Allllllllrighty then!!! Here’s the thing. =:) This page has never really been much of any use. I mean, it’s previously held nothing whatsoever of any use to anyone. So we take the big wad of uselessness and throw it right in the trash…. But OH BAYBEE, all that is going to change now!!! =:) Well, that is to say, I certainly hope that things will start to look up….

As far as computers go, I started playing with them in 5th grade (waaaaaay back when I was just this big). My first exposure to this fabulous new world was the Apple ][. =:) Ahh, it really brings back the memories…. I was always fascinated by the simple loop-programs that one could write in 7 lines of BASIC that generated such incredibly cool computer graphics. =:) Of course, you couldn’t really do anything with them, but that wasn’t the point. Well, then I got my own PC and I was living large!!! A big old 286!! Why, that should be plenty big for ANYTHING I would ever want to do with it!! =:) I then graduated up through the x86 market until I came in contact with Windows 3.1. And I thought that was pretty cool stuff. And by all means, it was back then. But as time went by, and so did the Windows versions, it became clear to me that there were inherent problems in this new-fangled operating system/windowing environment.

So along came Linux to throw my world upside down. =:) And as a part of any good UNIX distribution, the X11R6 windowing system, most commonly referred to as X. Well, more precisely, it was the XFree86 group’s implementation of the X11 windowing system, Release 6. But anyway…. When I first started out with X, the coolest window manager (that’s the program that handles all of the windows in a given windowing session and puts decorations/buttons on the edges, etc.) was fvwm 2. And with fvwm2, you could do things that you could not even imagine were possible, coming from a Windows 3.1/Windows95 background–simply because Windows (up until just recently) was not at all configurable as far as the look and feel of the windowing element of the operating system goes.

Man, the memories of those early days–pushing fvwm2 and olvwm and afterstep to new limits. =:) I still remember hanging out on undernet’s #linux channel with Myth and nyz and Coyote and Ankh and DocBoy, comparing our home-grown “themes” for fvwm2–and this was WAY before themes.org was even a twinkle in OctobrX’s eye. But anyway, I digress….

But now, things are so much easier, what with the extraordinary choice in desktop themes. And there are some really different choices in window managers too. What does this mean? Why, it means that you have MANY CHOICES about how you can make your working environment look and feel.