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Window Maker FTW.

(Actually, I use KDE most of the time and don't find it a bit laggy or what have you, but WM is great for remote sessions, VMs, and older hardware.)

Window Maker FTW.

To each his own.

I run fluxbox and I always have a dock on the right side of my screen where I run dock apps. http://dockapps.windowmaker.org/. On a wide aspect display I don't miss the 68 to 72 pixels they take up. At a glance I can see if anyone has IMed me and what time it was (wmmsg), switch keyboard layouts and see which one is active (wmkeys), So what me volume levels are and change/mute them (wmix), have my favorite net streaming radio stations available (pywmradio), have full control over audacious (wmauda), constantly monitor the status of 6 hosts (wmpiki), plus have some eyecandy with wmdots, wmcube, and wmxss.

And though Gnome 2 applets suck, I can assure you that old fashioned dock apps for the wharf, slit, dock or whatever you want to call it works quite well. You just do not get this level of information density with Unity or the Gnome shell. It is amazing what can be done with a 64x64 canvas.

Not all applets suck, not all DE's are created equal.

Ubuntu is being moved to Window Maker as it's X11 window manager. It provides "integration support for the GNUstep Desktop Environment".

Honestly, GNOME 2 was a poor DE particularly compared to KDE3, and GNOME 3 just became more unusable, while reducing already minimal functionality.

As for which desktop environment is better, that is purely a personal matter of preference. Right now I use both KDE and Unity in Ubuntu 12.04 as well as Xubuntu 12.04. Soon I plan to install Linux Mint and use Cinnamon and KDE along with MATE. I also plan to install Arch Linux. I'll try all these out then decide which ones I will use regularly.

Falcon

My first was Red Hat 7.x out of the back of a book I bought at Barnes and Noble. I got a number of later Red Hat distros the same way, largely because downloading ISOs isn’t an option when you’re on dial-up.

The first set of ISOs I did download was for Slackware. Can’t remember the version, but I ran it until a hard drive died. Kinda lost the ability to run a full-size distro without a hard drive.

(At some point prior to Slackware I fooled around with OpenBSD. Not entirely relevant, but true.)

Damn Small Linux (DSL) was next. That worked extremely well and got me hooked on package management as a concept.

After I got a new hard drive I looked at Debian but the install process was too much of a pain in the ass. Remember that I’m coming from Slackware and OpenBSD at this point, with MS-DOS in my more distant history. So, no, I refuse to see this as my fault. Back then, Canonical was still giving away free Ubuntu DVDs so I ordered one. I got it in the mail and I've been using Ubuntu ever since. I think it was either Dapper or Edgy.

Also: I’ve been using the same window manager since Slackware. Window Maker just fits me.

Yes, but with the wide aspect display, I have plenty of room for my dockapps. 1368-68 = 1300 pixels of usable horizontal space.

You don't need to let yourself become dominated by a desktop environment.

I've been using a plain old window manager, Window Maker, for 10 years now, since AfterStep became crippled by bells and whistles.

I watch desktop environments come and go.

Window Maker is wonderful. It's tasteful, light-weight and it just works. Best of all, it has a very simple menu (right-click on the root window) and it can be edited with vi. if you can't be bothered running the GUI tool.

It would take a loaded gun at my head to take me away from Window Maker.

It's easy to install and to configure provided you can live with KDE or XFCE before installing gnome 3 (gnomeslackbuild.org) or anything else...

Bah! You kids... What's wrong with Window Maker?

Now get off my lawn...

Window Maker rocks!

http://windowmaker.org/

Rocks my eyes with utter fuglyness...

Window Maker rocks!

http://windowmaker.org/

Window Maker is still around, and supported by numerous distros.

But we're talking about a desktop environment here: an application suite whose purpose is to give me an interface with the computer and system software that is easy to use and attractive.

That, incidentally, is why I use windowmaker. It is stable, looks good, and throws in GNUStep as a bonus.

Also, don't assume that KDE and GNOME are the only options. I personally run Window Maker (with various dockapps), with fspanel, and KeyLaunch, with xtrlock (invoked via keylaunch) as my screen lock. On top of that, I use various shell scripts that I've written over the years.

