Distribution Release: Window Maker Live 0.96 | Hacker News Reader

Distribution Release: Window Maker Live 0.96

distrowatch.com

42 pointsjandeboevrie16 comments

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Why is this a distribution instead of a deb repo with three packages?

(updated windowmaker, aux config to make it the default, and wallpaper/icons/art/misc)

The associated repo is here: http://wmlive.rumbero.org/repo/

It even contains slightly more than three packages.

A distribution is much more than just the superficial aspect of its primary GUI. So dig a bit deeper first.

Might be a good idea to first have a closer look at the things questioned instead of being led astray by just a few few random screenshots...

Could you be less gnomic, please?

I can't see any reason for this to be a distribution, incurring the overhead of replicating all of Debian, when instead it could be a single-digit number of packages that apply on top of a stable Debian release.

Why are you doing all that extra work? What value does it give you beyond "it is slightly fewer steps to install my image vs a standard Bookworm"?

Because i can. A standard Debian install doesn't provide the software we prefer because it appears to mainly focus on end user type desktops instead of providing a well equipped Unix toolbox. It's just great to be able installing a system that already has included all the nice tools and utilities we rely on since almost 30 years. And Window Maker is a good enough environment to run terminal emulator windows.

Thanks for maintaining this distro. Although nowadays I install things manually, when I started to get into windowmaker, I used your distro to get an idea of how to configure things in a cohesive environment. Things like the layout of the autostart file or which gtk theme to select are not so obvious for beginners, and for me it was more valuable than a bunch of packages.

Thought Windows Live Movie Maker was making a comeback for a minute.

Window Maker was my first window manager, but I hate to say I don’t think it has aged well.

> I hate to say I don’t think it has aged well.

Agreed.

Window Maker wanted to be the foundation of an entire "GNUstep" desktop environment, not just a window manager. Unfortunately, that environment never materialized; for better or worse, all of the development effort went towards GNOME and KDE. WMaker is still (barely) usable as an X11 WM, but there's no real ecosystem around it; based on the video at https://wmlive.sourceforge.net/, this distribution is mostly running GTK apps with a (rather ugly) theme to make them fit in.

The GNUstep Desktop Environment (GSDE) from OnFlapp:

https://onflapp.github.io/gs-desktop/index.html

This is a modern setup for Debian 9, 10 & 11.

(Not 12 yet AFAIK.)

It inherits a little bit of code from the earlier NEXTSPACE desktop, which was based on CentOS Linux:

https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace

NEXTSPACE is Ukrainian and development has been on hold since Russia invaded the author's country.

There used to be a site that had desktop themes showcased in the late 90s or early 2000's that was popular, csnt remember the name of it now.

I used to look at the windowmaker and KDE themes in that daily.

Nostalgia, would like to see them again.

I think I remember the site you are talking about, and I can't remember the name either.

There is still xwinman.org and even though it's not about themes it still has screenshots of some old windows managers, for nostalgia sake.

Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in at least a decade.

Nice nostalgia-factor whooshing in :)

Have a look at https://wmlive.sourceforge.net instead to get a better idea what this is about.

Non-mobile version of the page:

https://distrowatch.com/index.php?newsid=11963

I was always more a fan of afterstep, though I'm still happy to see people interested in keeping nextstep-derived interfaces like window maker alive.

So is this a PoC or something meant to be a daily driver?

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