Since NsCDE is basically a collection of configurations, themes and tools around FVWM and not desktop environment in official definition, user must choose some favorite and default applications such as X terminal emulator file manager, and X editor, which will then be provided to him in occations where programs of that type must be called.
Apart from this, since system tray concept has been introduced on X11 and is
here to stay, user will need some standalone tray application. For this
purpose, a logical and really great stalonetray (Stand Alone Tray) is more than
adequate. When NsCDE configuration for stalonetray $FVWM_USERDIR/Stalonetray.conf
is used, it will have this defaults: grid 3x3 and it's place will be in the bottom right corner of
the screen. Stalonetray is not integrated into Front Panel because it's
size cannot be known in all times: is it one button size, two, ten? It is growing and
shrinking depending on number of widgets or tray icons, and apart from
that, this can significantly alter the precious CDE look of the Front Panel. A window
with traditional mwm/dtwm borders and without title in corner of the screen is
default in NsCDE. Ideas are welcome.
There are some programs which needs to be run under escalated privileges. Usually as root.
Some examples are firewall-applet(1) for managing firewalld on Linux systems, Wireshark etc ...
For this purpose on Linux (and most probably BSD systems), so called PolicyKit
or "polkitd" is used as a authenticator component, while on the client side, PolicyKit agent
must be used. This will then prompt user for a password. Since there is no equivalent of
this agent as standalone DE-indepentent program analogously to stalonetray(1) or dunst(1),
probably the closest match and most often used is polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 which is
usually installed in /usr/libexec
and relatively without
huge dependencies on some desktop environment. It can be started from profile, for example from
InitFunction in $FVWM_USERDIR/NsCDE-Init.conf
or by using dex autostarter
from this very file (default NsCDE-Init.conf has an example for this).
Small python program dex(1) can be installed and used from InitFunction
in $FVWM_USERDIR/NsCDE-Init.conf
. This program can be configured to read
system autostart files in /etc/xdg/autostart
and/or
user's from $HOME/.config/autostart
. From here,
PolicyKit agent, NetworkManager applet, Nextcloud agent, Firewall agent, pnmixer and similar
can be started. Programs such as stalonetray(1), dunst(1), xsettingsd(1), xscreensaver(1)
are not candidates for this, since they are integrated directly with NsCDE and managed
by it's configuration and autodetenction procedures.
If found, and if configured in $FVWM_USERDIR/NsCDE.conf
with InfoStore
variable nscde_use_dunst
set to 1, NsCDE will make fresh copy of
$FVWM_USERDIR/Dunst.conf
if it doesn't already exist, and start
dunst(1) notification daemon. This standalone notification daemon is
highly configurable and is Window Manager and Desktop Environment agnostic. Usage of
dunst(1) is highly recommended.
X Terminal program? Urxvt, xterm,
mate-terminal, terminus ... user's choice
as always. As a slight recommendation, mate-terminal from MATE DE can be
set to look almost as Dtterm, but with richer menu and better UTF-8
handling, the bad thing is that configuration if not done via GUI or configuration file but is
stored in binary DCONF registry, and registry editor like dconf-editor or
or dconf gsettings must be used for non-interactive or CLI editing.
See the example in $NSCDE_ROOT/share/doc/examples/colormgr.local.example
on how to integrate mate-terminal with a
Color Style Manager.
Second (if not first) best choice is Urxvt, but since it does not have a menu nor a
real tabs, tmux(1), screen(1) or possibly tabbed(1) can be used for the same functionality.
Suggestions for more dtterm-like alternative are welcome.
File manager? Since author does not use them very much, there is no some strong suggestion. Maybe Krusader from KDE is a best choice because it has a lot of features and functions plus two pane mode for work. It looks like a total contrast to GNOME way of doing things, so it must be good, although it is not at all similar to CDE's original dtfile(1), but dtfile(1) is a bad and poor file manager anyway. Another reasonable choice can be pcmanfm or pcmanfm-qt. For something more original, Xplore file manager is written with Motif widget. It looks nice, but it is unfinished (lacks real actions for many things, and instead input dialogs are popped up for copy/paste ...) it is not maintained and developed, and if someone does not brings it up from the past it can serve only for overview of directories, simple actions and nice Motif decoration.
Editor? Gvim, Emacs, Xemacs, Nedit ... user's choice.
Another nice and useful app is Gkrellm for which
NsCDE has a ready drop-in theme called (of course) NsCDE in
share/config_templates
and it can be put in user's
~/.gkrellm2/themes
and integrated with
Color Style Manager
with the $NSCDE_ROOT/share/doc/examples/colormgr.local.example
which can be
installed as $FVWM_USERDIR/libexec/colormgr.local
.
If standalone freedesktop autostarter dex-autostart (sometimes called "dex")
is installed, it will be used by default NsCDE-Init.conf
function
CommonInitFunction
in local mode: it will read and start ".desktop" files
in the $HOME/.config/autostart
directory.
X Compositor: if user likes visual effects with tinting, transparency,
shadows, 3D, smooth changes and so on, compton(1), compton-ng(1)
or picom(1) standalone compositors are excellent programs and tools for such users,
who want to combine retro and modern style. It the time of writing this, it looks like picom(1) is
the most maintained of this three X compositors. Personally, I feel it like some kind of lag, no matter how
powerful GPU, CPU and RAM I have. I turn it on occasionally, more as an
amusement of xsnow, xsanta or xeyes type, but when I have serious work to do,
I simply turn it off in some moment.
Maybe it can be better if it is configured more conservative than example. See
/opt/NsCDE/share/doc/examples/compton-integration
for
a starting point. Syntax of this file is largely compatible for all three above mentioned
X compositors.
Notice: when X Compositor is active on X display, FVWM geometry indicator which is shown at the center of the screen during window move or resize actions will not be visible.