Desktop systems, especially for certain classes of users, are highly varied. Good luck trying to study them!

A UI without drop shadows? It's incredibly fast and efficient? That sounds to me an awful lot like Window Maker, Openbox, Fluxbox, BlackBox, aewm, flwm, and about 1/2 million other window managers already available for Linux.

Try this and either this or this: it's not quite the real thing, but it's as near as you're going to get for the time being. And you will certainly get to "dump Windows but not all of your hardware".

We should all use free (though poorly functional) things, rather than things that work.

Were you implying that free software is poorly functional? Geez, every day I use free software that feel is very functional, don't you think?

I'm also a bit confused as how 'free software' = 'freedom'. So... you lose your individual freedom if you buy software?

Free Software means that the users are free to share, study, and improve the software with very little restrictions. You might want to read this; it's best to get it straight from the horse's mouth.

And, people buy Free Software all the time. Why is Red Hat still in business? Free Software has nothing to do with costs; if it costs just as much as proprietary software, I'd still buy the Free Software package if it were superior.

Probably a gnome-dev mailing list question but my senses tell me here I get some answers...

• What's the logic behind swapped OK and Cancel? Although I close windows right wm-button I look left first, and OK is in many cases the default I want.

  (Why is OK+Cancel standard? I should think OK+Cancel are never intuitive.)

• Why does every button have an icon (even OK,Cancel)? Is this some Borland relic?
• Why are file choosers separate widgets from Nautilus? I find it quite comfortable to do things like copy/paste/delete inside a file dialog.
• When do we get good orbit components like gecko, nautilus etc.?
• If windows really sucks and is just petty pretty, why is it comfortable and workable whilst gnome still sucks?
• http://www.windowmaker.org/

Miguel de Icaza

With Debian, today, I was told that if I wanted to do a dist-upgrade it would remove gnome and gnome-desktop. I've done an upgrade, and it allowed me to do that without removing gnome. [Now I need to find out why it was going to remove gnome...perhaps there's a good reason. But I can put that off until I find it out.])

The reason is explained here. (Just kidding. I'm not into flamewars on either side. I use Debian with wmaker myself.)

It's nice eye candy but I really don't see how this will make a user more efficient as it seems to be distracting (just more ammo for those with ADD). I do find Windowmaker's multiple workspaces to be a great boon though but it's not XP.

If you find the demo compelling and want to try out NeXTSTEP for yourself, you can always go here or here to get started

If you want a more end user solution, you might want to go here.

Changelog.

Though frankly, I think I don't like the new window-circulation-navigation GUI, hope a disable option will go into WPrefs.

Why is it eye candy is so amazing and impressive if it's in OSX or KDE, but it's just bloat and a terrible violation of "your rights online" if Microsoft plans it for an OS that's at least two years away?

Mac users expect the eye candy and don't mind paying for it. Many *nix users I know, myself included, don't use KDE or Gnome. Personally I love WindowMaker

XPDE, for one.

Mind, it's got the uncanny valley problem after a fashion. It looks, sometimes a lot, like WinXP. But it's decidedly different in subtle (and not so subtle) ways. In balance, I'd think the result is more unsettling rather than less. You're better off with an environment that uses familiar motifs, but doesn't just ape another model.

There are a large number of desktops for Linux, and most of them are highly themable. KDE and GNOME are probably the leaders, and both are highly themeable. I found XFCE4 is really popular among kids (6-18), and prefer WindowMaker myself: clean, configurable, light, stable, and out of my face.

I do think KDE is a mature desktop, and so is Gnome. But personally I've been a long-time user of Windowmaker - it's quite lightweight, fast and something I'm used to.

I have nothing against KDE, it's a really wonderful Desktop Environment that's come a long way from the QPL days, as you put it. Lighten up, it was a joke!

Is Windowmaker dead? (No, I'm not a troll.) The website hasn't been updated since February, I've gotten no CVS updates since July, there's been no official releases since 0.80.2, there's no working mailing list archives on the site, and my emails go unanswered.

