- This topic has 39 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated Jun 6-4:49 am by olsztyn.
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Brian Masinick
IceWM is an excellent window manager. It’s been my favorite window manager for as long as I have been exploring them.
It does not come with a lot of graphical features and tools, but it also works well and doesn’t require a lot of resources.
You may be surprised at how easy it is to configure yourself. While on one hand it doesn’t include fancy setup tools, on the other hand simply putting images in your own directory and pointing to their location using the appropriate configuration files, that is all that is needed.
There are not a lot of notes on what to do but there are a few examples that can be found on the Internet and hopefully sufficient information in the antiX IceWM system directory.
The window manager setups available with antiX each have text editable configuration files (true for IceWM, fluxbox, JWM and others as well).
- This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by Brian Masinick.
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Brian Masinick
anticapitalista
However it seems not easy to find clean and crisp, professionally looking theme…
Thanks again and Regards…You should take a look at the default IceWM theme on Debian.
Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.
antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.
olsztyn
You should take a look at the default IceWM theme on Debian.
If this is the same as default on antiX I happen to like it the best so far…
Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parametersanticapitalista
No it isn’t. Click on Default theme to see Debian’s default.
Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.
antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.
BobC
On Default, you might want to check to see if the Minimize, Maximize and Close boxes are working.
My suggestion, based on the Op liking Fluxbox Radiant, would be Clearview Orange of whatever size fits his monitor
These are interesting suggestions anti and BobC… Thank you!
Now, when I have been downloading and testing various IceWM themes I experienced an interesting IceWM crash. Apparently a theme (do not remember which as there were so many) was rogue or buggy
that IceWM crashed and gave me two options instead of desktop – Retry or Reboot. As Retry just re-displayed the same options, Reboot option logged me off instead. Re-logging replayed the same issue.
The only way to restore IceWM desktop was to F1 to Fluxbox on log-in screen, then File manager to IceWM themes folder and delete the latest, most suspicious themes. After that upon logging off and switching to IceWM I was able to get back IceWM desktop.
Clearly there seems to be missing some error handling of loading bad theme.
However I want to be clear that I am not bringing this up as an issue but rather as an interesting observation…
Thanks again and Regards…Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parametersanticapitalista, I investigated the missing boxes from Debian’s default theme by doing a Debian XFCE install, adding IceWM, then upgrading it to 1.6.5 testing.
In the antiX version, we are missing /usr/share/icewm/themes/default folder and its contents. It didn’t contain any linked files or anything tricky that I noticed. I can email you a zip of the folder if it will save you time/effort. Someone else had brought that up a month or two ago, but found another they liked, so I didn’t dig deeper at the time. While there, I tried all the themes Debian 1.6.5 had included, and NanoBlue looked pretty nice, too.olsztyn, Yes, you are now beta testing themes, so you should expect a few glitches as some may not have been tried with current software. I’m glad to see you found a way to get back to normal. May I suggest if you find a really nice one that also works without any problems, share the name and location you found it so others can try it as well.
Thanks
BobC- This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by BobC.
olsztyn, Yes, you are now beta testing themes, so you should expect a few glitches as some may not have been tried with current software. I’m glad to see you found a way to get back to normal. May I suggest if you find a really nice one that also works without any problems, share the name and location you found it so others can try it as well.
BobC, I did go though many IceWM themes in search for the best for my use and I understand I cannot expect all to work perfectly. This is on top of personal preferences requirements…
In terms of malfunctioning, aside from some crashing desktop I reported above, my observation is:
– With Hide Toolbar option on, which appears to be ON in IceWM preferences some themes seem to never pop toolbar even hovering mouse pointer at bottom of screen persistently.
– Many of those themes which do not exhibit the above problem and do show toolbar upon hovering mouse pointer at bottom, upon changing the Hide Toolbar toggle in Preferences do not seem to hold such toggle as OFF and at some point revert to ON.
– When showing (Right Mouse click) menu on desktop, none of themes appear to pop toolbar when hovering mouse pointer at bottom. This could be by design, whether intentional or unintentional, but does not seem to be the right behavior.
