The Feeble Virtual Window Manager

NOTE: Since making this talk back in the late 1990's, I have abandoned poor old fvwm in favour of WindowMaker; this allows me the option of running either GNOME or KDE environments if I so choose, or neither. The fvwm manager cannot easily interact with these environments.

Origin

• TWM, the Tab Window Manager, Evans & Sutherland (Stardent?), circa 1988-1989

• TVTWM, Tom's Virtual Tab Window Manager (Tom LaStrange, Solbourne computer)

• FVWM, low memory implementation of TWM, Robert Nation, circa 1994 (now Charles Hines)

Features

• Virtual Panning in screen-size boxes via the pager; similar to TVTWM. Can move windows from box to box, scroll, shortcut keys (CTRL-arrow)...

• Allows multiple desks in addition to the panner functionality

• Extensible via modules; built-in modules include GoodStuff, Audio, Add Scroll bars to arbitrary window, etc.



• provides a 3-dimensional motif-like appearance.

• Available on SunOS, Solaris, Linux, AIX, Digital Unix, etc.