DISCLAIMER: I do not work or speak for SGI. I just like and use their computers a lot.
I first got started using Linux back in 1993 because of my experiences using the SGI workstations in service at NASA Lewis's Internal Fluid Mechanics Division. Working with these machines gave me very definite ideas of what a computing environment should be like. As a result, one of my goals in my early days of using Linux was to set up an environment as close as possible to that supplied by SGI's IRIX operating system and Indigo Magic desktop environment. The desktop shown in the screen shot above (or in this PNG file) is the result of my efforts over the last few years in trying to reproduce the useful features of this environment in Linux with X11 and the FVWM2 window manager.
The basic SGI desktop works like this: all of the system's important windowed applications, as well as many of the text-based applications, are available through the "ToolBox" in the upper left corner. This is a button bar with cascading menus similar to the Microsoft Windows 95 "Start Menu" or the NeXTstep Dock. There are also a couple xterm shells which come up for doing the usual Unix command line things; these start up iconified just to the right of the ToolBox. The Indigo Magic desktop, a later extension of the original SGI desktop, added a Desks Overview in the lower left corner which allows the use of multiple desktops, as well as a drag-and-drop file manager.
To reproduce the look and a good chunk of the feel of the SGI desktop under Linux, I use FVWM2 (set up more or less to emulate the Motif window manager mwm) and two of its extension modules: FvwmButtons for the ToolBox, and FvwmPager for the Desks Overview. I don't have a drag-and-drop file manager, partly because I dislike file managers conceptually but mostly because I've yet to find a good one. I also has a few extensions to the SGI layout that I find useful. First, I have another FvwmButtons module running in the upper right corner which I call the "Status Center"; this contains a digital xclock with the time and date, as well as an application called xosview which monitors most of the system performance parameters (CPU and memory usage, IRQ usage, etc.). Second, I have a copy of XEmacs running in the lower left corner, because I use XEmacs extensively as my programming environment, news reader, and mail reader. (No, I don't use XEmacs as my web browser. The w3-mode does an OK job of rendering HTML, but it's too slow.) I call all of these elements combined the "White Magic Desktop" (a weak pun on Indigo Magic and the background image I use).
So, assuming you've read this far and would like to copy this setup or borrow from it, here is what software is required:
The specific config files I use for the White Magic Desktop are below. They do not have the leading "." so that they won't accidentally clobber your existing configuration.
Please feel free to email me if you found this page or my config files useful.
