(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

There I was (and this is a true story) in Icewm when I got this as part of a private message . . .

Could someone in the forum knows & understand C++ and can compile Xclass and incorporate (making it worked) it to Puppy Linux 1.0.4 or 1.0.5 then afterwards make a Dotpup or Pupget. I hope it could work with fvwm95. I downloaded the files but I do not know how to do with it. I don't even have the technical knowlegde.

You think window managers are not important . . . tsk tsk - the new GTK themes, the new fonts and the new JWM theme which matches my wallpaper will do more for new users than might be imagined . . .

MU has created a great new dotpup of loads of Icewm themes. Which is your favoured Puppy environment?

I vote for FVWM95. Fast, Stable, & Neat.

I prefer Icewm.

it is fast, themable (Pixmap-themes, so you can give it any look you like), and it supports the NetWM-specifications.

Anyway I think JWM is the better choice for the standard-puppy.iso, as it is smaller.
And if the grey theme will be part of 106 (what Barry already announced), it will be quite pleasant for many users I believe.

Mark

I like IceWM configurability. That's my preferred one.

I have been surprisingly comfortable with JWM. It shows a lot of promisse if it continues evolving.

I was never comfortable with Fvwm95. It looks old and clumsy. It wasn't intuitive

On Fedora I use KDE for normal work, I like the eye candy and all the extra functionality and tools that comes with it. I use it in a decent desktop so I don't feel it slow. As root I log in with Xfce.

Gnome is very clean but I find it booooooring. Don't ask me why. It's just a feeling. Besides, I couldn't complain enough when they released version 2.10 without a menu editor.

Flubox is quite idiosyncratic. Most themes have tiny fonts with unreadeable colours. The advantage is that it's designed to be 'out of your way', so it's not for new users that need a helping hand.

Windowmaker. Talk about thinking out of the box. It's quite different from the other WMs a substantially different paradigm. It's one of those cases where an experienced user will have a harder time adapting than a new user as the former will have to 'unlearn'.

my favourite wm is fluxbox, but it doesn't play as well with rox as icewm does, and the binary is getting a bit bloated ... icewm is more windows-like, so would a better choice as a default wm for Puppy ... the icewm binary (the full version) is only about 130k compressed ... an icewm package is smaller than fvwm95

i like icewm ... the feature i miss most is being able to switch desktops by rolling the mouse wheel, like fluxbox or jwm

i find kde a bit bloated and slow

i never did like gnome much, or xfce

jwm is a bit buggy ... it has some of the same problems playing with rox that fluxbox has, but i don't think it has the workarounds flux has

fvwm95 is fairly fast, but it seems a bit cruder, and seems to be more awkward to use than, eg. icewm

as for using alternative widgets like xclass with fvwm95, or any other program ... i think you would have to write programs in C++ (xclass will not work with any other language) and specifically use xclass for your widgets (buttons and scrollbars and toolbars and things) ... to make any use of xclass widgets with fvwm95 itself, i think you would have to rewrite the complete fvwm95 program in C++, specifically using the xclass widgets ... this would be an immense amount of work, and would require considerable programming ability

it's easy to change the fonts that fluxbox themes use, to make them any size you like

i don't like most of the default fluxbox themes ... i didn't like most of the default icewm themes either, in fact, i left most of them out of my icewm packages amd made my own themes (though i'm not really satisfied with my themes either ... it's hard to make a good general-purpose default theme) ... i think the only original icewm theme i left in was the Win95 theme, and i hacked that a bit too

I've only tried the default window managers that come with Puppy, so I don't feel I ought to vote. From what everyone says about it, I'd like to try Icewm, but first I'm going to get multisession Puppy to work on a DVD.

i'm not sure fvwm95 might already be written using xclass anyway ... and that the fvwm95 buttons and scroll bars and other widgets are xclass widgets already

I vote for IceWM. I've been using it since my Libranet days, and I have always preferred it to anything else (having tried KDE - nice but slow, Gnome - didn't like, Fluxbox - a bit too spartan for my tastes, FVWM - always seemed more grainy than others on my machine, and JWM). JWM comes in second. I'd like it better except that sometimes when I click on the Start button, the menu appears then disappears, and I have to click on it several times before the menu stays up long enough for me to move my mouse cursor from the Start button to the menu itself.

Fluxbox takes alot of getting useto (espicially as all config done through text files) but the more i use it the more i like it.

