Installing a Window Manager (that didn't come with your distribution)

To understand the multiplicity and interchangeability of window managers under the X Window system, let's install the ice window manager. You can obtain it from the web, either by traditional browser navigation or by a single-shot command.

By browser, launch your X Window GUI and graphical browser, then go to http://xwinman.org/. Look how many window managers there are! Choose IceWM from the list in the lefthand column. In the next screen link to "Official IceWM site." Take a look around. The site makes Ice available for download, but we will use a version that comes from fedora.

In the gnome GUI choose "Applications" and note the menu offers an option to "Add/Remove Software." Using it conflicts with an auto-update feature that runs by default as a service. Its name is yum-updatesd. In order to Add/Remove Software we have to make yum-updatesd stop running:

service  yum-updatesd  stop

Now launch Add/Remove Software from the Applications menu. Click its "List" tab to see a list of all the software it offers that you could add. Scroll down and put check marks in the checkboxes for the following:

icewm...

icewm-gnome...

icewm-xdgmenu...

switchdesk...

Press the Apply button to install these programs. When that's finished, exit the Add/Remove Programs application and then exit gnome (System/Log Out). Now run switchdesk:

switchdesk  gnome

Now to invoke ice and see what it looks like. There are various ways you could do it. Let's try 2 of them, in succession. First, launch X via the xinit command, with no client specification:

  xinit

You get a GUI with a single client, which is a terminal window (that's how xinit behaves). In the terminal window run ice:

  icewm

It's truly beautiful don't you think? Now terminate the Ice window manager from the terminal window, like any other running app, with the control-C keystroke. Then terminate the X Window GUI altogether:

  exit

You usually launch the GUI via the script startx. By default it ends up calling the Gnome desktop environment. You can alter that by editing the file that specifies startx's default. In your home directory, edit the hidden file .Xclients-default (note the leading period in the filename, that's what makes it "hidden"). .Xclients-default may not exist; in that case, create it by running "switchdesk gnome" and then proceed. Change the "WM=" line, which probably reads WM="gnome-session" so it instead reads WM="icewm" instead. Now start the X Window GUI using the usual command:

  startx

but note the replacement of your familiar window manager with ice!

To restore your default window manger or desktop environment, edit the controlling file back as it was. If you were using gnome, the following command puts you back in business:

  switchdesk gnome

Verify that switchdesk altered the WM= line, and that consequently startx now invokes gnome instead of ice.