I know the answer is"you should just try them both and decide which one is best for you", but I'd like to hear some opinions anyway.

Fluxbox or Icewm?

If those are the only 2 choices available, then I choose fluxbox. Sleek and bare is how I like it.

I actually prefer (and run most of the time) tiling window managers, such as dwm or awesome.

Fluxbox here as well.
Easier to configure, faster, lighter in RAM and keeps out of the way.

Icewm usually but I have fluxbox tweaked to the way I like it with wbar so I boot into either or.

Fluxbox with wbar and lxpanel here,
In fluxbox I like the ability to set desired window functions for certain apps. Example: for iceweasel i have the chromifox addon, with no window decorations, set to a specific size and postition, and set low in the desktop layers so most will show on top.
Wbar for quick application launch
Lxpanel for a desktop panel, as I was not to fond of the fluxbox one

Thanks for your replies. So far it looks like fluxbox is winning. I'll have to check out wbar and lxpanel.

Couple quick and easy questions:
1) How to I access the control center without the desktop icons (i.e. via right-click menu) without rox?

2) Is Synaptic installed by default? If so, where is it? If not, what package manager should I use?

In fluxbox running M11, RC1
- right click --> control center
- right click --> applications --> other --> antiXCC

will take a look at icewm for a seccond
EDIT
in icewm
- menu --> applications --> Preferences --> antiXCC

To access control center, check your fluxbox menu (right click; it's right there on M11; don't remember which version you are running).,

Synaptic is there in control center: >System>Manage Packages

Have a read of our FAQ. It has lots of useful stuff.

Online here:


========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.mepisimo.com/antix/Tarballs/antiX-FAQ.html"
linktext was:"http://www.mepisimo.com/antix/Tarballs/antiX-FAQ.html"
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Should also be in the menu under Help -> antiX ->FAQ

You know how icewm has little icons along the bottom left, right next to the menu button...is there something like that in fluxbox?

I tried wbar. It didn't work perfectly, and I didn't really like it. I'd like a thin panel along the top or bottom of the screen with quick launch icon to fire up programs. Ideally, it would always be visible, as in icewm, even if I have a window maximized.

Probably the only thing I don't like about fluxbox is that I have to minimize my windows to be able to right-click to get the menu. The quickest and easiest solution is to have a hotkey to call up the menu. Is there a list of hotkeys for antix-fluxbox somewhere?

It would be sweet to be able to customize hotkeys to launch various programs

fluxbox keys are in /.fluxbox folder.

I like both of the window managers, but I got used to IceWM a long time ago, so I will weigh in with a vote of confidence for IceWM. There is not a lot of difference in resource use as far as I am concerned between the two of them, and I've used IceWM with great success on some pretty old hardware, as well as new hardware. I am able to easily modify the toolbar in IceWM, which makes it easy to start up my preferred applications.

You can't lose with either of them. One reason I've recommended IceWM to newcomers is that it is a little bit easier for people who are relatively new to Linux window managers.

I'm going to have to agree with masinick. I'm new to this but so far I have worked mostly in icewm and found it pretty simple to adjust things the way I want them. I also like the ability to launch the menu from the taskbar and the fact that it displays icons in the menu better than fluxbox does (at least on this machine it does). Also, I love the fauxglass theme with the flip clock style display. I posted a screenshot of what my desktop looks like right now in the screenshots section last night. If you look at the taskbar, you'll see I've modified it to have firefox as the browser. It was easy to do. As far as resource usage I didn't notice a huge difference between the two.

Obviously you'll have your own opinion after trying them out. You might even decide that you want to install lxde and like that better. I've used that enviro before and liked it pretty well. But since you asked... __{{emoticon}}__

Good luck and let us know what you decide on!

Chalk one up for flux. I usually set up my"windows" key to bring up the flux menu though. I generally don't have any desktop exposed for right clicking.

if you want a panel and wbar isn't doing it for you, try fbpanel or even lxpanel.

I too prefer fluxbox over icewm but icewm has one big advantage over fluxbox: it is more familiar to people who are migrating from Gnome, or KDE, or even Windows.

I'm using Enlightenment e16 with LXPanel. The e16 desktop is like fluxbox but is even more powerful and configurable.

With great power comes great configurability (and a great need to configure).