FVWM-Crystal aims to create an easy to use, powerful desktop environment for Linux or other Unix-like operating systems with lots of eye-candy.

It uses following programs:

• FVWM as a window manager and "main core",
• fvwm-crystal, ROX-Filer or Nautilus as desktop manager (manages icons on the desktop), the fvwm-crystal desktop manager support network mount using http or https (tested with webdav and davfs2),
• gnome-terminal, xterm, aterm, mrxvt or urxvt as terminal emulators,
• AlsaPlayer, mplayer, MPD, QuodLibet, XMMS2 and others as music players (there's built-in support for controlling these programs), and several other tools for different functions, like setting a wallpaper or making screenshots.

• Transparent elements of the interface: panels, menus, dialogs (pseudo-transparency, doesn't show windows underneath). The windows can be made transparent if xcompmgr and transset-df are installed (real transparency).

• Window decorations, panel/menu color-sets and desktop wallpaper changeable from the main menu; choice saved for next X sessions.

• Flexible window decorations: can have different title-bar buttons layout, pixmaps and button functions.

• Different "recipes" (panel placement and functions, desktop functions, window icons/thumbnails), changeable from the menu.

• The Custom recipe with its magical button bar provide a modern look and feel with a customizable interface.

• Advanced keyboard support: key-bindings for controlling the desktop switching, window management (moving, resizing, focusing, basic operations like minimization or closing) - in total there are nearly 90 different key-bindings.

• Support for controlling music players by using the keyboard or panel buttons and menus; currently AlsaPlayer, audacious. cdcd, cmus, mocp, mpd, mplayer (you can also play movies with it), mplayer2 (mplayer fork), Quodlibet and XMMS2 are supported.

• Advanced support of the terminal windows: special "Quake Console" terminal accessible by an Alt+` (grave) keystroke similar to the console found in FPP games; terminals can be opened using RMB on the desktop; terminal windows don't release focus for newly opened windows (by default).

• A Python script for generating different panels and menus with installed applications - automatically finds programs in $PATH and creates specified menus and panels.

• Support for nearly 400 different applications - icons, menu/panel database entries and window styles. Similar support for the other applications can be generated from the preferences menu or added manualy into the database.

• Applications menu customization by the user or system administrator will not be lost with fvwm-crystal software updates.

• Localization support using gettext.

• All FVWM configuration is divided into small files in a simple directory structure.

• Special functions for loading configuration files – allows for FVWM configuration files placed in different directories (for example system-wide and user-wide); user files are searched before system-wide files (directory structure must be preserved), the first found file is loaded.

• Simple and easy to use system of "user preferences" which adds to the configuration files' ability to remember different user choices and recall them at any moment, usually at the startup of X session.

• Support for system-wide configuration in /etc/X11/fvwm/fvwm-crystal directory as well as user configuration in ~/.fvwm-crystal directory - changes in configuration files can be preserved between package updates.

• Special files called "recipes" - similar to "standard" FVWM configuration model (one configuration - one file), allows for different configurations in the same package (for example different music players changeable during runtime).

• Support for different icon themes and sizes (similar to /usr/share/icons directory), included are many icons in 22x22, 32x32 and 48x48 sizes.

• Special script that will generate the application database and window styles by looking at the applications provided desktop files and icons.

• Built-in fvwm FvwvConsole support for direct fvwm input.

• Built-in fvwm-crystal developement in ~/.fvwm-crystal/ directory. Here, all files copied here from the ${prefix}/share/fvwm-crystal/fvwm directory can be edited.

• fvwm - version 2.6.9 or higher. This include fvwm3.
• Python 3 - for applications menu database and random wallpaper.
• ImageMagick - import and convert are used for screenshots.
• UAM and pmount-gui - automounting of removable medias, optional.
• ROX-Filer or Nautilus - for icons on the desktop and wallpaper, optional.
• XScreenSaver - a screen saver and/or screen locking, optional.
• Systray: at least one of Trayer or Stalonetray.
• xdg-user-dirs - localized desktop icons.
• Sudo and optionally gksudo configured for running text/graphical applications as superuser and reboot/shutdown computer options in the menu. Hibernation is supported via pm-utils or systemd.
• Terminal Emulator: at least one of gnome-terminal, konsole, xfce4-terminal, xterm, aterm, Eterm, mrxvt, urxvt or terminator. Be aware that the Quake console need one of mrxvt, urxwt, aterm or xterm.
• A program for setting a wallpaper such as Esetroot (orphaned here), hsetroot or feh (only needed if ROX-Filer or Nautilus are not used as suggested above). Habak support was removed due to X Errors at restart. hsetroot will be used first if present.
• A music player - At least one of Music Player Daemon (+ mpc), X MultiMedia System (+ xmms-shell and XMMSFind) (orphaned now on most distribution, you will be better with another one), AlsaPlayer, cmus, mocp, mplayer, XMMS2, Quod Libet or cdcd. You will get video support with mplayer. Optional.
• A mixer, one of the precedent if the player support it, aumix or amixer (alsamixer, you will get volume control in dB with it), optional.
• Some usual linux utilities like cut, sed and bc. (bc is needed for the speed control with AlsaPlayer and mplayer.)
• wget is needed by the IPTV playlists support for mplayer. The nsfw category is not enabled by default and only the root user can enable it in $FVWM_CONFIGDIR.

