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KDE 3.1.3 was kealesed.

I'm a big Galeon fan, have been since early days, but am currently running 1.2.5, so I haven't seen the 1.3 problems. I also keep a fairly popular Nix Browser Reviews page.

I'm not much of a GNOME fan, and note the extensive GNOME deps as a misfeature of Galeon -- recently rediscovered as it turns out that some user.js prefs are ignored and need to be set through gconf instead (user-agent). Though I can see some benefits in principle, the results of GNOME in terms of the actual desktop are not to my personal liking. Fortunately, this doesn't get in the way of running WindowMaker instead.

There's a lot of assumed knowledge about the 1.3 issues in the interview. Could someone point to where this has been discussed?

Pitching my own $0.02: I've got lightweight browsers. I'm not looking for that in the niche Galeon currently fills. I'm also not looking for the fscking kitchen sink (browser, mail, news, composer...). A browser, but a solid browser, with user-friendly preferences, giving solid user control over presentation, privacy, security, with stability and decent performance. But wait, I already covered that rant....

If Galeon's seriously fscked up (and its slavish devotion to GNOME has always been more a detraction than a benefit), I'll be happy to move on. Pity losing a few years of accomodation, configuration, and utility.

Strongly recommend the core team listen to its users.

In case anyone didn't know Window Maker is the free implementation of GNUstep. From the website "In every way possible, it reproduces the elegant look and feel of the NEXTSTEP[tm] user interface." It's actually quite a nice lightweight window manger and runs great on older hardware (for which GNOME & KDE are much too bloated) and has a pretty good developement community.

Shouldn't OSS be about solving problems that people want to work on rather than trying to be a cloning engine for Microsoft software?

Bingo. Sometimes I shake my head at the lengths people go to bash M$ at every chance they get, then spend tons of effort to clone them. The first blatent one was when RH shipped thier default windowing system to be FVWM95. I still havn't gotten over that one. KDE and to an extent GNOME are not too far behind either. For example. Why in the world do they put the start thingy/taskbar/icon collector at the bottom of the screen? Because M$ put it there first. Take a look at your browser. See all the menus up top there? See the titlebar to move the window and close it etc? Shouldn't the taskbar be up there too?

Look at StarOffice and OpenOffice. They seem familiar. And there are plenty of others, but I think you get the point.

Another thing that M$ gets bashed on here is because they "embrace and extend". Many, many open source projects do exactly this.

Don't get me wrong. I like OS and there are beautiful examples of its success, like Apache, Linux, Galeon/Mozilla. The last one is an excellent example. I never thought of what I would want out of a browser, I just knew they all sucked a few years ago. However, Galeon is exactly what I want out of a browser.

So, what software do I use on a daily basis? Linux for an OS, WindowMaker for a window manager, mutt for email, vim for an editor, and lord forbid a closed source calendar called corporatetime. I believe that Oracle bought this, its difficult to find info about it anymore.

So what is my point? I get along just fine without M$ nor do I use any software that really has a M$ equivalent. Why do these topics come up all the time? Maybe we should be cloning M$'s slogan too. "Where do you want to go today?" It is a fitting question, right now the answer seems to be "Wherever M$ was yesterday?"

I have a low budget for my computer addiction, so I scrounge up old cast-off stuff. Thus by necessity I've been experimenting with WMs with an eye for low resource use. This table was useful for making some initial decisions. Since there are more WMs than you can shake a stick at, I've decided to stick mainly to those listed here. I've never tried EvilWM (or ratpoison, or any of the other hyper-minimal WMs), as I want a bit more of my WMs than that.

I like Blackbox. It gives me everything I really need in a WM without the bloat to slow it down. I've been using it on my PCP 210 almost exclusively. IceWM is also a good candidate, being almost as fast as Blackbox, and having an interface closer to Win9*. (Not that Windows is a particularly good interface, but it's a common reference point for Windows users looking to try Linux.) I've run IceWM on a P133 (where loading KDE made me think the computer had hung) and an SE/30 (default theme looks good in 1-bit), albeit under a low CPU load, and been quite pleased. I'd still give Blackbox the nod, though, simply because widget size is also kept to a minimum, which is helpful on older machines that typically have smaller monitors.

