These are excerpts from an article i wrote in 2004.
Every time i tell people that i use IceWM, they snicker, and i resent
that.

If you are an IceWM user, you know it's a great window manager: fast,
light, uses very little memory. It's easy to use and one of the
quickest to do work with.
INSTALLATION
# apt-get install icewm icewm-themes iceme
NOTE: if you installed x-window-system-core during the Debian
installation, make sure you install the package 'menu' in order to get
the 'Debian menu'.
For the super-minimalist, you can install 'icewm-lite', lighter and without
a taskbar at the bottom.
THEMES
It gives you a ton of themes, if you like the
Gnome look there are several:
For the Gnome look: IceGnome2 and many others
For the XFCE4 look: IceBlueCurve and IceBlueOkayish
For the Mac look: aquablue, liquid, sortofaqua
For kde: pkde kde2 ,pkde2, yak
For the XP look: SilverXP, XP
I counted 70 different themes that come with IceWM with icewm-themes
package, without counting the others from other sites. There are more
themes you can shake a stick at, my favorite is Infadel2
To switch between themes, click on the start/linux button on the far
left of the taskbar to get the main menu, choose Themes from the main
menu, go down the alphabetical list, click on the theme you like, it
will switch like lightning, click on the desktop to make the main menu
disappear and voilà. Easy.
I like to use the keyboard instead of the mouse when i can, my wrist
appreciates it. So i press the Windows key to get the main menu, down
arrow to Themes, Enter, down arrow to designated theme, Enter, finito.
So that takes care of the 'looks' myth.
MAIN MENU
Remember i installed 'iceme'?
iceme stands for 'ice menu editor', launch it from the main menu:
Programs > Apps > System
Maximize the screen: Alt+F10, to minimize it: Atl+F10 again, if you
want to minimize to the taskbar: Alt+F9: Go down the list of the main
menu hilighting every item you don't want, and pressing Ctrl+X to
delete (or Delete from the Edit top menu). I ended up with this, as my
main menu:
iceme
Programs >
Windows >
Help
Themes >
Logout >
'Programs' is the Debian menu, i don't need much else. When we get to
the keybindings you'll see why this is enough.
How did i end with 'iceme' on the main menu? With iceme opened, (this
is inside iceme), i went to Programs > Apps > System > iceme, hilited
it,
Ctrl+C to copy it,
then i clicked on the space of the main menu that i wanted it placed
on, and pressed
Ctrl+V to paste it.
If you hilite an app and paste another app, the second one will be
under the first app. Say, you have Mozilla on the main menu, and you
want iceme on the main menu under Mozilla, hilight Mozilla and Ctrl+V
to put iceme under it.
ICONS ON THE TASKBAR
If you like icons on the taskbar, open iceme, copy the apps as i did
above, open the Toolbar folder, and paste them inside, in whichever
order you like, logout/login and voilà.
BASIC GOODIES
IceWM comes with a net and cpu monitor that will give you information
you require, if you click on the cpu with your mouse left button, it
will launch the program 'top'. If you just pass the cursor over it, it
will give basic information about the CPU. If you pass the cursor over
the net monitor, it will give you lots of information about the net in
your box. If you do the same over the time, it will give you the date
and the day of the week, all this can be configured in the
~/.icewm/preferences file. For the date and time, strftime is used. It
also comes with 'Show desktop' and 'Window list' icons by default.
On the far right, if you click on the symbol (>) it will make the taskbar disappear,
to put the taskbar back, click on it again.
What more do you want?
PREFERENCES
In order to configure and/or create apps shortcuts (key bindings), you
will have to copy the Preferences and keys files from Debian's global
address, but first find out if you got them by default.
$ cp /etc/X11/icewm/preferences ~/.icewm/preferences
$ cp /etc/X11/icewm/keys ~/.icewm/keys
$ cp /etc/X11/icewm/winoptions ~/.icewm/winoptions
If you're happy with the default preferences in your icewm, there is
nothing to change. If you want to change anything, remember to
'uncomment' the line you are going to change and leave it uncommented,
sometimes, all lines are uncommented, and that makes it easier.
enable = 1
disable = 0
$ nano ~/.icewm/preferences
If you want to change the taskbar from the bottom to the top:
# Task bar at top of the screen
# TaskBarAtTop=0 # 0/1
The second line is the one that has to be edited; notice it is
commented (#) which means any change to it, will be ignored, also the
value given to it, is '0' which means it is disabled and thus, the
taskbar stays at the bottom of the screen. So, if you want the taskbar
at the top, start by uncommenting it, and changing the value to '1', so
it looks like this.
