IceWM is a lightweight window manager for UNIX-like systems. Although widely used, it is often underrated – there is hardly any IceWM-related content on the Internet. This article is my attempt to share my experiences as a longtime IceWM user. It contains tips and tricks, usage scenarios, and makes use of examples whenever possible to better demonstrate IceWM’s features and capabilities. Finally, the article is meant for those with some familiarity with UNIX, but who are new to IceWM.
1. Introduction to IceWM
IceWM is mean to be a fast, lightweight, unobtrusive window manager. It isn’t a full-fledged desktop environment like, for instance KDE, GNOME, CDE or XFce. See Appendix A at the end of the article for the difference between a Window Manager and a Desktop Enviroment.
The IceWM interface looks a lot like a simple Windows 95 default desktop. So even for those of you new to UNIX, IceWM won’t be too difficult to start using. It can be extensively themed too, to resemble Windows NT, XP, MacOS 9 and OS X. So if you’re a recent convert to Linux, and don’t want (or can’t afford) the full-fledged capabilities of KDE or GNOME, IceWM is for you. Just theme it to look like your old OS! No wonder it’s also known as the “impersonator”.
IceWM is also for the UNIX gurus out there. Being fairly minimalistic, you can use it simply as a means to manage the dozens of terminal windows you’ll have open. Another reason that experienced Linux/UNIX ‘power users’ will like IceWM is that it’s extremely unobtrusive. Once you’ve got it customised the way you want it, you won’t notice it. Quite a difference from Windows XP’s irritating popup messages and ubiquitious branding. It’s like XP’s constantly hammering into your brain – “You’re Using Microsoft Windows XP And You Better Not Forget It”! Unfortunately, neither GNOME nor KDE are much better – think of all the applications which begin with ‘K’ or ‘G’! IceWM, on the other hand, accomplishes the one thing that is essential for an effective window manager – it makes you forget about its existence.
Finally, IceWM is remarkably flexible, while remaining simple to configure. All of IceWM’s features can be configured via five plaintext configuration files, all of which but one are usually under 25 lines in length. While there are graphical tools for configuring IceWM, I find them very inadequate, and almost everyone will find it easier to edit the files by hand.
Well, enough of an introduction to IceWM. Let’s get down to the specifics. First, the obligatory download-and-install procedure.
2. Getting, Configuring and Installing IceWM
2.1 Obtaining and compiling IceWM
You can get IceWM at http://www.icewm.org. There are both source tarballs and binary versions available for download. If you don’t have root privileges on your machine, then the source is what you’ll need. You can install in your home directory.
For the RPM, as root, type
rpm -Uvh icewm-<version-number>.rpm
For the tarball, we go through the 3-step ritual of configuring, compiling and installing. Say you’re installing in ~/icewm. First we’ll untar the archive. For files ending in .tar.gz, we type
tar -zxvf <filename>.tar.gz
and for files that end in .tar.bz2, type
tar -jxvf <filename>.tar.bz2
“cd” into the archive directory, and type the following:
$./configure --prefix=/home/rahul/icewm
The “–prefix” option will ensure that icewm is installed in a directory within your home directory. Other options you might want to add to the configure script:
-disable-i18n |
Disable internationalization |
-disable-nls |
Disable internationalized message |
-enable-gradients |
Support gradients (experimental, implies -enable-antialiasing) |
-enable-antialiasing |
Support antialiasing (experimental, implies -enable-xfreetype) |
-enable-menus-gnome2 |
Display GNOME 2 menus |
-with-imlib=path |
Use Imlib for images path to imlib-config |
The “imlib” option enables IceWM to use .pngs and other non-xpm file formats for use as icon files. That’s usually a good idea.
Once the configure script is done, type
$ make && \ make install && \ xmessage -center ' Done!' || \ xmessage -center ' Error!'
Then go on doing some other work. Once the system’s finished compiling and installing, a message window will popup with either ” Done!” if everything went off fine, else you’ll see ” Error!”.
