Calmar's Fvwm Stuff

• Fvwm's Homepage

Fvwm is a highly configurable ('I did it my way') Window-Manager. But be prepared it will take some time reading man pages and/or asking on the Mailing Lists or on #fvwm (freenode), until you have your special for your needs suited Fvwm-Window Manager.

You can e.g. use prebuild configurations and tweak them for your needs. Most people begin with taviso's .fvwm2rc (on buttons) file with many very sophisticated things in it. Or you may want to begin tweaking on the well documented .fvwm2rc file from Thomas Adam, what is easier, because he seems to be (very) happy with the default fvwm look and feel (I'm mostly too btw). However, once you have your basic configuration, you can still 'borrow' things later from wherever you see stuff you like. You might also want to read Jaimos's Beginner's Guide.

You have also the option to use one of the fvwm-themes, even so it might not be so easy to tweak them later, when you're new to fvwm. When you want to check out the themes, download them from here and put in your ~/.xinitrc an entry like: exec /usr/local/bin/fvwm-themes-start .

My personal system of handling windows is as follows according to this and that ('xev' provides the key-names) part of the .fvwm2rc file:

• with the keyboard:
  • fvwm-key(*) + Space -> opens up the WindowList, where I can select the window I want (e.g. in a vi-like manner)
  • Esc-key (or Print or whereever you have an unused key) gets the next windows in the current workspace for very fast switching in the case you keep the apps working together in a own workspace. (the Esc function itself is on my Caps-lock Key)
  • fvwm-key + r -> opens up the root (.fvwm2rc) menu (with all essential programs). There I can select the programs/actions with single keystrokes again.
  • fvwm-key + o -> toggles the Dock-Bar
  • fvwm-key + c -> closes a window/app.
  • fvwm-key + a -> toggles maximize window.
  There are much more, but these are the ones, I probably use most often.
  
  
• with the mouse:
  • When I touch the top of the screen, the list of all windows pop up (aka WindowList).
  • When I touch the bottom of the screen, the 'main root' menu pops up, where all important programs I can trigger with one click.
  • When I touch the right edge of the screen, an infomation (e.g. new mails arrived?) and the pager panel pops up.
  • When I touch the left edge of the screen and stay there for ca. 2/10 seconds, I will land on the neighbour pager-page.
  • Then I have the usual buttons at the window-decoration. A speciality: When I click the middle-mouse button on the top-deco, that window will close. Since I need that often, I bound it to the big top deco, so I don't need to navigate the mouse precisely to the normal close buttons.

• My .fvwm2rc configuration file
• According screenshots: ( 1 / 2 )