Poster is missing the point. Fvwm is not a minimalist WM! There are several minimalist WMs out there, and many of them are fairly nice, if that's your cup of tea. I think larswm is a pretty nice one, and the grandaddy of them all is 9wm. And there are a bunch of others, including, apparently, EvilWM. But Fvwm is not a minimalist WM! It's a full-featured WM that happens to use an amazingly small amount of memory. It does this by being highly modular, so that only the features you actually use get loaded. It's also amazingly configurable, considering how little memory it uses. (Another amazingly-powerful-considering-how-little-memory-i t-uses WM is Window Maker -- I'm always amazed at how little memory this feature-filled WM uses.)

And looking at evilwm's web page, I have to say, there is no way I'd consider switching from fvwm. Their choice of hard-coded defaults do not match what I want. If someone wrote a minimalist WM that did have all the defaults set to what I want, then I might consider switching, but these guys aren't even close. (And even then, I'd have to find third-party equivalents for the fvwm modules I use, like the buttonbar.)

Once you are used to multiple desktops (no, that measly 4 add-on powertoys desktops don't count.),

When I'm in Windows [.NET server rc2] I use Litestep, which has four nice proper virtual desktops. It also has a much smaller footprint than the usual Explorer.exe GUI. As you could probably guess I use Window Maker everywhere else (including XFree for Windows ;-)

Another myth: KDE users are leeter than me. Every time I get shit for using Windows, it's from a fucking KDE user. At least when I use Lunix I use a real window manager.

twitter is right - install WindowMaker and you can get really close...

I can't tell you how funny it is to look at those screen shots from 1993 while using Window Maker.

I've been running RedHat 9 (ISO's downloaded via BitTorrent) all week on my desktop machine (10:32:32 up 4 days, 19:58, 21 users, load average: 0.66, 0.44, 0.86) and it seems fine, the first thing I did was install apt-get to make updates nice and easy, the next thing I discovered was that there is no WindowMaker, which is a real shame, the reason stated by RH is "developer resource constraints". I hope they put it back in, anyhow, this is how I get it working with RH 8 SRPMS:

1. Install the WindowMaker SRPM from RedHat 8.0 updates.
rpm -ivh WindowMaker-0.80.1-5.src.rpm

2. Edit the SPEC file:
vi /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/WindowMaker.spec
Change this:
%define autoconf_ver -2.53
to:
%define autoconf_ver -2.57
Change this:
autoheader%{autoconf_ver}
to:
autoheader
Change this:
autoconf%{autoconf_ver}
to:
autoconf
(I don't know what the implications of this is -- I just played with the SPEC file till it worked...)

3. Rebuild:
rpm-build -bb /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/WindowMaker.spec

4. Install:
rpm -ivh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/WindowMaker-0.80.1-5.i38 6.rpm \
WindowMaker-libs-0.80.1-5.i386.rpm

I also got wmapm, wmclock and wmix SRPMS from RedHat 8.0 and rebuilt those.

There has been some discussion on the wm-user list about doing some RPMS for RedHat 9.

One thing that is great is the inclusion of Subversion -- I installed subversion from scratch on RH 8 and it took some time...

I've been running RedHat 9 (ISO's downloaded via BitTorrent) all week on my desktop machine (10:32:32 up 4 days, 19:58, 21 users, load average: 0.66, 0.44, 0.86) and it seems fine, the first thing I did was install apt-get to make updates nice and easy, the next thing I discovered was that there is no WindowMaker, which is a real shame, the reason stated by RH is "developer resource constraints". I hope they put it back in, anyhow, this is how I get it working with RH 8 SRPMS:

1. Install the WindowMaker SRPM from RedHat 8.0 updates.
rpm -ivh WindowMaker-0.80.1-5.src.rpm

2. Edit the SPEC file:
vi /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/WindowMaker.spec
Change this:
%define autoconf_ver -2.53
to:
%define autoconf_ver -2.57
Change this:
autoheader%{autoconf_ver}
to:
autoheader
Change this:
autoconf%{autoconf_ver}
to:
autoconf
(I don't know what the implications of this is -- I just played with the SPEC file till it worked...)

3. Rebuild:
rpm-build -bb /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/WindowMaker.spec

4. Install:
rpm -ivh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/WindowMaker-0.80.1-5.i38 6.rpm \
WindowMaker-libs-0.80.1-5.i386.rpm

I also got wmapm, wmclock and wmix SRPMS from RedHat 8.0 and rebuilt those.

