Stacking Window Managers

FVWM – ICCCM-compliant multiple virtual desktop window manager

FVWM is a powerful ICCCM2 compliant multiple virtual desktop window manager for the X Window System. It was originally derived from twm.

It is designed to minimize memory consumption, provide a 3D look to window frames, and a virtual desktop.

There are 3rd party projects to provide automatic configuration and themes (FVWM-Crystal and FVWM Themes). FVWM itself provides a default configuration file generator, in which certain options can be chosen.

Features include:

  • Image rendering.
  • Supports any number of virtual desktops, each divided into multiple pages.
  • Xft2 font support with anti-aliasing, drop shadows of any size, at any offset and at any direction, text rotation.
  • Titlebars can be disabled, or rendered on any window edge.
  • Animated window shading in all directions.
  • Perl based module library for extending FVWM using Perl, scripting and pre-processing of configuration files.
  • Full PNG Support, including alpha blending.
  • Extended via scripting. Preprocessing allows dynamic configurations.
  • Toolkit to build dialogs, menus and applications at runtime.
  • Configurable desktop panels.
  • Mouse Gestures allow to draw shapes with the mouse, and bind them to commands.
  • Dynamic menus; utilities to browse the filesystem, fetch headlines from the internet from menus included.
  • Session management support.
  • Xinerama extension support to use more than one monitor.
  • Support for XRender, and Xcursor.
  • Dynamically extensible using modules.
  • Side titles.
  • EWMH, ICCCM-2 and GNOME Hints support.
  • Internationalisation support, including multi-byte characters and bidirectional text.
  • Bi-directional Asian text support.
  • Extended Window Manager Hints support allows the use of docks, widgets, and such.
  • Colorset used to define color, gradient, transparency, etc. in specific areas of themes, backgrounds, icons, etc.
  • WindowStyle command used to segregate styles to individual elements.
  • Unmanaged command used to separate any window from FVWM control.
  • FocusStyle allows focus stealing.
  • Window states can be used to perform functions on similar groups.
  • XFT font are support.
  • Module dynamic actions allow changes while running.
  • Menu now uses XDG specifications.
  • PNG/SVG support for icons.
  • Mouse gestures and window-specific key / mouse bindings.
  • Lots of new style options for themers.
  • A new script to upgrade FVWM 2.4 configuration files.

Website: fvwm.org
Support: Wiki, GitHub Code Repository
Developer: FVWM Team
License: GNU General Public License v2.0

FVWM

FVWM is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.

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