WindowMaker analog

demidrol · n00b Joined: 25 Feb 2007 Posts: 5

Please tell me if there is a window manager similar to WM (i mean the style of menus - windows with buttons that do not disappear when they are not in focus). I do need it because WM seems to be neither supported nor developed now((
P.S. sorry for my English - I'm just studing

sandwichfeet · n00b Joined: 04 Nov 2006 Posts: 25

I don't know if this is any use to you, but I've just gone through the same process after using WindowMaker solidly for about five years and for similar reasons (lack of updates, no mailing list anymore, no one else seems to use it etc,.).

I tried all the *boxes, xfce and others, but never really liked them, largely because the menus didn't feel as solid as wmaker and the title bars didn't look as good. Some came close, but not close enough and I always switched back.

Anyway, I've settled on wmii and dmenu for the past few weeks and no looking back so far; dmenu has washed all my program launching fears away. The only things I really miss are wmnetload, wmacpi-load and the likes (still playing with conky). Well... that and the fact it doesn't look as good as wmaker!

a fellow (ex-)wm blowhard

i92guboj · Posted: Tue Apr 03, 2007 10:34 pm Post subject:

You could try to emulate WMaker with FVWM, it is very customizable, and I don't think that emulating the behaviour of the menus or the bindings will be complicated. Additionally, the wmaker and afterstep applets can be swallowed into FvwmButtons, and play nicely with them.

You need to be prepared to learn a bit about Fvwm and read quite a few man pages, though.

demidrol · n00b Joined: 25 Feb 2007 Posts: 5

Thank you, i'll try this!
P.S. FWVM has much trouble with Unicode, so installation will be non-trivial(i use utf-

((

i92guboj · Posted: Fri Apr 06, 2007 9:10 pm Post subject:

Here you have my Fvwm from CVS overlay:

http://jesgue.homelinux.org/fvwm-files/fvwm-cvs-overlay.tar.bz2

The ebuild can apply some patches, you can use emerge -pv fvwm once you have the overlay set up to see the available USE flags. Enable USE="default-charset-fix" to enable a patch that *should* fix those issues. All those patches are non oficial, and neither of them are mine, but the the newtest one, I just clean some of them so they can be applied against latest CVS without trouble.

With that patch enabled, I have no problem with those locales: es_ES.uft8 and en_US.utf8. Some people reported success on de, fr, pt and nl locales with utf8 enabled as well. If the config files are saved in utf8 encoding (they should in your case by default), you will have no problem.

mimosinnet · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 6:09 am Post subject:

I am also looking for an alternative to WindowMaker. I have tried xfce, but I find it less usable. I miss that you could have different application icons for different desktops (attaching them to the clip). Then, for example, in my desktop "mail" I had the kontact icon, and in my desktop "internet" I had my firefox and konqueror.

I work with different virtual desktops at the same time (configuration, mail, work, web, console, games). When I got into the desktop I click on the applications I use in that desktop (attached to the clip) so usually I do not have to enter any menus. Personally, I do not see the point in having different 'virtual' desktops looking the same.

Do you know of a window manager that allow to have different configurations for different virtual desktops?

Cheers!

i92guboj · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 10:30 am Post subject:

mimosinnet · Posted: Mon Jul 09, 2007 3:32 pm Post subject:

mimosinnet · Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2007 1:15 am Post subject:

I have tried to have different virtual desktops with different icons I can launch applications from (I like to avoid menus).

I have been able to achieve this with fluxbox + fluxspace + rox, having a different rox panel in each desktop with some applications to launch. I had to follow this thread to be able to get fluxspace working. Although I have been able to get a similar effect, I find WindowMaker more elegant.

Then I have then tried fvwm. I have not managed to get this feature yet (I have just been able to get a taskbar with a menu), but I like the possibility of having a full configurable desktop, so I'll keep trying. I will like to thank i92guboj for the suggestion; I will have a busy summer holiday :wink:

!

Cheers!