There has been some discussion on the wm-user list about doing some RPMS for RedHat 9.

One thing that is great is the inclusion of Subversion -- I installed subversion from scratch on RH 8 and it took some time...

Whatever happened to choice in this debate?

We can choose between various window managers, various linux flavors, and even office suites. Why don't we have a choice with our window system?

Why would it be any different for a fork of X for a choice between client/server and direct rendering, if backwards compatability was kept?
Would that not help the the people who only use Linux on their desktop, while allowing people with networks to use the tool, as it is now, that works for them?

Though I understand the need for something like a taskbar, the way Apple and MS have implemented it is completey wrong. It's too space-consuming, ugly, and especially in Windows, barely functional. WindowMaker's dock handles this in a much cleaner and intuitive fashion, and I can't overstate how much easier multiple desktops make life-an idea neither Apple or MS have caught on to yet.

Try this - it's faster than GNOME

Now, if I can get a panel like Gnome's that doesn't require Gnome or KDE...

You might want to take a look at WindowMaker.

Both camps have a lot of vocal jerks in them, who apparently hate each other for NO GOOD REASON.

That, and the fact that neither GNOME or KDE is worth the time of day as far as I'm concerned. They're both bloated Windows-wannabes. I'll pass. No thanks. I gave at the office.

Anyone out there who wants to try something that's ACTUALLY different, check out Enlightenment (which is what I use for Linux) or AfterStep or WindowMaker. Real people providing real alternatives to the twerps in the GNOME and KDE battalions. Psssst, you can even use GNOME and KDE software in them...

Blackbox is lighter and has more features than fvwm, and seems a lot nicer to use, IMO. Give it a shot. Just for the sake of comparison, note IceWM is about the same size as fvwm, and has a few more features, but not as featureful as Blackbox.

And I don't use GNOME; just GTK apps in Widowmaker. At least Steve Jobs isn't being a prick and jerking around with the OpenStep specs.

...that Mr. Dvorak used a stock install of Red Hat 8, fiddled about with GNOME2, and drew his conclusions from there. If the guy had played with Window Maker or Fluxbox or Ion or my girlfriend's arse he wouldn't be so fucking biased.

I like my WindowMaker. It's not a Win95/XP clone like KDE and Gnome tried to be. But they aren't fully Win95/XP clone that they tried for either, they all moved on. Gnome has multiple panels, as does KDE(ok, they keep up with each other instead of diverting, to me that is kind of pointless), as does Windows. But with Gnome and KDE is makes more sense to use the multiple panels, with Windows there really isn't a reason except to make it look better.

I do agree with Dvorak that WIMPs is a bad idea, but I do think that it is one of the best concepts out there. Although I don't have icons except when I minimize a window. What I would like is a scrolling desktop(and a CPU that could even support it if I coded it). I want to watch my MPlayer Window _over_ the Mozilla Window, but if I move the mouse towards the scrollbar(where MPlayer is covering), the Moz window would move over or the Mplayer window would dynamically shrink, to transparency would occur allowing me to use the scrollbar without having to move the mplayer window.

Everyone thinks that 3-D Window Managers are next. I say 3-d accelerated Window Managers, but having a box with windows on each side _really_ doesn't cut it in my book. It's neat. It's neat to program. It's neat to play with. Gotta get back to work now, good-bye. Just because 3-d is a big gaming thing and not used for regular Windows does not make it "The Next Big Thing(tm)" in my book.

What I would like to see, and this is off-topic, is XML menu specification. So you can download, install a program, and then install a menu item for it with whatever Window Manager you are using. It just needs a few fields. If someone wants to go with this idea and wants me to help(put my money where my mouth is) just e-mail me and I've got no problem.

What I also want to see is the death of X-Windows. It's served it's term, but it isn't getting any better. I want to see DirectFB succeed, but it needs to be multi-platform. I'm on FreeBSD so I can only run it under SDL ontop of X-Windows. But FreeBSD has something similar in the works set for probably 6.0 or whenever the person finishes it.