– The three IceWM (settings related) menu entries (Focus, Preferences and Themes) should not be separately listed on the main menu but should be rather submenus under one combined ‘IceWM Settings’ menu, like it is in Fluxbox.Just a few observations…
Thanks and Regards.Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_ParametersI have found that the toolbar doesn’t pop up initially on mine, and then after that it works. Ctrl+Esc always works.
Its been a while since I tried many themes. There is now a thing called prefoverrides which might help you with some of the quirks.
I agree that having one menu option for IceWM settings with submenus for the three options under it would be better.
You could submit a request for these on the icewm github site.
- This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by BobC.
Brian Masinick
Since the themes you have tried do not seem to appeal to your preferences I have another suggestion.
Something that I often do, whether I am using IceWM or a desktop such as Xfce that is used in MX Linux, I often copy images to my own Photo directory. Then I use a file or image viewer.
I just looked at Nemo, a simple file manager and it allows you to select images for the wallpaper. I’m pretty sure that SpaceFM and PCmanFM have similar technology.
(Probably rox filer as well)--
Brian MasinickBtw, I just installed updates and anti has included a new version of IceWM as well as the default theme that was having trouble, as well as a number of other updates.
Thanks anti 🙂
Since the themes you have tried do not seem to appeal to your preferences I have another suggestion.
Well… Although neither is perfectly fitting my preferences such perfection is not an absolute requirement. I just pick something I can live with…
So, in terms of numerous themes I have tried I settled on one. Not perfect but good enough. The same was previously under Fluxbox. Neither was perfect to my preference but one was good enough.
Fluxbox was simpler but very functional and rock solid in my experience.
Now, due to being forced to adopt IceWM due to re-emerged Fluxbox issues with Chromium/Chrome dropdown menus I am trying to make IceWM usable as much as I can. One annoying thing about IceWM is that it is somewhat buggy from my experience, behavior is not rock solid as expected, such as:
– Toolbar not always popping up when hovering mouse at bottom of screen, sometimes even after multiple attempts. Eventually I can make it appear though… This never happened to me in Fluxbox.
– Some themes are so buggy that they crash IceWM desktop for good until they are removed by logging in via different than IceWM desktop.
– One time IceWM desktop became permanently corrupted after rebooting from persistence=all to persistence=none, therefore Live instance needed to be rebuilt.My overall impression is these desktop managers are apparently not being maintained any more, in terms of continual their development and fixing, no matter what they say. So they are what they are and we have no choice but put up with various their quirks and bugs.
Now, as soon as something is working and predictably so, I am making multiple copies so as not to lose such working state…Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_ParametersBtw, I just installed updates and anti has included a new version of IceWM as well as the default theme that was having trouble, as well as a number of other updates.
Thanks much BobC and anti!
When will this update become available?
Thanks and Regards…Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_ParametersThe reason I posted that was because anti or one of the other devs had already made it available for everyone, including you.
Your comment on IceWM not being actively maintained is certainly untrue, as the previous release was about a month ago, which anti put into the repo at my request. Or maybe you weren’t referring to IceWM, I suppose.
It’s reasonable to expect the maintainer’s included themes to be stable, and if not, for them to include any fixes you find, but I wouldn’t necessarily expect that level of quality from ones off free websites that were user created (some likely very good, others maybe not so much), some almost 20 years ago. But they are free, so you get what you paid for, and if you improve them and post the improvements, you are paying it forward, by helping raise the quality bar yet another notch.
I just like it is all… I’ve tried lots of others, but IceWM is my favorite.
- This reply was modified 2 years, 11 months ago by BobC.
afghan
I use IceWM and find no problems with the default themes. If you’re looking for something more then try here. Plenty you can try out. Download the theme files and unpack them into /usr/share/icewm/themes/. You can also have it in a convenient place and create a symbolic link to it if you want to tweak it.
Have fun.
Beware of people who knows nothing; they are the ones that won't know that they know nothing.
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