First of all, Window Maker is quite a mature project in my opinion. Right now as we speak I am using even an older version 0.80.0-4 in Debian GNU/Linux (the stable Debian 3.0 "woody" which itself was released in July, 2002) and quite frankly I have never thought that I even needed any update. It's lightweight and rock-solid. Usually I have about 20 active workspaces with at least ten of them completely filled with tens of windows each, and it have never crashed since I started using it. And I've been using Window Maker exclusively on all of my desktops for at least five or six years (and in fact those were even older versions in Debian 2.2 "potato" and Debian 2.1 "slink"). I remember that switching from "potato" to "woody" I noticed few minor changes, mostly in Preferences Utility, if I remember correctly, but to be honest I'm not sure since I don't use it. Few years ago I was playing with Window Maker Themes but I observed that I am more productive without anime title bars and hentai background distracting me all the time, so after I got bored changing themes every day couple of years ago, I keep using one of the standard Styles, not Themes, and have blue solid backround and blue everything with very soft gradient but anything more fancy is just distracting becasue it makes me focus my attention outside of xterms instead of inside of them where it belongs, so it's quite pointless. Of course when I use Knoppix I always start it with knoppix desktop=wmaker, or at least always when I don't start it with knoppix 2, and using it I saw that icons are prettier and everything else seems the same. And quite frankly, I don't even want it to ever change, since I like it the way it is now. On the other hand I don't really care if it changes as long as I'll be able to use the old version in future Debians, and I know I will. I think all of you can already see my point. Window Maker is not dead, not because it is in active development, it doesn't even have to, but because it is immortal and cannot be killed at all, ever. As you see I will gladly keep using it even if no one develops it or even if I am the last and only user. I seriously couldn't care less what window managers other people use. It's not like I use it as a pick-up line or whatever.

I'm seriously interested in knowing. I'm a big Windowmaker fan, but I'm worried about its' apparent lack of development. Does anyone, anyone at all, know what the heck is going on?

I am a big fan of Window Maker either but I completely don't care about its development, just like I don't care much about the development of rxvt. Window Maker is exactly what I need and I'm quite sure I will keep using it even twenty years from now even if it doesn't change at all. I don't want it to change. I just want it to keep working. And I don't want it to be another KDE or Gnome. I don't even need other people using it, I don't need other people at all.

Maybe I'm stuck in tha past? I've always found KDE to be slow, until I got a dual 2.8GHz Xeon PC at work. Modern versions of GNOME seem to be quite lethargic and large too. I can't afford to keep buying new PCs all the time, and I'm afraid my athlon XP2000+ will have to do me at least another year.

I have an old PC in the house running Slackware 9.1 and GNOME 2.4 which is quite slow. The GNOME terminal runs like treacle on a cold winter's morning. If I fire up a traditional xterm, it's nice and fast.

I really wish I had time to delve through the source to see just where all this bloat and slowness is coming from. It used to be that KDE was the fatty boom boom of desktop environments, but the GNOME people seem to have out-done the C++ folks in plain old C.

What the heck is going on?

Anyway, life's too short to look at boring desktop environment code. Life's also too short to run a bloaty, slow desktop environment.

I'll just stick to a plain window manager and some xterms.

• X with dropshadows (from the article)
• Old X which shipped with Red Hat 5.0
• Windows 95
• Windows XP
• Mac OS X

Where the Linux desktop really shines, however, is when it comes to customization. I prefer to operate in a very Windows-like manner, with maximized windows and taskbar. KDE allows me to do that (and gives me a nice launcher command bar with autocompletion - I haven't used the "start" menu in ages). Some want a nice file manger - KDE gives you Konqueror, GNOME gives you Nautilus. Others prefer doing everything in the shell, where you can use Midnight Commander and feel like you're back in the old DOS days.

Some want virtual desktops or virtual screens (larger than the physical screen size). Any decent window manager provides that. Some want a very efficient, slim system - they use something like Windowmaker or XFCE. Others want all the bells and whistles and install KDE or GNOME with lots of applets. Some like to experiment with innovative new UIs and try out window managers like ion. Others are happy just using a cloned Windows or Mac interface.

