Old school window manager (fvwm)

Desktop Environments All WMs
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Hi all, I happened to notice, while surfing today, that the old school fvwm window manager is still alive and kicking. It especially got my attention with a screen shot of another old school interface: CDE. I love that old Unix interface and since I have a free drive (Sabrant nvme) doing nothing right now, I was wondering if I could do a minimal EOS installation on this drive (no GUI) and download the fvwm stuff I need to get going?

XFce used to have that old CDE theme, does it still support that? BTW, I’m running KDE Plasma on my main drive; it’s great!

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It was not a theme, the dev decided to make a CDE clone using GTK+, the look changed to what we have now when they switched to GTK2.

If you’re looking for a CDE clone, NsCDE is in the AUR, it’s based on FVWM.

NsCDE
NsCDE1920×1200 327 KB

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vazicebon, thanks for the reply. My memory isn’t what it used to be, so I thought it was a theme. But looking at the screenshot, I remembered that interface. It’s one of the reasons I used XFce so long ago; that look. Thanks for the tip, I’ll look into it.

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First time I tried Xfce, it was still the CDE clone, but after few months, I changed for Windowmaker, I got back to Xfce few years later.

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This brought back so many memories, - good ones! I grew up with Solaris, and CDE before xfce switched to windowmaker, - it’s amazing to see this still alive! Peak Linux DE!

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Yea, memories…
The screenshot brings back the past, just far away.
But, some minutes later I remembered, too, how limited these surfaces have been. Not sure, if I should wish it back.
Have used KDE since 1.0 until some 3.x (don’t remember exactly), then switched to LXDE and now since many years XFCE and feel no need for any change.

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Windowmaker was awesome! I used it also for quite some time. I loved how you could configure it. It’s too bad someone didn’t fork the old XFce.

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Yeah, it was a nice piece of software, I loved the dockapps system and it’s not so old, the last release was in 2023.

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