[HN Gopher] Modern Debian-based Window Maker distribution
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Modern Debian-based Window Maker distribution
Author : Aldipower
Score : 72 points
Date : 2025-07-21 16:32 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (wmlive.sourceforge.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (wmlive.sourceforge.net)
| indrora wrote:
| I've wished for a better WindowMaker experience for years -- and
| that more places would adopt the distribution solution that NeXT
| and its children adopted.
|
| Is it perfect? No, but it's sure a step closer to an ideal than
| whatever .so hell that we came up with before.
| wmlive wrote:
| Development of Window Maker (as in the window manager)
| unfortunately seems to be almost abandoned. The last few years
| of it's development saw the inclusion of rather superfluous
| additional features (e.g., screen capture, hot corners) instead
| of concentrating on it's main purpose of being a window
| manager.
|
| It's a pity no one ever tried to replace the WINGs widget set
| with actual GNUstep components, thus adding the full GNUstep
| themeability WINGs is not capable of, in order to finally get
| rid of that crufty NeXTSTEP look.
| esseph wrote:
| sourceforge, can't believe it's still around.
| ok123456 wrote:
| It's all git based now. They've tried to turn it into a version
| of github that is just for public projects, and with a 2004 UI.
| esseph wrote:
| slashdot and sourceforge "feel" so weird these days, I really
| don't know how to describe it accurately. I know they sold
| off years and years and years ago, but it makes me feel like
| watching a zombie company.
| pandemic_region wrote:
| I don't remember 2004 SF ui having such a treacherous
| download page. Is it downloading? Should I click this thing
| that does its best to not look like an ad? What about all
| these other banners I'm so lost crikey.
| esseph wrote:
| Yeah I mean the page might have changed over the past... 21
| years ;)
| _fat_santa wrote:
| I wonder how well WindowMaker integrates with modern
| applications, I've always wanted to give it a try but was worried
| about this. Does anyone use it as their daily driver?
| Aldipower wrote:
| Yes, I use it daily and heavily in a professional audio studio.
| It runs perfectly with Reaper and Bitwig (both DAWs), both in
| window or fullscreen mode. The great thing is also the quick
| switching between the multiple virtual desktops to the signal
| routing and level applications, like hdspemix and so on. It is
| such a distract free environment.
| badsectoracula wrote:
| I've been using (and contributed to) Window Maker for years -
| in fact it was my first non-DE window manager back in early
| 2000s. I have used other DEs (most notably GNOME 2 around
| mid-2000s) and WMs but when i use Linux i always end up back to
| Window Maker and it has been my main window manager for the
| last ~10 years as well as the only desktop environment i've
| been using since ~2021 or so.
|
| Most applications work fine since there is little difference
| between WMs. That said there are two issues Window Maker has
| that nobody has fixed:
|
| 1. There is practically no RandR support. Sure, you can enable
| it (and i think it is enabled by default) during compilation
| but the "support" is really to restart Window Maker whenever
| the video mode or whatever else changes so that it uses the new
| resolution. However due to the way Window Maker seems to
| identify monitors (it seems to use the vertical resolution -
| probably a hack that worked for someone somewhere around the
| 90s or early 2000s and nobody bothered to update to use
| something less hacky) it also causes duplicate dock
| configurations. Also for some reason if the dock is larger than
| the vertical resolution anything that doesn't "fit" gets thrown
| away. Ultimately i've found it easier to just disable RandR
| support to avoid losing my dock configuration whenever some
| program changes the resolution.
|
| 2. While there is EWMH support, either there is some bug with
| how some parts are implemented _or_ (most likely) there are
| subtle differences between Window Maker 's implementation and
| other window managers (e.g. IceWM) that applications assumed
| would work like that cause issues with Window Maker. The most
| obvious of those is applications that want to "take over"
| window management and handle moving and resizing themselves -
| it either doesn't work (the applications do not move) or the
| move/resize happens erratically (e.g. Firefox with the titlebar
| disabled or Steam has this issue). Also many applications do
| not get the frame size (this is _probably_ some race condition
| because Window Maker does set the frame size hints properly)
| correctly, causing them to get wrong sizes and when combined
| with them trying to handle sizing and position themselves, they
| can end up flickering by constantly trying to set the
| "correct" size and/or moving and sizing themselves whenever
| their UI updates (often becoming smaller and smaller because
| they assume some frame size of 0). This is most common with
| applications running under Wine, but some other applications
| have issues too because of that (e.g. Virtualbox).
|
| I've tried to figure out the #2 (for #1 i just don't care that
| much since i'm using a single monitor anyway) but from what i
| could tell Window Maker seems to be doing everything properly.
| I didn't spent _that_ much time on it though. At some point
| (and assuming nobody else does, though it has been like that
| for years) i 'll try and compare what Window Maker does and
| what IceWM does (which works fine) and where their behavior
| differs. My guess is some race condition, perhaps Window Maker
| sets the hints too late or something, though this is just a
| guess. I'll need first to write a small X11 program that
| replicates the issue.