2.2 Settting up IceWM as the default window manager
The binary that launches IceWM is now icewm-session. In earlier versions, the single binary icewm used to handle all of the window manager’s tasks. These have now been broken down into
icewm |
the actual window manager binary. |
icewmbg |
the background-setting applications. |
icewmtray |
catches docklet objects from aaplications like Gaim. |
icewm-session |
runs all of the above when needed |
icewm-menu-gnome1 |
(internal), generates IceWM menus from GNOME(1) menus |
icewm-menu-gnome2 |
(internal), generates IceWM menus from FreeDesktop .desktop files (KDE/GNOME(2) menus). |
Open your .Xclients file in your favourite text editor. At the end, add the line
/home/rahul/icewm/bin/icewm-session || exec xterm
and save the file. The .Xclients file is used by all Redhat-based distros. On other systems (I think Debian and others) it might be the .xsession file. This file is parsed when you start X either via the command line by issuing “startx” or by the login manager in case you’ve selected the “default” login session.
3. Exploring IceWM
3.1. Components of the IceWM desktop
- The Start Button
- Taskbar
- Virtual Desktops
- Command Line
- Clock
- CPU Status Applet
- Net Status Applet
So, if you’ve had any prior Windows OS experience, the default IceWM desktop won’t be in the least bit intimidating to you. Not as much as Fluxbox, anyways. The key is to be able to customise these components to maximise your productivity. That’s the purpose of the next section.
What you don’t see in this screenshot is the Toolbar. That’s an area on the taskbar usually just to the right of the start menu button – kind of like the Quick Launch Toolbar in Windows 98 onwards. You can place heavily used apps there, so that they’re just a mouse click away.
If you have a 24/7 Internet connection, you might be interested in the Mail Check applet. That’s an applet much like the Net Status/ CPU Status applets, which checks your mail server for new email every few minutes and reports when new mail does arrive. It can be configured to launch your preferred mail client when clicked upon.
The newer versions of IceWM have full support for the Freedesktop.org system tray standard, which allows applications like Kopete/GAIM/K3B to dock into the IceWM tray. That’s a boon – using GAIM was no fun when you had to keep it on the taskbar, conversations and all!
What might irk some users of Windows, or even our own KDE and Gnome, is the lack is support for icons on the desktop. Of course, that is not supposed to be the Window Manager’s job. Although the toolbar and menu provide ready access to most applications that a user requires, there might be those among you who insist that they have a “My Documents” or “Trash” folder on the desktop. There is a workaround to this, but it’s neither elegant nor pretty. You can use an application by the name of DFM, or Desktop File Manager. It essentially draws ‘icons’ on the root window, and can launch programs/ open the location in a traditional file manager when clicked upon. DFM is the application that Vector Linux’s implementation of IceWM uses. If you’ve ever wondered how Vector does it… well, now you know! The flip side to DFM is that it’s not pretty. Take a look at the screenshots on the home page, and you’ll find that you’d rather do without it.
3.2. IceWM configuration files
As I mentioned earlier, all of IceWM can be configured via five files. I stress once more that while there are graphical tools to provide an easy, point-and-click interface to configure IceWM, they’re ugly, incomplete, immature, hard to get, hard to install, frustrating to use, and hopelessly inadequate. (My, am I in a vicious mood!) Actually, all five files are small in size, well commented, and have trivially simple syntax. Besides, the excellent IceWM Manual contains all you’ll ever need to know to build your own config files.
- menu (~/.icewm/menu)
Unlike the Windows/KDE/Gnome “Start Menu”s, IceWM’s menu is not a pain to edit. The philosophy is to have entries for only those programs that you use on a regular basis, and organised into the menu structure that you want.
First, jot down a list of the applications you use on a regular basis, and the path to the executable. If you like, in a text editor or on paper, draw a rough outline of how you’d like your menu to look once its done. This outline will be a huge time saver when you actually to write your own menu file, and you’ll be able to concentrate on writing the file itself, rather than designing the menu at the same time. For instance, some part of my menu outline would go like:
Firefox Thunderbird ----------- Mozilla GFTP GAIM GVim XMMS More (menu) OOWriter Gimp Konqueror K3B ------------ Config Files (menu) bashrc bash_profile Xclients ... ...
