FVWM-ROOT(1)

💖 FVWM-ROOT(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to fvwm-root, the little utility that serves looks for your X root window. yes, the fvwm-root(1) manual, but make it cute. let's get into it 🦋

✨ NAME ✨

fvwm-root — sets the root window of the current X display to image. it's giving wallpaper CEO, no cap. 👑

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

fvwm-root [--retain-pixmap|-r] [--no-retain-pixmap] [--dummy|-d]
[--no-dummy] [--dither] [--no-dither] [--color-limit [ncolors] ]
[--no-color-limit] [--help|-h|-?] [--version|-V] image_file

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

so fvwm-root reads the image file you dropped on the command line and displays it in the root window. literally that's the whole job and it does it well. 💅

the image formats it vibes with are XBM, XPM, PNG and SVG — but only if the appropriate libraries are compiled in. so if your build said no to a format, that format said no to you. 🙈

also!! SVG rendering options (the ones described in the * ICONS AND IMAGES * section of the main fvwm documentation) can be utilized. iykyk. ✨

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

here's every command line option fvwm-root recognizes, and yes, we're doing all of them, no skipping, periodt. 📋

• --retain-pixmap | -r — tells fvwm-root to retain and publish the Pixmap it used to set the background (it does this via the ESETROOT_PMAP_ID and _XROOTPMAP_ID properties). this is the move for apps that want to use the root Pixmap as their background to fake transparency — Eterm and Aterm, for example, use exactly this method. you should also use this option for the RootTransparent colorset option; go peek at the COLORSETS section of fvwm(1). and if you don't use this option, fvwm-root sets the _XSETROOT_ID property to None, and some programs — fvwm modules, for instance — may use that to update their background when the background is transparent (the Transparent colorset).

ngl, here's the tea: a well behaved program, like fvwm, should listen to both _XSETROOT_ID and _XROOTPMAP_ID property changes and update itself accordingly. but some programs only listen to one of them 😭, so whether you use this option or not depends on which part those programs actually implement. also use this option to get fast root-transparent menus in fvwm. ✨

• --no-retain-pixmap — this is the default. may be useful to explicitly force the default even if --retain-pixmap was specified earlier. (yes, order matters, bestie.)
• --dummy | -d — causes fvwm-root to NOT set the background, but to only free the memory associated with the ESETROOT_PMAP_ID property (if any). and in any case the _XSETROOT_ID property is set to None.
• --no-dummy — this is the default. may be useful to explicitly force the default even if --dummy was specified earlier.
• --dither — causes fvwm-root to dither images for a "smoother" rendition on displays with color depth of 16 or lower. 🎨 this is the default with color depth less or equal to 8.
• --no-dither — causes fvwm-root to NOT dither images. this is the default with color depth greater than 8.
• --color-limit ncolors — causes fvwm-root to limit its color use to ncolors (if specified). heads up: this option is taken into account only with color depth less or equal to 8 (and a TrueColor or GrayScale visual). the default is to use the same color limit as fvwm, so in normal situations this option is genuinely not useful. BUT — if fvwm uses a private colors map, since fvwm-root always uses the default colors map, you should use this option to limit colors correctly. if ncolors is not specified, a default is used.
• --no-color-limit — causes fvwm-root to NOT limit its color use.
• --help — shows a short usage.
• --version — shows a version number.

psst — the synopsis also shows the short friends -h and -? for --help, and -V for --version, so go ahead and type those too. 🫶

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✨ BUGS ✨

repeated use of fvwm-root with different xpm pixmaps will use up slots in your color table pretty darn fast. 💀 consider yourself warned, bestie.

✨ AUTHOR ✨

Rob Nation

rewritten and enhanced by fvwm-workers. iconic behavior honestly. 🌈

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and that's the whole teapot!! this page was served up fresh on 2026-07-31, from the FVWM-ROOT(1) era of the fvwm manual. mwah, slay, go set that root window. 💖✨🎀