IceWM 3.3.1 Released With Various Fixes For This Lightweight Window Manager

[phoronix]

Phoronix: IceWM 3.3.1 Released With Various Fixes For This Lightweight Window Manager

For fans of the IceWM X11 window manager that has been around since the late 90's, IceWM 3.3.1 was released today as the first (minor) release of 2023...

https://www.phoronix.com/news/IceWM-3.3.1

[andyprough]

I use it pretty often with the antiX distro, as Icewm is the default, although I tend to use DWM a bit more. These look like minor changes and bug fixes, I don't think I'll particularly notice them. Icewm is old-school - not a lot of exciting new changes in the past 26 years. But it's quite good as a simple floating wm, probably one of the most complete and desktop-ish of the floating wm's.

[Paradigm Shifter]

...not a lot of exciting new changes in the past 26 years.

This is a good thing! - as I get the feeling you are implying - the constant UI tweaks and moving the deckchairs on the Titanic of others in the constant chasing of the latest fad (or trying to create the latest fad) is tiresome.

It's a bit like the new defaults for Mint. Sure, I can change them, but I've been really happy with Mint as a distro because my setup time for it is minimal - install OS, update, cuda, a couple of quality of life applications and compile the critical applications I need which are source-only, and it's basically done with. YouTube "influencers" (or at least the ones YouTube is promoting at me) are practically wetting themselves like overexcited puppies about the UI shift, but setting it back to what I consider familiar and they consider "old" or "boring" takes time (and it's not as simple as just "switch themes" because some applications follow settings defined in various config files hiding in /usr/*/* so bringing Mint 21.1 back to the comfort of the familiar is... troublesome.

[andyprough]

This is a good thing! - as I get the feeling you are implying - the constant UI tweaks and moving the deckchairs on the Titanic of others in the constant chasing of the latest fad (or trying to create the latest fad) is tiresome.

It's a bit like the new defaults for Mint. Sure, I can change them, but I've been really happy with Mint as a distro because my setup time for it is minimal - install OS, update, cuda, a couple of quality of life applications and compile the critical applications I need which are source-only, and it's basically done with. YouTube "influencers" (or at least the ones YouTube is promoting at me) are practically wetting themselves like overexcited puppies about the UI shift, but setting it back to what I consider familiar and they consider "old" or "boring" takes time (and it's not as simple as just "switch themes" because some applications follow settings defined in various config files hiding in /usr/*/* so bringing Mint 21.1 back to the comfort of the familiar is... troublesome.

I don't know much about Mint, but yes it sounds like we have the same basic ideas about what we want. I like to use Icewm, xfce, and dwm BECAUSE they hardly ever change, or at least when they do change it's glacial and never radical. DEs and window managers should do the basics and stay out of the way of the terminal and the applications, which is where the actual work happens. Environments like gnome that want to constantly yank you around to work the way they think you should be working are just too much bother.

[royce]

I used IceWM a lot back when KDE4 came about and it was a clusterfuck of epic proportions, and I loved it. I wonder if there are any plans to port it to wayland.

[pWe00Iri3e7Z9lHOX2Qx]

I used IceWM a lot back when KDE4 came about and it was a clusterfuck of epic proportions, and I loved it. I wonder if there are any plans to port it to wayland.

I don't' believe so. Enhancement requests for that in the past were closed as wontfix. Unfortunately there don't seem to be any good production ready wayland stacking window mangers / simple DEs. Everything out there right now seems to be alpha level. Maybe you'd like something like Budgie when it gets re-written to use EFL with Wayland support for version 11? That would still be less simple than icewm, but a notch below Gnome / KDE.

[rogerx]

DWM user for a long time. One of my issues with IceWM, the taskbar is too small/tiny for mouse clicking, unlike the larger XFCE taskbar.

DWM forgoes the taskbar, only requiring simple keyboard usage for navigating the desktops.

Even though Wayland/Sway is similar, still came running back to DWM as soon as Xorg started working again.

[kn00tcn]

This is a good thing! - as I get the feeling you are implying - the constant UI tweaks and moving the deckchairs on the Titanic of others in the constant chasing of the latest fad (or trying to create the latest fad) is tiresome.

