Reminiscing about fvwm

Inspired by Chris Siebenmann talking about his setup and reminiscing about MGR, let’s jump in the Epoch and set the dial for 2002.

I was in college, absolutely blown away by the customizability of X11.  You could have a “full desktop” like CDE on the Suns, or KDE/Gnome on my home computer (variously Linux and FreeBSD); or else you could choose to run with only a window manager.  Those ranged from quasi-desktops like WindowMaker and Fluxbox, down to minimalist options like Ratpoison (so named because it was intended to be used without the mouse), with what I can only describe as “normal” options in between.

In this milieu, I found fvwm2 and really dug into that.  The configuration makes it more of a “window manager construction kit” than a fully-defined window manager.  (In contrast, one could barely do anything but theme Metacity.)  I put my window title bars down the left side, because it let me have ten more pixels of vertical space!  And, let’s be honest, just because I could.

I had keyboard shortcuts for everything.  Nobody in Unix space used Macs in those days; we were busy calling the iMac a “lampshade.” Therefore, Linux applications all used ctrl/alt/shift for shortcuts, and left the Windows key (Super) free for my window management shortcuts.  Oh, and I think I drew my own icons, so I could have Amiga-style raise/lower buttons in the title bars.

I also found out I had limits.  I configured a 3x3 grid of virtual desktops each with 3x3 pages on them, but even “9 places to look for windows” was absurdly oversized.  In practice, I only ever used 3 pages on 1 desktop.  By the time I wrote Layer Juggling, I had forgotten about fvwm’s “pages” layer entirely.

I had a great run with fvwm and WindowMaker for 2–4 years there, but it soon became clear I was trading features (like having a volume control, or instantly applying themes) for an environment that nobody else could use.  Meanwhile, I was losing familiarity with Windows, which would slow me down if I were using anyone else’s computer.  I switched to KDE by 2004, and I would eventually, relucantly, capitulate and try Gnome again in 2008.  More or less just in time for Gnome and Canonical to blow everything up again!

Ironically, over time, there has been less need to use other peoples’ computers.  Besides which, I have kept using Dvorak for 20+ years now, despite that being a much bigger issue when switching systems.