Please be sure to read the information into the Install file when installing or updating Fvwm-Crystal. It is a few things you will have to do in order to get the full potential of Fvwm + Fvwm-Crystal.

Fvwm-Crystal work fine with graphical display managers like xdm or gdm. Choose it in the menu and it will start. (The desktop file is installed in /usr(/local)/share/xsessions/fvwm-crystal.desktop and fvwm-crystal should be available in any graphical display manager.)

Anyway, the prefered way to start Fvwm is with startx. You will get a fast and light system without to have to load non needed stuffs at login.

If you choose that way, you may want to edit ~/.xinitrc and add exec /usr/bin/fvwm-crystal if your system is polkit and console-kit free.

If it is not the case, something like the following will do the trick: exec ck-launch-session /usr/bin/fvwm-crystal

If you want to log Fvwm messages, you can use somethink like exec /usr/bin/fvwm-crystal 2>.fvwm-crystal_messages or exec ck-launch-session /usr/bin/fvwm-crystal 2>.fvwm-crystal_messages

Now, run 'startx'.

For Fvwm-Crystal to start at login, edit ~/.bash_profile and add the following line at the end of the file: if ! pidof X &>/dev/null ; then startx ; fi

The original author of FVWM-Crystal project is Maciej Delmanowski. You can contact with him using:

Jabber (preferred): harnir@jabberek.net Email: harnir@berlios.de IRC: #fvwm-crystal@irc.freenode.net (also on #fvwm)

The current maintainer and author of this project is Dominique Michel. You can contact me using dominique_libre@users.sourceforge.net or on the mailing list below.

There is also a low-traffic mailing list, where you can talk with other FVWM-Crystal users and contributors. More information and subscription instructions can be found on: http://lists.berlios.de/mailman/listinfo/fvwm-crystal-users You can also look at the archives located here: http://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/fvwm-crystal-users/

-): With the Music -> Playlist browser, file or directory names with quoting characters will confuse FVWM. I see that as a bug in FVWM - we all have utf-8 file system where such characters are valid ones into a file or a directory name, but anyway, these function make an intensive use of the shell, and for that reason the only real fix at that time, and I think for all eternity, is to fix your file and directory names by removing such characters. (Do a goggle search on special characters in file names and the shell to get more info on that.)

In the preferences of the Music menu, it is an option to get no icon into that file browser: This can help with the special characters in some cases, but this is a workaround not a real fix, and it will be of no help with quoting characters, and will break the exec title function (the function that load all the files of a directory into the playlist when clicking on that directory's name) instead. The real fix is to remove the quoting characters from your file and directory names.

-): Certainly others. Please report them to the mailing list - best, your report(s) will be archived, which insure they will not be lost, or to me directly - see next section:

The best way to contribute is to take contact on the mailing list. You can also take contact with me using dominique_libre@users.sourceforge.net

I would never have learn Fvwm myself without Fvwm-Crystal. Its modular architecture allow you to focus on one thing at a time.

For information on Fvwm, take a look at the Fvwm website: http://www.fvwm.org

I would like to thank all these people for help with this project (in random order): Aragorn_Vime, Lucass, Taviso, Hoppke, Ravbc, Myles Green, Esack, theBlackDragon, Thomas_Adam, Liorithiel, MadCow, LiNiO, fEnIo, KHorne, QsoRiX, niv, stR4y and all others which I can't recollect now - thanks, guys :)

I would like to thank harnir. Without him and his good work and vision, Fvwm-Crystal would not exist.

I would also like to thank all the peoples behind Fvwm. Without them, Fvwm-Crystal would not be possible.

FVWM-Crystal is and always will be a free software, however if you want, you can make a donation - I probably will spent it on my electricity & telephone bills... Anyway, below is the neccesary info to do that.

Account: PL 90 1140 2004 0000 3102 3664 7363 Name: Maciej Delmanowski Bank: mBank Address: 90-050 Lodz, Al. Mickiewicza 1, Poland