It's a bit like the new defaults for Mint. Sure, I can change them, but I've been really happy with Mint as a distro because my setup time for it is minimal - install OS, update, cuda, a couple of quality of life applications and compile the critical applications I need which are source-only, and it's basically done with. YouTube "influencers" (or at least the ones YouTube is promoting at me) are practically wetting themselves like overexcited puppies about the UI shift, but setting it back to what I consider familiar and they consider "old" or "boring" takes time (and it's not as simple as just "switch themes" because some applications follow settings defined in various config files hiding in /usr/*/* so bringing Mint 21.1 back to the comfort of the familiar is... troublesome.

people preferring a different interaction doesnt make it a fad, nor is familiarity always good

when windows vista came out with its new start menu, this unfamiliar change was a great improvement: just start typing without cursor or keyboard hunting, separate and remove less commonly used things like controlpanel into a different column, contain the app list into a scrollable menu instead of covering up the screen horizontally, pin your choice and order of apps for the root menu, etc... multiple aspects that reduce friction, the old familiar simple tree menu is no longer good

some people seem to like their pinned app icons, it's how macs have been for decades, makes sense for multitasking between apps to keep the muscle memorized click position the same, but it's not for me since i usually have multiple windows of the same app open (that also means no window-grouping and visible text labels for me, the 'old' way gives me less friction)

there are new paradigms for multitasking, intuitive ones for all skill levels and input methods such as an overview of open windows that can further be moved to different workspaces and then having an overview of workspaces, almost literally like having a physical desktop, again macs and gnome's mimicking have done this for a while which makes sense, but in my case i want to know exactly what's open at all times by name so it's a single workspace traditional labelled window list taskbar for me (i dont feel the need or intuitiveness to visually comprehend my windows as objects, at least not with keyboard/mouse input compared to touch input)

then there are the philosophical differences, gnome wants to do simple things automatically in the way that most people expect while i want consent as much as possible, the first thing i do with any new app or game is check the options (this is where i hate how debian enables every service/daemon you install, before they're even configured properly)

how about something as simple as the order of 'ok' and 'cancel' buttons, i believe mac and most linux interfaces are cancel-ok like a previous-next order, but because most languages are read left-right and your intended/emphasized action is usually first, because the two buttons are usually grouped and aligned to the right side of the window, i strongly think the order needs to be ok-cancel as the linguistic logic matters more here than other design placement decisions

i've been wondering about the issue of constant minor (usually graphical) tweaks lately, i've realized some of it may be coming from the fact that corporations have lots of expensive employees that need work to do, sometimes in an attempt to keep or add customers by appearing new, gmail is completely bizarre now with the rounded buttons everywhere and scrollable mail list that's for some reason wrapped in a rounded corner frame instead of reaching the edge of the browser window... tasteful intentional rounding of specific elements can be pleasant, rounding everything possible with a large radius is not tasteful nor intentional (as in based on psychological interaction principles)

in the end we just need options or at least presets and sane intuitive defaults (vim is not intuitive), changes need to be based on scientific data or at least some kind of logic, remember good design is intentional design, good design communicates information or interface guidance, it's separate from whether you like or individually interface well with it

(this post became way longer than intended, nor did i want to make it sound like everything new is well designed, i could go on with specific bad designs or noob designers repeating the same mistakes that have already been solved in the past if they bothered to study the past, i strongly dislike the mac/gnome way not that the kde overload is much better, dislike suddenly rounding everything, i simply care about interface design and defining antagonistic blanket statements... i should look into those mint changes you mentioned, for cinnamon i presume)

[Paradigm Shifter]

I don't know much about Mint, but yes it sounds like we have the same basic ideas about what we want. I like to use Icewm, xfce, and dwm BECAUSE they hardly ever change, or at least when they do change it's glacial and never radical. DEs and window managers should do the basics and stay out of the way of the terminal and the applications, which is where the actual work happens. Environments like gnome that want to constantly yank you around to work the way they think you should be working are just too much bother.

And it appears that Mint 21.2 is starting to move toward the "hamburger menu". Since in the blog post comments Clem says they'll listen to feedback, and quite a lot of the posts there appear to dislike the hamburger menu, I wonder whether the wider community will hold the same opinion and whether that will influence anything going forward.

I'm ambivalent about it. On devices with small screens, I see the utility. On devices with larger screens, I prefer to be able to access things as efficiently as possible, and explaining the hamburger menu over the phone when family or a colleague call for technical support is a pain (I never realised how few people understand "look for the three horizontal lines in the right hand corner and click it"). Might end up moving to Mint XFCE or MATE, although both of them feel like third-class citizens when compared to Cinnamon.

people preferring a different interaction doesnt make it a fad, nor is familiarity always good

Indeed not, I agree. However when one group does something, and other groups rush to copy it, rather than continuing to forge their own path... well. I forget who said this (and I am probably paraphrasing) but "one cannot be a leader by following others". That doesn't mean you'll be successful, but there is at least a chance. Simply copying something that came first guarantees either mediocrity or outright failure.

