Readit NewsThere is a Wayland compositor namend wlmaker[2] that tries to mimick Window Maker. But judging by its description it still appears to be a far cry from that Window Maker offers.
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.
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
I really wouldn't want to host my stuff on any Microsoft controlled sites.
Mainly thinking about being able to reuse the NeXTSTEP versions of programs such as FrameMaker, WordPerfect, Quantrix, CedarWord, Adobe Illustrator, Altsys Virtuoso, and so many more.
NextStep’s influence can still be felt in modern computing. From the object-oriented philosophies that underpin macOS and iOS, to the minimalistic, function-driven design ethos that many desktop environments aspire to replicate, NextStep exemplifies a visionary approach to software. Steve Jobs’s journey from Apple to NeXT and back to Apple fundamentally shaped personal computing. Meanwhile, GNUstep and projects like Window Maker preserve the look, feel, and efficiency of NextStep, allowing its spirit to thrive in open-source communities around the world."
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.
Not being a software developer myself, I've resorted to loosely following the progress of GNUstep over more than 20 years, in the hope that it will eventually become a viable option. But apparently capable people found more interest in KDE, GNOME, and similar projects based on either Qt or gtk+, and then hardly anyone cared anymore.
By all means, if anyone here is capable enough is wanting to still contribute to the GNUstep project, please do! At the current stage of the project it would be a pity if all the efforts made over the years would be wasted by not supporting it anymore.