| FVWM | |
| Developer: | Robert Nation |
| Programming Language: | C, Perl, Unix Shell |
| Operating System: | Unix-like |
| Genre: | Window manager |
| License: | GNU GPL v2, FVWM included in OpenBSD: BSD License[1] |
The F Virtual Window Manager (FVWM) is a virtual window manager for the X Window System. Originally a twm derivative, FVWM is now a window manager for Unix-like systems.
In 1993, during his work analyzing acoustic signatures for the United States Department of Defense, Robert Nation began hacking twm with the intent of simultaneously reducing memory usage and adding support for virtual desktops.[2]
Already known for his rxvt terminal emulator, Nation worked on reducing the memory consumption of his new window manager. Deciding to test FVWM's reception, on June 1, 1993, he bundled it with a rxvt release.
In 1994, Rob Nation stopped developing FVWM and made Charles Hines the maintainer. Rob Nation's last release of FVWM was fvwm-1.24r. The post-Rob Nation version of FVWM uses a different configuration file format and has a significantly different architecture. Many Linux distributions, as a result, distributed both fvwm-1.24r and later releases of FVWM as separate programs., fvwm-1.24r still compiles and runs on a modern Linux system without any problems. A small number of users continue to use the older FVWM release. In late 1998 the office of FVWM maintainer was abolished and further development has been conducted by a group of volunteers.
Many window managers in use today are have been influenced by FVWM, notably Afterstep, Xfce, Enlightenment, and Metisse.
Originally, FVWM was named the Feeble Virtual Window Manager, as stated by Robert Nation in a 1997 Linux Journal interview with, who claimed the name had been chosen because original releases had almost no user selectable features. When Google published the old news group archives acquired from DejaNews, the original origin of the name was re-discovered. However, when Chuck Hine was answering questions for the official FVWM Frequently Asked Questions, Chuck had never agreed with the 'feeble' explanation, and added alternate possible meanings of F (as in the name of the window manager) to the FAQ, with many entries coming from mailing list messages.[3]
Many of these features can be disabled at runtime or compile time, or dynamically for specific windows, as well as many other options. FVWM provides the ability to configure the desktop to work, look and behave the way the user wants it to.