About

This is a Fvwm 3 configuration intended to:

• Make Fvwm behave like a normal wm by default.
• Make it easy for even a beginner to customize Fvwm.
• Switch between themes in an easy way.
• Showcase a variety of panels and other Fvwm functionality.
• Improve game compatibility. (No titlebars where they shouldn't be or fullscreen issues).

Downloads

Fvwm3-Starter-kit-1.1.zip (5.74 MB)

Extra-1.1.zip (965.47 KB)

Install

Move the contents of "fvwm" into ~/.fvwm
(No other configuration is needed.)

Extra: Install the main config. Then move the contents of "fvwm" into ~/.fvwm

Dependencies

Recommended: stalonetray cava xosview xload
Extra: playerctl brightnessctl pactl mpv yt-dlp fonts-dseg
Useful: pasystray nm-applet cbatticon hsetroot feh picom

New in 1.1

Note: This release is licensed under GPL v2.0 or later, so many themes/modules have been renamed or moved to the "Extra" package. See the notice below for further details.

Themes: All KDE1 themes, more OS/2 themes, RISC OS, steam (green), desqview, more Macintosh variants (now called "pear") and various others.

Modules: utc-clock, flag-clock, LCD clocks, slide-panel-thin, openbsd-pager, cube (spinning 3D cube), system-plot (shows CPU and memory usage as graphs), space-live (live feed from ISS), space-xload, pear-panel (Macintosh like)

There are now 17 sunclock variations.

Various other things have also been fixed.

LCD Clocks

There are 6 color variations. The autocolor variant bases its colors of a Colorset. There is also "lcd-clock-simple" which uses a font from the "fonts-dseg" package. These modules are found in the "modules/LCD-Clocks/" directory.

Media bars (experimental)

This is a music player widget. It shows the remaining track time and the current title as scrolling text. It stops scrolling when the music is paused. There is both a normal and mini variant. These have both a mpd + mpc and a playerctl backend. You can change the volume by scrolling over the dial. Make sure the "volume-event" module is loaded so the dial uppdates immedeately.

Note: This uses AI generated scripts. See "readme.txt" for more details.

These only work on Linux and are part of the "Extra" package.

Original description

Default look

Theme: fvwm-slate | Modules: floating-buttons (clock, pager, sunclock, media buttons, cpu, memory, tray, window list).

Themes

There are over 50 themes included. Among them are: KDE 1, Windows, Macintosh, NextStep, Window Maker, OS/2 Warp 3 and 4, Plan 9, 2bwm, dwm, various UNIX (OpenVMS, Solaris, ...), Ko-Window, SX-Window, FM Towns, and more.

Module Examples

slide-panel: Dark panel from an earlier setup. (pager, cava, media buttons, sunclock, clock) slide-toolbar: Simple slidable toolbar example. movable-bar: A panel that can be moved around using a handle.

Slide panels can be toggled using Super+p or pressing the triangle button on the right.

Sunclock

Inspired by the "sunclock" program. There are 10 sunclock variations. Edit "modules/sunclock/module" to select a style.

Desktop Scroll

Load "desktop-scroll" to enable desktop scrolling. By default you can scroll using the scroll wheel on the desktop. "drag-to-scroll" enables you to click and drag on the desktop to pan around. (Use Alt+F1 to open the root menu). "scroll-with-pointer" scrolls when the pointer touches a screen edge.

Notice

This project is now licensed under GPL v2.0 or later. Some of the included resources have a different license. See the included LICENSE.txt for further details. This does not apply to the "Extra" package.

If you disagree with the license decission, contact me and the license may be changed for newer releases.

AI was used to create the "generate-theme-menu" script. See readme.txt for further details.

I don't use social media, so any posts elsewhere are most likely not by me. But I'm fine with you posting this elsewhere to promote the project. If you decide to host this elsewhere, I would like you to link back to this page. This is not required by the license, so this is simply a personal request.

If you wish to collaborate, send me a message on CustoDesk. I may include themes in a "Contributed" category, modules or other suggestions.

Tested on: Debian 13, fvwm3 1.1.2
Debian sid (2026-10-05, fvwm3 1.1.5
OpenBSD 7.9, fvwm3 1.1.0
FreeBSD 15.1, fvwm3 1.1.5_4 (ports, the options XPM and ICONS must be enabled)