How to install FVWM-Crystal on MEPIS 6

This is a guide to setting up the FVWM-Crystal Desktop Environment on a machine running MEPIS 6.

First, log in as the root user, open up a console, and then type in this command:

apt-get install fvwm python imagemagick rox-filer xscreensaver trayer gksu aterm habak mpd mpc

Hit enter to run that command. Now keep in mind that this requires your linux machine to be connected to the internet, otherwise none of this will work.

That fairly lengthy command, once it's done (it may ask you some things), will get all the different packages that FVWM-Crystal needs installed.

Next we need to go to the FVWM-Crystal homepage, and download FVWM-Crystal. Put the file wherever you want, and then navigate a console to there and type this command:

tar xvzf fvwm-crystal-3.0.4.tar.gz

Then this command:

cd fvwm-crystal-3.0.4

And finally this command:

make install

You have just installed FVWM-Crystal, but there's more to do still.

Navigate in Konqueror to [where you downloaded the fvwm-crystal tarball to]/fvwm-crystal-3.0.4/addons/. There you will find a file called fvwm-crystal.desktop - copy it to the clipboard, and then navigate to /usr/share/xsessions/, and paste it. Log out of KDE.

Once you're at the login screen, hit "Menu", then go to the "session" submenu. From there, select "FVWM-Crystal". Then log in to whichever account you want to log in to (you'll have to set the session for every account before logging in the first time).

Voila! You're now in FVWM-Crystal. It's pretty neat-looking, hey? Well you haven't seen half of it yet.

FVWM is highly configurable - the first thing you'll want to do it click the crystal menu button at the top left-hand corner (it has a crystal logo on it), and you'll see a menu with several sub-folders. Go to window decorations, then button style, and click MS-Windows. Then go to the other folder in window decoration, and click on any style in there to selkect it as your window decoration.

The next folder in there that we want to mess with is the Color Scheme one - just select a scheme from there to shange appearance.

Use the background folder to change the background, but WARNING - DO NOT TRY TO OPEN THE BOTTOM FOLDER IN THAT, ONLY THE TOP ONE! TRYING TO OPEN THE BOTTOM ONE WILL HANG YOUR SYSTEM DUE TO HOW KDE ORGANIZES FILES IN THAT FOLDER! YOU WILL HAVE TO WIPE THAT FOLDER MANUALLY THROUGH KONQUEROR OR ROX-FILER TO BE ABLE TO USE IT!

Next, go to the development menu, then to recipies. These can change how your display is set up - where the system tray is, the clock, the appearance, etc. Just try playing around, seeing which one is for you (You have to restart crystal whenever you do so, but it prompts you to do that on recipie change, just click the left button in the window it pops up, and it takes maybe 15 seconds to do that). You can configure crystal to look similar to MacOS, Windows, or a ton of crystal-specific layouts.