Re: [likely out of luck]
On Sat 17 Feb 2018 at 13:22:52 (-0600), Richard Owlett wrote:
> On 02/17/2018 10:13 AM, Thomas Schmitt wrote:
> >Google for "fvwm2rc". It is rewarding to add the word "examples".
> >
> >My experience with installing Debian package fvwm2 two years ago would
> >have been much worse if i did not have the file ~/.fvwm2rc from my eight
> >year older workstation. Actually i carry it from system to system since
> >a SuSE installation in year 2000.
I'd probably agree with you. Actually, it's about time I rerevised
my ~/.fvwm/config and family. It still starts with:
# Configuration file for FVWM 2.xx originally by Lars Wirzenius
# modifications by Julian Gilbey <jdg@debian.org>, copyright March 1999
# adopeted for fvwm 2.4 by Alexander Kotelnikov <sacha@debian.org> August 2001
[sic ↑]
> >Fvwm is not a desktop like KDE or Gnome but rather a window manager,
> >which nowadays is only a smaller part of the desktop goals.
> >It offers no GUI library and thus has no fat applications depending on it.
> >If you use KDE or Gnome applications then you pull in half of their very
> >many libraries.
> >
> >Fvwm is software for people who don't want look-and-feel to change for
> >the mere reason that another decade went by.
> >One has to customize it by editing the configuration file, not by
> >drag-and-drop. It is best used with a zillion xterm windows and a few
> >inavoidable GUI programs like web browser or PDF reader.
> >
> >I simply love it.
> >
>
> This is a general question about the relationship of "window
> managers" and "desktop environments".
>
> I'm getting the impression that:
> 1. a window manager can manage several desktops.
There's room for enormous confusion with terminology here.
Desks, desktops, pages, panes, panels, screens, viewports, windows:
these are all parts of fvwm or have been used somewhere to describe
it. They don't map straight onto the same words as used by other
WMs and DEs.
> 2. each desktop may or may not have an associated desktop environment.
That's kind of the inverse. A typical DE will have, as part of it, a
window manager of some sort, to manage its windows, duh. But it'll
have a lot more, and as you have read here in the recent past, there's
a tendency of DEs to feel that they have to manage the entire system
on their own terms, negating many of the traditions that we have
"grown up with". (Even those of us that came to unix late, like linux.)
A typical WM is a much lighter affair (and the laptop I'm currently
typing on is about the first PC I've had that wouldn't be completely
overwhelmed by a DE installation.
> If a window manager launches 3 desktops:
> 1. there need not be any relationship between the 3 desktop
> environments.
> 2. all could be different configurations of MATE such that
> a. one desktop would only have program icons for creating
> documents.
> b. one would only have program icons for doing matrix algebra.
> c. one would only have program icons for web browsing and email.
>
> How many fallacies or misunderstanding above?
That sounds like what you're gunning for, but I wouldn't know how
to achieve it. I don't use icons¹ but xterms. They're scattered over
a large 5x4 desktop so I'm looking at 1/20th of it at any time.
I use them in a fairly disciplined way, so the top row tend to be
ssh'd to my headless server, where I typing this email.
The rightmost column has my browsers (me at the top, for finance etc,
next is my general browser as a different user) and various monitors,
players and tools. If I need a local root session, I use /bin/su -
in the bottom left corner.
A lot of the xterms will be running mc, and a few might be running
emacs -nw. Windowed emacsen will have their own windows in addition,
as will xpdf instances, images, and so on.
Some things "stick" to the screen whichever part of the desktop I'm
on, like the swissclock and date, and of course the pager. The last
is in a small window that also has buttons for screenshots, ditto
after a ten-second wait (to capture things like dragging in action),
and video capture.
When I had a real job, I had a lower resolution 2x2 desktop on
old junk VDU for ssh connections to university servers (ie anything
I didn't administer) including for mutt (and before that, Pine).
Summing up, work is arranged geographically over the desktop, with
a tiny representation of everything on the pager in the corner.
One doesn't spend time watching animations of windows maximising
and minimising back and forth.
¹ unless I accidentally iconify it.
Cheers,
David.
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