Re: mouse

[Kent West <westk@acu.edu>]

Marlin Unruh wrote:

> Is icew part of the debian install or is it from off the web? I would like
> to look at it if you recommend it. I prefer programs that are less dependent
> on a mouse. Hotkeys are so much faster

Be aware, icewm is much less pretty and full-featured as KDE, but of 
course, that also means it loads faster and takes up less RAM. It's a 
trade-off.

There are lots of different window managers (wm's) available in Debian, 
such as icewm, sawfish (or is it sawmill now?), wmaker, fluxbox, twm, 
etc etc etc. KDE and Gnome are not just window managers, but entire 
desktop environments (DE); they have lots of "eye candy" and ease-of-use 
features. Some folks like this wm; some folks like that wm; some folks 
prefer the full DE; it's just a matter of personal preference. Try 'em all!

To get a feel for some of the wm's available:
   apt-cache search manager | grep window

To install some wm's:
    apt-get install icewm icepref wmaker twm fluxbox

Once installed, restart your session manager (probably KDM or GDM or XDM 
or WDM):
   /etc/init.d/[kgxw]dm restart
where the letter in brackets is for whatever session manager you're 
using. After the restart, the various wm's should show up in the 
pull-down menu of KDM's login screen; the other session managers may 
have a similar feature; I'm not sure.

Or if for some reason that doesn't work, create a file named .xinitrc in 
your home directory, and put a single line it it for the wm you want to 
start; here's my current ~/.xinitrc file:

westk[@westek]:/home/westk:> cat .xinitrc
#sawfish &
icewm
#gnome-session
#startkde
#flwm &
#blackbox &
#fvwm95 &
#larswm &
#galeon
#while :; do galeon; done
#fvwm95
#xterm
#gnome-panel &
#twm
#wmaker
#xfwm

This way I can just uncomment whichever wm I want to fire up (there's 
some experimentation in there that won't do what you expect, but I'm too 
lazy to trim for educational purposes). Since most everything's 
commented out, this is the equivalent of:

westk[@westek]:/home/westk:> cat .xinitrc
icewm

Then if you execute "startx" or set KDM (or other session manager?) to 
load the "default", it'll start X with whatever wm you've specified in 
~/.xinitrc.

Hope this helps!

--
Kent