[ale] Preferred Window managers

[Vernard Martin]

> I hope this isn't a religious issue, ie, vi vs. emacs, but I've been
> using the olvwm window manager as it was the most similar to my Sun
> Workstation at work.  Now that I'm no longer using the Sun Workstation,
> I'm curious as to the window managers others are using.  I'd be glad to
> poll the ALE list, requesting the info in a personal email and be glad
> to repost the results.  I'd appreciate it if those of you who feel
> strongly about one or the other window manager would let me know what
> you're running, and maybe why via personal email, I'll put it together
> and post it, if there is an interest.  Thanks.

THere is a good page on window managers that exists at the URL
           http://www.PLiG.org/xwinman/

There is lists about a dozen or so major window managers and another dozen
that arne't as widespread.

By far and large, Fvwm rev 1 and Fvwm rev 2 are the most widely used. THis
is because they are shipped in every linux distribution currently
available. Fvwm95 is probably next thanks to the RedHat environment called
the TheNextLevel which is based on Fvwm95. The one that is getting all the
attention though is Enlightenment. It started out as a hacked version of
Fvwm2 that allowed for the use of Pixmaps to create a more colorful
environment. It is now a complete rewrite from the ground up. It is pretty
impressive as far as the configurability but fundamentally, if you are not
into all the colorful stuff then its not that great. The concept of themes
ALA windows 95 is a neat feature though and one of the major reasons that
ENlightenment is successful. Last but not least is Afterstep which is a
window manager designed to emulate the look and feel of the NeXT OPENSTEP
environment but allowing enough configurability to add on some other useful
features. It has recenltly been superceeded by WindowMater which more
accurately emulates the original NeXTSTEP interface.

I personally prefer FVWM2.

Vernard
--
Vernard Martin, College of Computing Systems Research Laboratory
(vernard at cc.gatech.edu) http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~vernard/
College of Computing, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332
"Understanding is a three-edged sword: your side, their side and the truth."