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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."

46 of 192 comments (clear)

  1. Woooo! by busyqth · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've been waiting anxiously for this for, like, 6 years!!!!

    1. 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!
    2. Re:Woooo! by Jeremiah+Cornelius · · Score: 2

      I think that I first came to "Chips & Dips" in '96 or so, looking for Rob Malda's DockApps - and his Window Maker news.

      --
      "Flyin' in just a sweet place,
      Never been known to fail..."
    3. Re:Woooo! by ByOhTek · · Score: 5, Informative

      Dude, Window Maker is awesome as a light weight desktop system. 3

      Aside from compatibility improvements, I say don't fix what isn't broken.

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
    4. Re:Woooo! by goose-incarnated · · Score: 2

      I've been using WindowMaker almost continuously since the 90's. In addition to be much more lightweight than any DE:

      • With ctrl-alt- controlling which of my 8 workspaces I am on, it means I don't have to touch the mouse.
      • It also supports focus-follows mouse (properly, I mean) with alt-tab. The alt-tab doesn't raise the focused window, though, so I can switch to a big background window to type stuff in while reading from the unfocused foreground window.
      • Pressing f-12 gives me a menu that can be used with the arrow keys, meaning I don't need to use the mouse to launch new applications that are in a menu.
      • New applications don't automatically get focus, so I can launch an application and carry on typing in my current application without fearing that my keystrokes are going to suddenly go to a different application. (As far as I know, only WindowManager has a sane policy with regards to this. The others don't have the distinction between "unfocused foreground application" and "focused background application"). Even if the new application covers the existing window, it won't get focus and my keystrokes don't go to the new application until I alt-tab to it.
      • I lose no vertical screen real-estate, my icons are set to minimize to a horizontally-aligned place (that doesn't get covered when a window is maximised).
      • I've mapped shortcuts for maximise and maximise vertically, so never need to touch the mouse.
      • It starts up in under half a second from login. Basically, instantaneous to me when I press "enter" on the login screen.
      • Windows can "snap" to a border, making the rare occasion when I use the mouse for window-management a pleasant one.
      • tiles rock!

        • All in all, it means I hardly ever have to touch the mouse. Other window managers I've tried that boast of never needing the mouse (like "awesome" or something that was spammed here recently! I tried it for about an hour before I gave up and went back to WindowMaker) have insane window-placing policies, no help in configuring it, etc. WindowMaker comes with a gui tool that lets you configure everything without needing to edit files or find a menu-item that will configure separate parts of the system It is not only much more configurable (in the ways that matter to me) than something like Gnome, it is also more easily configurable. Simply click the icon you see when it starts up.

          It is the kind of beauty of simplicity that Apple users would probably go green over (from NeXT, no doubt :-)) Everything works like one expects it to. Nothing on screen is superfluous. When it starts up, there is nothing but the desktop background and three icons. And, whats more, thats all that is ever needed - I never found myself trying to place more tiles on the desktop. Everything I ever want to do is no more than 3-5 keystrokes (yes, you read that right ... 3-5 keystrokes) away from me, whether it's launching the browser, starting an xterm, changing the desktop, reading a manpage, locating an eclipse workspace or writing some lisp code, the thing I want can be found in under 2 seconds.

          Try that with KDE, Gnome or another DE.

      --
      I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
  2. 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. Re:Sweet by dcherryholmes · · Score: 2

      I also have a fondness for some of the more robust WM's in lieu of full blown desktops. I thought WMaker was neat, but Fluxbox is what I really enjoyed. I got lured away by compiz years ago, but I've been thinking of going back because Gnome/Ubuntu is imploding, and KDE is not to my taste. Anyway, check out Fluxbox, if you never did.

    3. Re:Sweet by Blaskowicz · · Score: 2

      LXDE is fine as a windows 95 clone, it's what I use on a recent piece of junk - VIA C7 1.8GHz. along with firefox 8 which has fast javascript and patched memory leaks. LXDE may feel boring, too conventional and gtk based, but that's you use nowadays if like me you weren't on linux in the good/bad old days, or if you're lazy.

    4. Re:Sweet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Try NX. All you need is a working sshd and it's wayyyyy faster than VNC.

    5. Re:Sweet by MikeBabcock · · Score: 2

      OT but I use Blackbox on all my headless servers as a VNC GUI when I need one for the same reasons; its functional and yet very fast with very low memory requirements. On the odd occasion when I need a remote GUI on a server, I can launch 'vncserver' with blackbox in the xstartup and know it will be ready almost instantly with nearly no impact on the server's performance.

