WindowMaker Development Resumes, Has First Release Since 2006
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."
I've been waiting anxiously for this for, like, 6 years!!!!
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".
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?
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!
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.
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!
I have a bunch of art updates I'd like to push. Real Media or ICQ, anyone?