If you're willing to experiment, no system offers you as many possibilities as Linux. If you just want a clean, working desktop, all the major distro makers provide that by now.

There's room to improvement, and the devil is in the details: clipboard interoperability is still buggy and incomplete, performance in some areas can be improved (try resizing your window very fast with content visible), the driver situation is unsatisfactory etc. But none of the problems before us is unsolvable. It's just a matter of time.

All the X-WMs look shabby, slapdash and incomplete compared to MacOSX and even, dare I say it... WinXP.

i think windowmaker looks pretty slick. i also like gnome, but i'll agree that that has a number of rough edges. but windowmaker is pretty tight in my opinion. kde and gnome are far from being "all" of the X-WMs available.

GNOME 2.8 is going to be a really great release.

last time i tried gnome it was bloated, why not go for something different and do windowmaker?
also, try konqueror for webbrowsing (if you haven't already)... it's fast

NeXT was (and is) amazing... object oriented code base and networking (10baseT at that) in 1986or7.. amazing

take a look at windowmaker for a gnu clone of the gui (part of openstep)

Well, you don't have to use KDE as the window manager. There others like Fluxbox, WindowMaker and IceWM that could suit your needs and aren't full of bloat.

cause it's all eye candy
the nextstep os was wonderful, and parts of it are in os x... right now i'm using windowmaker (on freebsd :))
it's a free derivative of the openstep gui, and really cool.
also, the nextstation was built to support nextstep, and your laptop was built to support os 9, not os x

what's wrong with an all-in-one box? you can still upgrade stuff, it's just a laptop mobo in a monitor case with a modified power supply

This might be a troll, but I'll bite.

Don't like GNOME? Use windowmaker. If that's still too fat for you, use oroborus. Still too big? Try setting your window manager to "twm".

Don't like OpenOffice? MS Office isn't much better...maybe you'd better stick to HTML and CSS with Bluefish. Or maybe vim or Emacs.

FireFox still too slow? As long as you're dropping features by moving away, try w3m or lynx...two very capable text-based browsers.

Don't have a 3D accelerator? Play software-rendered Quake. Or (using that same project) use the SDL's aalib target.

I'd love to use something like KDE or Gnome, but every time I give it a try, it's just so bulky and slow, comparatively.

Since /. decided to post this story, I guess they really badly want to know what software I use. So here goes.

I only use operating systems that will run the bulk of software developed for Linux and/or *BSD. I'm assuming that compiler toolchain (cc, make, ld, etc.), net utils (ping, ftp, etc.), ssh are installed.

screen (terminal multiplexer)
netcat (tcp and udp from the command line)
elvis (lightweight vi clone*)
Some X11 implementation (usually XFree86)
WindowMaker (window manager with efficiency)
Mozilla Firefox (great web browser)
mutt (fast and versatile mail client)
Gaim (multi-protocol instant messenger)
wget (download over http or ftp)

* I personally think vi is a prime example of horrible interface design, but it proved hard to find a text editor that is similarly efficient and powerful as elvis. I only with they would get rid of the HTML (and Latex?) view mode and just show me the source so I can edit it.

It's been established previously in this thread: the supposed Longhorn skinning is ugly. Artistically speaking, it has some commendable points. That said, we who use and understand computers are generally rooted in logic and efficiency, and this set of schemes disregards that.

I'm a firm believer in F/OSS and use Linux always. I still maintain a Windows partiton on the lappy for Uni-related projects &c. I'm very much partial to the Windows 2000 desktop. It's barren enough to be effecient, and complex enough to be useful.

All stability issues aside, Microsoft has a strong advantage against Linux DE's largely because they implement functionality with the 'newly acquired user' in mind. KDE is a magnificent testiment to modern programming, and that team has accomplished UI capabilities I never thought I'd see in a UNIX environment. IT IS STILL MISSING that edge, that edge that beginners can grab a-hold of and incorporate into their daily lives.

