Strog
January 30th, 2006, 23:23
Would you have come if I said fvwm in the subject? I bet you expect the following when you think fvwm but scroll down for a nice looking desktop (in my opinion at least).

http://strog.org/pics/images/screenshots/_640x640/neon-2006-01-30-ugly.png

http://strog.org/pics/images/screenshots/_640x640/neon-2006-01-30-fvwm.png
Click here for fullsize pic (http://strog.org/pics/images/screenshots/neon-2006-01-30-fvwm.png)

Now that I have your attention, let's get some background. First off, this is based off of Pem's Fvwm theme (http://pemarchandet.free.fr/fvwm.html) (most of the credit for the bulk of the work belongs to him). It's all fvwm without a bunch of external apps (topbar, dock, etc.). There's some links on that site to a long thread discussing it. It's based on a linux install. There's files in different places, most of the scripts rely on /proc, it's hardcoded to 1280 width and I wanted to make the dock slimmer to save some desktop space.

Now some details. This needs the Fvwm2.5 port (/usr/ports/x11-wm/fvwm2-devel) for all the features to work. The only other thing I added for this was xosd (/usr/ports/misc/xosd) for the onscreen display on the wireless and battery. It's still hardcoded for width but I made up some configs for 1024, 1280, 1400 and 1600. You just overwrite the existing dock and topbar with the appropriate file in ~/.fvwm/conf/. The icons in the topbar have actions when they are clicked and there's 5 icons for varying output (volume, battery life and signal strength). I haven't gotten the icon setup to change on wireless strength yet but someone is free to take a crack at it because I'm not going to get back to that right now. You can see the onscreen text in the screenshot when I clicked on the battery icon. All the output I need are in sysctl so it made it a lot easier than the old scripts extracting that same info from proc on linux. :rolleyes:

Here's an example of the output from the wireless script:
http://strog.org/images/ssid.png

Everything is setup to be modular as possible in this config so most of your editing will be to the ~/.fvwm/config file. You see aumix in my screenshot but your mixer could be set to whatever you have installed. You click the speaker icon in the topbar and it will open your default mixer. The same goes for browser, email client, terminal, etc. I'm using multi-aterm but I think any terminal that supports transparency would match the theme. The icon theme for the menu is gnant (link to download at the bottom of the post) but you can use any theme just by changing it in the config.

Files:
My fvwm config (http://strog.org/files/fvwm-config-1.0.tbz)
The gnant icon theme (http://strog.org/files/gnant-0.2.tar.bz2)
The background (http://strog.org/files/arcticsunrise.jpg)

Grab the files, extract fvwm-config to your home, extract icon theme to /usr/X11R6/share/icons and copy the background (or any you like) to your pic folder (defaults to ~/pics) as .current. This should get you going. I'd be happy to discuss this more and this post could go on for quite a while but I need to get something posted to get it rolling.

Strog
January 30th, 2006, 23:49
I forgot a couple things. There's probably more. :silly:

It thumbnails and iconifies your windows when you minimize them to the desktop.

It's also setup to use 3ddesktop if you have it installed. Ctrl-alt-up/down cycles the desktops normally and ctrl-alt-left/right cycles with 3ddesktop for more oohhs and ahhhs. :wink:

elmore
January 31st, 2006, 00:37
Byron needs to check this out, we had some discussion a while ago about using fvwm in Anonym.OS

cod3fr3ak
January 31st, 2006, 08:23
Very nice Strog

Strog
January 31st, 2006, 10:31
Byron needs to check this out, we had some discussion a while ago about using fvwm in Anonym.OS

There's some config changes in Fvwm 2.5 compared to the earlier versions. It probably could be tweaked to work on pre-2.5 but I haven't attempted that to know for sure.

There was a 2.5 version on the OpenBSD mailing list but it didn't make the ports tree yet (and it's been a while). I have a recent snapshot of OpenBSD on my Powerbook. I started to put this together but got busy with other things and haven't been back to it yet.


Very nice Strog

Thanks man. :biggrin:

bsdjunkie
January 31st, 2006, 10:42
damn, never knew fvwm could look that good =)

bumbler
January 31st, 2006, 14:50
Excellent. I used to love running Fvwm, but I got tired of experts refusing to help me make some minor changes. Since then, I've pretty much forgotten all I knew about it. I confess I really liked Another-Level-Up, the scripts by a college professor in the UK. However, he lost interest, and it's all obsolete. Now I favor IceWM for lightness, and KDE when I need lots of features.

Strog
February 1st, 2006, 01:02
I've updated the config file and added a script called resolution.sh to copy the appropriate config based on the resolution (assuming you are using 1024, 1280, 1400 or 1600).

I threw ~/.fvwm/script/resolution.sh & in my .xinitrc and it automatically copies the configs. This is nice since I change resolutions for testing.

byron
February 1st, 2006, 13:06
Very nice. I've been looking very seriously at FVWM as a desktop window manager. I've been dragging my feet mainly due to the time investment I expect that will be required to have a pleasant looking and functional windowed environment. Hopefully this will be just kick in pants I need to get something put together.

Strog
February 1st, 2006, 18:07
Very nice. I've been looking very seriously at FVWM as a desktop window manager. I've been dragging my feet mainly due to the time investment I expect that will be required to have a pleasant looking and functional windowed environment. Hopefully this will be just kick in pants I need to get something put together.

There's the Fvwm Crystal Theme (http://fvwm-crystal.berlios.de/), the screenshots & configs page (http://fvwm.lair.be/viewforum.php?f=39) on the fvwm forum and the fvwmwiki (http://www.fvwmwiki.org/) if you need more kicks to put something together. I was looking through there and there's some things I want to steal out of some of these other configs. Maybe even start another config outright. :biggrin:

byron
February 2nd, 2006, 12:57
Yeah, I've run the crystal theme (very slick looking) for a short while. Unfortunately, I found it challenging enough to be productive in that I had to dump it for a desktop that I was more comfortable with. One day I'll find the time....

Kernel_Killer
July 2nd, 2007, 19:29
You know what's really bad, is that I just read through 10 pages of a thread at the FVWM site, to only be directed to this link. :rolleyes:

Strog
July 7th, 2007, 21:48
heheh.