FXwm
The 'For XiniX window manager' (FXwm) is a small and fast X window manager for Linux, featuring the most basic configuration with as much flexibility as possible. To help achieve this goal, our window manager only handles the chrome of each window along with the I/O from connected devices such as a keyboard or mouse. There is not any built-in functionality to supervise the environment such as a taskbar or popup menu. Instead, this functionality will come from a complementary software such as web.de, wbar, or even a terminal!
License
This projects' codebase is licensed under the CPLv2 unless a valid CPLv1 license has been purchased. More information about both of these licenses can be found under the "Our Licenses" link of our homepage.
Installation
No matter which method of installation you choose below, FXwm does not require a lot of complication to get running on your device. The 'Package Management' option will be the easiest since someone will have taken the compilation steps for you, but even if you have to perform the building of the executable on your own, the only dependency you will require is a working compiler like gcc.
Package Management
As noted above, this will be the easiest method of installation for this software. We will expand the below list to include as many mainstream Linux distros as possible when submissions are made to our staff for inclusion.
Debian and derivatives (Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Knoppix, )
$ sudo apt-get install fxwm
TinyCore and derivatives
tce-load -iw fxwm
Compiling from Source
This will the most difficult method of installation, but our staff has tried to make this as painless as possible. Currently only a compiler needs to be installed along with a few simple commands and the build process will be completed. For this example, we will be using GNU's gcc compiler and assumed that the source was downloaded into the /tmp directory.
$ tar zxf /tmp/fxwm_x.x.x.x.soft $ cd /tmp $ ./make install
It should be noted that if you are a package maintainer, you can optionally include a 'PREFIX=/staging/dir/prefix' to the 'make' call to have the software install to a staging area where you can package the software for your distro. If you are uncertain what a package maintainer is, then you should not use the 'PREFIX' switch!
To use FXwm as your window manager after installation (via package management or downloading and compiling on your own), you will need to create or modify a text file that is parsed during the initialization of the X Window system. On modern Linux distros that use a graphical login window, the file will be ~/.xsession. For older systems that start X after a successful shell login, you will need to modify the ~/.xinitrc file. To make FXwm as your default window manager, you may also have to select it as the default option at the graphical login screen.
The file used by your system should look similar to the following:
#!/bin/sh xsetroot -solid \\#006060 xrdb .Xresources # start xset, xmodmap, other configuration programs fxwm -S /usr/local/bin/web.de & WindowManager=$! # start xterm, other auto-start programs wait $WindowManager