# Task bar at top of the screen
TaskBarAtTop=1 # 0/1
save/exit
logout/login
and the next time you start icewm, you'll have the task bar on top.
Now, in your terminal, press Alt+F10 to maximize and have a full-screen
look, all the preferences are piled together by sections, which makes
it awful hard to find anything the first time around.
These are my preferences:
# Opaque window move
OpaqueMove=0 # 0/1
# Opaque window resize
OpaqueResize=0 # 0/1
# Smart window placement (minimal overlap)
SmartPlacement=1 # 0/1
# Support mouse wheel
UseMouseWheel=1 # 0/1
# Show 'show desktop' button on taskbar
TaskBarShowShowDesktopButton=0 # 0/1
# Show 'window list' menu on task bar
TaskBarShowWindowListMenu=0 # 0/1
# Command to shutdown the system
ShutdownCommand="sudo halt"
# Command to reboot the system
RebootCommand="sudo reboot"
# Clock Time format (strftime format string)
TimeFormat="%H:%M"
# Clock Date format for tooltip (strftime format string)
DateFormat="%a %d %b"
WorkspaceNames=" 1 ", " 2 ",
save/exit from your editor
logout/login
when you come back into the X system all changes will be effective.
WINOPTIONS
$ nano ~/.icewm/winoptions
once there, i decided to erase everything and add this:
aterm.startMaximized: 1
pine.startMaximized: 1
name.class.startMaximized: 1
aterm.dTitleBar: 0
opera.dTitleBar: 0
gqview.dTitleBar: 0
openoffice.org.dTitleBar: 0
xchat.dTitleBar: 0
The first 3 lines will launch my terminal and mail app full-size, plus any window i open.
The other apps will appear without the title bar, saving me space on my monitor's screen.
KEYBINDINGS
IceWM comes with many keybindings by default:
Alt-Tab to switch windows
Alt-F4 closes app
Alt-F10 maximizes screen
Alt-F9 back to original size
To move between virtual desktops: Windows key + right/left arrow
for more info see icewm.org
$ nano ~/.icewm/keys
Once there, i replaced the first section with this:
key "Ctrl+F1" aterm
key "Ctrl+F2" xfe
key "Ctrl+F3" xchat
key "Ctrl+F4" gqview
key "Ctrl+F5" mozilla-firefox
key "Ctrl+F6" opera
key "Ctrl+F7" mozilla-thunderbird
key "Ctrl+F8" oowriter
save/exit
logout/login
Now you can launch your apps like lightning.
Debian carries the following apps that help do the above described operations, such as:
iceconf
icepref
icemc
WALLPAPER
If you want a wallpaper, put this in your ~/.xinitrc or ~/.xsession whichever you use:
#!/bin/sh
xscreensaver &
numlockx &
icewmbg &
exec icewm-session
Then go to your ~/.icewm/preferences and at the end of the file edit the folowing so it looks like this:
# Desktop background scaled to full screen
DesktopBackgroundScaled=1 # 0/1
# Desktop background color
DesktopBackgroundColor="color"
Download your wallpaper to your /home, and enter it here:
# Desktop background image
DesktopBackgroundImage="/home/luigi/photos/ClubSandy11.jpg"
And that's all folks, you've got a good looking, extremely fast, highly
configurable window manager.
References: www.icewm.org
IRC: Freenode server #icewm
Luis Lima aka macondo/Lou
ironwindow2001 [at] yahoo.com
Revised on May 23 2006
Edit 5/31/06:
In the .icewm/winoptions, the line to make the new window maximized is:
name.class.startMaximized: 1
it will be corrected in the main article.
Edit 2 June 2006:
Here's my new keybindings in:
$ nano ~/.icewm/keys
key "Ctrl+F1" aterm
key "Ctrl+F2" xfe
key "Ctrl+F3" aterm -e tinyirc
key "Ctrl+F4" gqview
key "Ctrl+F5" mozilla-firefox
key "Ctrl+F6" opera
key "Ctrl+F7" aterm -e pine
key "Ctrl+F8" oowriter
key "Ctrl+F9" aterm -e elinks
save/exit
logout/login
Luis Lima aka Lou/macondo