Communication and features between other type of hardware, specialized, would be great. And the framework to support it. Example, FingerWorks has some great products and great concepts. Once I get the money I'm going for their keyboard. I'd like to see a framework to make it work with any GTK, Gnome, KDE, GNUStep, and a generic library to add support for it to any program. That way have a custom gesture(when it is created) that will allow you to launch a program. I want to be able to hit numlock twice(Example) and type in 0805040206 and launch a program of my choice. For me, memorize 5 numbers, adding a '0' before it, and typing that in is much faster than moving the mouse, opening the menu, finding it, and clicking it. The generic framework, standardized would be best, would add the ability for, say, Mozilla to receive the two numlocks, to realize that it is a registered event handler, and to pass it off to the framework and do what is asked. Say, even passing it off to the 'server' so to speak to figure out what to do, although I think if it was implemented on a window manager level it would be best. That way you have a generic framework to work with as far as developers go, possibly a generic XML exporter of all your functions that you've specific(scanning the bar code, with your CueCat, of your favorite foot powder say, brings up userfriendly), and a generic XML importer to bring into the Window Manager. But having it Window Manager based, so that it fits in with Accessibility theory(I believe?). It _is_ a part of KDE Control Panel, it _is_ a part of Gnome Control Panel, it _is_ a part of that little WindowMaker configuration program. Easy for developers, easy for users, easy to switch between.

Sorry for the long post.

Nah, no one wants free software to go away except vendors of crappy closed source software. Free and Open software folks can have their differences but the commonality is much greater.

Since (almost) noone is making money doing it, the primary form of compensation is ego gratification.

What a crock, lots of people are making a good living with free software. Even pioneers such as RMS got by. Now that free software is universally recognized as superior to other software, there is a much larger demand. Show me someone who does not get some ego gratification from their job and I'll show you someone who should be doing something else.

If someone doesn't get their way, they throw a temper tantrum and go off on their own.

This is unique to free software? -Bangs his fist and insults a federal judge- Have you ever seen the monkeyboy dance? If your eyes don't convince you, just read this article. I would never ever want to work at a place like that. It looks like they treat each other worse than they treat the rest of the world.

The end result is forked code trees, huge amounts of duplicated effort, and projects that never go anywhere.

Said another way, free software could never make a working operating system, an easy to use GUI, it's chaos, blah, blah, bull shit on a stick This message posted with Mozilla and Windowmaker on X11 under Debian, software so superior to comercial junk I can never ever go back.

SPI will survive this little tussle and free softare will survive SPI.

The problem, the last nail in the coffin if you will, is that Mozilla fails to render many web sites that IE renders perfectly.

Do you have examples?

What's important is that it just doesn't work.

I've never noticed a problem.

When Mozilla is as fast as IE for Windows, when it has a native UI, and most importantly when it has 100% compatibility with IE 5 and 6, then and only then will it become a reasonable alternative.

My experience says that Mozilla, on *nix or Win32, is faster than IE for Windows. Every time I've had occasion to see either in action. Further, Mozilla has enough efficiency tools built into it that any slowdown, if there was any, would be amply compensated by the overall speedup of my "browsing experience". And the retention of my sanity.

The native UI thing, you'll note, is something I've complained about myself on occasion. But the XUL stuff has gotten much faster, and at the same time enhanced its capabilities. And they're finally starting to use native widgets. Remember that Mozilla is both a proof-of-concept and a software deployment platform (which, once again, has proven itself worthy; I love the DOM Inspector, the Prefbar, etc). If you want simple fast HTML, get a simple browser built around Gecko. Heck, the next generation of AOL's getting built around Gecko...

In the Bad Old Days, yes, browsing in the *nix world was no fun. Netscape 4 was broken, thanks to getting rid of apparently the only guy who knew what he was doing, and when Mozilla first arrived, it was slow. Painfully slow. I'll admit that I was often envious of Windows at that time. But the tables have turned. Coupled with a good window manager, Mozilla provides me a more pleasurable and efficient time on the Web than I could have dreamed of several years ago. And Microsoft's products have been left in the dust.

As for 100% compatibility, congratulations, you're attempting to crush the return of technodiversity and heterogenity. I'll remember to thank you when the next worm sweeps through.

Widespread adoption will come when large vendors simply repackage Gecko in their products instead of IE. Suddenly browser independence and standards compliance will matter again. That is, unless you want to cut off all the potential customers from, say, AOL. That's a lot of potential customers. And all of those arguments about "market share" and "most common browser" will come back to bite Microsoft in the butt.

[Apologies if this is slightly incoherent; I work nights and I got up in the middle of my sleep time to check on some stuff...]