|
| As a workaround for #2 i've been using a feature i added to
| Window Maker years ago to ignore any decoration changes for
| windows (it is in Attributes -> Advanced Options -> Ignore
| decoration changes), essentially forcing all windows to have a
| resize frame and titlebar, ignoring any requests for hiding
| them. This lets me move around and resize, e.g., Steam (and
| also use all window management functionality that Window Maker
| provides - like rolling the window up/down using the mouse
| wheel - instead of whatever Valve thought i'd need).
|
| One other issue with Window Maker (though it isn't really a
| Window Maker issue per-se) is that since Window Maker is not a
| (desktop) compositor, Gtk4 applications that assume a
| compositor will use black colors for whatever would be beneath
| a window - this mainly means that popup menus with rounded
| corners will actually get black corners. This is really a side-
| effect of Gtk4 assuming a compositor is there and not having a
| fallback for when there isn't one and would be an issue with
| other window managers too, but it should be solvable (if you
| care about it, i don't) by using a dedicated compositor (i
| think compiz or something like that may work).
| aflag wrote:
| Probably not worse than other DEs. Aren't modern applications
| just a bunch of SPAs?
| daantje wrote:
| Yes, for ~20 years on Ubuntu.
|
| Nice startup time, and just works -- especially if all you use
| are terminals and browser windows. Things like firefox look a
| little out of place, now that they are pushing their UI chrome
| into their own title bars.
| Koshkin wrote:
| Window Maker looks alien to me as a Unix user. CDE is good, but I
| like TWM which is the default window manager in Slackware (if you
| want someting more Windows-like, you can switch to MWM).
| fullstop wrote:
| I used WindowMaker from 1997 until about 2005, so it doesn't
| look too foreign to me. I kind of want to try it again to see
| how it holds up, but perhaps that kind of desktop is best left
| in my memories.
| Aldipower wrote:
| NextStep, where WindowMaker derivated, is also a Unix-like OS.
| For me it perfectly fits to Unix. But yeah, this a a matter of
| taste of course. :-)
| gigel82 wrote:
| Oh wow, sourceforge, can't believe this site survived after it
| started introducing malware into binary distributions.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| Pretty sure it's under new management and they have nothing to
| do with the scummy behavior of the past.
| wmlive wrote:
| Is there any better alternative site for easy and free bulk
| data distribution of ISO images?
|
| I really wouldn't want to host my stuff on any Microsoft
| controlled sites.
| karmakaze wrote:
| Having used both NeXTSTEP and Window Maker, the weirdest thing
| for me was the left-side scrollbars especially on the file/column
| browser where there's 3 side by side. Great to see this still
| alive and kicking.
| indigodaddy wrote:
| Would this work for touchscreen/tablet I wonder :)
| kev009 wrote:
| The NS UI looked really odd to me until relatively recently
| having grown up on Mac OS Classic, Win9x. Now I look at that and
| think, damn.. that aged well.
| runjake wrote:
| It's probably lost to history now, but portions of Windows 95
| drew partial inspiration from earlier versions of NEXTSTEP,
| such as the window buttons and titlebar.
| wmlive wrote:
| wmlive maintainer here.
|
| In fact, this should rather be considered a Window Maker based
| Debian/Bookworm distribution instead the stated reverse.
| Certainly more then 95% of the shipped packages are plain
| Debian/Bookworm packages, with only a few additional packages
| contributed by yours truly.
|
| The main merit of wmlive is providing the necessary glue to
| properly preconfigure Window Maker with an out of the box usable
| environment (unlike Debian's crude/primitive Window Maker
| configs) and make it the default GUI.
|
| The other merit is to make the supplied software complete enough
| to serve as a standalone system without the immediate need to
| connect to the internet to install more useful packages than are
| normally supplied by distributions in their quest to provide an
| initial system too generic to be really useful by already
| experienced users. This is not meant for beginners,
|
| While some work went in homogenizing the overall looks with
| Window Maker's own WINGs widget set, no efforts were wasted with
| further eye candy stuff. The themeability of the WINGs widgets
| are limited to that crufty NeXTSTEP look everybody either loves
| or despises, being the least common visual denominator. Not being
| particularly enamored of these visuals, but this was the only way
| to find some common ground for the look and feel.
|
| Window Maker is just a highly compatible X11 window manager and
| is supposed to work as such. There is no interest to specifically
| integrate it with the provided GNUstep applications, as this is
| not supposed to be predominantly a GNUstep desktop. The included
| GNUstep applications are just an addon to give people a practical
| way to verify what GNUstep has to offer. In fact, wmlive would be
| perfectly usable without providing any single GNUstep
| application. The freedom and flexibility provided by an X11
| window manager instead of the walled garden of a specific desktop
| system is much more preferable to many Linux users. NeXT
| nostalgists might want to look elsewhere. [1][2]
|
| What most people don't seem to get is that there is much more to
| wmlive than just the visible desktop. Below the hood is a wide
| range of command line tools suitable for system rescue and repair
| when using it as a live system booted from an USB stick.
| Supposedly many youngsters who were yet to be born when we
| already grew up with Linux from day one have never learned to
| look beyond what's visually obvious.
|
| If anyone who downloaded it does like wmlive, I'd appreciate a
| donation via the download pages. While i hate sounding like a
| beggar, given the current economic situation i could really use
| it. Thanks!
|
| [1] https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace [2]
| https://github.com/onflapp/gs-desktop
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(page generated 2025-07-21 23:00 UTC)