IceWM - how to...
 

I recently discovered IceWM and it appears to be quite a nice cross between a lightweight WM and a easy to use DE. I'm trying it out and it appears to be a nice alternative to KDE. I still like KDE a lot, but it's nice to experiment!

I however have a few questions:

1. Enabling a screensaver - mind you not wallpaper which I found out how to.
2. Enabling autoloading of programs on startup.
3. A good lightweight file manager alternative (I use konqueror currently).
4. A way to import Debian and KDE menus into IceWM. Currently I'm having to manually enter all the menu items into the IceWM menu.

I have a few more doubts, but those can wait. At present I would be glad for help on these points. Pointers to useful documentation would also be appreciated! :)

1. I cant help you here, but screensavers dont do much anyway
2. you need to [edit] or [create and edit] ~/.icewm/startup
Add each program to run as a new line... i cant remember it u need to add a "&" at the end of them or not. I apparently did in my file.
3. try XFE http://roland65.free.fr/xfe/ and ROX Filer http://rox.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/i...9406915325e9ea
4. Try one of the ice config editors you may get lucky

check out http://www.icewm.org/manual/ Its very good
im a big fan of icewm and ive tried dozens of WMs

Jeff
http://www.happytrees.org

Well I want a screensaver because I leave my machine unattended for long durations for downloads so I don't want the screen to "burn out". Also if there is a way to configure power saving mode in IceWM, I'd be glad to know.

I hate turning off and turning on the monitor constantly. It draws a heavy load of current each time and I'm sure it can't be good for the monitor life and besides my UPS keeps failing each time I turn on the monitor...

As for importing menus, it's my last priority, but so far there doesn't seem to be any mechanism to import the menus from KDE... I've checked out iceconf and icepref and neither have an option to do so.

Thanks for the other tips.:)

Hi Harishankar and zymos,

"...big fan of icewm..."

Don't mean to threadjack, but would you mind posting a few notes about what you think are the best features of Icewm? E.g. speed? convenience?
I don't really have time to try many window managers.
Being new, I settled in with kde (easy for beginners). Use WindowMaker a bit.
Would like to switch to something more light-weight than kde. I mainly do office type work but like to play with audio as well.
Would love to hear your thoughts about Icewm.

Well monitors do have the buring screen problem anymore, and they dont save any power,. they solved that quite some time ago. To set auto monitor power save add [ Option "dpms"] in the [Section "Monitor"] of /etc/X11/XF86Config. To set the turn off times add
{{
# Set the basic blanking screen saver timeout.

Option "blank time" "10" # 10 minutes

# Set the DPMS timeouts. These are set here because they are global
# rather than screen-specific. These settings alone don't enable DPMS.
# It is enabled per-screen (or per-monitor), and even then only when
# the driver supports it.

Option "standby time" "20"
Option "suspend time" "30"
Option "off time" "60"
}}

in the [Section "ServerFlags"]

I would probably edit the the menu files manually then. juct cut and paste from kde's file.

Why i like IceWM?
my main goal is light weight. I dont want to upgrade my system ever year because micro$oft decides to make there software biger and less effeicent.
ice is extreally light, less than a meg. yet has great functionality. Most WMs i just found to be anoining. I am very picky. I found the taskbar style to be the the most effiecent for me. I also like geoshells taskbar but its for windows, and XP patented the "grouping" function, so that sucks for us. IceWM's configuration is quite diverse, allowing configuration of almost everthing, however it is simple enough to not take to long to find what you like and set it. I liked blackbox's taskbar also. It is similar to geoshell, however it only shows the top most program in the bar, which i could not understand. so that is my thoughts.

and just in case you care here are a list of my perfered programs
text: vim and gvim
audio, video: mplayer
file managment: xterm or xfe or rox filer
the rest are ether obvious or i dont really like what i use, but its the best ive found


jeff
http://www.happytrees.org

For loading programs when I start Icewm, I just edit /etc/X11/xinit/xinit.rc for system-wide stuff. XScreensaver can be started there if you want to. For file management, I really like emelFM. It is really basic cause it doesn't use any wierd icons or anything, and is extremely configurable. To convert KDE menus to IceWM menus, there is a python program called kde2ice. It doesn't really do a good job though. I would just create a menu file with what you use and a few that you don't at /etc/icewm/menu and add stuff when you need to. IceWM will filter everything that isn't on your system, so your menus stay clean.

Hi zymos,
Thanks for the comments.
Just logged on with Ice and noticed it really is quick.
I think it's faster than WindowMaker.
Also, unlike in Harishankers's distro, in my Suse 9.1 the main Suse menu is already in Icewm (but not my user-modified Kde menu).
I could become a fan just for the speed.
(Just have to face that learning curve again.)

Thanks for all the input here! Yes, I'll try xscreensaver for screen saver and also use the IceWM startup script to start frequently used programs.

IceWM is cool. I'll probably use IceWM and KDE alternatively until I get used to it.

Yes, IceWM is really excellent. I made some measurements with my laptop, and IceWM was even lighter than Fluxbox, while being IMO a lot more usable for beginners.

For a file-manager, you may want to look into ROX Filer. It is my favourite even with bigger PCs and bigger environments.

For the menus, you may try and use the Mandriva RPM (using "alien" maybe) because Mandriva is also using the Debian menu system (last time I checked it was), and its IceWM ships with Integrated Debian-style menus.

Yves.

Right now I've gone back to KDE because installing XDM seems to have reverted things to default. I might want to uninstall XDM or try to tweak it to figure out how to load IceWM by default or even have a choice between KDE and IceWM.

For a file manager, I might look at gentoo.

Been experimenting with Ice since yesterday.
two annoyances I have not been able to work out:

1. How to stop Ice from displaying the window position co-ordinates when windows are moved.

2. How to get a bigger font in xterm. The option "-fs [font size]" is not working for me.
Anybody know how to set the font?
I just feel silly using big fat Konsole within Icewm.
I have read the xterm man page for hours and still no wiser.
there is the option "-fn [font] " but what goes in there?
I tried one of those long font names full of asterisks that I don't understand, like
-adobe-helvetica-medium-r-normal-*-12-*-*-*-p-*-iso10646-1
but it didn't want to launch with that.
Pardon my newbie-ness.

I've found out how to get my Debian menu into IceWM.

Just used the command
And it did the trick!!!

Debian is the ultimate...

No need to uninstall xdm.
I use gdm with fluxbox or icewm or E17.
I have kde on my system but dont use it.I like krusader and k3b as well as kasablanca and some other qt type stuff.
as root,do
rcconf
untick anything you dont want to start,like kdm or whatever.
Installing gdm or kdm will ask you if you want it to be default startup and there you can have options to start ice by default or last used.
Gdm is more tweakable and the options are just what the doctor ordered.Its themeable too.If you remove xdm expect all of x to go with it.So just leave xdm and install another one.KDM will load ice bydefault also if thats what you want.

I already removed xdm and have no problems. I just boot off the command line and use startx to initialize X.

I am just used to logging in into a text shell these days :p