Window Maker

[abarbarian]

2 hours ago, crp said:

i put Ventoy on a SSD and have a partition set aside for persistent storage and some program installs.

 

That is a neat solution what with the cheap price of ssd's these days. I'll have to have a look see for a dirt cheap ssd.

[crp]

On 8/27/2023 at 12:46 AM, abarbarian said:

 

That is a neat solution what with the cheap price of ssd's these days. I'll have to have a look see for a dirt cheap ssd.

Oh, and I also have a USB=>SATA cable so I don't have to open the chassis.

 

[abarbarian]

15 hours ago, crp said:

Oh, and I also have a USB=>SATA cable so I don't have to open the chassis.

 

 

I have a usb2 dock which copes with hdd/ssd sata drives. Great for using old hdd's as backup drives aswell as newer ssd's. Been using them for over ten years.

 

[crp]

5 hours ago, abarbarian said:

 

I have a usb2 dock which copes with hdd/ssd sata drives. Great for using old hdd's as backup drives aswell as newer ssd's. Been using them for over ten years.

 

Mine is a wavlink.  Used so much, the door flap for 'source' doesn't flap anymore.

[abarbarian]

WorkspaceBack in themes - useful information

 

Going from a 22" flat to a 27" curved monitor threw up some strange behaviour in Window Maker.

 

A resized and altered theme with a resized background did not seem to work even after several reboots. Then it started to work properly.

 

So I had a look at some of the other themes I had installed and there was some odd results. Bearing in mind that I did not resize or alter any of the theme configs or the background graphics for these themes.

Some of my own creations did not show a resized background, this was expected as they were using a 1920x1200 .jpg. However some of my own home made themes did automatically show a correctly resized background which was not expected and rather strange.

Now I have themes gathered from all over the net and some of them go back to the beginning of time itself. Whilst I have poked around in some of them some I have just transferred to the correct folder for themes if I have found that they worked ok.

Looking at one very old theme I found two background pictures, 1012x756 and 1024x768. Now this theme worked just fine on my 1920x1200 screen and the background seemed to fit the screen perfectly. It also works the same with this new screen.

A quick run through of some other themes showed that some did a background resize automatically and some did not and it made no difference if they were very old or newer themes..

 

Why was this happening ?????

 

After a little investigation I found the reason. Some themes have this instruction in the "style" file (that is a sort of .config file),

 

WorkspaceBack = (tpixmap, skynet.jpeg, gray20);

 

and some have this line,

 

WorkspaceBack = (spixmap, shark.jpeg, grey20);

 

You will notice that one has a "tpixmap" and the other has a "spixmap". The "tpixmap" themes did not auto resize but the "spixmap"  ones did.

 

So after a quick change from,

WorkspaceBack = (tpixmap, purpleballs.jpg, gray20);

 

to

 

WorkspaceBack = (spixmap, purpleballs.jpg, gray20);

 

Just by altering the "t" to a "s" my Purple Balls theme now works correctly. No need to resize the picture and swap it over in the theme folder and no need to fiddle around too much with the style file. Just a quick "t" to a "s" alteration.

 

Don't you just love well crafted old programs that still work really well using the kiss principle. 

Edited February 5 by abarbarian

[Hedon James]

On 9/4/2023 at 6:48 AM, abarbarian said:

 

I have a usb2 dock which copes with hdd/ssd sata drives. Great for using old hdd's as backup drives aswell as newer ssd's. Been using them for over ten years.

 

I've been using a single bay (3.5" or 2.5") BlacX dock for about 10 years.  Just bought a Sabrent dual-dock 2.5"/3.5" with clone capability.  Very pleased, and impressed with it!

[abarbarian]

It seems as though there are some other folk running Window Maker out there in the wild. Well done those clever people.

 

What do I need to run to get GTK themes in WindowMaker in linux Mint.?

 

Quote

I am currently running Window Maker (wmaker from the repos). Window Maker is a beautiful, old school, window manager and I love it's simple and NeXTStep-like interface. I have Window Maker up and running perfectly.. except for one thing; GTK themes.