Its simple, fast (though not so much the newer versions) and is just CLEAN biggest problem i find with most O/S

Windows has good menus but ICONs become a massive problem very quickly, also lets face people love to hate windows (otherwise they wont be here)

OSX the Dock looks nice but is mostly useless, at lest can find all installed GUI applications in the App's folder, spotlights also kinda nice, but there is something compleatly unintuative about the setup.

Linux (in general), massivly bloated, too many menu's with too many options, that are very rarely used and just generally disconcerting.

Fluxbox a couple of xterms and a few useful menu entries
* Xterm
* Internet
* Office
* MUT
* Configure
* Games (Other program)
* List of infrequently used commands
* shut down

And a little thought about where programs are installed and what info goes into the infrequently used commadns section.
Things just run sooooo smooth once you getover the fact that not everything you want is in plain sigh.

Best of all mouse wheel to switch desktops and most useful windows shortcuts (such as alt+tab) work.

IceWM forever !

FVWM for me.
I tried icewm on a previous version of puppy and thought it was excellent, but spent lots of time trying out themes and things. Only after i upgraded to 1.0.4 did I realise that I don't care what it looks like, as long as it works. FVWM works fine.

I like IceWM

Some of my favourite themes:
# AcquaBlue - ~Mac
# AcquaIce - ~Mac
# puppy-xp - if you like the blue xp ...
# Elberg - clean
# SilverXP - the 'single' one is really cool! With it I think I'm using xp I don't like the 'double' one as it double the height of the task bar
# IceBergX (included in the "Blue4ever" (145k) 4 themes in 1 package ) - this one has its own 'character', for those who doesn't like emulating other OS, this one is great!
# RevolutionX - this one is simple and cool too!
Get them at http://www.goosee.com/puppy/wikka/DotPupsContributions

IceQua - ~Mac (I forgot whether this is a dotpup or not, anyway it can be found at http://themes.freshmeat.net/projects/icequa/ ); screenshot

For a larger collection:
http://www.murga.org/%7Epuppy/viewtopic ... 6433#16433

And here is a taskbar button for IceQua that I made. It's brighter and has the word Puppy
Save it as /root/.icewm/themes/IceQua/taskbar/linux.xpm
(The image won't show if I upload it as .xpm, why?)

I love XFCE 4.2 - to me it's like a fast slim version of the GNOME desktop, with really useful features such as using the mousewheel to change desktops, roll up/down windows, etc.
The taskbar panel plugin makes the panel much better, IMHO. The xfce4-session package is damn useful too, needs an entry in /etc/sudoers to allow no-password shutdown/reboot from the desktop . I think the next version (4.4?) is going to have desktop icons again - so might make it more popular.
I'm keeping an eye on the thread with XFCE in puppy:
http://www.murga.org/~puppy/viewtopic.php?t=2789

Minor point - most of the other WMs can change desktops with the scroll wheel. JWM and iceWM, at least.

Now shading through the wheel, that's a nice feature. The other WMs just let you double click.

JWM, since I first tried it.
Simple, easy customizable, although still buggy, but predictable.
I hope it will stay in Puppy.

Icewm appears o be the winner so far. Maybe there will be a future release with Icewm as the only wm

XFCE should also be included in the list

bombayrockers

I also like icewm the best - especially with the XPDE theme, which pairs up very nicely with a wallpaper I borrowed from VectorLinux called "AloneIsWhenYouAreShining.jpg." It is the desktop I use most frequently, configured this way.

But I have to say, JWM is quickly growing on me. At first I was ... "What the heck is this new desktop?" ...but the more I use it and the more I play around with customizing the config, the more I like it. I have been able to nearly duplicate the settings from my above icewm favorite in JWM - with no previous experience - so it is very easy indeed to manipulate to your satisfaction.

I think Barry made an excellent choice in selecting this (JWM) for the default WM for Puppy. It works very well, is very attractive, easy to configure, and is very small, leaving more room for other enhancements to Puppy within the 60MB framework, plus all the other choices are available via dotpup.

Now, I'm running all five (jwm, icewm, fvwm95, fluxbox, and xfce4) - it's nice to be able to compare them side-by-side like that. (I do hope someone comes out soon with a 1.05 update for fluxbox menus)

BTW, someone (Walt?) mentioned above that they were having a problem with the start menu in JWM staying open when they clicked it. That only happens when you click the start menu button - Better is to just click on the desktop anywhere with either button, both of which bring up the menu such that it stays open til another click is made. ... or so I have observed.

Best Regards

kcin

IceWM - like an old suit, it just feels good.