WhyIcewm

IceWM depends only on X Window System ( no matter how old) and on libXpm. Naturally it has to be very fast by default. Even document of IceWM says that it runs very fast on 386 machine. So it is the best choice for my PI 266MHz CPU. I have found some strong points to support IceWM as below.

There are different types of Icewm. Icewm-light with no support for taskbar and antialiased fonts. Icewm-experimental is the experimental version of IceWM. It contains some additional experimental features, including antialiasing of icons, support for sound events and gradients, provides all files needed for IceWM to enable GNOME related features. Finally Icewm which just provides a taskbar and antialiasing support with Icewm-light. I use Icewm to bypass the gnome support as well as bypassing the gnome libraries. And I am quiet satisfied with Icewm.

Some tools are available to configure IceWM. iceconf a graphical tool to configure the Icewm, IceMC is a Qt-based application that configures IceWM menus and toolbar but I don't prefer it due to its delay as based on Qt, then IceMe is a graphical menu and shortcut editor for the IceWM window manager, written in Python and GTK+. You can edit menu entries with drag and drop as well as cut and paste. IceMe is Fast. I use IceWMCP which is a combination of different tools and is actually a complete control center for Icewm. IceWMCP is fast as it is based on PyGtk.

At first we need to create the .xinitrc file by vi or any other editor and the .xinitrc should contain a line

Now execute startx command from the console and within just few seconds IceWM will come up. Below is a screen shot of a very basic IceWM

IceWM comes with Win95 like taskbar, start button, window list, CPU load monitor, net load monitor, digital clock applet and mailbox status.

IceWM first searches a local folder called .icewm for its configuration otherwise follows the global configuration. In debian /etc/X11/icewm folder contains all the global configuration files. Configuring IceWM is extremely easy, and while there are graphical tools available for this, it's just as easy to edit its configuration files manually. Make a hidden folder called .icewm in your home directory and copy the global configuration files into it. Now edit these files to suit your own needs and tastes.

programs - Automatically generated menu of startable applications (this should be used for wmconfig, menu or similar packages, perhaps as a part of the login or X startup sequence).