Desktop

I'm currently using the FVWM2 window manager to manage the system's virtual desktops.

You need to remove the gnome-session-bin package to start the default window manager (FVWM2 in our case) instead of the GNOME session manager, which will error out and leave you a useless desktop with no windows and no window manager.

While FVWM2 is an older window manager, it's heavily customizable, which suits our purposes well. Some of its features that I currently use are its layering ability (to put screenshares on top), its ability to move windows on and off the screen (to hide windows when doing a screenshare, or in "teacher mode"), and its ability to execute arbitrary shell functions while passing in a window's title (to handle mouse clicks on the miniaturized windows).

"Teacher mode" and screenshares, in particular, are implemented with heavy support from FVWM2, so while another window manager could be used, it would take some time to figure how to re-implement these functions.

Currently, I recommend using the following one-line FVWM config, which is installed in /usr/share/fvwm/default-config/config:

PipeRead 'python3 -m vnc_collaborate print fvwm_config'

You can put this line at the beginning of a custom FVWM config (in $HOME/.fvwm/config) and add your own customizations.