Now for the file itself. The syntax for the menu file is
- For applications:
prog Program_Name icon-name executable -with -options
- For submenus:
menu Submenu_Name folder {}
Between the braces, you can have any sort of hierarchy you want – applications, and more submenus. If the program label or submenu label spans multiple words, enclose the string in double quotes. The icon field is the name of the icon file to be used to display a small 16×16 sized icon to the left of the menu entry, a la Win/KDE/GNOME. More on the icon convention after this sub-section. Finally, the “path to executable with options” is how you would call the application via the command-line, with all its options. For instance, the menu entry for my xterm is
prog XTerm xterm xterm -bg black -fg white -font 7x14 -geometry 120x40
Hope that example makes things clear. Oh, and one more thing: If IceWM can’t find the executable, it just won’t display it! If you thought you had Gaim installed but didn’t, IceWM won’t find /usr/bin/gaim or whatever, so it’ll just ignore that line! Nice touch, eh?
About the icon option:
IceWM expects to find all its icons in some directory. This option can be set in the preferences file (the exact option will be discussed in the section on the preferences file). If not set, it’ll assume the system default. Now, if configured with generic icon handling capabilities, IceWM will look for two .xpm files. For instance, for Mozilla, IceWM will expect to find, in that directory, XPM images named mozilla_16x16.xpm and mozilla_32x32.xpm, which are, of course, 16×16 pixel and 32×32 pixel images. To set this icon in the menu file, simply enter “mozilla” in the icon field. So your entry for mozilla would end up something likeprog Mozilla mozilla mozilla
My IceWM installation has the icon directory set as ~/pics/icons . One useful tip: Usually the icons that you want to use will be in PNG format, usually as part of a Gnome or KDE icon theme (think Crystal or Noia). So to convert them to XPM, and the right sizes, you’ll need a couple of carefully crafted shell commands:
- First copy all the icons you want from the KDE icon theme into a directory – ideally the one which you’ve chosen as your IceWM icon directory. So you’ll have PNGs like mozilla.png, gaim.png…. Ideally copy the 48×48 icons.
- Now we need to convert them to XPM format, and resize them to 16×16 pixels and 32×32 pixels. So for that, on the command line, type
$ for F in `ls *.png` > do > convert $F -resize 16x16 `basename $F .png`_16x16.xpm > convert $F -resize 32x32 `basename $F .png`_32x32.xpm > done $
With this, you’ll have populated your icon directory.
Here’s a listing of my menu file, and the menu it produces:
prog Firefox firefox /home/rahul/local/firefox/firefox prog Thunderbird thunderbird /home/rahul/local/thunderbird/thunderbird separator prog Opera opera opera prog Mozilla mozilla /home/rahul/local/mozilla/mozilla prog FTP gftp /home/rahul/local/gftp/bin/gftp prog Gaim gaim gaim prog GVim vim gvim prog Nedit nedit nedit prog XMMS xmms xmms prog XCalc xcalc xcalc menu "More Progs" folder { prog "OO.org Writer" kword oowriter prog "Gimp 2.0" gimp gimp-2.0 prog Konqueror kfm kfmclient openProfile filemanagement prog GKrellm gkrellm gkrellm prog Dillo app dillo prog K3B k3b k3b } separator prog MPlayer mplayer gmplayer separator menu "Configs" folder { prog Preferences app gvim /home/rahul/.icewm/preferences prog Toolbar app gvim /home/rahul/.icewm/toolbar prog Menu app gvim /home/rahul/.icewm/menu prog Keys app gvim /home/rahul/.icewm/keys prog "Win Options" app gvim /home/rahul/.icewm/winoptions separator prog "bashrc" app gvim /home/rahul/.bashrc prog "bash_profile" app gvim /home/rahul/.bash_profile prog "xbindkeys" app gvim /home/rahul/.xbindkeysrc prog "Xclients" app gvim /home/rahul/.Xclients } menu "System" folder { prog "Logout" app killall icewm-session prog "Halt" app halt -p prog "Reboot" app reboot } - For applications:
- keys (~/.icewm/keys)
IceWM’s got excellent support for keyboard shortcuts. The IceWM manual goes so far as to say you can use IceWM without a mouse. Indeed, you can control all aspects of the window manager – minimising/maximising/moving, workspace navigation, and so on – with keystrokes (this is done via the preferences file). In addition, IceWM includes a configuration file that you can use to launch arbitrary applications using arbitrary keyboard shortcuts. This is the ‘keys’ file. Its syntax is exceedingly simple:
key Keystroke+Combination executable -with -options
And here’s my keyfile listing:
