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?
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.
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.
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).
I'm still using wmaker starting from late 90s (also had couple minor contributions)
> 1. There is practically no RandR support.
It is awkwardly implemented yes, as internally wmaker will restart, although changing resolution works for me most of the time. Wmaker doesn't identify monitors, it talk with xlib to get the layout when new display is detected or removed.
As for double dock - never have double dock issue. Sometimes I ended up with lossing it's configuration, especially in a cases when resolution set for the display is too low. That might happen when no display is detected/connected, then resolution is set to 64x64 pixels by X.
> 2. While there is EWMH support, […]
It's partially implemented, and indeed it lacks of handling self-managed application. Some apps are working fine (AFAIRC GTK3 based) and some don't (steam client), but in general for those which are not cooperate modifier key can be used to move such window around and keyboard shortcuts (which I'm mostly using anyway) to resize. Or to force window to use wmaker decorations as you mentioned.
This issue I've tried to solve couple of years ago[1], found culprit, but I've failed to do so. I've also spend a large chunk of time to compare it with PekWM, where those things are working as intended, but stuck on event handling.
As for composition. You might consider to use standalone one (xcompmgr, compton, picom, etc) just to get the effects.
I used to use WindowMaker back when I regularly used Linux on the desktop¹, and as I'm about to pave a Win10 desktop & laptop and Linux them rather than being forced down the Win11 route² I'm considering trying it again.
Is it currently maintained though? The main page for it states “Latest source of stable version is 0.96.0, released on 2023-08-05.”. The previous couple of releases where a few years apart so this could just be because it is largely (entirely?) feature complete but still actually supported, or not…
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[1] I still use Linux a lot, but mostly server-side via CLI rather than anything GUI. Those few occasions when I've found myself using something in the GUI fold it is usually via X remoting (via SSH) or where I'm working more offline such as with a LiveCD I just use whatever the default is for the distro I'm interacting with.
[2] It won't even officially run on this desktop, and I refuse to use hacky tools to get around that so that I can regrade to something I don't even want, and Win10 has had a couple of issues on the laptop (wrt waking from sleep, or not) for a couple of years (it used to be fine, the issues started immediately after one of the big updates, I forget which, various firmware and driver updates since have had no lasting effect).
Yes, but there aren't any huge changes in it, so releases are sporadic. You can see that there is the occasional commit on git[0] though most patches posted in the developer's mailing list are for the dockapps (in a different repository), not WM itself.
Nice, I like seeing projects like this. In fact I always wanted someone to make a complete system based on GNUstep. Like a Mac but open source software and hardware. App store, customer support, all that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ultimately, the GNUstep project should have taken on the burden of porting whatever could be kept from Windowmaker into the GNUstep world, and made a complete solution to compete with GNOME / KDE with a chance of also making it easier to write an app for both OS X and Linux using much of the same underpinnings (Objective-C, etc).
A lot of really great work went into GNUstep but looking back... for what? It would have needed so many more resources than it had to ever have a chance at becoming something like the above.
Maybe with AI, one day it will be easy enough to pick some of these ideas back up and run with them.
> It's a pity no one ever tried to replace the WINGs widget set with actual GNUstep
It was by purpose at the beginning. Window Maker suppose to be lightweight window manager which resembles nextSTEP, nothing else. GNUstep people has decided to adopt wmaker as their window manager, not other way around.
> 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.
Hot corners is a great feature and it is in fact part of being a window manager since providing means to move and resize windows is one of the core aspects of window management.
> It's a pity no one ever tried to replace the WINGs widget set with actual GNUstep components
Uh, no, GNUstep is heavy, weird, doesn't look that good (all these smoothed out approximations of the NeXTSTEP look are ugly) and is incredibly buggy and unstable.
> thus adding the full GNUstep themeability WINGs is not capable of
I'd rather see WINGs adopt themes itself than use GNUstep.
> in order to finally get rid of that crufty NeXTSTEP look.
Some people actually like that NeXTSTEP look. In fact AFAIK historically Window Maker exists exactly because the original developer didn't like Afterstep not looking NeXTSTEP-like enough.
