Get The Most Out of Your Minimal Window Manager on Linux
My current favorite: IceWM. Click for full-sized image.
Why do some us continue to use minimal window managers like OpenBox, IceWM, and Fluxbox as our primary desktop environment in this modern age of 3D accelerated desktop cubes and wobbly windows? The way I see it, there are four main reasons:
1) We don’t like bloat. We get what we need, when we need it…nothing more, nothing less.
2) We like a high degree of configurability. It’s often possible to achieve a greater level of customization with minimal window managers.
3) We like rock solid reliability. Most minimal window managers have far few crashes and freezes than their big brothers, especially on less-than-blazing hardware.
4) We need the speed. We run high-end apps that require every ounce of cpu cycles and RAM that we have, or we just can’t stand the thought of something that should be essentially invisible to the user taking up precious resources.
“Yes,” you say, “that is me…I’m ready to give it a shot…” Awesome…then I’ve got some tips that I think will really help you out.
1) Be open to trying a few different ones out. All the minimal wms have different design philosphies and a slightly different feel. Try several out to find the one that works for you. A few I think you should Google: OpenBox, Fluxbox, IceWM, Ratpoison, Orobus.
2) Don’t get get to carried away with configuring, yet… Most of us Linux people like to tinker, and almost all these window managers let you tinker to your heart’s content. FVWM, especially, is like an illegal addictive substance for your computer. Productivity is the name of the game here, so get it going the way you want it to, but remember that figuring out crazy complex stuff should wait ’till break time.
3) Bring your GNOME settings with you. Trust me, this makes your life easier. Look in your documentation for the window manager that you choose, and make sure you edit the startup file so that GNOME-settings-manager is started. Another good one to start automatically is GNOME-volume-manager, which will take care of mounting your usb sticks and the like.
4) Don’t be discouraged. Sometimes it does take a while to get the hang of a new system…but I think you’ll find that in the end, many minimal wms will actually help you get things accomplished your way, instead of Windows Way, or the Mac Way, or even the GNOME Way.
5) Add some polish. Most minimal window managers have tons of high-quality themes to choose from. You don’t have to give up aesthetics for minimalism. Add some elegance with xcompmgr for drop shadows, and consider Simdock as a OSX dock-like application.
Do you use a minimal window manager, or do you like the big dogs like GNOME and KDE?
Thanks Nathan. I started listen to PL after your appearance on Fresh Ubuntu. I am toying around with minimal WMs now. I changed a temp machine from Ubuntu to Xubuntu. Xfce is really not doing it for me. I am going to d/l Fluxbuntu tonight and work with that for a couple of days and we will see what we can see after that.
Thanks for the article, and the great podcast.
Michael
I think you’ll enjoy Fluxbox, it’s one of my favorites! I think XFCE is pretty cool, but it’s getting more and more like a full-on desktop environment, albeit a relatively light one.
You’re point about minimalist wm’s and my question: metacity, GNOME’s default window package, says it’s a minimalist package (requiring devil’s pie for window placement at startup) if that is true, does metacity have higher overhead than the wm’s you review here? I didn’t like xcfe (moving over requires way too much reconfiguring) so I’m once-bit twice shy about other wm’s…
@Kyle Metacity it and of itself is not a resource hog, but the GNOME desktop environment has all kinds of other things running, like nautilus (manages your desktop/file), compiz, the GNOME-panel, and other background processes.
As far as configuring goes, switching to a minimal WM will definitely take some learning and quite a bit of configuring (usually, but not always) to get it exactly how you want. I would still encourage you to check out some other ones in your distro’s repositories other than XFCE…while that’s a great package, there many options, and I think everyone is bit different in what appeals to them.