Discussion about max. usability

Other things FVWM General FVWM discussion
1

Hi guys! This is my first post here… I’m really
excited because I’m entering the new (for me) FVWM world. I’ve been using
Linux for years and Gentoo as my main and only OS since 2008. I’ve been a KDE
fan, but I can’t stand anymore all the compilation time, qt libraries and all
the kde packages are terrible with a single core cpu.
So I decided to try this FVWM as I saw fantastic screenshots over the net.
First it seemed to be very hard to configure but with the documentation, some
config examples and many hours of time, I have to say it’s not that difficult (in general).

Here I would like to know your experiences about the WM Usability, meaning
mouse and key binding and focus policies, since I’ve started a new config from
scratch and this is the more important part for me, the graphic and style can follow :smiley:

I’ve been thinking about a configuration like this:

CTRL+PageUp Maximize
CTRL+PageDown Iconify
Alt+Tab builtin behaviour
Ctrl+Right/Left/Up/Down navigation through Virtual Desktops

Alt+A urxvt
Alt+E File Browser
Alt+F Firefox

Alt+D Minimize All Windows

Focus: ClickToFocus

Tell me what you guys think about it and what bindings/focus you you use to
get the best usability and speed.

I hope this is the right section (no question here, just a discussion) and that it’s not a duplicate post (I searched on the forum first).

Thank you

synthesis

2

I use the keyboard for almost everything; hardly ever use the mouse. As such, I’ve got a mess of keybindings to do things to the window or windows, or groups of windows, send windows to different pages/desks, etc.

Some people like an EMACS-style binding of having a leader-key which defines other bindings (like what GNU Screen does with ^a). I find this less intuitive with FVWM, and although I live inside xterm and tmux (and hence have ^a as my prefix key anyway. :stuck_out_tongue:), most of my bindings for FVWM are using the WIndows key.

I haven’t really thought about the pattern to how they’re organised – I suppose it’s just how it worked at the time for me.

It is, yes.

3

Hmm some of my own keybindings:

Most of my WM level bindings start with Ctrl+Alt…
Ctrl+Alt+M -> mail(just a full screen terminal on a specific page/desk)[run remotely]
Ctrl+Alt+T -> generic terminal(80x25) -> which gets spawned under my mouse
Ctrl+Alt+I -> irc(same as the mail one)[run remotely]
Ctrl+Alt+W -> browser on a specific page/desk)

Alt+F1-12 -> switching between pages

No bindings to manage windows yet. But then I rarely need to.

With the exception of the Numpad :wink:
Numpad with NumLock disabled(means other binds have double binds… one with mod2 on and one with mod2 off) -> media controls(4,6 prev,next) others have other meanings(like playlist, shuffle, remove, etc…)
And yea using sloppyfocus