Re: WM Question

[Max Watson <redline pdq net>]

At 02:36 PM 5/23/98 -0300, Horacio J. Peņa wrote:

>> I am new in Gnome, and I have a question.
>> What windows manager is better for using with Gnome?

>The one you like most...

You know, we could at least offer some hints to those people who have not
yet become religious about their choice of window manager. How about
expanding that area of the FAQ a little, so we can point new users to that
section? Anyway, here are some suggestions on window managers for people
who are just starting out with GNOME / *nix / X11:

---------
Enlightenment - Is maintained by a GNOME hacker and all-around brilliant
guy, will definitely work well with GNOME. CAVEAT: It is a bit of a
resource hog,  but man does it look great!

Icewm - Supports the proposed XA_WIN_* hints that GNOME will (hopefully)
adopt. Also supports some themeing, and even has an embryonic GTK
Look&Feel. The wmpager_applet (soon to be in gnome-core) works with this
one at least. The author is trying really hard to work with GNOME, and
doing a great job. (icewm also supports the KDE and Motif hints, if you
like to mix your desktops!)

fvwm2 - There is work being done to create a set of modularized default
configuration scripts if you want to run GNOME under the classic fvwm2. It
is about time someone wrote some good defaults, because the standard fvwm2
setup is (IMHO) super-ugly. 

SCWM - A fvwm2 derivative that uses Guile (GNOME's official scripting /
extending language) instead of the fvwm resource format. Newer versions
have some neat hooks for sending commands to the wm, executing scripts,
etc. Very configurable, but not nearly as wild as E or as easy as icewm.

WindowMaker - The WM maintainers/hackers seem to want to get GNOME
compliant, but due to some miscommunication, some of them are pissed off.
Now that a good GNOME<->wm proposal has been made, maybe some work will
progress toward that goal. The proposed wm hints have some features that
would work well with WM. 

OLVWM - The GNOME FAQ eludes to this. It claims Miguel de Icaza wants to
GNOMEify good ol' OpenLook's wm. This might be a while, though, since I bet
Miguel is pretty busy with higher priority tasks.

wmx-gtk - Just a rumor, but I have heard that a gtk version of wmx is in
the works. This one is not really an option, but may be in the future.
----------

Anyway, so while (in GNOME's eyes) all window managers are equal, some are
more equal than others. If I have forgotten any that are working with
GNOME, please forgive me. The point is, any window manager will work with
GNOME, so if you are fond of your current setup, you do not have to give it
up. If you have not yet committed yourself to one, choose on of the above,
these cover most of the feature-spectrum you could ask for in a window
manager. (Except maybe pie menus and color-changing lamps/beacons :)) Good
luck and happy GNOMEing!


M.Watson <redline@pdq.net>
Simulation. Do not drive in ocean.