icewm as windowmanager

e_f · 2013/09/05, 22:34:51

Hello friends,

I've just installed siduction (and aptosid) on several computers.
Because of many reasons (mostly speed and hardware but also Windows-accustomed users) and as xfce had strange malfunctions on one computer but I didn't want to administrate several different systems I've choosen to install IceWM as window manager.

But there are several things to do in order to get it going as it is supposed to do.

Now I want to seek for like-minded people and collect information about "how to icewm, but do it right".

Anybody who dislikes IceWM or wants to persuade me/us to use a different WM, please don't reply and just ignore this thread. Thank you very much.

Anybody who has tried to work with icewm and/or has got further knowledge is welcomed very much to help to build a kind of knowledgebase for icewm with siduction or any debian based system.

Now let's start.

e_f · 2013/09/05, 23:23:11

As you may have noticed I'm a native German and my English is not that fluent so please don't flame me for this. But I wanted to address as many people as possible and so English should be a good start. You can answer in German if you want.

Now back to the topic.

Theme
The first thing I did was changing the "skin" so I choose the "XP-new"-theme because it resembles Windows-XP the most and for some novice people there "has to be a start-button period"... so with icewm they could be satisfied (fluxbox seems to be a no-go for them).

Start-menu
In xfce and lxde window-managers you can't customize the menu so that it only shows your choices. If you have novice users who tend to get confused with too many options IceWM gives you the possibility to reduce the menu to just what the user needs.
You can edit ~/.icewm/menu in order to set things up. Here is an example of a menufile:

Code Select

#----------------------------------------------------
#pattern:
#menu "title" icon_name {
#prog "title" icon_name program_executable options
#}
#icon_name can be - if icon is not wanted.
#Restarting another window manager can be done using the restart program:
#restart "title" icon_name program_executable options
#-----------------------------------------------------
menu "Prog" folder {
     prog "Code::Blocks" codeblocks codeblocks
}
separator
menu "Tools" folder {
     prog xterm xterm xterm -vb -bg gray -fn 7x14
     separator
     prog dolphin app dolphin
     prog KRename app krename
     separator
     prog emacs emacs emacs
     separator
     prog "Restart IceWM" Restart killall -HUP /usr/bin/icewm
     prog "Suspend" app gksu pm-suspend
}

Error-report: In order to edit the most interesting files all at once I tried the following line but it only opened emacs without the files as options. This happend also when I didn't use quotes. Maybe one of you know what's wrong with it:

Code Select

prog "config IceWM" app emacs "~/.icewm/toolbar ~/.icewm/menu ~/.icewm/preferences ~/.xbindkeysrc ~/.Xclients"

Screen Lock:
If you want the screen to lock after a period of time and want to have a password-protection you have to install some additional software. After reading some info in the web I choose to install xsreensaver

Code Select

#apt-get install xscreensaver xscreensaver-gl
Here some good information about screensavers for icewm:
http://forum.vectorlinux.com/index.php?topic=10878
http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/man.html

Shutdown-command
It may sound rediculous but if you don't customize icewm a shutdown won't do what you may expect - icewm just logs you off an goes back to kdm/xdm.
To change this you have to edit ~/.icewm/preferences and add the lines

Code Select

# Command to shutdown the system
#ShutdownCommand="sudo halt"
#ShutdownCommand="sudo shutdown -h now" 
ShutdownCommand="killall -QUIT icewm | sudo /sbin/shutdown -h now" 

# Command to reboot the system
#RebootCommand="sudo reboot"
RebootCommand="killall -QUIT icewm | sudo /sbin/shutdown -r now"

As you can see I've tried several settings. Only with the killall-lines I could achieve what I wanted.

--------------------
Last but not least some good findings of "aunt google":
serious tipps for icewm:
Can be found in this links
http://iceme.sourceforge.net/
http://www.osnews.com/story/7774/IceWM_-_The_Cool_Window_Manager/page1/
http://www.debian.org/News/weekly/2006/32/index.de.html
http://jbakshi.50webs.com/PART-I/INDEX.html
http://jbakshi.50webs.com/PART-II/INDEX.html
http://www.troubleshooters.com/lpm/200209/200209.htm
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/icewm-user

FAQs about setting up IceWm:
They are a bit outdated but a good start.
http://www.icewm.org/manual/
http://www.icewm.org/FAQ/IceWM-FAQ-15.html
http://www.icewm.org/FAQ/IceWM-FAQ-11.html
celettu.wordpress.com/icewm-guide/ -pretty old guide

Tools for IceWM:
http://www.korseby.net/computer/linux/icewm.html
http://icecc.sourceforge.net/
http://www.phrozensmoke.com/projects/icewmcp/[/code]

e_f · 2013/09/05, 23:50:43

Sound and mixer
After switching to icewm I was a bit confused because sound did not work anymore. After consulting aunt google I found out that installing and using aumix helped very much.
Todo: I would like to have some kind of icon next to the clock that is connected to aumix or some other working mixer software but haven't found anything so far.

Keyboard-Shortcuts
You can edit ~/.icewm/keys for this purpouse. Here is some good idea found in the web (copy/paste, source unknown):

Code Select

#key Keystroke+Combination executable -with -options
#I've simply mapped my two Windows "start menu" keys and the other "right-click" key to F13, F14 and F15, from left to right. In addition, my keyboard has four smaller keys at the top right hand side, labelled "Turbo", "Power", "Sleep" and "Wakeup", 3 of whose keycodes can be picked up by xev. They've been mapped to F16, F17 and F18, left to right. This mapping's been done via xmodmap. Use "man xmodmap" for more information on this tool. 

#Rahul Gaitonde's IceWM keys file.
#key "F15" xterm -bg black -fg white -font 7x14 -geometry 120x40
#key "Ctrl+Alt+f" /home/rahul/local/firefox/firefox
#key "Ctrl+Alt+t" /home/rahul/local/thunderbird/thunderbird
#key "F16" killall -QUIT icewm-session

key "Ctrl+KP_Divide" aumix -v -5	# lower volume
key "Ctrl+KP_Multiply" aumix -v +5	# raise volume
key "Ctrl+KP_Subtract" aumix -v 0	# mute
#I use the OSS sound drivers, so my volume is adjusted using aumix.
#If you're using ALSA, use alsamixer instead. Experiment on your own; I've never tried. ALSA always gives me slightly inferior sound quality

Todo: I haven't used xmodmap so far so I don't know how to remap the keyboard. That should be my next step.
Todo:I would like it very much if I could activate the screensaver/screenlock with a combination of "left-Windows-key + l" as it is used in windows xp. But so far I didn't recognize how.
Todo: How can I use my special keys of my thinkpad to map to sound or other options? www.thinkwiki.de didn't provide enough information yet...

IceWM-Tools
I found several tools but none of them really worked. Perhaps one of you get them working. Here is a list of tools I've tried so far:

It is said that they are used for older icewm-versions and they are not maintained for the newer one... Perhaps only some tiny little modification is needed.

Known IceWM-Errors and "features"

eQuacky · 2013/09/07, 10:46:24

Hi e_f

nice idea in intending to provide a windowmanager like icewm for siduction.

Cannot help much in your features-/issues-list but there is an existing project - based on debian testing - with icewm called Antix.

Forums operator is anticapitalista. He did interesting things like "siduxing antix" which means he used the sidux sources to get a debian sid in antix.

I did either and had a turbo fast system on an old thinkpad X20, as to that time sidux xfce was simply too slow.

Hope to have helped.

greetz

Thomas

icewm as windowmanager

e_f

e_f

e_f

eQuacky