic window manager.... (using OSX so don't really use window non-apple managers anymore) . Surprised no one mentioned the amazing keyboard support... one of the few wm's that you can fully control without a mouse.

anyway, just wanted to pay my respects to this fantastic piece of software... Fri, 23 Jul 2004 00:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I've had a few fullscreen issues with icewm.

mplayer full screen used to have the toolbar regardless in fullscreen video playback until i added

TaskBarKeepBelow=1

Which works but it's kinda clunky in that windowed apps can now cover the taskbar.

Also a psx emulator (epsxe) fullscreen mode stays a zoomed scrollable app, where I can scroll down and see the taskbar even with this setting. At first I thought it was epsxe but it doesnt happen in other wm's.

If I right click and choose fullscreen, epsxe becomes a normal fullscreen. I tried making it a fullscreen app in icewm prefs but couldn't get it working properly as the emu spawns another window for the actual game. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 00:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I have to agree. The menu is a pain to edit. There are tools that are supposed to help. But, frankly, I don't think any of those tools are very good. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 00:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The theme is called elberg and I got it from http://themes.freshmeat.net/ - I have changed the fonts from the original theme though, because I didn't like them.

Why do you say my taskbar is hideous? It's very simple and has every program I use sort of often but not often enough to warrant a shortcut key. I downloaded an icon pack from icewm.org, which is where all those icons came from.

The thing I like most about IceWM (other than its speed) is the fact that it's very easy to set key bindings. I have alt-e for my terminal, alt-f1 - alt-f4 for my four desktops, alt-v for my gvim (which is what I use most of the time - I work as a perl programmer), and quite a few other interesting ones.

I got the desktop background from themes.freshmeat.net as well but I don't use that one anymore - I now have darth vader but I'm too lazy to upload another shot Fri, 23 Jul 2004 01:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Oh, I also don't use any root window drawing icons-on-desktop program. Even when I was on windows, I didn't have many icons. I generally just use alt-e to start a terminal, or a really nice shortcut in icewm is ctrl-alt-space, which will temporarily blank your taskbar (just the part that gives icons for all your open apps), and it lets you type a command (and executes it from your home directory I think). So if I want to open mozilla, which I don't normally use (and thus don't have a shortcut key nor a quicklaunch icon), I type ctrl-alt-space then "mozilla" (no quotes of course), then press enter, and mozilla pops up. It's a lot easier than going start/applications/www browsers/mozilla with the mouse. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 01:32:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I type ctrl-alt-space then "mozilla" (no quotes of course), then press enter, and mozilla pops up. It's a lot easier than going start/applications/www browsers/mozilla with the mouse.

But is it easier than clicking (or double-clicking) an icon?

I've tried IceWM a couple of times but every time I thought it's kludgy to use with mouse (especially in trying to resize windows). I do know that most IceWM users prefer to use keyboard only. For me, a handful of keyboard shortcuts is enough and I prefer to do the rest with mouse. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 01:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I've never encountered any problem re-sizing a window in icewm.

It's a straight-forward click & drag operation, or if you prefer you can use the title-bar accessible menu. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 01:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Compare all WMs here:

http://www.xwinman.org/ Fri, 23 Jul 2004 02:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? But is it easier than clicking (or double-clicking) an icon?

Considering the thousands of programs and commands most linux distros come with, I would say yes. Also, I type somewhere around 120 words per minute, and typing "mozilla" is much easier than moving windows out of the way to expose some icons in the background. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 04:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? typing "mozilla" is much easier than moving windows out of the way to expose some icons in the background.

You do it your way, I'm OK with that. Just out of curiosity, isn't there a keyboard shortcut in IceWM to make the root window (the "desktop background") visible quickly? Fri, 23 Jul 2004 04:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I had the latest ROX completely nuking my share-mime info gnome 2.6 needed, so I am weary of it now.

Really? Interesting. But considering that Thomas Leonard wrote both shared-mime and ROX-Filer, I suppose you ought to be wary of Gnome. If you can find the cause (whether in shared-mime, ROX or Gnome), you might want to file a bug. (Also, are you sure it was with shared-mime? Gnome and ROX try to be compatible with icon themes, but fail badly, so when I run Nautilus 2.6.something under ROX-Session I don't get any icons.)

Also, what is the 'latest ROX'? 2.0.1 (stable)? 2.1.2 (developer)? CVS? (If you or anyone else wants to try ROX out (again), I would recommend 2.1.1 at /uri/0install/rox.sourceforge.net/apps/ROX-Filer/ROX-Filer-2.1.1/ or the CVS snapshots at /uri/0install/rox.sourceforge.net/apps/ROX-Filer/latest/. IME there were a few showstopper bugs in 2.1.2.) Fri, 23 Jul 2004 04:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? "Some weeks ago I switched from GNOME to IceWM! So far it's pretty nice (small & fast), but I'm still looking for a Nautilus replacement. Any hints?"

Well, you could just keep using Nautilus. Apps run under any WM if you have the libraries installed. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 05:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The author mentions DFM as a way of getting icons on the desktop. There is an alternative. XtDesktop. Buffalo Linux uses it with IceWM as its default desktop. Damn Small Linux and Feather Linux use XtDesktop to provide icons with Fluxbox.

