FVWM as main desktop again (sort of)
====================================

Logout [1] once  observed that there are no more  active FVWM [2] users
(sadly, even  the fvwm.org site is  now gone). There were  people which
used and tuned  their FVWM environments for years but  now they usually
have been using modern desktops like GNOME.

Well,  it's  very  true. I  have  been  using  the  FVWM since  I  have
discovered the Linux  (my first Red Ht  Linux was 5.0, I  think, and it
had the FVWM 1.x ad FVWM95 by  default). I of, course, used things like
the AfterStep, the WindowMaker (for  several years, actually), even the
GNOME 1.x,  and of  course the  Indigo Magic Desktop  on the  IRIX. But
about 2004 I have started to use the  FVWM 2.x on all my machines as my
default desktop  and it  hasn't changed  until 2018  when I  changed my
default home  desktop from SGI  to OpenPOWER (I  have used the  MATE on
some notebooks before so I have started  to use it also on my OpenPOWER
machine).

When I have  bought my first MNT  Reform laptom (the Reform  2) it came
with the  Sway pre-installed  (it used  Wayland by  defauls to  it have
become my fist Wayland-only computer as  I refuse to install taht thing
on an OpenPOWER machine).

But now,  there is  an problem  with my desktop  - the  Blackbird still
refuses to start and I have too  little free time now to play with if).
Thus I have been using the  MNT Pocket Reform as a desktop replacement.
I  have connected  my Eizo  LCD, USB  port adapter  wiith the  ethernet
adapter,  keyboard and  mouse and  I  have been  using it  as my  Linux
desktop. It  has sway and  Wayladn, however.  Also many of  my favorite
apps (like  the XFig) are  old X11  apps and a  large, high-resolution,
screen and Wayland are not ideal for them..

Thus I have started to use the SGI  O2 again. It has the SGI 1600SW LCD
(1600x1024, 17"), an actual, proper keyboard (a mechanical, SGI-branded
logitech, I think) and the three-button mechanical mouse.  And the FVWM
is still  installed and configured  here and my fingers  still remember
the shortcuts.

Once again  I use this  machine on daily  basis, to read  Gopher, write
LaTeX documents,  to do  (relatively) light computations  and so  on. I
reserve  my MNT  for modern  WWW, AI  interaction and  such tasks.  For
the  rest  I use  the  real  computer.  It's  faster, easier  and  more
user-friendly.


Also, I have been using my old R4k IRIS Indigo computer on weekends. It
has IRIX 5.3 and Tcl/Tk 8.0 so  I'm have been modifying my Tcl files to
me 8.0-compatible. Surprisingly, that old blue box performs pretty well
(I need to find tardist package for wish8.0 to be able to compile the C
extension I developed to speed-up computations). I still have to manage
the app-defaults for the XFig to  make that machine fully usable for my
daily tasks.

I have been using AI for helping me with some utilities to make my SGIs
more usable  in today's world (as  the late Jynx once  mentioned) but I
still have  to polish these  thing somewhat (I'm  trying to make  a GNU
Remind to Palm and PSION II calendar conversion utility, for example).


References:

[1] http://technomorous.eu
[2] https://fvwm.org