I have to agree, do a "ps aux" and take a gander of whats running when you run gnome.

I'd like to take this opportunity to plug windowmaker here;-)

I'm not trying to put down gnome here, some people love it, hey if it works for you cool.

This is what makes x cool, you run gnome I run wmaker and we can do it on the same machine running the same apps, at the same time if we get trickey and have the horse power.

X runs pretty damn fast on my dual celery 500

For the moment I ditched Peanut Linux, and went on with Vector Linux, but so far I didn't get X running (not that I tried very long).

> KDE actually "runs", but only in the most comical sense of the term. :-|

Doh! ..KDE and Gnome are the heaviest and slowest desktop environments around; I'm not surprised your machine is so slow. Go for ROX on top of WindowMaker (or any other light wm) and your hardware will fly again.

IMO the absolute fscking all-time number-one of really annoying "innovation" that Linux(...) desktop application programmers so happily copy from Windows is the Start Button.

Why the heck do I have to move the mouse to one of the most obscure position, the lower left corner, just to start a program, which is easily the most used desktop operation of all?

In almost all Linux(...) window managers including my favorite gnome-incompatible WindowMaker, the application menu can be reached just by clicking on the desktop, which is IMO the easiest and fastest way to do this by far.

KDE and Gnome developers what were you thinking? (This is not a rethorical question, please reply). How anyone can compare those two methods and go for the Button completely elludes me.

For a more heavy-duty WM, I recommend WindowMaker over GNOME or KDE. WindowMaker is fairly light-weight, and has a much cleaner appearance and feel. Another nice feature about WindowMaker is that it has a lot of the nice Apps that you see in OSX, like the mail program and the column-file navigator. Better, its easy to port an OSX program to WindowMaker if you have the source, as its based on OpenStep.

Window Maker is what I'm currently running at home. I used to use AfterStep, but got fed up with it for various reasons.

Contrary to what dh003i says, it is strictly a window manager - it doesn't have any applications associated with it, except for WPrefs.app). The applications like Mail.app (well, it's called GNUMail.app) and the "column-file navigator" (called GWorkspace.app) are part of GNUstep, not Window Maker.

Redhat 8.0!

I haven't had time to install redhat 8.0 myself, but according to the package list windowmaker is included in the distribution.

A hint though, make sure you only install what you need and when install is done, make sure nothing unnecassary is running. This procedure is also good for security.

UNIX is hell to visit, but heaven to live in.

Here is RedHat's take on this issue, which makes a lot of sense to me. If you're interested in trying an alternative to Gnome or KDE, check out WindowMaker, it's fast, stable, simple and has some nice themes.

This is a really important point, and this is the behavior of the oft-maligned OS X Dock. You see application icons in the Dock. You click them to use the application. If the application isn't running, it starts. [...] I would love to have this on Linux.

Now, where did OS X dock got this feature from? NeXT, of course! And what is the best way to relive the NEXTSTEP experience on Linux?

WINDOW MAKER! WOOHOO!

The dock works just as you describe: If the app is running, a double-click brings it forth; if not, it's launched.

They don't, unless you consider this or this to be like Windows 98. The only similarity I see is that it has windows, menus, buttons, images and text. (If it didn't, it wouldn't be much of a window manager would it?)

KDE and GNOME can look like windows if you want, but they don't have to. By default those two resemble it, but that's because that look is most familiar to people and in general its a decent design.

have a 75 MHz pentium that's practically useless. It takes forever to do anything in Win95, and even Linux is unacceptably slow. (As for KDE or GNOME, I can just forget about those.)

Movie destops also have an excessive amount of animation. Trust me, you'd hate any desktop that worked that way -- it'd run like absolute molasses.

Kinda like Mac OS X, eh? Yeah, yeah, it's getting better, but it's still pretty slow compared to other operating systems with less flash.

The user experience I've had that most closely resembles a movie desktop is application built using Flash, like you find on web sites and enhanced CDs. These apps try to emulate the look and feel of movie desktops.

Interestingly, most of those movie GUIs are built using Macromedia Director (or similar), so building the same thing out of Flash makes sense. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those movie web sites actually took most of the code directly from the mock-up made for the movie itself. It shouldn't be difficult to do.