I'm off on a tangent, which is inherent when a textbox maintains only some ~24 lines of previous text. Many appologies. Long and the short: if you are a power user, fuck the themes. Gnome and KDE have truly done programming wonders. But, like the currently efficient battery-gas driven cars, I'd rather move quickly, than be hampered by an ugly designed monstrosity (EV1?).

A forward thanks to you who have the forsight to buy an environmentally efficient car.

-pararox-

Sorry, but if you do not want the mainstream desktops, you can get as excentric as you like.

Tried Blackbox (or Fluxbox)? WindowMaker? Slicker? There are plenty of GUI options for Linux that look nothing like Microsoft's GUI.

You can even easily modify KDE or GNOME so that they look nothing like the default.

WindowMaker's dock keeps the most important application icons and applets in place. As the workspace clip's icons are specific to virtual desktops, it is quite easy to use one virtual desktop for word processing and spreadsheets, another one for drawing and a different one for WWW and email. Icons of minimized applications stay out of the way, too.

WindowMaker's dock keeps the most important application icons and applets in place. As the workspace clip's icons are specific to virtual desktops, it is quite easy to use one virtual desktop for word processing and spreadsheets, another one for drawing and a different one for WWW and email. Icons of minimized applications stay out of the way, too.

After switching to Linux six years ago and spending a lot of time trying to navigate Gnome's menus to find what I was looking, a friend told me about WindowMaker. I edit the menus to weed out the cruft, include things that take a lot of keystrokes to launch, and open terminals to do my other work. If I need something that I didn't put in a menu, I have a command prompt to launch it. No muss, no fuss. This, of course requires a real OS.

do What The Fuck you want to Public License

Version 1.0, March 2000
Copyright (C) 2000 Banlu Kemiyatorn (]d).
136 Nives 7 Jangwattana 14 Laksi Bangkok
Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies
of this license document, but changing it is not allowed.

Ok, the purpose of this license is simple
and you just

DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.

Window Maker's Dock is similar to Apple's, both getting their ideas from NextStep.

Window Maker has this nifty "Lock (prevent accidental removal)" checkbox for each docked program. Dragging so marked stuff out of the dock does not undock them.

I believe this could be extended to cover things like locking whole dock at once, locking the resizing of the dock, etc etc...

If somebody came along and made a lightweight, dynamic windowing system and desktop environment for Linux, with real usability and minimalism, I'd shit my pants!

May I suggest Windowmaker? Please post pictures of your feces-encrusted jeans by 12:00 GMT tommorrow.

I'll be the sole vote for WindowMaker. Small, fast, compatible with KDE & Gnome etc..

but we also have some efforts that really try to aim at end users, more or less succesfull. allright, it's not as easy as using MacOSX, but it's quite close in many aspects. and quite usable for the novice, especially in the distributions that try to make it simple (xandros, lindows, etc)

I don't think it's being fair to Unix-based operating systems to imply that they're playing catch-up on the desktop. (I know you haven't said it, but that's how your comment reads to me.) To a certain extent KDE and Gnome are, but they don't cover everything.

One of the main reasons that I run Linux on my desktop PC is that I don't really like Windows on the desktop. You're effectively locked into Microsoft's idea of a good UI, which for a variety of reasons I don't like. (Both their UI design and their lock-in.)

By running Linux, I get to choose from a much wider variety of UI's. Personally, I choose WindowMaker.

From a UI perspective, I tend to think that allowing for too much choice and configuration about how things work is a bad thing. But on the other hand, I'd rather be able to choose than be forced to use somebody else's bad design.

Sounds like what Netscape did with mozilla...

Hmm, well I think it is more like what AOL did when they pulled the plug and set up the Mozilla Foundation or perhaps what Sun did with OpenOffice, but neither of these are exactly the same...

This could definately be a step back for linux on the desktop, which had finally become a pleasantly useable thing.

No, I think it will be good for the desktop, things like WindowMaker will get back in, and the added involement of more developers will make stuff happen quicker -- Fedora 1 will be even more bleeding edge than Redhat was.

