This penguin walks on a bed of blue screens of death!

[Lincoln Peters]

I looked at the config file for FVWM2, and discovered that the "Programs" 
submenu was generated using the command "wmconfig --output fvwm2".  It turns 
out that for some reason, wmconfig was not installed!  So I went to 
ftp.redhat.com, got the missing RPM package, and installed it.  It should be 
working now, but I won't be sure until Monday (can't run FVWM2 now because I 
did all this using an SSH session over a dial-up modem).

Still looking for a way to create a recognizable Start menu, though...


>From: E Frank Ball <frankb at efball.com>
>Reply-To: <talk at nblug.org>
>To: talk at nblug.org
>Subject: Re: This penguin walks on a bed of blue screens of death!
>Date: Thu, 4 Oct 2001 16:43:56 -0700
>
>On Thu, Oct 04, 2001 at 03:53:51PM -0700, Lincoln Peters wrote:
>} That is, it works pretty well for me, because I know what I'm doing.  I
>} couldn't run GNOME or KDE on any of the workstations because they only 
>have
>} 64MB of memory (aack!) and it is impossible to set up any sort of swap
>} device when netbooting.  By default, it now runs FVWM2 when users log in,
>} and the default configuration (at least it's the default in RedHat 7.1) 
>will
>} probably get a big "Huh?" from everyone who looks at it.  It took me 30
>} seconds to figure out that I was supposed to click on the desktop to get 
>any
>} kind of a Start menu (there was nothing at all like a "Start" button), so 
>it
>} would probably take most people 30 minutes to figure it out.  I couldn't
>} find any session manager that was any frendlier and that didn't overload
>} that precious little 64MB of memory.  It's weird, though, because I 
>remember
>} that in RedHat 6.1, FVWM had a "start" button.
>}
>} Even worse, the "Programs" section of the menu is empty!  I can't see any
>} way that anyone besides myself would feel comfortable starting programs
>} using an XTerm!  I guess I'm somewhat spoiled because Ximian GNOME runs 
>on
>} my home computer (it has 256MB of memory), so I have no experience with
>} setting up FVWM2 or any other session manager besides KDE.  Can anyone 
>clue
>} me in on how configure it?
>
>The default fvwm2 for RedHat is pretty pathetic.  The config file is
>/etc/X11/fvwm2/system.fvwm2rc in case you hadn't found it.  Copy this to
>.fvwm2rc in your home directory to customize it for you or change the
>system file to change it for everybody.
>
>SuSE has a lot of the applications in the root menus and the SuSEConfig
>program keeps these menus up to date as you (un)install programs.
>Unfortunately lifting the config file from SuSE to RedHat will break
>most of the menus and icons.  You probably don't want to start from
>scratch with SuSE huh?
>
>I have some very custom fvwm2 environments, including one I use on my
>HPUX machine.  I'd recommend a number of buttons in the fvwm control
>panel for commonly used applications, that's pretty easy.  I don't use
>the root pulldown menues much myself, so I don't have a lot in them.  I
>either use the buttons or the command line.
>
>One of the applications where I'm using fvwm2 is a "restricted" group
>environment at work.  We have stations in manufacturing (at Agilent in
>Rohnert Park) that use group logins so that anybody can walk up and use
>them.  We don't want "anybody" to be able to access a command prompt,
>mail program, or news program.  So there are some buttons to run the
>applications they need to run under the group login, and if they need to
>do something else, like start an xterm, they are prompted for their
>personal login and password.  I had to turn off the pager on these
>stations, that was too weird for users with no training, but they can
>push the buttons and start things just fine.  Now I have to try to teach
>them not to re-boot as a first resort when they can't figure something
>out.  I wanted these accounts to use fvwm2 and only fvwm2 so I got rid
>of the /etc/X11/xinit/Xclients file and replaced it with this:
>
>#!/bin/bash
>exec fvwm2
>
>Works great.  Users can select whatever window manager they want from
>the login screen and they get fvwm2.  I'm using Redhat 6.2 because
>that's what my software runs on.
>
>Between the faq on the fvwm.org web site, man fvwm2, and fooling around
>with the fvwm2rc file it's not too hard to customize, but it can take a
>while.  I started with the SuSE 5.2 system.fvwm2rc file, but not many
>people would recognize it anymore.  Once you get the hang of it you can
>crank out root menus and front panel buttons pretty quickly, but there
>are no GUIs (vim is your friend).  There is also a mailing list where
>people get help with config questions.
>
>I'll put together some screen shots and the config files and try to get
>them on the web.  In the meantime goto fvwm.org and check out some of
>their screenshots and links.  My stuff is very different, I seem to be
>bucking the latest window manager fashion trends, what can I say?  I
>grew up with mwm.
>
>--
>
>    E Frank Ball                efball at efball.com


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