Installing the Enlightenment Window Manager

One of the most garish and outlandish X11 window managers is Enlightenment, by Carsten Haitzler and Geoff Harrison. Want to feel like you're hurtling through space, flying an alien spacecraft at the helm of an organic console? If your answer is "yes," then this window manager is for you.

Like other window managers, Enlightenment provides window controls, virtual consoles, scrollbars, and desktop menus (see Figure 8.4). But that's where the similarity ends. This window manager works by loading configuration files for various themes, and two themes, DEFAULT, and DEFAULT_small (for 800-by-600-pixel displays), are included.

Figure 8.4.
The Enlightenment
window manager
provides a unique,
futuristic X Window
System desktop, with
many unusual controls.

To install this window manager, you'll need a library of graphic routines called imlib.

Download this library from the following site:

ftp://ftp.mandrake.net/pub/imlib

After you download and install this software library (it needs about 12 megabytes of disk space after being decompressed), you must then download, compile, and install the Enlightenment software distribution. You can obtain a copy of the software from:

http://www.rasterman.com



http://mandrake.net/e

Uncompress and dearchive the Enlightenment software (it needs about three megabytes of hard drive space), then build and install the software according to the included instructions. You can then insert the Enlightenment command in your .xinitrc file in your home directory.

Emulating Other Desktops with the mlvwm Window Manager

If you miss your old system after migrating to Linux from another computer operating system (the one from Cupertino, California, not the one from Redmond, Washington!), you can feel comfortable again by using the mlvwm window manager. This simple window manager uses the Apple Macintosh desktop theme. Although not all menus work from the Finder's desktop, you'll feel right at home with this window manager (see Figure 8.5).

Download this window manager, by Takashi Hasegawa, through the www.plig.org Web pages, or you can try obtaining it from the following site:

http://www.biole.nuee.nagoya-u.ac.jp/member/tak/mlvwm.html

Figure 8.5.
The mlvwm window
manager for X11
emulates appearance of
the Apple Macintosh
desktop.

Download the software package, then uncompress and dearchive the mlvwm sources. Edit the file configure.h and type the following:

# xmkmf

# make install

Once finished, you should copy the file Mlvwmrc from the sample_rc directory to a file named .mlvwmrc in your home directory. You can edit this file and make changes to allow mlvwm to use icons installed on your system. Mlvwm comes with some computer-translated documentation in its source package, but it also has detailed man pages in English that you can read for configuration details.

Using the Simplest Window Manager, wm2

If you don't want to fill your hard drive with countless configuration files or fiddle with complex X11 desktop settings, but still want to use X11 and a window manager, use Chris Cannam's wm2 window manager. This window manager has the bare minimum of features you'll need in a window manager. Its best feature is the list of features it doesn't have:

• no desktop icons
• no pager, or virtual desktops
• no root menus
• no complicated configuration files

Unlike other window managers discussed in this hour, wm2 requires only 65,000 bytes of hard drive space, which makes this window manager an ideal candidate for installation on Linux X11 laptops, especially where hard drive space is at a premium. Because there are no configuration files, customizing must be done when you build the program (see Figure 8.6).

Compiling and installing this window manager is a snap, with the exception of one minor glitch (you'll read about the fix in a minute). Download the source, wm2-4.tar.gz, then uncompress and dearchive the file:

# gunzip wm2-4.tar.gz

# tar xf wm2-4.tar

# cd wm2-4

# make

gcc -c -O2 Border.C

gcc -c -O2 Buttons.C

gcc -c -O2 Client.C

gcc -c -O2 Events.C

gcc -c -O2 Main.C

gcc -c -O2 Manager.C

gcc -c -O2 Rotated.C

mv -f wm2 wm2.old >& /dev/null || true

gcc -o wm2 Border.o Buttons.o Client.o Events.o Main.o Manager.o

Rotated.o -L/usr/X11/lib -lXext -lX11 -lXmu -lm

/usr/i486-linux-libc5/lib/libXt.so.6: undefined reference to `_Xsetlocale'

make: *** [wm2] Error 1

As you can see, wm2 compiles well enough, but the linker barfs on a missing subroutine and the build aborts. This error shows that when the various compiled components of wm2

Figure 8.6.
The wm2 window
manager is compact,
efficient, and space-
saving—ideal for
running X11 on
laptops with little hard
drive space.

were linked against your installed X11 software libraries, under the /usr/X11R6/lib directory, an X11 software routine was missing. To fix this error, open wm2's Makefile with your text editor and look at the beginning of the file for the linker option line:

LIBS    =  -L/usr/X11/lib -lXext -lX11 -lXmu -lm

Change this line to add the X11 Xt library to the list of X11 libraries to be linked:

LIBS    =  -L/usr/X11/lib -lXext -lX11 -lXmu -lXt -lm

Use the make command again, and wm2 links properly. When done, make sure you're the root operator and copy wm2 into your /usr/X11R6/bin directory. If you'd like to use wm2 as your window manager, insert wm2 into the .xinitrc file in your home directory.