@wmlive has already brought these up, but I think they're worth highlighting again: check out these projects if you're interested in NeXTSTEP-like desktop environments:
Readit News
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.
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).
> 1. There is practically no RandR support.
It is awkwardly implemented yes, as internally wmaker will restart, although changing resolution works for me most of the time. Wmaker doesn't identify monitors, it talk with xlib to get the layout when new display is detected or removed.
As for double dock - never have double dock issue. Sometimes I ended up with lossing it's configuration, especially in a cases when resolution set for the display is too low. That might happen when no display is detected/connected, then resolution is set to 64x64 pixels by X.
> 2. While there is EWMH support, […]
It's partially implemented, and indeed it lacks of handling self-managed application. Some apps are working fine (AFAIRC GTK3 based) and some don't (steam client), but in general for those which are not cooperate modifier key can be used to move such window around and keyboard shortcuts (which I'm mostly using anyway) to resize. Or to force window to use wmaker decorations as you mentioned.
This issue I've tried to solve couple of years ago[1], found culprit, but I've failed to do so. I've also spend a large chunk of time to compare it with PekWM, where those things are working as intended, but stuck on event handling.
As for composition. You might consider to use standalone one (xcompmgr, compton, picom, etc) just to get the effects.
[1] https://github.com/window-maker/wmaker/issues/20
Deleted Comment
Is it currently maintained though? The main page for it states “Latest source of stable version is 0.96.0, released on 2023-08-05.”. The previous couple of releases where a few years apart so this could just be because it is largely (entirely?) feature complete but still actually supported, or not…
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[1] I still use Linux a lot, but mostly server-side via CLI rather than anything GUI. Those few occasions when I've found myself using something in the GUI fold it is usually via X remoting (via SSH) or where I'm working more offline such as with a LiveCD I just use whatever the default is for the distro I'm interacting with.
[2] It won't even officially run on this desktop, and I refuse to use hacky tools to get around that so that I can regrade to something I don't even want, and Win10 has had a couple of issues on the laptop (wrt waking from sleep, or not) for a couple of years (it used to be fine, the issues started immediately after one of the big updates, I forget which, various firmware and driver updates since have had no lasting effect).
Yes, but there aren't any huge changes in it, so releases are sporadic. You can see that there is the occasional commit on git[0] though most patches posted in the developer's mailing list are for the dockapps (in a different repository), not WM itself.
[0] https://repo.or.cz/wmaker-crm.git/shortlog/refs/heads/master
I'm sure it's long gone now but it used to be included with OS X (along with other NeXT-era artwork):
https://www.theregister.com/2008/09/02/mac_images/
Then about 10 years ago, MicroSoft (more likely somebody's 20% project) tried to do it again, this time based on iOS.
https://github.com/microsoft/WinObjC
Is it perfect? No, but it's sure a step closer to an ideal than whatever .so hell that we came up with before.
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.
A lot of really great work went into GNUstep but looking back... for what? It would have needed so many more resources than it had to ever have a chance at becoming something like the above.
Maybe with AI, one day it will be easy enough to pick some of these ideas back up and run with them.
It was by purpose at the beginning. Window Maker suppose to be lightweight window manager which resembles nextSTEP, nothing else. GNUstep people has decided to adopt wmaker as their window manager, not other way around.
Hot corners is a great feature and it is in fact part of being a window manager since providing means to move and resize windows is one of the core aspects of window management.
> It's a pity no one ever tried to replace the WINGs widget set with actual GNUstep components
Uh, no, GNUstep is heavy, weird, doesn't look that good (all these smoothed out approximations of the NeXTSTEP look are ugly) and is incredibly buggy and unstable.
> thus adding the full GNUstep themeability WINGs is not capable of
I'd rather see WINGs adopt themes itself than use GNUstep.
> in order to finally get rid of that crufty NeXTSTEP look.
Some people actually like that NeXTSTEP look. In fact AFAIK historically Window Maker exists exactly because the original developer didn't like Afterstep not looking NeXTSTEP-like enough.
https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspacehttps://github.com/onflapp/gs-desktop
I really wouldn't want to host my stuff on any Microsoft controlled sites.