HOWTO: IceWM basic configuration

[Member macondo]

HOWTO: IceWM Configuration (Verbose)

Obviously, this is a subjective matter. There are different ways of doing this,
I like to edit the files.

IceWM comes by default with alt-tab to switch windows, alt-F10 to maximize,
alt-F9 to minimize the screen, the Windows key will give you the main menu. In
the main menu click on Settings > Focus and choose your favorite, (i like
“Sloppy”). Do it again, and click on Themes and choose.

NOTE: winkey (Windows key) + space bar will give a ‘run box’ at the taskbar by
default. from where you can launch apps a la gmrun.

If you go to the icewm site: http://www.icewm.org -> IceWM Manual you get all the keybinds
and mouse commands. It’s a very worthwile read, it will teach you how to lock
your screen (xtrlock), move a window to another workspace, screensavers, and so
forth, how to start an app in a different workspace when you enter the X system,
etc.

Congratulations! you’re ready for prime time. Just point and click.

But if you want to increase your speed, if you’re a geek wannabe, if the Windows
way of working bring tears to your eyes, then KEYBINDINGS are for you.

My configuration uses 4 files: preferences, keys, winoptions, and prefoverride.

Preferences deals with the window manager’s behavior.
Keys with keybindings.
Winoptions with options that alter the windows.
Prefoverride changes the default keybinds for the ones you like.

You CANNOT edit the global file, so you have to create them and put them in your /home.

The global file resides in /usr/share/icewm/preferences where all the
preferences for IceWM are, copy/paste the ones relevant to your way of working,
and put them in your ~/.icewm/preferences.

Now create these files in your /home, and edit them as USER. The directory .icewm already exists.

$ touch .icewm/preferences
$ touch .icewm/keys
$ touch .icewm/winoptions
$ touch .icewm/prefoverride


PREFERENCES
So now all you have to do is edit .icewm/preferences as USER.

$ nano .icewm/preferences


Choose the preferences you like from the global file
(/usr/share/icewm/preferences) and copy/paste them into your .icewm/preferences.

Every preference consists of 2 lines, both of which are commented (#), uncomment
(erase the hash mark) on the second line of the preference, and add 1 or 0
(zero) at the end.

1 = enables the preference
0 = disables it.

save/exit and RESTART icewm – Menu >Logout >Restart icewm for it to take
effect.

Clear as mud?

Example:

# Hide title bar when maximized
#HideTitleBarWhenMaximized=0 # 0/1


After editing it, it should look like this if you wanted it enabled:


# Hide title bar when maximized
HideTitleBarWhenMaximized=1


Restart icewm, restart icewm, restart icewm 😀

Me? I copied/pasted my personal preferences I stored
in my web mail. It takes me 5 minutes to config icewm.

Here’s my .icewm/preferences:

OpaqueMove=0
OpaqueResize=0
SmartPlacement=1
MenuMouseTracking=1
ModSuperIsCtrlAlt=1
UseMouseWheel=1
QuickSwitch=1
AutoReloadMenus=1
ShowProgramsMenu=1
ShowThemesMenu=1
ShowHelp=1
TerminalCommand="lxterminal"
ShutdownCommand="sudo poweroff"
RebootCommand="sudo reboot"
WorkspaceNames=" 1 ", " 2 "

TaskBarAutoHide=0
TaskBarShowClock=1
TaskBarShowAPMStatus=0
TaskBarAtTop=0
TaskBarShowAPMStatus=0
TaskBarShowAPMTime=0
TaskBarShowMailboxStatus=0
TaskBarShowWindows=1
TaskBarShowShowDesktopButton=0
TaskBarShowTray=1
TaskBarShowWindowIcons=0
TaskBarShowCPUStatus=1
TaskBarShowNetStatus=0
TaskBarShowCollapseButton=1
TaskBarWorkspacesLeft=1
TimeFormat="%R"
TaskBarShowShowDesktopButton=0
TaskBarShowWindowListMenu=1
TaskBarShowMailboxStatus=0
TaskBarMailboxStatusBeepOnNewMail=0
NormalTaskBarFontName="-*-sans-medium-r-*-*-*-100-*-*-*-*-*- *"
NormalTaskBarFontNameXft="sans-serif:size=10"
ActiveTaskBarFontName="-*-sans-r-*-*-*-100-*-*-*-*-*-*"
ActiveTaskBarFontNameXft="sans-serif:size=10"
HideTitleBarWhenMaximized=0

save/exit your favorite editor.