      --
      - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
    6. Re:Sweet by realityimpaired · · Score: 2

      Try Bodhi Linux... they're a minimalist Ubu derivative, and e17 is the only officially supported DE. It's based on LTS, so as of this writing, some of the stuff might be a little outdated, but they maintain their own versions of a *lot* of software, in their own repos, so it is mostly up to date (and it's pretty much on the bleeding edge when it comes to E builds, with a new one usually every couple of weeks... the lead developer is very much in contact with the e17 developers, and is keeping it up to date). It still ties in to Ubuntu's repos, though, so anything that's in Ubu's repos will work on Bodhi, too, and they have software packs available for anybody who wants to have the "everything including the kitchen sink" set up that Ubuntu seems to prefer in their distro.

      http://bodhilinux.com/

    7. Re:Sweet by ByOhTek · · Score: 2

      Actually, it was a BSD box. And no, I don't claim I was hosting a lot of crap. I didn't claim I had a lot of memory. You just made a lot of assumptions. I used it to rip flac files, sever a few web pages (that only about a dozen people used), some development, and for some network file storage. A 386 would have been fine if I could get my hands on it, but the nice part about that system was the WHOLE computer used not much more energy than a modern "low energy" cpu used.

      --
      Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
  3. Yay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you really want to make your modern operating system look antiquated, isn't it easier just to go back to doing everything from the command line?

    1. Re:Yay? by mfwitten · · Score: 2

      I thought doing everything from the command line makes one look like a sophisticated hacker...

      In truth, though, I believe people made a mistake when they gave up the keyboard in favor of graphical trickery. If you take the time to cobble together a shadow of such a system, it becomes very clear that a keyboard-centric environment is one of the most superior modes by which to compute, because the keyboard is currently one of the most (if not the most) superior modes by which to communicate with a computer when it comes to a panoply of tasks.

      As the older people die off, I believe we'll start to see more keyboard-centric environments pop up once again; soon enough, a computing environment for grandma will be targeting someone who has been texting while driving her entire life. Just consider the Ubuntu head-up display stuff; I don't know much about it, but from what I've heard, the return to the keyboard has already begun.

    2. Re:Yay? by Spiridios · · Score: 3, Funny

      I'd imagine CLI-only GIMP would really live up to its name.

    3. Re:Yay? by Teun · · Score: 2

      It looks the way it looks because the rounded corners were already patented by Apple.

      --
      "The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
    4. Re:Yay? by 19thNervousBreakdown · · Score: 2, Funny

      Let's sum up this post:

      1. Using a GUI necessitates giving up the keyboard. Because of shadows.
      2. The keyboard is the best because the keyboard is the best.
      3. You can't wait for the old people to die because, once they're all dead and there are no more old people, CLIs will come back into vogue.
      4. The skill level required for texting while driving is roughly equivalent to the skill level to comfortably use a CLI.
      5. You don't know much about Ubuntu's Head-Up Display, but it heralds "the return of the keyboard", because, and this is pure conjecture but I imagine it must be your line of reasoning because it's the only thing that ... makes sense ... 2012 is the year of Linux on the desktop.

      Will the tragedies of the amphetamine shortage never end?

      --
      <xml><I><am><so><damn>Web 2.0</damn></so></am></I></xml>
    5. Re:Yay? by MikeBabcock · · Score: 2

      I have yet to find a GUI that can replace good old Unix pipes for complex work. I can imagine someone developing a drag'n'drop development system like the old "Forest and Trees" software that works similarly but I can't see any benefit to doing so. As it stands now, I can do *anything* from a command-line and simply *lots* from a GUI. That's why I use lots of terminal windows in a GUI on my desktops ... best of both worlds.

      --
      - Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
    6. Re:Yay? by larry+bagina · · Score: 3, Interesting
      Before starting work on GIMP, Peter Mattis asked for input on features and formats.

      The first suggestion was to use existing CLI utils, augmented with new CLI utils. (In fairness, there were some other ideas that did make it in and script-fu is similar in spirit to cli apps)

      --
      Do you even lift?

      These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  4. Expo and Scale by wirelessdreamer · · Score: 2

    if window maker supported Expo and Scale for window management like in OSX or Compiz I'd Gladly switch.

    1. Re:Expo and Scale by Unknown+Lamer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      xcompmgr was always just the demo/reference compositor... IIRC it had (still has?) memory leaks... cairo-compmgr almost works but for whatever reasons goes out to lunch whenever changing display settings (I might have a laptop and external monitor so that makes it really, really unusable for me).

      Unfortunately things like Expose can't be implemented in an external compositor now (at least not in a flashy or particularly usable way)-- there's no way for the window manager to say "hey can you do this fancy animation crap for me". AFAICT there is only a window property that communicates the translucency level of a window available. The same goes for fancy iconization effects, graying out unfocused windows, wobbly dragging, etc.

