FVWM

FVWM (or F virtual window manager) is an extremely powerful ICCCM-compliant multiple virtual desktop window manager for X.Org.

One of FVWM strong points is its configurability as virtually anything is possible. People have made clones of Windows and Mac themes, and created some very creative original ones. Take a look at some screenshots.

Setup
Before emerging FVWM start off looking at the USE flags of you want to enable. One of the less obvious (but cooler) options is stroke, which lets you configure mouse gestures later on.

Then, as usual just emerge fvwm and wait a while, it should take about 15-30 minutes (or even less) on fairly recent hardware.

After it's emerged you'll probably want to start playing with it, tweaking it to your liking. This is done editing your file (before fvwm 2.5.10, the config file was, and it is still recognized by fvwm). This file handles all the settings for the WM, such as window decorations, menus and items.

Initially config should be empty, giving you the ugly default when you start. To get around this you can either try out fvwm-themes (see next section) or start with someone else's config. Starting with somebody else's configuration will give you a nice desktop and a complete config to learn from and tweak. On the other hand, you can follow the [FVWM/Configuration] and build step by step your desktop and appreciate the strength and capabilities of FVWM.

If you want to have a command executed at startup, like xmodmap, you can have it in "config", like:

AddToFunc InitFunction + I Exec exec xmodmap -e "pointer = 3 2 1 4 5"

Note that anything with fvwm-themes will only work if you have emerged the fvwm-themes package.

From a Console
You can get into FVWM pretty quickly by at a console:

This is done so that should something go wrong, we can still, and get into our normal desktop to get some help, or just get back to life for a while.

To get back into FVWM after switching away, hit.

Fvwm as your default WM
Crack open and replace whatever you had there with the following:

Then run startx, with this a *very* ugly default FVWM will start, don't despair, changing everything is possible.

From a Graphical Login Manager
If you're using a display manager, you should change the following:

1) Create

2) Update

Select FVWM from XDM
FVWM can be selected with the function keys (see this article in the old wiki). For example:

Select FVWM from GDM or KDM
The other way that you can select fvwm from gdm or kdm session before you login is to use the file in. In case the file is not in the system, it can be created with the f0llowing text:

Then you can select FVWM from gdm or kdm session before you login.

Themes
You can find some interesting themes in and.

If you would like to learn how to create your own theme, read FVWM/Configuration

In the Gentoo Forum threads The F? Virtual Window Manager, The F? Virtual Window Manager (part 2) and The F? Virtual Window Manager (part 3), you can find a ton of tricks, tweaks and solutions to any problems or desires you may run into.