KEYS
Same. Choose what you need. I erased everything and pasted my keybinds.
This is my .icewm/keys:

$ nano .icewm/keys


Example:

key "F1" lxterminal
key "F2" xfe
key "Ctrl+f" firefox
key "Ctrl+g" google-chrome-stable
key "F7" mirage
key "F8" hexchat
key "Print" lxterminal -e scrot -cd 10

#Sound
key "Ctrl+Down" amixer -q set Master 9%- # lower volume
key "Ctrl+Up" amixer -q set Master 9%+ # raise volume

Save/exit your editor.

Ctrl+Up arrow increases volume.

Ctrl+Down arrow decreases volume

If you get no sound go to alsamixer as USER and unmute with M key.

<code

$ alsamixer

Needless to say choose your favorite applications and keybinds.

I have no use for the Fn keys, but if you do, just add Alt or Ctrl or Super (winkey) example:

key “Alt+ l” leafpad
key “Ctrl+f” firefox

SOUND
A word about sound. In my case, I haven’t had good luck with Pulseaudio, so I use ALSA.

[code]

$ apt-cache search alsa
[/code]

Installed the alsa packages plus aumix and menu.

# apt-get install aumix menu alsa-lib alsa-plugins alsa-utils


Config the sound volume:

$ alsamixer


Unmute sound with letter M

WINOPTIONS
Go to .icewm/winoptions and paste this, I’m only interested in
maximizing my windows:


$ nano .icewm/winoptions


lxterminal.Lxterminal.startMaximized: 1
hexchat.Hexchat.startMaximized: 1
firefox.Firefox.startMaximized: 1
xfe.Xfe.startMaximized: 1
mirage.Mirage.startMaximized: 1


save/exit

PREFOVERRIDE


$ nano .icewm/prefoverride


And paste this:

KeyWinClose="F4"
KeyWinMaximize="F12"


save/exit

So now I close applications with F4 (boom! gone) and maximize the windows with
one key (F12), instead of the default Alt+F10.

THEMES
I’m not much for themes and eye-candy, my thing is simplicity and speed.

Go to http://www.box-look.org, click on “icewm themes” in the left column, if you know
the name of the theme, click on “alphabetical”. Click on Download. There are
over 400 themes for IceWM in this site. There are a bunch on the right column on
the site.Download the theme file /home/<yourusername>/Downloads (automatic with
Firefox).

I launch xfe (my file manager) as ROOT, I find the theme in Downloads,
right-click on it, and choose “Extract to” in the next screen at the bottom I
type the location where to be extracted, (/usr/share/icewm/themes) press
Enter, and that’s it, the new theme appears in Settings>Themes from the main
menu. Click on it and you’ll have a new theme immediately.

NOTE: Restart icewm every time you do changes on the window manager.

• This topic was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by macondo.
• This topic was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by macondo.

antiX Core 64 Bit Runit IceWM

"Sometimes a man finds his destiny on the road he took to avoid it."

[Moderator BobC]

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If dmenu is installed (it is in antiX full at least) it makes for a nicer Win+Space by adding this line to keys

key "Super+Space"           /bin/sh -c "$(ls -lL <code>echo $PATH | tr : ' '</code> 2>/dev/null | awk 'NF>2 && $1 ~ /^[^d].*x/ {print $NF}' | sort -u | dmenu -b -fn 10x20 -nb black -nf white -sb grey -sf black)"

[Member macondo]

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IceWM comes with ‘menu’ by default, just press Winkey (Super) to bring it on 🙂

antiX Core 64 Bit Runit IceWM

"Sometimes a man finds his destiny on the road he took to avoid it."

[Member Xecure]

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BobC wrote:

If dmenu is installed (it is in antiX full at least) it makes for a nicer Win+Space by adding this line to keys

Examples of dmenu:
Launching geany:

Launching synaptic

It also suggests on the right side of the box names of commands, programs, files, etc.

key "Super+Space" /bin/sh -c "$(ls -lL echo $PATH | tr : ' ' 2>/dev/null | awk 'NF>2 && $1 ~ /^[^d].*x/ {print $NF}' | sort -u | dmenu -b -fn 10x20 -nb black -nf white -sb grey -sf black)"

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by Xecure.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member Xecure]

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Forget it. I cannot quote the string with the forum software. It does whatever it wants.

Edit: Forgot to say, dmenu is included in the package suckless-tools (I believe it is not included in antiX core).

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by Xecure.