      And so every window manager ends up having to implement its own effects using its own internal protocol... it's a hard problem figuring out the needed common ground (especially when GNOME and KWin both appear to be actively divorcing themselves from X11). I've always wondered how hard it would be to at least make Compiz a library that other window managers could integrate (some construction needed) to gain compositing and effects... but I'd rather whine about how CLIM had a transformation and frame management protocol in 1995 that could do all of this without radical replumbing like X11 does ;)

      --

      HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
    2. Re:Expo and Scale by realityimpaired · · Score: 2

      e17 has that. It's part of the "composite" module. Load it, and set up a binding to launch the pager... perhaps different names for it, but essentially the same effect. I have mine set up with edge bindings on the screen... I put the mouse in the bottom right, it launches the "scale pager", which is essentially an expo-like desktop switcher. I put it in the top left, it launches scale for all windows on the current desktop, and bottom left is bound to scale for all desktops.

      Surprisingly light on resources, too. Despite having the desktop compositor loaded, as well as a calendar widget, a clock widget, and a few other desktop blingy things, enlightenment itself is only using 49MB of RAM on my system as I type this. And there's some truly beautiful themes in existence for it, giving it the potential to be an absolutely gorgeous system, while still being very easy and intuitive to work with.

      There's even a few distros built around e17 as their core offering... my personal favourite (and the distro this laptop has installed) is Bodhi Linux (http://bodhilinux.com)

    3. Re:Expo and Scale by unixisc · · Score: 2

      I was wondering about this. Isn't it possible to have a complete desktop environment based on GNUSTEP, w/o having it sit over either X or Wayland, but just have it run on the OS - be it Linux, BSD, Minix or Hurd - just like OS-X does? NEXTSTEP used to use Display Postscript - what does OS-X use? Can't something like that be used in making this GNUSTEP DE?

      As an aside, I've seen GNOME 3.3 being modified to look like OS-X in Comice-OS (an Ubuntu based distro), but is the effect the same as GNUSTEP, or is it missing a lot of the things that OPENSTEP and GNUSTEP had? If it's not, I'd say it's a good thing to have. Incidentally, in my early days when using Unix, I couldn't work much w/ SunOS or Ultrix, but NEXTSTEP made it a breeze to work w/.

  5. 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!

  6. Is WindowMaker still relevant? by Hatta · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I never "got" WindowMaker. I gather it was good back in the day, when docks were kind of a special feature. But these days even Fluxbox has support for dock apps. So why WindowMaker?

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    1. Re:Is WindowMaker still relevant? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      Sometimes all you want is a window manager. You don't need an integrated file manager, dvd burner or media player. WindowMaker is tremendously fast, stable and memory efficient.

    2. Re:Is WindowMaker still relevant? by mbkennel · · Score: 2

      The WindowMaker look and UI (being NeXTSTEP and not some hacker's idea) is pretty good.

    3. Re:Is WindowMaker still relevant? by Hatta · · Score: 2

      I played with Windowmaker back in the day. It didn't seem particularly special to me. I think I particularly hated that awful paperclip in the corner. When Blackbox came out, I was all over that. It was fast, spartan, easy to configure, and supported dock apps.

      What I'm really asking here is what's the actual benefit of doing things the NeXTSTEP way? I don't get it.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
    4. Re:Is WindowMaker still relevant? by drinkypoo · · Score: 3, Informative

      What I'm really asking here is what's the actual benefit of doing things the NeXTSTEP way? I don't get it.

      The NeXTStep dock keeps things that you fix to one place in the same place so you can use muscle memory to find them, whereas when it was remade for OSX it was designed to prioritize looks and so it wanders around the display. It has folders, which is a cool thing for a dock to have, and which was taken out for OSX. It's nothing you can't get with other docks, but it's sensible by default and at the time it was pretty groundbreaking.

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  7. One release in 6 years? by CanHasDIY · · Score: 3, Funny

    Man, I do not envy the person who has to clean up that mess...





    (Yes that was a sex joke)

    --
    An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
  8. cool by larry+bagina · · Score: 2

    WindowMaker (now Window Maker) was the first X11 window manager I liked, after having used CDE (shudder), fvwm95 (double shudder), bowman, and AfterStep.

    Congratulations and thanks to everyone involved.

    --
    Do you even lift?

    These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.

  9. They will definitely have a niche.... by cyberkahn · · Score: 3, Interesting

    With a lot of people unhappy with the direction Gnome 3 and Unity are going. WindowMaker is a nice light window manager. It's what I use to use until active development stopped. I will look at it again for sure.

