FVWM-Crystal
FVWM-Crystal aims to create an easy to use, eye-candy, functional, but also powerful ultra-fast desktop environment for GNU/Linux or other Unix-like operating systems, based on FVWM desktop environment for Linux . FVWM is one of the oldest window managers for the X Window System. It is actually so old that even the creators don’t remember what the first letter of the acronym stands for.
FVWM-Crystal can be used even on very old machines, thus it is a noticeable alternative to popular desktop choices like XFCE or Fluxbox. FVWM-Crystal, has been originally created as an FVWM theme, however, it evolved to something much more complex. Currently Crystal is integrated with numerous external tools like music players, desktop toolbars, file managers, terminals and more, so we decided to call it a minimalistic desktop environment with FVWM as the window manager.
Why Crystal?
- FVWM-Crystal is fast. It boots-up a few times quicker than GNOME or KDE and takes up a dozen times less memory. This is however a feature of most lightweight window managers. Nothing too fancy.
- FVWM-Crystal looks really great. The whole desktop is transparent by default, including application panels, clock and menus. There are some great themes available, as well, making the desktop look like Windows or MacOS. It has its own original Crystal look as well. This is something already.
- FVWM-Crystal is convenient, thanks to very configurable shortcuts, well-selected functionality and neat integration with lots of external applications, like file managers (ROX-Filer, Nautilus), tray panels (trayer, habak), multimedia players (XMMS, mpd or Quod Libet) and many more.
- FVWM-Crystal is highly configurable. You can alter almost any desktop function: windows buttons, main menu and sub-menus, virtual desktops, shortcuts, mouse behavior and everything else you can think of - including the layout and the meaning of buttons - with just a few mouse clicks.
FVWM-Crystal Configuration
Crystal introduced a few one-click configuration options available straight from the main menu. You can change the windows style, color theme, recipe, desktop wallpaper, screen-saver and the default applications (music player, terminal, etc) using the System menu (the one with a Crystal image). From the same menu one can also make a screenshot (with or without a delay, saved in ~/.fvwm-crystal/screenshots by default), log out or reboot/shutdown the system.
For all remaining configuration options, manual editing of configuration files is required. The good part of this is that the Crystal config files are very well documented. It’s fairly easy to learn how to use them for adjusting the desktop look and feel. Still, the lack of advanced configuration wizard (known from GNOME, KDE, or even IceWM) is a little problem, especially for the newcomers.
Coming back to the configuration files, the Crystal configuration is located in /usr/local/share/fvwm-crystal/fvwm. Personal settings are located in ~/.fvwm-crystal. It’s a good practice to copy each file you need to edit from the system-wide folder to the corresponding location in ~/.fvwm-crystal, so that you always know which files has been modified. This way you also keep the original configuration for all users and you can switch back to it any moment you want (by simply removing ~/.fvwm-crystal).
The FVWM-Crystal configuration is divided into a few folders:
- * Applications – contains a list of programs to be displayed in the Crystal menu,
- * colorsets – the color sets describe the color of foreground text, menu items, shadows and transparency level of each component,
- * components – this is the place where all the low-level stuff can be configured, more details about this folder later on in this article,
- * decorations – window decorations and scripts for different button models (FVWM-Crystal, MS Windows, MacOS, OS/2, NextStep),
- * icons – icons of the applications, used in the menu, on the applications panel, on the window bar and in the virtual desktops applet,
- * locale – translation files for desktop and menu (in different languages),
- * preferences – personal settings (which we can also change using the Crystal menu mentioned before) including the list of apps to be launched during the X window system startup,
- * recipes – recipes are FVWM scripts which describe the desktop layout - things like the main menu, clock, applications panel, virtual desktop applet, etc,
- * scripts – scripts used by Crystal, by default we have here some scripts used by the MPD application,
- * wallpapers – one of the places where Crystal expects to find the desktop wallpapers, another two are /usr/share/wallpapers or ~/wallpapers.
The folders which are especially interesting are components and preferences. They consist of those configuration options that are usually most frequently used. All key bindings are defined in components/bindings. The first thing I do after installing Crystal is changing the default desktop switching key in file Pager-Horizontal, since I’m used to ALT + 1-10 combination.
Another important file is preferences/Startup. This is the place where you can put all the apps you want started on Crystal boot-up. Sample configuration is provided with Crystal. It’s enough to comment out the required lines. (remove #sign)
There is one more file which can be very useful - it’s userconfig in home Crystal root (~/.fvwm-crystal). You can put any FVWM command there, but it’s good to keep this file clean and modify the appropriate ones, leaving userconfig for quick hacks only.
Included applications:
- FVWM as a window manager and "main core"
- ROX-Filer as file manager (manages icons on the desktop)
- xterm, aterm, mrxvt or urxvt as terminal emulators
- MPD or XMMS as music players (there's built-in support for controlling these programs) and several other tools for different functions, like setting a wallpaper or making screen shots.
Registration Date: Thursday 02/16/2006 at 02:15 CET
License: GNU General Public License V2 or later
Development Status: 5 - Production/Stable
Helpful Links
FVWM Beginners Guide http://www.zensites.net/fvwm/guide/
More screenshots here http://fvwm-crystal.org/screenshots.html
More information here: http://crystal-audio.sourceforge.net/ http://fvwm.lair.be/ and here: http://ironphoenix.org/tril/fvwm/configs/
Source: http://polishlinux.org/apps/fvwm-crystal-speed-and-transparency/