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WindowMaker Development Resumes, Has First Release Since 2006

Posted by timothy on from the now-where-was-I dept.

First time accepted submitter brad-x writes "A new team of developers has recently picked up development of WindowMaker, and they've added many new features, including improved support for the freedesktop standard menu layout and Mac OS X style application and window switching from the keyboard, culminating in a new release, 0.95.2. A basic changelog is available on the newly redesigned website."

4 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Sweet by gman003 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I actually use WindowMaker on my personal dev-server-slash-tertiary-backup-desktop. It's an old piece of junk - Athlon 900 FTW! - but it still runs, and I don't have to worry about breaking anything important.

    I've tried various window managers and desktop environments. KDE, even a 2.x release, is too slow. Same for GNOME. Most of the rest are too capability-light for me to seriously use. But WindowMaker hits the sweet spot of "runs fast on old crap" and "is actually usable".

    This is the same machine I keep a copy of Firefox 2 on, since anything after that doesn't so much "run" as "walk".

    1. Re:Sweet by ByOhTek · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Prior to upgrading the hardware (2-3 years ago?), I had an old K6-III for my server, and Window Maker was awesome on it. I still use it for the VNC attachable desktop I have running in the background to keep all my projects open so I don't have to restart my apps each time I log in. I don't need anything that lightweight any more, but, it gets the job done well, and doesn't crap out in the VNC "box" like KDE or Gnome.

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
  2. WindowMaker is awesome. by Strahd+von+Zarovich · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Personally, I've used WindowMaker since the early '00s, and I'm still sticking to it. As a power user, I find its customization abilities extremely helpful. Also, I like that it's sticking to what it does best -- window management -- without eating up most of my CPU and GPU resources and bloating my memory. That's great news, keep up the good work!

  3. Re:Woooo! by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So have I—only more seriously. I built a crude imitation of the NeXT UI for Windows in tribute four years ago and I can't live without it. Tiles for icons was a Good Idea.

    --
    Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!