As a longtime Windows user, I like having desktop icons, but since I decided to ditch KDE and Gnome to use IceWM exclusively (without XtDesktop), I have not really missed the icons at all. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 05:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I've tried nearly every WM and DE which is available for Unix - IceWM was simply the best: I'm using nearly exclusively the keyboard, and IceWM is perfectly easy to configure in a way, that every app I need is simply a hotkey away.
Besides that, its fast, lightweight - and after using it 2 years in my workplace we've grown together. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 07:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I the maximize, minimize and close buttons can not be set on the left hand side of the window manager, I will not use that window manager.

Long Live Icewm! Fri, 23 Jul 2004 07:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? XFE works a treat! Fri, 23 Jul 2004 08:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I've just installed the fox-toolkit, but I can't find path finder in my kde menu. The fox calculator is there though...

When I type pathfinder in the terminal it tries to start it, but fails with something like: c++ command not found.

Anybody has an idea? Fri, 23 Jul 2004 08:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I use Icewm on and off. I use rox to get desktop icons - just run it in pinboard mode, for filemanager i also use xfe.

Icewm really is a nice desktop, it's simple, fast and yet powerfull and it's easy to go in and fiddle with images to adapt a theme to your liking.

Its a nice change from KDE from time to time, but kde is still what i normally use. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 08:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Is there a nice iceWM theme?
Most of them look strange to me. especially these bold fonts are hideous. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 09:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? This is my favorite icewm theme :
http://themes.freshmeat.net/projects/miggy4/

I just wish they would port it to other wm.

There are a lot of good themes for IceWM on Freshmeat ( http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/925/ ) Including TrueCurve, a nice Bluecurve look-a-like, and themes that look almost exactly like winxp if you like hat sort of thing. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 11:07:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I just wish they would port it to other wm.

This is a little known trick, It is possible to use IceWM themes with KDE.

Make sure you have installed the kdeartwork package, then right click on a title bar, configure Window behavior... Then on the drop down benu for Window Decoration select IceWM. You can now use IceWM themes with KDE. Just extract the tarballs in the directory. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 11:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I run a rox filer (just a panel, no pinboard) + fluxbox development version desktop. It's light, fast and easily configurable. Right now, it looks similar to windows/icewm, with incredible drag 'n' drop capabilities...

It's quite awesome Fri, 23 Jul 2004 12:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'm more of a gnome man (I have been known to run icewm as my gnome wm in fact (-: ), but I will definately try that next time I install KDE. Probably when my SuSE evaluation package arrives. Fri, 23 Jul 2004 12:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? is there a keyboard layout can be used i iceWM ,
if there's how to enable it ? Fri, 23 Jul 2004 13:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'm surprised that there was no mention of idesk, a lightweight yet good looking desktop icon manager.
http://sourceforge.net/projects/idesk/
Works perfectly with IceWm Sat, 24 Jul 2004 07:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I would use IceWM if it respects freedesktop.org menu structure. As far as I know WindowMaker allows you to use external programs to build menu on the fly, why icewm shouldn't? Every app in the modern distros has a .desktop file in it's package. The structure is ready, just use it. And have the same menu in Gnome, IceWM, BlueBox KDE and any other WM (or better desktop manager) in the world. Sat, 24 Jul 2004 18:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? You do it your way, I'm OK with that. Just out of curiosity, isn't there a keyboard shortcut in IceWM to make the root window (the "desktop background") visible quickly?Yeah, but I'm not sure there's a way to put them all back quickly... probably, but I've never looked, because typing a command is easier Sun, 25 Jul 2004 05:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? The syntax of the toolbar exactly the same as the one for the menu file, but of course, no submenus!

Actually, it is also possible to have submenus in the toolbar. Tue, 27 Jul 2004 10:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Some of these posts seem to be missing the point of people who are saying that drawing desktop icons isn't the window manager's job. I'll put it an entirely different way. What other window manager draws application launching icons? I can't think of one offhand (although there very well may be one in existence).

Desktop icons are generally drawn by file managers rather than window managers. Remember that IceWM is a window manager rather than a complete desktop environment. In GNOME, Nautilus draws the desktop icons (and you can use Nautilus with IceWM if you want). Again in KDE, the window manager, kwm, does not draw the icons (kfm used to, not sure if Konqeror took over any of that job or not).

If you are using separate components rather than a desktop environment, you should be prepared to mix and match them to get the features you want. I actually much prefer to do it that way. The only possible drawback is that different components don't always interact smoothly to produce your environment. This is one reason why desktop standards are important. Still, it gives me the opportunity to have features where I want them, and not where I don't. As more standards for the way different components interact are created and are supported by various desktop utilities, it will become easier to create your own custom desktop that is streamlined and lightweight, but also works well. Tue, 27 Jul 2004 19:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? On my linux pc with starting 'startx', I get IceWM running.

I got exceed running and when starting 'xterm', I get a grafic terminal. So all is working fine, but I would like have more than just the terminal, I rather have the whole desktop with nice background and toolbar with nice buttons.

Does someone know what to start (or configure), so I get the IceWM desktop and toolbar projected on my WindowsXP ?

PS IceWM kicks some ass... Wed, 28 Jul 2004 11:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments