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Interview with Alfredo Kojima at Linux Brazil
Crash writes "There is a very nice and personal interview with Alfredo Kojima, the creator of
Window Maker, over at Linux Brazil which now has been translated to English. Thanks to LWN. "
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I had the same problem with GNOME (not to mention instability, but that's another topic). I have an almost identical system (RH 5.2 on a K5-133 w/32 Mb & generic SVGA card) that runs KDE well enough, (not great, but faster than it ran Win95) but GNOME was very slow. It's far better running FVWM2 or WindowMaker. Both use less memory than KDE or GNOME and will run their apps almost as well as in their "native" WMs (KWM and Enlightenment, respectively).
Choice & empowerment - don't ya just luv it?
FunctionalOS != Microsoft
Officially, Gnome has no specific Window Manager.
UnOfficially (in Gnome 1.0), the code is written so that anything _but_ Enlightenment is not recoginzed as a valid Window Manager.
A lot has changed in the last couple of fixes in the source code, and Gnome now recognizes more Window Managers. Reason is totally up to speculation.
Review the source.
I for one am apt to try every new gadget and WM that comes out...
I used enlightenment for awhile (With & without the whole "gnome-session bloat"), played around with Afterstep, KDE for a week or two...
But it never fails....I always come back to Windowmaker. Usually I start with KFM or Gnome Panel running with Windowmaker....But after a couple of days of not using either -- I reclaim the memory and screen real estate anb go back to using just plain Window Maker...(With a few choice dockapps of course..)
I would bet that I am not the only one who goes through these motions?
DT
Like you I have used WMaker for a long time. But recently I want something more than consistency. Window Maker is an excellent choice for those who desire consistency and predictability and order. But I tired of the fixed dock and blockiness of it all. Window Maker also has a lot of other positives like speed and excellent graphics and tear-off menus, but you make a great mistake in assuming that those who have tried Window Maker are all so satisfied. Some want a more mature and flexible desktop environment.
Regarding E - that's what I use right now, mostly. I also use Afterstep some. Window Maker originally was just a fork from AfterStep, and it lacks many features AfterStep has like multiple docks with drawers and real virtual desktops with a pager and multiple pages in each desktop (with each desktop's looks and feel further customizable). That makes all the difference in the world to me - like being free after being boxed in by WindowMaker and other window managers that don't fully take advantage of what X offers.
E has been helped by its association with Gnome
(good exposure) but also its reputation for stability has been hurt by using E in a Gnome-Session. Running E without Gnome-Session, even with K Filemanager also running and several other apps, my swap is less than 1 megabyte. With Gnome Session and *no applications* running, my swap jumps to 34 megabytes, more than Microsoft Windows. Using the Gnome panel without gnome session management (barf) is all right, though. E just does not crash often when one runs it independently of Gnome, and it is incredibly fast even with *heavy* themes on my little 32 meg machine with a cheap video card. Many people do not understand that E works just fine without Gnome. I have even rewriten the e-config utility to work without gnome libs and will put that out for people to use if they want to shortly.
No, I do not want consistentcy. That's why I like E. Sadly, most people do like predictability and order - anal characteristics. So, it is no wonder that Window Maker is so popular. It looks good but is boring to me - I want something other than blockiness on my desktop, even though I have to admire the skill of Alfredo and the rest of the team in delivering what so many people seem to want. They also tend to want the Windows "start here" button.
There is a difference in philosphy. I run Linux, not NextStep. I do not want my desktop to have the limitations of NextStep or its looks. I want it to take full advantage of X and Linux. Alfredo and the rest of the Window Maker team have strong feelings about making Window Maker as much like Next as possible, not just in looks but in feel as well. No thanks.
I've only found three Window managers that fully take advantage of what X allows - Fvwm2, Enlightenment and Afterstep. Fvwm2 has been hurt by shitty defaut configurations supplied by distros like Slackware (ugh) and Redhat. But it has excellent graphics and themability and has that expansive feeling if one wants to go beyond that in a way Window Maker doesn't allow.
So, I have not gone back to Window Maker and I don't look back. We are not all like you.
* It seems these guys are building a cathedral, not running a bazaar.
* There doesn't seem to be an authoritative voice deciding how GNUstep should be developed.
* There is a lot of infighting between people on the list.
* They are heavily dependent on Display PostScript, which does not have a decent free implementation.
* Instead of writing to the OpenStep specification, they are tracking a moving target--Yellow Box--which is still being enhanced by Apple.
* Hard to generate GUIs, which are heavily dependent on tools that only run on OPENSTEP.
In short, I don't see it going anywhere until they make the hard decisions to stop tracking Yellow Box, until they get an authoritative voice, and until they get tools that can run on Linux/FreeBSD.
I have 4 16 Megs EDO SIMMS gathering dust that I would gladly donate to the cause....(Since I went to SDRAM)
You know, I had been meaning to send Alfredo a CD for some time. (I'm thinking he could use something good and Texan, like Stevie Ray Vaughn) But after reading about his P100/16 MB development machine, I am thinking about taking up a collection to buy the boy a new computer!
... EVERYONE loves Window Maker.
These days you can grab a K6-2/400 and 64 MB of the good stuff on a decent motherboard for around $200 online. I'm seriously thinking about passing the hat at the next LUG meeting. Its certainly a good cause
I fully believe that Window Maker is the best window manager ever written, and I feel a great debt to Alfredo for this solid and well-designed piece of code. I'm forever spoiled for other window managers.
I'm just curious about the shipping to Brazil,
--Lenny
Windowmaker has a fast, usable, and _consistant_ interface. Which is more than I can say for some of the more recently developed window managers.
well, I think he said that as an explanation to the fact that probably windowmaker won't get things like transparent menus. WindowMaker can look real pretty, as we know.
BTW I'm the guy who interviewed Kojima and later translated the text to English (with a lot of help from Joachin Nilsson and Kerry Kox). Glad to know you liked it!
Augusto
Are you trying to say that you want to go to brazil first?
I think this may have to do with the mind set of people who tend to use WindowMaker (this is true for me, and I suspect I am not alone in this). WMaker is a simple, slick, and fast interface. No extraneous googaws, bells, nor whistles. It's a good window manager that does what it needs to do to be useful and effective, it's very configurable (and configuration is a damn sight easier than with E). People who want this kind of interface are less likely to want all the googeegawgaws of a desktop suite. I used KDE for a while, but found the windowmanager was a big sluggish. I tried running WMaker as the window manager inside KDE, but it didn't work very well. So I adjusted the WMaker startup scripts to launch just the KDE file manager in the background (I found I didn't need the panel, esp. since it didn't work with WindowMaker). After a while, I realized that I never really used the KDE file manager, so I turned that off. So now I'm back to where I started (sort of) with window managers from when I started with Linux. I just have a much cooler looking color scheme, and lots of hotkeys mapped to the windows key (xkeycaps is fun). The only part of KDE I still use is the application menu tree (I have use a perl script that converts it on the fly into WMaker menu format) and a couple of the applications.
The bottom line is that the type of person who is attracted to WindowMaker's advantages doesn't need the extra overhead of a full desktop suite.
-Cheetah
Bzzz... wrong. I've used Gnome with WindowMaker since well before Gnome 1.0, and all it takes is a quick unbinding of a desktop mouse button so gmc's desktop menus work. Notice that that is a change to WindowMaker's configuration, not gnome's!
Just a little rectification: Gnome don't have any official wm, they want to be wm agnostic (you can love it or hate it this is not the point here).
You probably think that enlightenment is Gnome default wm because Redhat use enlightenment with Gnome and enlightenment was (is?) the most Gnome complient wm but this is a decision from Redhat and not from the Gnome team. this may even cahnge now that Rastermann left Redhat.
"The obvious mathematical breakthrough would be development of an easy way to factor large prime numbers." Bill Gates,
Tim
Just wondering...anyone know why the development of GNUStep hasn't been as fast as GNOME or KDE? I would have thought there would have been more developement considering the number of /.ers who use WindowMaker (remeber that poll from a few months ago?).
--------------------------
Nothing terribly revealing in that, but adds to the whole idea of "personalities" though.
...Student, Artist, Techie - Geek *
I was interested by the final comment about a P100/16mb - My friend recently installed Gnome on a P133/32mb and it was pretty damn sluggish (although it did have a reasonably old gfx card) -AK states earlier that his intention isn't too make WM look "pretty" - just functional and easy to use. Nice to see that traditional values and sensible sys requirements still hold true...
Mong.
* Paul Madley
*...Slacker, Artist, Techie - Geek *
Remember: Nothing is Cool.