# Window Manager Recommendations



## Maelstorm (Aug 4, 2012)

I finally (after 13+ years) got around to playing with X-Windows on FreeBSD (Xorg or XFree86).  The machine is an old machine, with an older video card.  The card is a genuine 3Dfx Voodoo3 3000.  Reading the documentation, it took me a few hours to figure out why it would work under the vesa driver, but wouldn't work when I specified the use of the tdfx driver.  What really threw me is that tdfx_dri.so is in the Xorg distribution, but the driver is not.

Anyways, I am looking for a window manager that is the same as or similar to Sun's (Oracle's) OpenWin (owlm).  Any suggestions?


----------



## zhoopin (Aug 4, 2012)

x11-wm/fvwm2


----------



## purgatori (Aug 6, 2012)

FVWM2 is great, but requires a lot of fairly elaborate customization on the user's part. Olvwm used to be in the ports tree, but it was deprecated or dropped, so I think the next closest for you might be x11-wm/ctwm.


----------



## jb_fvwm2 (Aug 6, 2012)

When I used fvwm2, I scrounged a few .fvwm2rc from the web, and tested before settling on one. That is one way to save a few weeks and have an expert setup already...


----------



## UNIXgod (Aug 6, 2012)

I loved my experience with e16. I used FluxBox and BlackBox before that.

When I get back to running FreeBSD on my laptop I plan on exploring some of the tiling windows managers. DWM was cool but awesomeWM was okay as well. My guess is the one you can script against with your preferred programming languages (or sh) is the right one to use =)


----------



## purgatori (Aug 6, 2012)

^ Remember, the OP is looking for a window-manager that is similar to openwin.

As for you, UnixGod, which text editor do you use? If you use Emacs, I'd recommend giving x11-wm/ratpoison or x11-wm/stumpwm a try.


----------



## UNIXgod (Aug 6, 2012)

purgatori said:
			
		

> ^ Remember, the OP is looking for a window-manager that is similar to openwin.
> 
> As for you, UnixGod, which text editor do you use? If you use Emacs, I'd recommend giving x11-wm/ratpoison or x11-wm/stumpwm a try.



I played with ratpoison. I'll look into stumpwm. I'm not an emacs user though.


----------



## UNIXgod (Aug 6, 2012)

CDE is now open:

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/08/06/1335258/cde-open-sourced


----------



## purgatori (Aug 7, 2012)

UNIXgod said:
			
		

> CDE is now open:
> 
> http://tech.slashdot.org/story/12/08/06/1335258/cde-open-sourced



That's fantastic news. Hopefully it doesn't take long for CDE to make it into the ports tree.


----------

