IceWM

After a light window manager roundup in the latest LXF (Issue #103) I decided to give IceWM another shot.  I had looked at it once before and found it to both be bare and lacking any programs in the IceWM->Programs menu.  It loaded up ridiculously fast, which was nice.  Unfortunately, for some strange reason, loading up Rythmbox also loads up the Gnome background.  I understand that the Gnome libraries are loaded for whatever necessary reasons when Rhythmbox loads up, but I think it’s pretty rotten behavior to usurp the desktop background!  I wonder if this is worth filing a bug report about with Gnome developers.

Program load a bit faster, but not orders of magnitude faster.  The IceWM menu loads up faster than the Gnome menu, although this is less of a problem in the most recent Gnome builds.  Like many other small Window Managers IceWM is extremely themable  and can be made to look like a Mac OSX, Windows XP, or anything else.  I have read in LXF and elsewhere that it’s very, very easy to come up with a new theme in The GIMP.  This is promising….

Yes, your Pidgin, Rhythmbox, etc icons appear in the taskbar.

In the short amount of time I’ve given it today, it appears that the only real downside is that PulseAudio appears not to work - at least not the GUI I usually use.

I’ll be giving it an extended trial this week as I’m a little sick of Gnome bloat and even a bit sick of Compiz recently….

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Tags: WindowManager, IceWM, themes

• Icewm
• Themes
• Window-Manager