 

The rest of the thread gives explanations of why the problem occurs and this simple fix.

 

Quote

The app you need to start is csd-xsettings - this is the app that takes care of setting GTK themes, and probably other stuff, in Linux Mint 21.2.

You can start this app in another window manager to get all of your GTK themes working. Add the app to your autostart script - in Window Maker this script is located at ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/autostart

 

Code: Select all

csd-xsettings &

 

Bear in mind this is for Mint and may work in other Ubuntu based os's. Arch does not need this fix as Cinnamon can be installed with the package cinnamon.

 

Window Maker the choice of very clever folk.

[abarbarian]

Window Maker Live is a throwback to the exciting days of early Linux

 

I do not agree with his opinions of Window Maker.

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After a weekend of using Window Maker Live, I came away thankful for the efficiency of modern Linux,

 

Really. Window Maker has had so many of the so called modern features right from when it was created.  Customising its looks is the easiest of any of the modern alternatives. You can not only use any icons you want you can easily create your own too.

My take on Window Maker is that it is for wolves , folk who like to make their tools and world look and act the way they want them to. If you are a sheep then sure use some pre made pre packed creation that will only be halfway to suiting you, but then again you would not care as you are a sheep.

 

Mind you Window Maker Live is well worth checking out as it has many dock apps preinstalled and is a pretty good way to try out Window Maker.

 

Ready-made Window Maker Live CD ISO images for download

 

Edited February 15 by abarbarian

[abarbarian]

Window Maker Users at Google.com

Window Maker users with queries or information on the program can find other users at the above link. It is an active site with recent posts.

 

 

Edited February 15 by abarbarian

[abarbarian]

Linux: Back to my Linux roots  Jan 2022

 

Linux: ALT and Window Maker = Good Brain Food  Sept 2022

Two articles from the same author on ALT linux and Window Maker. One written after he had been using Window Maker for nine months or so. Interesting to see observations from a user rather than the quick an dirty reviews that usually appear.

 

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Next to TDE, Window Maker is my second favourite desktop environment/window manager and I was anxious to give it a try once again. I chose the SysV build simply because it’s been working out great for me with my Exe GNU/Linux system, so I’ll continue to stick with it, over systemd.

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Once again, I’m always impressed with the aesthetics and design choices by the ALT development team. Simply lovely. At this point, I was instantly reminded as to why I liked using Window Maker so much: it’s simple, unassuming, and just gets out of your way to allow you to do what you want to do. And it’s fast! Boy, is it fast.

 

These quotes sum reflect my own thoughts on why I use Window Maker. He has left out one big plus to Using Window Maker though. That is unlike any of the big modern alternatives where you have to keep on relearning and adapting to changes made by the developers. Once you have set up Window Maker to suit you then you will never have to bother with it again. So it may take some time to set up but in the long run it will save you time, effort and frustration.

 

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I see it like this: using desktop environments (like TDE, XFCE, Mate, Gnome, and KDE) is like going to the grocery store and buying a gourmet frozen pizza for dinner. It’s already made for you, all the ingredients have been selected, arranged and cooked for you. All you need to do is get it home and reheat.

 

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Using a window manager (like Window Maker, IceWM, or OpenBox) is more like going to the grocery store and, rather than buying frozen pizza, you go to the produce and deli departments and choose your own ingredients. Then you take them all home, make a crust, add your toppings, then slide it into the oven to cook. And using Window Maker once again has reminded me at how much I actually enjoy taking the time and getting my hands back into the “dough”, so to speak.

 

This is a pretty good reason to use Window Maker on older kit.

 

Quote

Finally, I think the real benefit I’ve been gained is the level of efficiency of my Acer Aspire One netbook. The resources Window Maker requires to run is much less, leaving more for the actual applications to use. With ALT Linux and WM, it’s the first time that I can effectively run both SeaMonkey and Vivaldi web browsers side by side for any length of time. On the other distros I’ve tried, if I used these two applications together at the same time, the system would quickly grind to a slow crawl. But, now, they seem to be quite content to run together without becoming completely unusable.

