Useful and Decorative Minimalist Desktops

I use two fast, simple, and lightweight GUI desktops: one at home, and one at work. Both are based on wmx for the window manager and idesk for desktop icons and a decorative frame for the icons. I also use xbiff for mail notification, xcal, xclock, and xload running in fixed windows, wget and ImageMagick to grab a weather radar image, and xli to overlay images on the desktop wallpaper such that they look like fixed windows in their own right.

In this series of articles, I describe how I made the themes and why I made the decisions I did. Where possible, I also explain alternatives that have the same effect. I'll go over every icon, image, and fixed window, so that you can make and maintain your own desktop or start with mine and adapt it to your needs.

Samples of my home and work destkops. Click the thumbnails for full-size images.
home desktop (1920x1080):	work desktop (1280x1024):

First, a bit of warning. The OS I use is FreeBSD Unix, not a Linux distro, which means all the commands I list are more likely to be BSD versions than GNU versions.

I made the work desktop first, but I'm going to break them down starting with the home desktop. The reason is that the work one is complex and was made by trial and error (lots of error), resulting in lots of lessons learned that I applied to the simpler home desktop, and my intent is to spare you from learning those lessons the hard way.

Let's get started, then, with each component one by one:

Home desktop:

• Window Manager: wmx (and patching on FreeBSD)
• Desktop Wallpaper:
  • Set Any Image As Your Wallpaper in a Variety of Styles
  • Set Multiple Overlaid Images As Your Wallpaper: Part 1
  • Set a Fractal Plasma Effect As Your Wallpaper

(More to come. ~arielmt, 1K39L