# Rahul Gaitonde's IceWM keys file. key "F15" xterm -bg black -fg white -font 7x14 -geometry 120x40 key "Ctrl+Alt+f" /home/rahul/local/firefox/firefox key "Ctrl+Alt+t" /home/rahul/local/thunderbird/thunderbird key "F16" killall -QUIT icewm-session key "Ctrl+KP_Divide" aumix -v -5 # lower volume key "Ctrl+KP_Multiply" aumix -v +5 # raise volume key "Ctrl+KP_Subtract" aumix -v 0 # mute
Obviously, pressing the Control key, Alt key and ‘f’ simultaneously, would launch Mozilla Firefox. That’s fine, but what the hell is F15? or F16? No, dear reader, I have not managed to get hold of a very complex keyboard with numerous additional keys; I’ve simply mapped my two Windows “start menu” keys and the other “right-click” key to F13, F14 and F15, from left to right. In addition, my keyboard has four smaller keys at the top right hand side, labelled “Turbo”, “Power”, “Sleep” and “Wakeup”, 3 of whose keycodes can be picked up by xev. They’ve been mapped to F16, F17 and F18, left to right. This mapping’s been done via xmodmap. Use “man xmodmap” for more information on this tool.
Anyways, as you can see, pressing the “right-click” button, now F15, launches an xterm. This, I’ve discovered, is an even faster way of launching your favourite terminal emulator than, say, Ctrl+t or similar.
The last 3 lines are a huge convenience – adjusting the volume, no matter what application has current keyboard focus. I use the OSS sound drivers, so my volume is adjusted using aumix. If you’re using ALSA, use alsamixer instead. Experiment on your own; I’ve never tried. ALSA always gives me slightly inferior sound quality – and I can’t take that – I love my music and I’ve spent a lot of money on my speaker system! So I increase the volume with the control key and the ‘*’ key on the numeric keypad (hence the ‘KP_’ in the key name). To find the name for a key, look carefully at the output of xev; the “keycode” section gives the scan code for the key.
- toolbar (~/.icewm/toolbar)
The toolbar is the area just to the left of the start button. It exists to allow one-click access to the most heavily used applications. I’ve come to the conclusion that most users will use either the keys file or the toolbar file. Those that prefer the mouse will pack their toolbar with apps; those whose fingers are stuck to their keyboards, will prefer to launch their apps via the keyboard. I’m part of the latter category, so I don’t even use a toolbar.
The syntax of the toolbar exactly the same as the one for the menu file, but of course, no submenus!
Here’s a screenshot of an ad-hoc toolbar I made:
- winoptions (~/.icewm/winoptions)
The winoptions file defines which applications go on which workspace (virtual desktop). In addition, you can define what kind of border it has, whether or not it appears on the taskbar, in the window list, on all workspaces, in the system tray; its layer (below, above all other windows), its geometry, whether it will be moveable, resizable, closable, and much more. A comprehensive list of all options is given in the section on Window Options in the IceWM manual.
The syntax of this file is
application.property: value
To make it clearer, consider the entry for xmms in my winoptions file. I spend extended periods of time at my computer, and I like music playing at very low volumes while I’m working. I don’t want xmms to be present on my current workspace, or on all workspaces. I want it in some far-off wokspace, playing a huge playlist. At the same time, I don’t want the hassle of launching it and then moving it to that workspace – since I always do that, there has to be a way of automating it. So I tell IceWM via the winoptions file, that I’d like my xmms instance to be moved to workpace so-and-so as soon as it’s launched. So my entry is
xmms.workspace: 3
which puts xmms onto the 4th workspace, no matter when or where it’s started from.
Another example – I want to have an xterm ready for me to work on whenever I log in to IceWM. The simplest solution would be for me to put an entry for xterm in my .Xclients file, and write
xterm.workspace: 0
in my winoptions file, so that I’d be on workspace 0, ready with the xterm when IceWM starts up. But think again. Now, every time I were to launch an xterm, it’d get placed on workspace 0, which is not what I want! So what do I do? Be Smart. In my .Xclients file, I change the line that launches xterm to include the option
-name init
and in my winoptions file, I add the line
init.workspace: 0
What happens, is that ONLY that particular instance of xterm is placed on workspace 0.