 

I was impressed with the articles so much so that even though I am quite busy with life at the moment I tried out the ALT Window Maker offering found here,

 

http://nightly.altlinux.org/p10/permalink/

 

this is the 64 bit version

 

http://alt-p10-gnustep-sysv-latest-x86_64.iso

 

and the 32 bit version

 

http://alt-p10-gnustep-sysv-latest-i586.iso

 

I ran the .iso from my Ventoy usb and booted into the live version. This was pretty quick and once I was at a useable system I found that it was quick and responsive. Internet service was automatic and the browser, SeaMonkey opened up very quickly. I tried out all the dock apps which all worked and seemed to run ok. Opened up quite a few of the included programs and once again they all loaded quickly and seemed to run ok. All in all the set up ran so smoothly that I could barely tell I was running from a usb stick. A lot of live distros give you the option to run from ram when you first boot into them, I did not see an option to do this with ALT, I may have missed it, so I just let it boot itself. It is possible that ALT has been set to run from ram as a default which may explain why it ran so smoothly for me.

Unlike some live distros I have tried recently ALT did not pick up my Arch partitions or other drives I have on my pc.No doubt I could have solved that quite easily.I tried to take some screen shots but ALT does not come with scrot and I could not find a screenshot program. There were quite a few programs that I am not at all familiar with in the ALT offering.This is hardly surprising as the penguin world has a vast amount of programs for every task and you would need several lifetimes to be familiar with all of them.

All in all if you want to see what Window Maker looks like and runs like then I can heartily recommend the ALT Window Maker Live offering run from a usb stick. I would imagine that installing it to iron would give a pretty nice user experience especially on older kit.

 

 

Ha ha looking at the screenshot from the article I see that scrot has been installed by the author. I must say I never saw an entry for it when I looked in the menu. So maybe he installed it himself on top of the default install. Or possibly I am just a half blind old git who missed it. 

Edited February 15 by abarbarian

[abarbarian]

ALT Live Window Maker screenshots

 

I realised that with just a bit of jiggery pokery I could download scrot and take some screenshots. copying them to my local drives took some head scratching but I found ALT had included the " wmvolmon " dock app which auto mounts drives. Installed that along with Thunar and all was good. i just could not fathom out how to do that with the included file managers.

Anyways messed around with all the dock apps included and here they are. I really like the fish dock app, I must get one for my Arch set up.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 15 by abarbarian

[abarbarian]

Window Maker who says it looks ugly and outdated ? What most articles written about Window Maker forget to mention is that you can very easily create your own themes and personalised look with Window makers easy to use built in theme making tool.

 

You can also with a bit of knowledge and creativity create a theme that is bang up to date and as modern as it gets.

 

Give WindowMaker a macos Mojave look

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I felt like I could tune my beloved WindowMaker to not look so 1990.

Quote

After all this, you’re still wondering “but why?”. Well, because you can

 

 

A Big Sur look for WindowMaker on OpenBSD

Quote

A rainy day leads to an attempt to give a 2020 look to some old 90s software I love: a macos Big Sur look for WindowMaker. Obviously running on OpenBSD here but this is not mandatory.

 

 

An OpenBSD desktop using WindowMaker

 

Quote

Since I started using *N?X, I’ve regularly used WindowMaker. I’ve always liked the look and feel, the dock system and the dockapps. It may look a bit oldish nowadays. And that’s enough to try to change this. So here it is, a 2019 flavored WindowMaker Desktop, running on OpenBSD 6.4/amd64.

 

 

[abarbarian]

You want a taskbar at the top or the bottom in Window Maker ? No problem at all.

 

WindowMaker theme inspired by Windows 10

 

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Because I’m a terrible person, I themed my beloved WindowMaker to look like Windows 10. Because it’s fun and possible, somehow.