Personally, I like usability with a bit of flash. Something like Window Maker, while very useable (it should be, since it's based on NeXT), is rather boring. Enlightenment, while flashy, isn't that useable in my opinion. In that vein, I'm pretty happy with Windows XP. It's themeable (link is down at the moment, but according to the notice it should be back up in a half an hour -- I doubt that, but check back in a day or two), so I can get my eye candy, but it's also very useable. Say what you will, Microsoft has spent a small fortune on useability testing, and most of what they've done works well. Brush it off as familiarity if you will, but there are concrete examples of Windows useability getting better (small example: the Start button now has infinite borders, just like the Apple menu in Mac OS -- throw the mouse down to the lower left and click, you'll get the start menu).

Although I stubornly refuse to work with RedHat after another one of their famous progressive actions, I think this one is from a different nature.
Unfortunately, I just admit, John Doe wants a simular look and feel for all the machines he is working on. Just try to explain the concept of Window Managers, and the layered structure (OS/X/WM).
Most ppl work with a "computer" and start a browser and some office program, they really do not care what it is running (but the sysadmins do). With Mozilla and OpenOffice.org, GNU/Linux finally seems to have mature solutions for this (FS/OS). For the first time in years (ever since the demise of WP), a user has again a choice what software to use for his/her "productivity" tasks with these mature solutions.
The only confusing thing is the desktop which has so many looks and feels. Imagine a secretary, used to work with KDE, working on a replacement machine and needs to start Mozilla in windowmaker
We should not see this as an attack on KDE of Gnome, but as a move to a common interface, at least for the non expert users. For the rest of us, we will keep starting several X servers with multiple window managers and compiling and packaging them from CVS.
I guess it's a corporate geek reflex that we do not like meddling with our software, but is general and widespread use (albeit eclectic with the best of the best) not the best recognition?

a portion of the README included in WindowMaker:

Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS, RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"

CDE? I don't know about you, but on my E4500 I don't run X. I use windowmaker on my Ultra60. I've seen GNOME run OK on an Ultra 5.
Just to clear up a few points for the uninitiated:
Solaris 8 (and 9) come with a GNOME CD in the media kit, and they also come with the Companion CD which has many Free and Open Source packages on it, including Afterstep, KDE, WindowMaker, GCC, pine, GIMP etc.

I prefer windowmaker myself

If you're gonna cry about little Gnome coverage, what about all the users of better (faster) systems like WindowMaker, etc... :)

Agreed, in general. However, there is a UNIX desktop that doesn't clone windows, is clean and easy to use, and is easy to configure.

Find out more here.

I think it's a crying shame that the mainstream linux distributions don't provide WM as a third option.

What I find funny is you guys look at people using MSFT by choice as a problem. Aren't OSS/linux cult people by nature pro-freedom-choice. So if a user CHOOSES to use windows isn't that a good thing? I thought the gloves only come off when they have no choice?

Once I was talking with one of my friends and I asked him:
- Why do you use Windows?
- Well, isn't it the best choice? - he replied, so I asked him:
- How many different operating systems have you tried, so you can say which one is the best?
He said:
- None, but everyone I know told me to use Windows.
So I asked:
- How many different operating systems have everyone you know tried, so they can say which one is the best?
After few seconds of silence, he asked me:
- Can you help me installing Linux?

He had no problem with understanding my point because he's a musician composing, playing and listening to technically very difficult music, while most of people listens to pop music, so he knows that whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Some time after that, he convinced his father to try using Linux and Apache on one of his company's servers, then went the MySQL in the place of MS-SQL and even large part of the desktops were switched to diskless X terminals. The choice was obvious because of the lower cost (licenses, maintenance, backups, uptime, hardware requirements, etc.) but he didn't know he had that choice in the first place, no one had ever told him and that was the problem.

The problem is that I don't know many people who've chosen Windows, they usually just wanted a PC. I have yet to see anyone who can't work on my Debian boxes with Window Maker and Mozilla or Galeon. My parents use it and my sister uses it (now she has in her resume that she has experience with GNU/Linux and X11 environments, it looks very impressive to employers).

So that's what I do, I just give them a choice.

And don't tell me that most of people can't install and configure Debian, because most of people can't install and configure Windows either, they bought it preinstalled. We could talk about the choice you fight for, when I can go to a large computer store and buy a preinstalled working Debian box. Until then, please don't tell me about choice.