when windows vista came out with its new start menu, this unfamiliar change was a great improvement: just start typing without cursor or keyboard hunting, separate and remove less commonly used things like controlpanel into a different column, contain the app list into a scrollable menu instead of covering up the screen horizontally, pin your choice and order of apps for the root menu, etc... multiple aspects that reduce friction, the old familiar simple tree menu is no longer good

Funnily enough, I actually quite liked Vista. What I didn't like was my printer manufacturer using Vista and the changed driver model as an excuse to drop support for a printer that I had purchased less than a month prior, and some time after Vista was released (so I have never purchased from them again). The Vista start menu was quite nice, agreed. The issues most people had with Vista were a) the driver model update, b) the insane system requirements which meant it was installed on 4200RPM HDD Intel Integrated Graphics systems with the bare minimum RAM to make it load (because, IIRC, Intel asked Microsoft to drop the minimum requirements so absolute potato systems could "run" it). But I didn't switch to Vista until about six months after SP1 (always a good idea with a new MS OS) and I ran it on a moderately capable system (Opteron 170, 4GB RAM, Radeon 4850, 7200RPM HDD).

some people seem to like their pinned app icons, it's how macs have been for decades, makes sense for multitasking between apps to keep the muscle memorized click position the same, but it's not for me since i usually have multiple windows of the same app open (that also means no window-grouping and visible text labels for me, the 'old' way gives me less friction)

And I like my Taskbar on the left-hand-side... which Windows 11 no longer permits. And the new Start menu, which is... next to worthless. Yay for "improvements"! And yet WSLg and the ability to run Linux CUDA applications on Windows means I use Windows 11 when I run Windows... except on systems without nVidia GPUs, where I still run 10.

there are new paradigms for multitasking, intuitive ones for all skill levels and input methods such as an overview of open windows that can further be moved to different workspaces and then having an overview of workspaces, almost literally like having a physical desktop, again macs and gnome's mimicking have done this for a while which makes sense, but in my case i want to know exactly what's open at all times by name so it's a single workspace traditional labelled window list taskbar for me (i dont feel the need or intuitiveness to visually comprehend my windows as objects, at least not with keyboard/mouse input compared to touch input)

I use multiple desktops in Linux and on MacOS, but on Windows I stick with a single desktop because the transition animation makes me feel sick. Or it did. Maybe they've changed it and I've not noticed because I've not tested it again.

then there are the philosophical differences, gnome wants to do simple things automatically in the way that most people expect while i want consent as much as possible, the first thing i do with any new app or game is check the options (this is where i hate how debian enables every service/daemon you install, before they're even configured properly)

Depends on your target. In the name of "simplicity" a lot of UIs seem to be going the "hide everything away and treat users like idiots" route. Funnily, the least technical person I know had (and has) less trouble using the old "unfriendly" UIs than they do the new "user friendly" ones, where they struggle to find basic options.

how about something as simple as the order of 'ok' and 'cancel' buttons, i believe mac and most linux interfaces are cancel-ok like a previous-next order, but because most languages are read left-right and your intended/emphasized action is usually first, because the two buttons are usually grouped and aligned to the right side of the window, i strongly think the order needs to be ok-cancel as the linguistic logic matters more here than other design placement decisions

On that, I just want consistency. I don't really mind what order they are in, provided that across the OS and applications the order is consistent. This can, of course, make things difficult for multiplatform programs.

i've been wondering about the issue of constant minor (usually graphical) tweaks lately, i've realized some of it may be coming from the fact that corporations have lots of expensive employees that need work to do, sometimes in an attempt to keep or add customers by appearing new, gmail is completely bizarre now with the rounded buttons everywhere and scrollable mail list that's for some reason wrapped in a rounded corner frame instead of reaching the edge of the browser window... tasteful intentional rounding of specific elements can be pleasant, rounding everything possible with a large radius is not tasteful nor intentional (as in based on psychological interaction principles)

I have a cynical view and an even more cynical view of the constant UI adjustments.

(this post became way longer than intended, nor did i want to make it sound like everything new is well designed, i could go on with specific bad designs or noob designers repeating the same mistakes that have already been solved in the past if they bothered to study the past, i strongly dislike the mac/gnome way not that the kde overload is much better, dislike suddenly rounding everything, i simply care about interface design and defining antagonistic blanket statements... i should look into those mint changes you mentioned, for cinnamon i presume)

Yes, Mint Cinnamon. And it appears further changes are coming (which will not be as simple to revert if imposed). Mentioned above.