Posted by: Anonymous Coward
on July 29, 2004 10:24 PM
To those complaining that the author failed to mention any of the various *box window managers, or that his omission of Xfce is "inexcusable," I have one thing to say: go back and read the first sentence below the first heading, "Four lanes to choose from." That sentences reads, and I quote: "My [emphasis added] favorite four 'alternative' Linux window managers include".
Note that the author is talking about his four favorites, not anyone else's. Which means that Xfce and the various *boxes don't qualify. Sorry. For those interested in other alternatives, the author places a link at the end of the story to a site discussing various other window managers.
To the responder who said "IceWM is a minimalist window manager but is also quite ugly. I wouldn't mention it in an article enticing new users." Nowhere does the author state he is trying to entice new users. However, if he is, I disagree with your comment. When I first switched to Linux, I tried KDE and Gnome just long enough to realize how long they took to load on my older laptop. (I almost had time to fry up a couple of eggs and fix some toast.)
I checked out Enlightenment, WindowMaker, Fluxbox, and Xfce 3.8 just long enough to realize that they were a little too different for my tastes. Then I tried IceWM. While it does not natively support desktop icons (which I do still like), they can be added by using something like ROX or XtDesktop. What IceWM does have that I like is a menu button similar to what I was used to in Windows. I also like the fact that you can have buttons for subments (browsers, mail, file manager by default).
By the way, on my old Celeron 400, IceWM loads in just a few seconds after login. Could never do that with KDE or Gnome.
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Posted by: Anonymous Coward on July 29, 2004 10:24 PMNote that the author is talking about his four favorites, not anyone else's. Which means that Xfce and the various *boxes don't qualify. Sorry. For those interested in other alternatives, the author places a link at the end of the story to a site discussing various other window managers.
To the responder who said "IceWM is a minimalist window manager but is also quite ugly. I wouldn't mention it in an article enticing new users." Nowhere does the author state he is trying to entice new users. However, if he is, I disagree with your comment. When I first switched to Linux, I tried KDE and Gnome just long enough to realize how long they took to load on my older laptop. (I almost had time to fry up a couple of eggs and fix some toast.)
I checked out Enlightenment, WindowMaker, Fluxbox, and Xfce 3.8 just long enough to realize that they were a little too different for my tastes. Then I tried IceWM. While it does not natively support desktop icons (which I do still like), they can be added by using something like ROX or XtDesktop. What IceWM does have that I like is a menu button similar to what I was used to in Windows. I also like the fact that you can have buttons for subments (browsers, mail, file manager by default).
By the way, on my old Celeron 400, IceWM loads in just a few seconds after login. Could never do that with KDE or Gnome.
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