For things like i18n it will be fantastic -- RedHat could never afford to employ developers for every language, and now anyone can help with i18n for Fedora :-)

H. Seldon himself could not have come up with a better way** to improve Linux GUIs than the rivalry (mostly friendly) among the various approaches to Linux GUIs. (And though there are other Free Software desktops, I'm going to ignore them for part of this comment ;))

KDE's approach looks a lot like Windows, is very well integrated down to having a "burn data cd" (with k3b) option in a menu reachable with a mouse click on any file. Neat. (I'm typing on a KDE desktop right now, appreciating how much more I like KDE now than I did a few years ago.) (Knoppix comes with KDE, this machine's installation was from the Knoppix HDD install script ... )

GNOME is IMO slightly slicker graphically, and -- in ways that are not easy to pin down -- a little more user friendly. No accounting for taste (and I certainly have questionable taste), but I happen to like a lot of GNOME apps more than their KDE equivalents ... mostly a "so what?" since most apps I use don't care one way or the other ;)

The Seldonmost part of the KDE/GNOME "battle" (in which actual developers mostly get along well, share beers in pubs when they're not coding) is that their [conspiratorially arranged?] back-and-forth wrt feature lists and ease of use distracts people from, for instance:

- enlightenment
- blackbox (old) / fluxbox / etc.
- icewm
- and windowmaker / afterstep

The point being, KDE and GNOME may be the most complete / comprehensive approaches to Free Software desktops, but they're far from alone. Fluxbox and Afterstep in particular I like for defaulting to extremely clean desktops, making apps easy to get to through menus available with a mouseclick from anywhere. We're not all in the same gang, because we're not in gangs, gong long a gong a gong a long long fee phi pho fee phum.

Whenever people talk about "standardizing" as if this was an obvious good thing, I wonder if they feel the way to end illiteracy is to settle on one accepted book as The Standard, and making sure people know *that* book. Architecture, too, would be a lot less confusing if we didn't have all these different *types* of housing or approaches to engineering large buildings -- let's just settle on the right one, dammit!

Having only one choice in a given context might make sense -- but it depends on the context.The owner of Amalgamated Consolidated Products, Inc.* is free to declare that Windows 3.1 is the only acceptable desktop standard for his company's employees while they're at work: Fine. Dumb, or maybe it's smart for that company, but fine. Likewise, if NASA decides its billions in tax dollars would contribute the most to the commonwealth if some of them went to creating a standard GNOME-based desktop and ignoring KDE, well, that might make sense in that context.

When I hear lots of 1st-person plural handwringing about how "we" ought to adopt a standard *anything* though, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I get a little defensive. 1st person plural is always annoying when someone seems to be speaking on my behalf but without my consent or agreement. What if I *like* the standard you don't? Think Low-flush toilets as a mandated standard. Think building codes that make inexpensive legal housing a legislated near-impossibility. Building codes, of course, are standards imposed for the good of all, and if you don't like it, you can stick it your ear, fill out this form in triplicate, and wait for the county inspector, who is currently on extended leave in Botswana. Citizen.

To the extent that actual programmers voluntarily combine their efforts, it's nice to see some convergence, even a lot of it. But there's no g

what on earth are you talking about??? how in any way shape or form is shlashdot the biggest advocate of linux? how is linux window's main competition? for one thing, linux still has a smaller desktop usage percentage than apple. secondly, in the server market -- doesn't BSD have the upperhand? and third of all, slashdot has microsoft advertisements in their pages. this is not he future of my desktop. this is nopt he future of ANY desktop. thsi is the furture of crappy proprietary software that it mostly used for controlling the user's experience. if i want a different/better desktop i already got mine

what on earth are you talking about??? how in any way shape or form is shlashdot the biggest advocate of linux? how is linux window's main competition? for one thing, linux still has a smaller desktop usage percentage than apple. secondly, in the server market -- doesn't BSD have the upperhand? and third of all, slashdot has microsoft advertisements in their pages. this is not he future of my desktop. this is nopt he future of ANY desktop. thsi is the furture of crappy proprietary software that it mostly used for controlling the user's experience. if i want a different/better desktop i already got mine

Window Maker