    1. Re:They will definitely have a niche.... by tthomas48 · · Score: 2

      The only problem is those people are anti-change. So a *new* release of WindowMaker won't work for them either.

  10. wrong by Lunix+Nutcase · · Score: 3, Funny

    No this would be the second release since 2006. 0.95.1 was released 2.5 weeks ago.

  11. Re:1990 Called by Beelzebud · · Score: 5, Funny

    I know! Where is the flash content, and the social media scripts, and tracking cookies that we have all come to love in this modern era!

  12. Sweet!! by SCHecklerX · · Score: 2

    I've missed the elegance and flexibility of Windowmaker and have always wished that it had stayed current. Looking forward to having a great way forward vs. that unity garbage!!

  13. development has been going of for a while now by C0vardeAn0nim0 · · Score: 2

    i've been following the development for more than a year. i've even contributed a fix for a null pointer exception on the menu editor.

    the only news for me is to see it back on the news. which is a great thing in the sense that it'd bring awareness to this great desktop manager.

    i've tried using KDE, gnome, several *boxen to name a few, but i always go back to windowmaker.

    the killer featuer to me is the automatic cascading of new windows. i often need to open more than a dozen terminal windows to do my job, and having them cascaded across several virtual desktops is a helluva lot more eficient than any other method (and no, tabs don't work for my workflow)

    --
    What ? Me, worry ?
  14. Next up: Blackbox by debrain · · Score: 2

    WindowMaker has a special place in my heart, right next to BlackBox. I still look at them and go "cool".

    I hope someone revitalizes BlackBox, too. It was just plain neat.

    1. Re:Next up: Blackbox by Hatta · · Score: 2

      Have you tried Fluxbox? It's a fine modern alternative to BlackBox.

      --
      Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  15. Re:Nooooo! by Unknown+Lamer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Since Window Maker has had pretty bad multi-display support, when I got a new laptop a summer or two ago I looked for replacements and discovered ... Sawfish is alive too. I'm using it now with xfce-panel and gnome-session (2.x since 3.x hates me) and it's pretty tolerable (supports all of the new window hints and session management stuff ... giving me something that's almost as reliable as what I had with Window Maker a decade ago). I really, really miss the dockapps though... the network and cpu monitors available nowadays blow and I've never really gotten over now having a dock app to control my music player ("media keys" get the job done but you get used to doing things a certain way when you've done them that way for a decade and all).

    --

    HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
  16. Cool by itomato · · Score: 5, Funny

    I have a bunch of art updates I'd like to push. Real Media or ICQ, anyone?

  17. Re:You see, unlike you, we know that quality count by RocketRabbit · · Score: 2

    Are you by chance a Gnome 3 developer?

    Progress for the sake of progress alone, that's what you say, right?

  18. Window Maker Live ISO by pseelig · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is a project on sourceforge to remaster a standard Ubuntu 11.04 ISO image into a Window Maker Live ISO. It is based on a small scripting framework which relies on the Ubuntu Customization Kit for the creation of a working Live CD, and has the very latest Window Maker 0.95.2 as the only and default graphical user interface. It is also very preconfigured, so that one is able to just start using it already at first login.

    The project is currently hosted at sourceforge.net/projects/wmlive and also provides some ready made live ISO torrents for interested people who don't want to have to remaster an Ubuntu ISO image on their own. Any feedback and possibly even contributions are very welcome.

  19. Re:You see, unlike you, we know that quality count by ByOhTek · · Score: 2

    The CPU on that machine used 12.5W power.

    I eventually upgraded to a quad core process, more because I wanted to do mulit-core software dev than any other reason. I got the lowest power quad core I could find - 45W. At that point, the CPU uses more power than the entirety of my old K6-III

    So, until I needed to, yeah, sticking with the "90s tech" was good because it saved me energy, and I got NO advantage from upgrading.

    --
    Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
  20. NeXTstep was more than just a look (was Re:Woooo!) by WillAdams · · Score: 2

    The problem is, the NeXT UI was more than just appearance --- it was a synergy of:

      - Display PostScript (it kills me that it's still possible to display something on-screen in Mac OS X or Windows and _not_ be able to print it as it appears on-screen!)
      - Services --- I still miss poste.app's ``Print envelope from selected address'' Service, LaTeXiT doesn't work quite as well as TeXView.app's ``TeX eq -> EPS'' Service, &c.
      - pop-up main menu which made how far one was from the main menu irrelevant and made some commands (e.g., ``Punch'' in Altsys Virtuoso) gestural
      - tear off menus which meant no need for inscrutable toolbars --- just position a frequently needed command where one wanted it, then close the torn-off sub menu when done

    William

    --
    Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.