 

 

Sweet Mars inspired theme for WindowMaker

 

Quote

The GTK theme is Sweet Mars, by EliverLara . The icon theme is BeautyLine . The cursor theme is Simp1e Tokyo Night . The used fonts are “Futura Md BT Medium” and “Monofur Nerd Font Book”. The wallpaper is one of the Sweet KDE wallpapers .

 

 

 

 

 

Edited February 18 by abarbarian

[abarbarian]

wmdl a LOAD or CPU monitor  - 2024

Here is a real goody I installed today

 

https://neanderthal-design.com/oss/window_maker_apps/index.html

 

Quote

A simple LOAD or CPU meter using:

  * ID Software's DOOM faces  or
    ( More Bloody = more system load or CPU usage ).
  * Tux
    ( More Angry = more system load or CPU usage ).

  Button 1 selects image sets.

Also can monitor almost anything else.
 

 

   

 

This super dock app first saw light ,

 

Quote

wmdl-1.1 Dec 25, 1998
    First version.

 

an had its last update in,

 

Quote

CHANGE LOG:
-----------
wmdl-1.4.1 Nov 14, 1999
    Made #includes, Makefile, and show_usage printf more
    ANSI compliant. Should help with protability.
    Thanks to Kevin Pulo <kev@zip.com.au> for his insight.

 

There is no Arch package so you have to install it yourself. I have a folder specially for new programs and create folders in that for each new program so I did,

 

Quote

Download wmdl to a folder for wmdl........extract......................cd from terminal to folder...............make wmdl.....................make install..............enjoy

 

I think it is pretty impressive that a program made over thirty years ago can be installed and it runs otb just as it should today. 

Edited February 22 by abarbarian

[abarbarian]

 

Arch Linux + Window Maker + weatherspect

 

It was fortold way back when that once again a hero would emerge and fight to put the world to rights.

 

That day has arrived.

 

Wielding the power of the noble Arch combined with the everlasting Window Maker our hero valiantly shows the world that computers can be fun and easily customised to suit.

 

The opening blow has been struck. Watch in awe the magic of Open Source.

 

 

1.30/3/7/9 mins are good points.

 

A short clip showing weatherspect running in a terminal. As you can see the terminal can be resized and weatherspect will run resized. You could use weatherspect full screen as a very nice screensaver. This would be easy to do in Window Maker but am not sure how easy it would be with other environments. For lazy Arch users like myself find weatherspect ,

 

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/weatherspect

 

WeatherSpect is a single perl script, so all you have to do is make sure it's executable and put it somewhere convenient, like /usr/local/bin or /usr/local/games.

 

https://github.com/AnotherFoxGuy/weatherspect

 

Enjoy.

 

 

Edited March 5 by abarbarian

[abarbarian]

MX Respin Window Maker

 

Quote

This Linux distribution runs completely from DVD or Flash disk and installable on a fixed disk, based on Debian and MX Linux. Windows users are encouraged to use Rufus at https://rufus.ie to create Live USB.
The default is Window Maker Desktop environment.

 

Finally someone has joined the fight. There is hope that Window Maker will take over every desktop in the world. With the might of MX support we can not fail.

[abarbarian]

MX Respin Window Maker  -- Live try out.

 

Well I added the respin to my Ventoy and booted up with no problems.  As there were no wallpapers or themes included I decided to add  my own. Firstly I had to mount my Arch partition. With no programs included for this I used the terminal.I recently found a couple of new to me themes, below is the Darkburn theme.

 

 

I also downloaded a dock app , wmclock and installed it.With very few programs included there was not a great deal I could try out and did not wish to spend a great deal of time downloading and installing. I did however do a system update which went ok. Downloaded and installed scrot and the  wmclock app. FireFox opened and ran as normal, SpaceFM worked ok and I tried out a video from my mounted Arch partition which ran just fine.

