I'll pitch in even though you weren't asking me, of course. But I'm a big fan of ice, myself - though, ironically, posting this from fluxbox. (And you were asking about ice, not ice vs. flux, but those are the two I'm most familiar with.) The default look of ice is nowhere near the best it can do. (Though I do like a no-nonsense look to things generally.) And of course it lacks the features of KDE - it's a window manager. I like it because it's very functional and solid-feeling. It's actually very similar to flux, but with less (or different) eyecandy.
Both have a menu and keys file and a startup script. Both have a directory (or in flux's case, a kind of pointless trio of directories) for styles/themes. Flux has an 'init' and a 'slit' that is more than covered in ice's 'preferences' (a far larger and more configurable file - except ice doesn't have a proper slit - see below), while ice also includes a 'prefoverride' file (which flux's init sort of serves for in a case or two like rootCommand). Ice's 'winoptions' and flux's 'groups' are not completely disimilar, but ice lacks tabs. And ice has an extension of the menu with the 'toolbar' file.
Both draw a tool/task-bar along the bottom and both have access to the menu through a right click on the desktop. Flux lacks access to it from the toolbar, though. Both can have most of their components themed or styled or whatever - change widths, colors, apply pixmaps, whatever.
Flux does look a bit more stylish even when compared to ice's best, but not by a whole lot. Flux has a big advantage with tabs. Ice is actually more configurable and has a far more functional taskbar and windowing controls, including easy tiling or whatever you might like. And most of the functionality in flux (and much of the eyecandy) has come along quite recently with the 0.9.x series. 0.1.14 lacks a lot of things. The 0.1.14 toolbar is basically useless (mainly why I switched) and none of these pixmaps or transparencies were available - even tabbing was impaired due to grouping. And the 0.9.x series hasn't always been entirely stable.
(Ice's 1.2.14x has its issues, too, it seems which is why I stopped at pre9 and even it may have a serious bug I haven't tracked down yet - which is why I'm in flux at the moment - where 0.9.9 is much better than 0.9.8.) So if you want a stable flux (0.1.14) vs. a stable ice (1.2.13) ice is *way* more functional without a lot of pointless crap, either.
One of the big things ice has is a window list that is a single window when you middle click on the desktop, instead of the kind of twitchy menu structure flux has. Ice has builtin system monitors (which really only matter if you don't already use gkrellm). The winoptions, launcher, and systray area of ice are very cool. I have xmms, gkrellm, and a special aterm in the 'systray' which means I can minimize and maximize them directly, but they don't take up any room on the taskbar and don't show up in the window switching with alt-tab. (Since all I use the slit for in flux is a place to have, but hide, gkrellm, this functionality replaces the slit for me.) Also, when I minimize all windows, I've got it so the term stays up - instead of showing a useless desktop, I show a console, in essence. The launcher on the taskbar (kind of like XFCE's thing in the sense of a doohickey on the taskbar for quick access without wading through the menu) is very cool (but doesn't clutter up the bar with a dozen of them and make me waste space on a second bar for buttons for the running apps like XFCE). With flux, it's the menu or nothing, mouse-wise, though both can be fully equipped with keyboard lanchers. To get around that, in part, I have a handful of apps at the top of the menu that aren't in a subdirectory, but on the top level (and I use the keys). And, strangely, while ice's 'stuff' is bigger, it feels roomier than flux, somehow. And definitely more solid. Flux is more 'X'-like in that it seems designed to have a lot of small windows floating around when I prefer maximized apps 'planted' on the display.
I dunno - different strokes - but tabs and eyecandy and reputation are really the only distinctions for flux and more functional taskbars and windowing controls and winoptions are really the only distinctions for ice. And a 'floatier' vs. a 'solid' feel. Those are really the only two I've been able to use for very long. (Well, and blackbox, but that's just flux's parent.)
They're both cool - other than twm
and pek (eh) the only GUIs on my system are ice 1.2.14pre9 and flux 0.9.9.
Oof. That was a ramble. If it made any sense, hope it was helpful.
Oh - and the idea of a half meg ice binary bloating Slack when there's a half-dozen wm's and enlightenment is gone now - well, I think it'll fit.
But I've never had trouble compiling ice - just strange things going on with some 14pre's *after* compiling. Ditto fluxbox.
What troubles are you having, mbabuskov?
Adding icewm to distro