This is something that I picked up from the Internet – winoptions for running gkrellm.
# GKrellm requires some special settings gkrellm.allWorkspaces=1 gkrellm.ignoreWinList: 1 gkrellm.ignoreTaskBar: 1 gkrellm.ignoreQuickSwitch: 1
Essentially, place gkrellm on all workspaces, do not place in in the taskbar, and do not show in the Quickswitch (Alt+Tab) list, and do not show it in the Window List box.
- preferences (~/.icewm/preferences)
OK. This is the one huge file among the five. My preferences file is 838 lines long. Don’t be surprised, though. This file contains settings for each and every aspect of IceWM that you can think up of, and plenty that you can’t. This is the place to tweak IceWM. In fact, this file contains so many options to set, some obvious, some esoteric, that I haven’t seen a single graphical utility that does a good job of presenting all this to you in a well formatted, categorised manner. Again, you’re better off editing this file by hand.
No, really. Each option is preceded by a line or two, explaining the option. There’s also a blank line between two consecutive options, so that explains why the file is so goddamned large! The options themselves are pretty straightforward and consistent in their naming.
What I’m going to do now, is list a few lines from my preferences file, to get you started on editing your own preferences file. I don’t think any option really needs to be explained.
# Rahul's IceWM preferences # Those settings commented out will use system default/theme-specified values # Misc. Global Settings ####################### ShutdownCommand="halt -p" RebootCommand="reboot" UseMouseWheel=1 ClickToFocus=1 OpaqueMove=0 OpaqueResize=0 IconPath="/home/rahul/pics/icons-icewm" WorkspaceNames= " 1 ", " 2 ", " 3 ", " 4 " DesktopBackgroundCenter=1 DesktopBackgroundColor = "rgb:00/00/40" DesktopBackgroundImage = "/home/rahul/pics/wallpapers/apple/redmond-2.jpg" # Taskbar Settings ################## ShowTaskBar=1 TaskBarShowTray=1 TaskBarShowCPUStatus=1 TaskBarShowNetStatus=1 TaskBarDoubleHeight=0 TaskBarAtTop=0 TaskBarKeepBelow=0 TaskBarShowClock=1 TaskBarShowAPMStatus=0 TaskBarClockLeds=0 TaskBarShowMailboxStatus=0 NetworkStatusDevice="eth0" TimeFormat="%I:%M:%S" TrayDrawBevel=1 # Menu Settings ############### AutoReloadMenus=1 ShowLogoutMenu=0 ShowHelp=0 ShowAddressBar=1 ConfirmLogout=0 MenuMouseTracking=1 DontRotateMenuPointer=1 # Keyboard Shortcuts #################### Win95Keys=1 KeySysRun="Alt+Ctrl+r" KeySysMenu="F13" KeySysWorkspace1="Alt+1" KeySysWorkspace2="Alt+2" KeySysWorkspace3="Alt+3" KeySysWorkspace4="Alt+4"
3.3. Graphical configuration tools
Don’t like ’em… don’t use ’em.
4. IceWM Themes
IceWM has hundreds of themes written for it! As I said at the beginnning of this page, IceWM is very themeable. Find links for two sites chock-full of IceWM themes in the next section on Links for IceWM. You can even write your own themes – it’s very simple. There’s a guide at http://www.icewm.org/themes/index.html.
Here are a few of my favourite themes. Most have been lightly hacked to suit my desktop. I haven’t changed any accompanying documentation, so the names of the original authors, their contact addresses and email addresses have been preserved. In fact, none of these even contain any references to me. Use them all you want – all of them are freely distributable – but contact the original author in case of problems/anything else!
I’ve also heavily hacked a theme named “Fake95”, and made it look as much as possible like Windows NT 4.0, based on a bunch of screenshots that I had. Here’s the tarball.
IceWM Links
The home page. http://www.icewm.org
Manuals from IceWM’s Home Pages.
Theme sites.
- Freshmeat Themes:
http://themes.freshmeat.net/browse/925/ - Themedepot.org:
http://www.themedepot.org/showarea.php4?area=22
Some useful IceWM pages.