You can see in the bottom right corner of the screenshot a small window  with three symbols. This has something to do with the ANTHY program.

 

Quote

Anthy (Japanese: アンシー, romanized: Anshī) is a package for an input method editor backend for Unix-like systems for the Japanese language. It can convert Hiragana to Kanji as per the language rules. As a preconversion stage, Latin characters (Romaji) can be used to input Hiragana. Anthy is commonly used with an input method framework such as ibus, fcitx or SCIM.

 

So I am guessing that the developer is Japanese. Also I would think that you could uninstall the program or possibly move the small window to a better place.

 

Changed the theme to one of the new to me themes, this one is called Golden.

 

 

This offering would make an excellent start for anyone wishing to try out Window Maker. The MX base will provide a stable and reliable os and the very minimal set of programs make it easy to uninstall the few a person did not need leaving an almost blank canvas to customise to suit.

All in all well done and a fine effort by the developer.

[wibblewobble]

I want a dockapp that I can used to switch between headphones and speakers being active.  I'm using debian bookworm with wmaker.  I've figured out the command line calls to make to switch the sound between the two outputs.  What I want now is a dockapp that I can click on that will switch between two icons and execute the command to switch between phones and speakers.  Is there a suitable dockapp that can be used for something like that?

 

Also, here is a slightly old screenshot (last year) of my desktop running freebsd 13, with a real-time geostationary satellite view of europe as the background.  I use wmaker as my common desktop on both freebsd and linux

Edited July 22 by wibblewobble

[securitybreach]

Nice wibblewobble and welcome to the forums

[securitybreach]

abarbarian will be happy to see another windowmaker user around these parts.

[wibblewobble]

Been using wmaker much of the time since it first came out.  Had spells with the other stuff but always came back to wmaker.  Small, fast, does just what I want I used to be a slacker but got debianised recently.  And long time bsd user.

[wibblewobble]

What I want is something like buttonmaker, but that I can pass a list of {icon, command} args to, so that on each click it switches to the next pair and displays the icon and executes the command.  So for my current thing I want to pass it something like -i speaker.png -c use-speaker.sh -i headphones.jpg -c use-headphones.sh, that kind of thing.  With each click it moves to the next item in the list and runs the associated command.  When it gets to the end of the list it goes back to the start.  Can buttonmaker do that?  Or is there another dockapp that works like that?  All advice gratefully received

Edited July 21 by wibblewobble

[securitybreach]

I have been using arch since 2007 but ran Slackware for about a decade prior. I have been running i3wm on all my machines for about 10 years now.

[securitybreach]

That said, I know most distros as I do lots of testing in VMs.

[securitybreach]

Sorry, never even heard of buttonmaker before.

[wibblewobble]

No worries, buttonmaker is just a windowmaker dockapp.

[wibblewobble]

Another screenshot of wmaker desktop, this was also on freebsd, this one is from a few years ago, sadly the gmplayer front end is deprecated now.  This was running on a thinkpad X200.

 

 

Edited July 22 by wibblewobble

[Hedon James]

ah jeez....there's TWO of them now?  j/k

 

I saw this post and immediately thought "hmmm....Abarbarians's new best friend!", LOL.  And I saw that BSD base OS and thought "OOOOHHH...BSD....we don't have one of those guys yet?!"  And I'm reluctant to say it out loud, but the filter between my brain and my mouth has always been hit or miss, so here it comes...."Eric and I used to say that if Linux got too popular, we'd just migrate to BSD to dodge the mainstream."  So here comes this former Slacker who's running BSD, with a Windowmaker interface. 

 

Welcome to the forums WibbleWobble....you're definitely in the right place!

[wibblewobble]

Aw struth blue, windowmaker ain't so bad, ya know?  Oh well, if there's only 2 of us, its better than zero :-)

[wibblewobble]

If you're interested in audio on linux, have a look at alien bob's DAW design for slackware, he's done some good work.

 

https://alien.slackbook.org/blog/configuring-slackware-for-use-as-a-daw/