I love IceWm, it seems so fast and easy to use except for two things- I don't know how to put icons on the desktop, and I don't know how to browse through my directories/folders... Anybody know how? I am still working on making the transition from Windows, and it's working out, but I still need a little help.

Also, how do you put a desktop background in IceWm?

To put icons on your desktop, you'll need a third party program to do it. Maybe someone else knows but you can search on
http://www.freshmeat.net


To browse files:

If you have gnome installed, you can open up
nautilus

From a terminal window you can use
mc

the gentoo file manager is good
http://www.obsession.se/gentoo/

To change a background you have to edit the file
default.theme
found in a themes directory
either
~/.icewm/themes/theme_name/default.theme
or
/usr/local/share/icewm/theme_name/default.theme

There are a variety of programs to do so. I've only really tried [i]fbdesk[/b] but I take it on good authority that rox (or rather rox-filer, I think) is good too.

Try dfm http://www.kaisersite.de/dfm/

Maybe I can join in on all this "getting help" stuff :-)

I've used gnome for about 6 months and then switched to KDE for about 1-2 months. I just installed ICEWM tonight and it is wicked fast! However I can't seem to change the background. I've tried all of this:

1. Change setting in "preferences" config file
2. Change setting in default.theme file
3. Start icewmbg as stated on www.icewm.org (both in a "startup" file and in ".xsession"

The only thing I'm wondering now at this point is the file I'm trying to set as my bg is a .jpg...is that not supported by chance? Any help is much appreciated. Thanks!

what i do is i either launch a desktop background changer program ( i have a shell script that launches some things at login) or, if i want the background to go with my theme i just do

$ xsetbg nameofpicture.jpg

i dont know if itll work for you, but it works fine on my machine ^_^

Thanks, but per recommendation of someone else on another thread a day after I posted this question, I tried XFCE and it does everything I like (it's also wicked fast, but a lot easier to configure).