(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

XFCE is the best

On a HD Puppy install, I perfer XFCE for the easy configuration. For a no-frills Live CD experience, I'll take IceWM.

Lobster, may I suggest that we first need to define what a window manager is. Here's my preliminary take on it:

A window manager is a program in Linux which integrates the other programs that are necessary to make the desktop GUI you see. Some programs apparently create their own GUI independently of the window manager, which is why e.g. the fonts in Firefox are different from the system fonts.

That is based on my limited observation. Is it anywhere near right?

Flash,

a WM simply adds Window-Borders and organizes the "stacking" (bring a window to front or send it to the background). It also organizes the internal logic of virtual desktops.

The stuff in the windows is independent from that.
It is organized by "widgets-sets".
Widget-engines are QT (Opera) Gtk/Gtk2 (leafpad, beaver) and XUL.

Mozilla uses a combination of Gtk2 and XUL.
It has special Widget called "Gecko", the "rendering engine to display HTML", that draws fonts like a bitmap, and does not use the Gtk-Fontsystem. So the fonts on a Webpage may look different from the same font in the Mozilla-menue.

Mark

I love JWM and think it's a great choice for the Puppy default. The only bug I've seen is the one mentioned above about the disappearing menu. I like icewm even more, however. I don't go crazy theming it, I just run it and it works and feels right to me. It's got all the options you really ever need but is still smaller than just about everything but JWM.

I run icewm on my Fedora server even thoough I've got KDE and Gnome available, too. Something about KDE just never clicked with me. It does too many things without your input, which is one of the reasons I left Windows. The only benefit I see to it is the integration of the applications into one whole and complete desktop environment. Once again, however, this is too 'Windowsish' for me. I like a mish mash on my desktop.

Before anyone points it out yes I know the difference between a window manager and a desktop environment. I was just pointing out that even with the option available I still choose icewm.

Nathan

I have tried them all and keep going back to fvwm95 if for nothing else because it seems more stable to me. I also really like the monitor apps, mostly the battery one on the laptops. I think it is a good maneger for folks who are not familiar with linux too.

What do you know, I'm in the popular crowd on this poll.

I like IceWM, it runs fast and clean on my older systems.

I'm late to this poll, but I too really like icewm.

I'm not sure I can justify why, other than it feels right and it is comfortable.

Funny really because until I tried it, I couldn't see the point of changing from the default wm. Glad I did though.