Pre-compiled IceWM package for Cygwin

• Important information
• Download
• Installation

PLEASE NOTE:

Some people sent me reports that the binaries do not run on Windows 2000 (and therefore probably not on Windows NT). Others report that the binaries do run on Windows 2000/NT but only if the color depth of the X server is set to 16 bits.

I also received a report that the binaries run fine on Windows XP albeit that the minimise/maximise/close buttons are messed up a little. They are reported to run fine on Windows XP Pro.

I would be happy to supply binaries compiled on Windows NT/2000/XP but I do not have access to such machines.

Settings used for Compilation

The compilation system was a Windows 95 PC with cygwin-1.3.2 installed, compiler was gcc-2.95.2 for cygwin.

I used the default settings for the compilation. I just untar-ed the sources and performed:

$ ./configure

At this point I applied a small patch supplied by Joshua Walsky that removes a problem in dealing with DOS-style line endings (CR/LF) in IceWM's configuration files. Next I performed a normal build and install.

$ make
$ make install

Therefore this package installs IceWM under directory: /usr/local.

NOTE: I am not a developer of IceWM and window managers are way outside my knowledge domain so I can not fix bugs or implement "cool" features in IceWM itself. Please contact the IceWM developers at icewm.sourceforge.net to send bug reports or patches that are about IceWM itself.

Known issues

• Slow start. On my 233MHz Pentium II, 320MB RAM it takes about 30 seconds before IceWM is up and running. After that it is just as quick and responsive as the windows desktop itself. I suspect this is caused by IceWM scanning the system for applications that are listed in the start menu that comes with IceWM as standard.
• Spurious ` (back-quote) characters are generated into the input stream from the keyboard when pressing a modifier key (Shift, Ctrl, Alt). In my case this happens maybe 4 or 5 times in an hour so it is not a big problem.
• When switching between desktops IceWM sometimes freezes for 1-5 seconds. However it always comes back to life. In the meantime, however, the active window responds normally.
• Switching themes once IceWM is running is very slow and 8 out of 10 times IceWM crashes before the new theme is fully loaded. NOTE: Since I upgraded the memory of my machine from 64MB to 320MB this problem is gone.

Dependencies

• basic Cygwin installation with commandline interface
• xfree
• readline
• ... the ones I did not notice

Download

Use the link below to download the binaries for IceWM compiled for Cygwin.

Please read this: Some browsers automatically uncompress .tar.gz archives if you download them by left-clicking (I know IE does this). However they do not remove the .gz extension from the filename causing all kinds of confusion. To prevent this: right-click on the link and choose "Save Link as ..." or something similar from the menu that pops up.

icewm-cygwin-1.0.8-6p1.tar.gz

Installation

Start a Cygwin bash-shell and go to the cygwin root directory:

$ cd /

Untar the IceWM binaries:

$ tar xzf ~/path_to_tarfile/icewm-cygwin-1.0.8-6p1.tar.gz

Edit the startxwin.bat and/or startxwin.sh script you use to start xfree and find the line that starts your current windowmanager (I'm assuming that is twm, but YMMV) and change the line that reads "twm &" into "icewm &".

Start xfree and ... have a little patience and ... voila! IceWM on cygwin. Have fun!

If you want to start X using the standard "startx" script install this script as /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xserverrc. You should use this script as your $HOME/.xinitrc file. Please edit these files to your own preferences. Finally, run: "touch .Xauthority" from the command line in your home directory. This last command is not essential but it silences some annoying warning messages.

For help on using IcwWM see the documentation installed in directory /usr/local/doc/icewm-1.0.8 and the IceWM homepage at icewm.sourceforge.net

Contact

If you have any questions or remarks, please let me know.

Harry Kuiper (hkuiper at xs4all dot nl)