Ubuntu + FVWM-Crystal

Now, if speed is a must with you and you really want something that flies, I have my own recipe for that: Standard Ubuntu and a desktop called FVWM-Crystal. FVWM-Crystal is a new version of an older Linux desktop GUI. It has taken a very outmoded looking desktop and gives it a more modern aspect while preserving its speed.

First, we'll get a hold of Ubuntu Edgy Eft, which is the latest version of Ubuntu at the time of this writing. If you're going to be using older hardware, you'd be better off getting the 'alternate' ISO image of the CD. On my test machine, the standard ISO image, which also doubles as a live CD, wouldn't boot. So go right for the 'alternate' image. That will save you some time. You can find that at: http://ubuntu-releases.cs.umn.edu/6.10/

Once you've installed Ubuntu, you'll get a desktop GUI called GNOME, which comes standard with Ubuntu. Compared with KDE, it seems a bit faster. If you're happy with the speed and the look, then that might be OK for you. However, if you want something that's going to give that old machine a spring in it step, then you'll need to do the following:

First, we need to install the aforementioned FVWM-Crystal desktop. To do this, just open a terminal type the following:

sudo apt-get install fvwm-crystal

This will analyze the system and get the dependencies you need. It will also recommend some other programs that go well with it. One of these is ROX Filer, a file manager. I installed it after, but you can add it to the above install command if you want.

Once you're up and running with fvwm-crystal, I think you'll be very pleasantly surprised with this. It won't look like something from 10 (or even 20) years ago as some minimalist windows managers for Linux do.

It would seem that fvwm-crystal is designed to detect the programs that you have installed and use them to form the menus. To make fvwm-crystal a bit more friendlier, you might want to use the configuration options menus to change a couple of settings. Though this may sound sacrilegious, coming from a Linux advocate, I suggest you go to the settings menu (it looks like a blue jewel in the upper left) and choose: windows decorations --> button model -> MS Windows. This will give your windows the familiar icons (- [] X) in the upper right. Also, you might want to change the windows focus policy to also emulate MS Windows. Go to: Preferences --> Windows Focus Policy ---> MS Windows. This last one is probably more important. You may find yourself annoyed by overlapping windows if you don't set this one.

Some notes about performance

The machine I'm running this on is an IBM Thinkpad 600x. It's got a Pentium III and has 256 MB of RAM. I was originally running Kubuntu (which is Ubuntu with KDE as the main desktop). KDE, while a wonderful desktop, as I mentioned before, just slowed this machine down enough that, though not exactly to a crawl, was just weighed down enough to be annoying. Granted, it's an old machine - but it's still a good one to lug around and get a bunch of work done. In fact, I can do all of the work I do on my main workstation with the Thinkpad. That is, I'm not limited to working in text mode in a black screen. I'm using programs like GIMP, Inkscape, Firefox and yes, even OpenOffice. However, with the new fvwm-crystal setup, everything just flies. It's like working with a new machine. In fact, I even watch movies with it. Before, with KDE, sound would often cut out for a few seconds when increasing the image to full screen or it would even just randomly cut out. Not any more. When using mplayer to watch any kind of video, I don't get any sound problems now.

If you have similar hardware, you might find Open Office performance to be acceptable. However, if even the slightest hint of slowness annoys you, you can simply install the word processor Abiword and the spreadsheet program Gnumeric. These will both handle most Word files and Excel spreadsheets respectively.

Some drawbacks

In my opinion, fvwm-crystal's documentation is a bit sparse. I suspect this has a lot to do with the fact that the project most likely started out as on of the oft-occurring 'itch' that Free and Open Source software developers like to scratch. So in these cases, development is always ahead of documentation. I've exchanged a couple of emails with Maciej Delmanowski, the main developer of fvwm-crystal and I have cleared up a number of issues I had. He tells me that a Wiki will be set up soon to deal with configuration options and other issues. Also, the thing that attracts me to fvwm-crystal is that it doesn't look like other graphic user interface environments. I have always liked that fact that my desktop 'looks' like Linux. Whether that would be a draw to others, I don't know. Some people's comfort zones are very small and when they see something that's too 'foreign' looking, they bristle.

So if you're looking for something that will make your old machine seem new again, then the Ubuntu/fvwm-crystal combination will let you make your hardware investments pay off a little longer. For non-profits and budget strapped schools, not to mention small and medium sized businesses, this seems like a pretty good deal.

Michael J. Jordan is the managing editor of Linux Online. He can be reached at Michael.Jordan**AT**linux.org