- September 2002 Linux Productivity Magazine : Using IceWM
http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200209/200209.htm - IceWM Page
http://www.b4net.lt/mgedmin/icewm/index-en.html
Window Managers v/s Desktop Environments
The X Window System (often just X) is the program that provides the capabilities for running graphical applications on Linux (for that matter, UNIX). It controls the hardware – keyboard, mouse, touchpad, monitor. This is so that the apps themselves don’t need to bother about the underlying hardware. All they do is “talk” to X. X makes applications display their interfaces on screen but doesn’t bother about how the apps are displayed, or the windows themselves. This is the famous “mechanism, not policy” distinction that the X Window System makes.
The program that does control the displaying of windows on the screen is the Window Manager, which in essence is an X program. The window manager (WM) controls the look and feel of the windows – the decorations. It also controls how the windows act. So it manages the moving, hiding, resizing, iconifying and closing windows. It determines which window is on top, handles the overlapping, determines which window gets the input from the user. Finally, it controls the manner in which the above tasks are initiated – that is, which keyboard/mouse buttons correspond to which actions.
Additionally, a WM may provide additional capability – mapping key combinations to launch arbitrary applications, or providing a task bar and menu, like IceWM, or providing a number of Virtual Desktops, and so on. These are not strictly required of a WM. Metacity, which is GNOME’s default WM, does not provide a menu or taskbar and leaves that to gnome-panel.
Examples of WMs are IceWM, Fluxbox, WindowMaker, FVWM, Metacity, Sawfish, AfterStep, Blackbox, OpenBox. There are literally dozens more, all with different aims (eye-candy, productivity, low resource usage…)
Optionally, a window manager may be part of a larger suite of tools called a Desktop Environment. The Desktop Environment, manages the entire desktop, in addition to just the windows. A Desktop Environment may provide its own graphical toolkit (the way GNOME uses GTK+ and KDE uses QT), features such as icons on the desktop, screensavers, a file manager, a framework for inter-application communication (the way GNOME’s got Bonobo and KDE’s got DCOP and KParts), and so on. However, a WM must still manage the windows. GNOME uses Metacity as its default WM, but it’s used WindowMaker, Enlightenment and Sawfish in the past. It’s usually quite easy to change GNOME’s default WM, but KDE’s WM, kwm, is tightly integrated into the DE. That makes it a real pain to change, and an even greater pain to live without later.
About the author:
Rahul Gaitonde is a developer at IBM Global Services, Pune, India. While his first experience with Linux was RedHat 6.0 in 2000, today he uses Fedora Core 2. He often writes about Linux-related issues, especially pertaining to usability, and has previously contributed to OSNews.com. Find all his articles and essays at http://www.rahulgaitonde.org.
If you would like to see your thoughts or experiences with technology published, please consider writing an article for OSNews.
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
I have been using IceWM for years, here’s another example of a theme: http://www.massassi.com/etc/desktop.png
Yo, dude, your desktop wallpaper is great, but your desktop toolbar is hideous! Lol, what gives?
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.
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?
@ saberworks: just forgot to ask.. which theme do you use?
>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
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.
I had the latest ROX completely nuking my share-mime info gnome 2.6 needed, so I am weary of it now.
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?
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!
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.
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.
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/
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!
If you really want an unobtrusive window manager, try OpenBox.
I recently gave IceWM a try. Nice, although I think I’ll stick with WindowMaker…
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.
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.
Try EmelFM2, I still use it quite a bit even though I’m using GNOME now, it’s great. http://freshmeat.net/projects/emelfm2/
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.
check it out:
http://www.fox-toolkit.org/
is what you need.
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…
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).
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.
@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.
Could you explain how file associations work in PathFinder?
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?)
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.
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.
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/
It takes me 5 minutes to configure mine with iceme (ice menu editor) and that includes the taskbar icons. what gives?
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
Is there a way to increase the fonts’ size in the bars and menus? uff, they are pretty small.
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
“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!
I want that leaf wallpaper where can I get it?
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…
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Compare all WMs here:
http://www.xwinman.org/
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.
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?
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.)
“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.
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.
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.
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!
XFE works a treat!
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?
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.
Is there a nice iceWM theme?
Most of them look strange to me. especially these bold fonts are hideous.
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.
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.
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
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.
is there a keyboard layout can be used i iceWM ,
if there’s how to enable it ?
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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…