Window Maker Nostalgia

Let's also not forget the unsung hero of the "let's pretend we're NextStep" saga, "bowman" (a fvwm hack). A much shorter shelf-life than its successors AfterStep and WindowMaker, but the one that started it all...

This brings back memories of going from one window manager to the next (blackbox, fluxbox, or enlightment anyone?) and fiddling with the configuration endlessly. Now I don't think twice and just use whatever the default is.

Aww. I miss using Window Maker. I used to maintain the FAQ as it was the first software project I was involved with. To set the era, newsgroups were active but dying, freenode irc was shiny and new, freshmeat (now defunct) hadn&#x27;t launched yet, linux.com hadn&#x27;t lost millions, and slashdot hadn&#x27;t launched, and Linux was a pita to keep working on my Dell laptops.<p>I still give people the advice to get involved with a project even if just in a docs roll at first.

The fondest computing memories I have is my Pentium II 233 mhz machine, with 128 MB RAM, running a heavily tuned debian with window maker on a 15 inch trinitron nokia monitor. It was the best window manager on the best monitor of the era. For its time it was an amazing hardware and software combination. I went from that system to a mac mini, and although in many ways it was a step up, the OS X window manager and dock were definitely a step down.

I still use windowmaker as my main work PC WM. It works beautifully.

There used to be a site called Largo? that had awesome themes for Window Maker. Fond memories..

Wow, I have fond memories of using WindowMaker. I was really excited to see some recent development with new featuers this past summer (<a href="http://windowmaker.org/news.php" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;windowmaker.org&#x2F;news.php</a>). I spent a few days with it, I was surprised at some of the defaults. For instance, click to raise isn&#x27;t enabled by default. That&#x27;s probably how I used it all those years ago. Anyway, I agree it&#x27;s lovely. The main things I was missing were modern looking applets (but the Wolfenstein-face CPU monitor is classic), and also better compositor integration (for stuff like expose-style window switching).

I use a tiling wm (i3) now, but before that it was Window Maker all the way, from 1998 until about 2012. Fantastic piece of software: straightforward, clean, and beautiful to look at.

You can have pretty much the same UI in Openbox today.<p>Openbox + devilspie + xcompmgr + rxvt-unicode + Firefox with Pentadactyl is perfect. Especially on a 1440x900 12&quot; X200s.

I used Window Maker and I liked it! It was very smooth even on old machines, like 486... And those dockapps! Lovely and cool!

Wow, I thought I was the only one who preferred that WM. I should try and get it running in my ubuntu instance again...

i still use windowmaker on my desktop development system. its very efficient and doesnt get in the way.

It was my window manager back in 1998-2004, then it went stale. Fond memories.

Brings back memories. I still miss focus-follows-mouse.

Still using it, at home and at work.

I use Window Maker on Ubuntu. Great mix of simplicity and usability.