FVWM-Crystal aims to create an easy to use, eye-candy but also powerful desktop environment for Linux or other Unix-like operating systems.

FVWM-Crystal uses following programs: FVWM as a window manager and "main core", ROX-Filer as file manager (manages icons on the desktop), xterm, aterm, mrxvt or urxvt as terminal emulators, MPD or XMMS as music players (there's built-in support for controlling these programs), and several other tools for different functions, like setting a wallpaper or making screen shots.

Here are some key features of "FVWM Crystal":

· transparent elements of the interface: panels, menus, dialogs (pseudo-transparency, doesn't show windows underneath)
· window decorations, panel/menu colorsets and desktop wallpaper changeable from the main menu; choice saved for next X sessions
· flexible window decorations: can have different titlebar buttons layout, pixmaps, button functions
· different "desktop layouts" (panel placement and functions, desktop functions, window icons/thumbnails), changeable from the menu
· advanced keyboard support: keybindings for controlling the desktop switching, window management (moving, resizing, focusing, basic operations like minimalization or closing) - nearly 90 different keybindings
· support for controlling music players, using the keyboard or panel buttons and menus; currently MPD and XMMS are supported
· advanced support of the terminal windows: special "QuakeConsole" terminal accessible by an Alt+` (grave) keystroke similar to the console found in FPP games; terminals can be opened using RMB on the desktop; terminal windows don't release focus for newly opened windows (by default)
· a Python script for generating different panels and menus with installed applications - automatically finds programs in $PATH and creates specified menus and panels
· support for nearly 250 different applications - icons, menu/panel database entries, window styles
· different language support using gettext

Features for advanced users

· all FVWM configuration divided into small files in a simple directory structure
· special functions for loading configuration files - allows FVWM configuration files placed in different directories (for example system-wide and user-wide); user files are searched before system-wide files (directory structure must be preserved), first found file is loaded
· simple and easy to use system of "user preferences", adds to the configuration files ability to remember different user choices and recall them at any moment, usually at the startup of X session
· support for system-wide configuration in /etc/X11/fvwm/fvwm-crystal directory as well as user configuration in ~/.fvwm directory - changes in configuration files can be preserved between package updates
· special files called "recipes" - similar to "standard" FVWM configuration model (one configuration - one file), allows for different configurations in the same package (for example different music players changeable during runtime)
· support for different icon themes and sizes (similar to /usr/share/icons directory), included many icons in 22x22, 32x32 and 48x48 sizes

Requirements:

· FVWM - version 2.5.13 or higher
· Python - for some scripts
· ImageMagick - import and convert are used
· ROX-Filer - for icons on the desktop (additional wallpaper program not needed)
· XScreenSaver - a screen saver
· trayer - a systray (notification area)
· configured sudo - for reboot/shutdown computer options in the menu
· terminal emulator - xterm, aterm, Eterm, mrxvt or urxvt
· program for setting a wallpaper - Esetroot, hsetroot or habak
· music player - Music Player Daemon (+ mpc), X MultiMedia System (+ xmms-shell and XMMSFind), Quod Libet or cdcd

What's New in This Release:

· This release fixes a very critical bug on POSIX systems.
· Every user is encouraged to upgrade.
· A utility to update the environment variables into the user configurations was added.
· A few minor issues were fixed.
· All the ASCII files are encoded using UTF-8. bin/fvwm-crystal uses the new and now old fvwm2 executable name: fvwm.