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1. icewm-dmenu.txt

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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These are all good suggestions. Remember, since these are configuration files, note a couple of things: any time you see the word “configuration”, it also means “customization’. Therefore any application that has configuration, config, or any kind of text editable files, it means that you can modify it to suit your interests, or you can leave it alone and use it “as is”.

macondo, Xecure, and BobC frequently have useful examples and suggestions. Thank you, and many others who are also good community citizens by sharing ideas, which other people can use, modify, and contribute to both the usability and the understanding of software customization.

Keep doing what I feel is very useful, helpful work. Thanks again for sharing with us!

--
Brian Masinick

[Member macondo]

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Xecure: you’re right, I meant default in the full installation or not, anyways I usually install menu, sorry, my bad!

antiX Core 64 Bit Runit IceWM

"Sometimes a man finds his destiny on the road he took to avoid it."

[Member macondo]

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Here with Rapoison is only using around 400 MB RAM (pretty good)

$ inxi -Fz
System: Host: foo Kernel: 4.9.212-antix.1-amd64-smp x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Ratpoison 1.4.9
Distro: antiX-19.2-runit_x64-core Hannie Schaft 28 March 2020
Machine: Type: Desktop Mobo: MSI model: H81M-P33 (MS-7817) v: 1.0 serial: <filter> BIOS: American Megatrends v: 1.9
date: 03/30/2015
CPU: Topology: Dual Core model: Intel Pentium G3250 bits: 64 type: MCP L2 cache: 3072 KiB
Speed: 3200 MHz min/max: 800/3200 MHz Core speeds (MHz): 1: 3200 2: 1700
Graphics: Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics driver: i915 v: kernel
Display: server: X.Org 1.20.4 driver: i915 resolution: 1920×1080~60Hz
Message: Unable to show advanced data. Required tool glxinfo missing.
Audio: Device-1: Intel 8 Series/C220 Series High Definition Audio driver: snd_hda_intel
Sound Server: ALSA v: k4.9.212-antix.1-amd64-smp
Network: Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet driver: r8169
IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
Drives: Local Storage: total: 111.79 GiB used: 2.68 GiB (2.4%)
ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Kingston model: SA400S37120G size: 111.79 GiB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 24.99 GiB used: 2.68 GiB (10.7%) fs: xfs dev: /dev/sda4
ID-2: swap-1 size: 1.86 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/sda1
Sensors: Missing: Required tool sensors not installed. Check –recommends
Info: Processes: 142 Uptime: 8m Memory: 7.68 GiB used: 421.2 MiB (5.4%) Shell: bash inxi: 3.0.36

antiX Core 64 Bit Runit IceWM

"Sometimes a man finds his destiny on the road he took to avoid it."

[Member macondo]

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Forgive my ignorance, when formatting my howto, i used: [code] [/code] but it’s not working.
What am i doing wrong? thanks!

antiX Core 64 Bit Runit IceWM

"Sometimes a man finds his destiny on the road he took to avoid it."

[Member macondo]

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• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by macondo.

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1. 

   2020-06-30-112256_1920x1080_scrot.png
   

antiX Core 64 Bit Runit IceWM

"Sometimes a man finds his destiny on the road he took to avoid it."

[Member Xecure]

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macondo wrote:

Xecure: you’re right, I meant default in the full installation or not, anyways I usually install menu, sorry, my bad!

Nothing to be sorry about. BobC was sugesting dmenu as an alternative to:

macondo wrote:

NOTE: winkey (Windows key) + space bar will give a ‘run box’ at the taskbar by
default. from where you can launch apps a la gmrun.

I just wanted to illustrate what BobC meant.

About

macondo wrote:

Forgive my ignorance, when formatting my howto, i used: [code] [/code] but it’s not working.
What am i doing wrong? thanks!

there is a CODE text at the top of the textbox where you write replies. Select the text you want to to format as code and click CODE

Another alternative is writing < code > (without spaces)
< code > my code < /code >

About icewm, it was very interesting to leanr how one can set everything from scratch. I am to lazy for that and usually just edit out what i don’t want from the .icewm files that come with desktop-defaults-icewm-antix

• This reply was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by Xecure. Reason: adding image

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member Xecure]

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My post got lost, (spam filter probably).

About the code thing, I was going to repost but now I see you figured it out.

Select text, hit the CODE button at the top (on top of the textbos where you write replies).

Another option is using < code > mycode < /code > (remove spaces).

I forgot to say in the previous repply. Good job with the icewm tutorial!

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

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