Window operations functions

[Zoltán Kócsi]

> If you like fvwm, why not use fvwm with some Xfce components?  Fvwm
> seems to do everything you want.

First of all, thanks for the response.

Well, yes, chances are that I will stay with fvwm. However, there are
a few issues. One of them is that having been a Linux user since it
was distributed on a bunch of 1.44MB floppies in the early 90's I have
seen a lot of things to get abandoned and fvwm is old enough to go out
of fashion. I haven't touched my fvwm config file for some 6 years or
so, which means that disaster is looming. Nothing stays unchanged in
Linux that long unless it's considered dead. Time to work on some
contingency plans.

Second, fvwm lacks compositing, which sometimes can be very handy. I
find that for example window shadows and translucent moves are rather
useful. In theory you could do a compositing fvwm with Matisse but that
was a research experiment and not a mainstream feature for everyday use.

Third, fvwm is strictly a window manager. I wouldn't use most of what a
desktop environment offers - starting with the desktop itself. To me
that's just the background, the root window and nothing more. I don't
care about eye candy, ultra cool visual effects and the like. However,
a little awareness of the system can be useful and fvwm is not aware of
anything but the X server.

Xfce/Xfvw is a desktop environment, meaning that most of the feature
set is of no interest to me, but it's small and efficient and offers
the few things that I miss in fvwm. It is also relatively new, so
there's a chance that in a few years time I would not have to spend
half a day to find the source and half a week to hack it just to make
it compile with the then latest&greatest kernel, X server, C library,
compiler, header files, /proc/* format and so on. Besides, I like the
Xfce mouse :-)

Anyway, I think that for the time being I will indeed stay with fvwm,
as it does the most of what I need. I'll keep my fingers crossed that
fvwm stays alive and maybe it even gets the features I miss.
Alternatively, I hope that some new thing implements the old features.

Again, thanks for the response,

Regards,

Zoltan