I wipe my ass with TWM.

Windowmaker's got all my lovin'.

Look here for the soft and wet.

A few years ago I tried out Window Maker, as I was looking for an Afterstep alternative. At the time, kde was an infant and gnome was in the same nursery. Afterstep was getting to bloated and slow, and when I tried out Window Maker I was in heaven! It was fast, lightweight and clean. My only complaint is that every time a new app is launched, an icon is displayed at the bottom of the screen.

As far as key bindings are concerned, everything is customizable. I use my keyboard to move virtual desktops all the time. Actually this is one of the things Window Maker wins me with -- I can jump from virtual window 1 to virtual window 3 by just typing "Alt-3" sort of a la Linux virtual consoles. I can also cycle through windows making them active "Alt-tab" or kill windows (read: Netscape annoying javascript banner pop-up adds)

I haven't tried the other window managers people have suggested, but I will be soon. If you want to get something up quick, without having to do a lot of customization, try out Window Maker for a while.

...let them take over! Run something sane, fast and highly customisable like WindowMaker and create shortcuts or menus for your favourite g- and k-based apps.

If you really have to use KDE and want some serious speed increases, then compile both KDE and Qt from source with the switch --no-g++-exceptions. This is a hint from Linux from Scratch which works very well.

As an ardent WindowMaker user (I couldn't stand the bloat of other desktops), I would say that half of this guy's problems would be solved if he were just to switch to WindowMaker, and learn about the middle mouse button. WindowMaker has a dock, you can collapse app's onto it, launch them from it, and even have neat dock apps. Adding apps to the dock is as simple as dragging their application icon (which is created for any application not already "docked") onto the dock.

I'll admit that the OSX dock is more graphically pleasing. And a little more flexible. But the big points are already there.

I also own an iBook (old clamshell), and wouldn't consider running OSX on it. OSX requires too much of your CPU and memory. WindowMaker under Linux runs as smooth on my iBook as it does on my Athlon.

I've got a little propaganda page up about it. Go read and make sure it makes sense. If you wanna help out, please email me. I need all the help I can get right now. Last year I was there for Window Maker. I'm probably gonna go to kinko's and print out like a hundred of them or so, to make me look like I've actually got my shit together. Right now, I'm just getting started, so there's not much going on. It'll probably just fail as a site, but hell, I haven't ever really done anything for the open-source community other than get a tux tattoo on my shoulder. Mostly because well, there's really not much that sysadmins can give back. I figure this is the best way for me to be able to. I dunno, it probably sounds cheesy, but it's something I wanna try to do. -- John

If you look at many window managers home-pages, they say things like "which came from $(ANOTHER_WINDOW_MANAGER), which came from ...", so they were started off by someone hacking around with a previous window manager, until it became a seporate entity, not just a hack. I use windowmaker which (IMHO) is very elegant and easy to use. I have looked at the src a few times, and every so often change something (nothing releasable), and find that the main source is very easy to edit, and browse, so if you want to start, try reading through that. Its probably not the easiest, but its the one I use (I'm biased).

Windowmaker has been in development for years, and is very stable.

It is also very themable, I used it for years until I installed Linux on a faster computer. KDE 2.2.2 works fine on my PII 333 with lots of RAM so I don't really care about the few MBs. But Windowmaker is real great, it runs just fine on a Pentium 133 with 32 MB!

And whatever you do, DON't run KDE apps!

allowed you to _persistently_ associate an application with a particular "screen"

Your screens are called "workspaces" in Window Maker. You can set an application's "initial workspace" (based on the application's name, class, or both) using a simple panel.

The automatic creation/destruction of screens on an as-needed basis

You can tell Window Maker to create a new workspace as soon as you move there.

and the ability to name each screen

Also easy, from the menu of workspaces, or from the Clip (see below).

You flicked between screens by clicking the top-right hand corner of the screen,

Window Maker has a sort of "button" on the desktop called the "Clip". Among other things, the Clip allows you to switch among workspaces. You can move the Clip to the upper righthand corner of the desktop if you want it there.

and you could drag them up and down to partially expose screens behind

That's the only thing Window Maker doesn't do; each workspace is disjoint and occupies the whole display. (You can drag windows to other workspaces, however).

And in addition, Window Maker owes much to another underground computer maker with fiercely loyal fans: NeXT. Should make you feel right at home. :)