22 Nov 2005

Choice: the spice of desktop Linux

Filed under: Software and Technology by Hari
Posted at 19:17:13 IST (last updated: 16 Jul 2008 @ 21:05:52 IST)
Having always been satisfied with KDE as the desktop for my Linux box, I decided to experiment with other options in this area, particularly the lightweight window managers. I've been discovering quite a few good ones and I thought I would share the results here.

I'll say right away that if you're perfectly happy with KDE or Gnome, there's no reason to switch. As a matter of fact, I maintain that KDE is the current champion of desktop Linux and I won't be totally giving it up either. However, what I can offer you is a glimpse of some of the alternatives to the two heavyweights of desktop Linux should you be curious enough to experiment. And for those with older hardware and slower machines, these desktop alternatives could really be handy because they're lightweight, configurable and extremely useable. I'll focus on IceWM here, because that's what I've picked as my window manager of choice. Here's a screenshot of IceWM on my Debian desktop with the rox file manager running.

IceWM screenshot

IceWM is actually like a good cross between a WM and a DE. Unlike most WMs, it comes with a few bells and whistles like a little taskbar and panel to hold your minimized and background apps and an application "start" menu. But what really attracted me was the GUI IceWM configuration editor and the menu editor icepref and iceme respectively: no messing around with config files. The basic configuration is quite simple and the UI is very intuitive, especially for users of DEs like KDE and even Windows. What would attract many people is the fact that it comes with a large number of themes. I've chosen SilverXP as my theme because it looks sleek and nice. I've also configured the focus to follow the mouse and made the menus navigable without clicking. This gives IceWM a smoother feel. A couple of things to note, though. Like most lightweight WMs it doesn't come with an integrated session manager, meaning that you cannot save session data whenever you exit IceWM. You will probably need to install and configure one to suit your needs. Another is the fact that you may need to manually create and manage your applications menu in IceWM because your distro might not use a common menu configuration file which works will most WMs and DEs. Luckily in Debian, I was able to solve this problem by using the update-menus utility which creates a "Debian" menu with all the apps installed on my system. Thirdly you will need to configure xscreensaver daemon to load automatically at startup if you want a screensaver option. These issues might not be serious, but they could potentially annoy people used to the conveniences of a full-fledged desktop environment which are taken for granted. The menu problem, in particular, could be a real show-stopper for some users. But on the whole, I would say that IceWM is a minimum fuss WM and you will probably find that you need to do very little initial work to get it to work the way you want.

So would I recommend IceWM? If you want an easy to use WM that's a lot lighter than a full fledged desktop environment, I think you can't go too wrong with IceWM. However, before you make a decision, you might be interested in checking out others like WindowMaker, Enlightenment, and even Xfce which is a full-fledged but lightweight DE. As a matter of fact, I use Xfce on Slackware and I find it to be an excellent desktop environment too. Enlightenment is another good looking GUI and if you're fond of eye-candy it would be a good choice. However, I am not the biggest fan of fluxbox, because it's just too basic by default and requires quite a bit of work initially to become useable. However it has a dedicated fanbase and being extremely lean and mean, it should be really responsive on older hardware.

I've tried them all and I've chosen IceWM. You might pick another one. There are quite a few WMs and DEs I've not even mentioned here and which I haven't had time to play with: the number of options are overwhelming. Did I mention freedom of choice? I'm discovering it every day with Linux.

13 comment(s)

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  1. fluxbox rocks!

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 22 Nov 2005 @ 20:56:09 IST #
  2. Does it though? I thought it was too barebones by default. But it may have been Debian's default configuration for fluxbox. In Slackware it was slightly different.Can you give me some tips and tricks for Fluxbox, though? I could not get myself to go through a lot of configuration just to get a decent desktop going.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 22 Nov 2005 @ 21:05:13 IST #
  3. well, i personally hate icons and hate large task bars. i like the fact that i right click anywhere and get a menu to my most commonly used programs while in X, if i don't have it there, i tend to just open up a terminal to launch the program. though, at most, i pick a color theme that suits me, might have a background image and that's all i need. don't need any thing else on my desktop, so it's just really a matter of preference.my only pointer would be to highly customize your menu and possibly your background image.

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 22 Nov 2005 @ 22:10:05 IST #
  4. Drew, have you put a screenshot of your fluxbox desktop anywhere? Just curious. I'd like to know exactly how you got it to look like.Also you use Slackware, right?

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 22 Nov 2005 @ 22:14:55 IST #
  5. i don't have a screenshot handy at the moment but can take one and post it once i do. and yes, i use slackware.

    Comment by drew (visitor) on 22 Nov 2005 @ 23:05:23 IST #
  6. I tend to agree with Drew's views - taskbars & icons are things I can (and do) live without. As you've no doubt noticed from my screenshots. . . Oh, and I didn't see FVWM in that list of WMs! :P

    Comment by Dominic (visitor) on 23 Nov 2005 @ 04:30:44 IST #
  7. I use KDE (not Gnome, despite photos to the contrary ;)) and have set it up so that clicking the moddle button brings up the menu, in the same way as the right-click works in Fluxbox.I think it's all down to what you like. KDE is easy to set up, Fluxbox takes a little longer. If you have the time, the first few times you try Flux, you can make it look exactly as you want it.

    Comment by Ray (visitor) on 23 Nov 2005 @ 05:34:30 IST #
  8. Dominic, I mentioned that I didn't have time to play with all the DEs and WMs. I've not tried out FVWM at all. I just didn't have time.Ray, yes. Fluxbox appears to be highly configurable. As I mentioned, I should give it a try again at some point of time.Drew, actually I viewed quite a few screenshots in the Fluxbox website and it appears to be quite a cool WM. Just needs a lot of initial configuration I guess to get it to work the way I want.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 23 Nov 2005 @ 07:30:07 IST #
  9. Yes, I had given this a try when I installed Linux on an old 200Mb disk in my college, and was quite impressed. Unfortunately, the others who used the system (read the non-Linux enthu guys) found it too flummoxing, and had to do away with the system from the computer centre. There are always ups and downs being a sys admin :)

    Comment by Sudipta Chatterjee (visitor) on 25 Nov 2005 @ 12:50:02 IST #
  10. Sudipta, do you mean IceWM or Fluxbox?

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 25 Nov 2005 @ 14:08:08 IST #
  11. It was IceWM

    Comment by Sudipta Chatterjee (visitor) on 13 Dec 2005 @ 21:46:55 IST #
  12. Yup - KDE definitely rules! I tried out Enlightenment (DR-17?) and that was also pretty nice - eye candy at a much less resource-hogging rate. I found the same thing with Xfce - both it and E are quite nice alternatives.I liked Fluxbox's speed, although I was never really attracted to it. As for the others - I haven't given them a go yet! :)(Ps. In my previous comment I meant the fifth most recent post! ;))

    Comment by J_K9 (visitor) on 24 Dec 2005 @ 07:31:03 IST #
  13. Thanks for dropping here, J_K9. I'll add your blog link to my list of blog links here. :)

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 24 Dec 2005 @ 08:28:47 IST #

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