Subject: FVWM: Newbie at large

From: Pete Milne <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 19:30:45 -0600

Ok...here goes!

  I am totally new to FVWM.  I loaded FreeBSD the other day for a first
  time as well.  I have hardly any experience with anything but Windows.

  I loaded BSD and then loaded Gnome.  Had all sorts of problems so looked
  what else I could use as a WM and found FVWM.  Got it loaded and the
  default screen consists of:

  FVWM Icon Man Box, with a mail box in it and a clock and FVWM Butt. WWhat
  and where does one go from here?  Doesn't seem to be any 'first time
  user' info that I can see.

-- 

 Pete                         

 7:17:16 PM

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From: Dan Espen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 22:34:09 -0400

Pete Milne <[email-masked]> writes:
>   FVWM Icon Man Box, with a mail box in it and a clock and FVWM Butt. What

Fvwm doesn't supply as much hand-holding as Windows.
Use Gnome or KDE for that.

If you want something more elaborate than what you see so far,
but not as elaborate as Gnome or KDE, try fvwm-themes:

http://fvwm-themes.sourceforge.net/

If you just want to use Fvwm as is,
the configuration file is in:

$HOME/.fvwm/.fvwm2rc

Look at it with an editor and read about the commands in the
man page.

Fvwm doesn't have a first time user guide.
Fvwm has so many commands that the developers are busy just
keeping the reference material up-to-date.

There are very good reasons to use Fvwm.
Fvwm is extremely configurable and consumes a lot less resources
than Gnome or KDE.

-- 
Dan Espen                           E-mail: [email-masked]

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From: Tenebrae <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 19:45:59 -0700 (PDT)

> keeping the reference material up-to-date.

There are a few (possibly very old and outdated) .fvwm2rc files along with
some of the screenshots at www.fvwm.org, too.

> Fvwm is extremely configurable and consumes a lot less resources

I think I was under the impression that Gnome and KDE were different
animals than FVWM.  You can use window managers like FVWM and
Enlightenment under Gnome and KDE.  I personally think Gnome and KDE are
about as useful as Windows 3.1 was over DOS.  "Windows 3.x - a colourful
clown suit for DOS."  But I guess this is bordering on a rant.

Anyways, back to useful info for newbies, I found it most useful to get an
fvwm dot file from somebody and start editing it to see what happened.  If
you get one with a screenshot, it makes it that much easier to pick the
parts you like and change the parts you don't.
								-Tenebrae.
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From: Chuk Goodin <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 23:13:30 -0700 (PDT)

> >   time as well.  I have hardly any experience with anything but Windows.

Another newbie here...I've only had Linux up for about two weeks, but
fvwm2 works a lot more nicely with my P133 than KDE did.

> Use Gnome or KDE for that.

I'll say!

> Look at it with an editor and read about the commands in the

Also, you can download other people's .fvwm2rc off of the internet, then
examine them.  I'm using a modified version of Don Knuth's, just 'cuz I
can. :-)

chuk

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From: Peter McAlpine <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 09:45:24 -0500

I finally gave fvwm2 a decent shot a week ago, and have completely
fallen in love with it. It's taken quite the time commitment... but
you can take a look at a fresh screenshot of mine at:
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~pmcalpin/pitc-screenshot.jpg

My .fvwm2rc file (which isn't too too complicated... yet): ;)
http://www.uoguelph.ca/~pmcalpin/.fvwm2rc

The best first step that I made... read the first half of the fvwm2
man page. It was hard to actually have the patience, but it paid off
big time. Then I stumbled across:
http://www.igs.net/~tril/fvwm/configs/

This girl has a pretty sweet config, and wrote a script "fvwm-theme"
that I use and love. NOTE: It's NOT the same thing as the fvwm-themes
project. I tried fvwm-themes, and didn't like it at all. It felt like
a whole new window manager, and I was just starting to get used to
vanilla fvwm. I use it for setting backgrounds and titlebar
pixmaps. It works nicely, but I HIGHLY recommend you read through it
first, and try to figure out how it works. Then try to do the same
thing by hand. That's the best way to learn if you ask me.

I tried fvwm on top of gnome, but it seemed to defeat the purpose of
it. Instead, I (sometimes, because I found I don't need them as much)
use gnome apps on top of fvwm. I like fvwm's speed and stability way
more than gnome's buggy UI's.

Also very cool is wmpinboard (bottom left of my screenshot). Everytime
I think of something that I want to tweak, I write myself a
note. Helps me to remember: "oh yeah, I wanted to figure out how to
use..."

Hmmm... hope this book I just wrote helps. I'll give you the website
I've been at the most in the last week: ;)
http://www.fvwm.org/generated/manpages/

Good luck and have fun,
Peter

-- 
Peter McAlpine
[email-masked]

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From: Sam Izzo <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 01:29:11 +1000

> http://www.uoguelph.ca/~pmcalpin/pitc-screenshot.jpg
Are you using the graphics from the default sawmill/sawfish setup?  Or is that
actually sawmill/sawfish running there? :-)

> more than gnome's buggy UI's.
Ahh, this can be quite confusing.  :-)  You see, gnome in itself (along with
kde) isn't a window manager; basically it provides the gnome bar (there's a
desktop too but in a way that's not a gnome thing; it's just a standard
program - nautilus).  There isn't much point to running gnome by itself; you
really do need the window manager to get window decorations happening.  Gnome
doesn't do any window decorations.  When you say "gnome apps" probably what
you're talking about is gtk apps (which you can run under KDE too - it just
uses a different library to draw widgets etc).

Still, I imagine everything that gnome does with the gnome bar could easily
be done using fvwm.  When I get some time I'm going to have a go at doing
this as I would like to get rid of my gnome bar (I use it but it feels like
such a waste since I'm using little else gnome-related).

If anyone else can explain the whole gnome/kde/wm confoundedness or wants to
correct my explanations, please feel free, as I often still get confused with
the entire thing. :-)

sam

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From: Peter McAlpine <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 13:54:02 -0500

I got the title bar pixmaps from the other site I mentioned:
http://www.igs.net/~tril/fvwm/configs/

But it is 100% pure fvwm. No sawfish at all. =)

pete =)