Fabulous Virtual Window Manager Sees First Release in Five Years
on April 20, 2011
After five years, a new stable release of FVWM has finally been announced. FVWM is a lightweight and fast window manager still used by a few distributions and offered as an option on several. This landmark release brings several new and improved features.
Some of the new features include:
- Extended Window Manager Hints support allows the use of docks, widgets, and such.
- Colorset used to define color, gradient, transparency, etc. in specific areas of themes, backgrounds, icons, etc.
- WindowStyle command used to segregate styles to individual elements
- Unmanaged command used to separate any window from FVWM control
- FocusStyle allows focus stealing
- Window states can be used to perform functions on similar groups
- XFT font are support
- Module dynamic actions allow changes while running
- Menu now uses XDG specifications
- PNG/SVG support for icons
- Mouse gestures and window-specific key / mouse bindings
- Lots of new style options for themers
- A new script to upgrade FVWM 2.4 configuration files
- Support for Xinerama, XRender, and Xcursor
FVWM 2.6.0 was released April 15 and a follow-up bugfix, 2.6.1, was released April 16. F doesn't really stand for Fabulous. Tradition says F used to stand for Feeble, but the actual meaning has been lost. Today F doesn't stand for anything. Austrumi is one distribution that relies upon FVWM for its desktop.
Helpful links:
FVWM Homepage
FVWM FAQ
FVWM Forums
Full Release Announcement