Back to Window Maker

What seems like ages ago, Window Maker was my choice of window managers on my unix workstations. I ran Window Maker on both my Linux and Solaris machines. As updates to Window Maker got fewer and farther between, I eventually succumb to the trend of "desktop environments" and started using Gnome. After enough fighting, tweaks and compromises, I got to a tollerable place and just lived with Gnome.

The other day at work, I decided to see how Window Maker was doing after all these years and what it would be like to go back to just a simple window manager instead of a "desktop environment". After quick install and a log out/log in, I was back in time to Window Maker. A few minutes of minor adjustments later, and good ol' version 0.92 was again making using X far more pleasurable than any "desktop environment" ever did. The simplicity and ease of configuring everything is a pleasant change from the complexity of Gnome.

What is it that makes Window Maker so nice (in my ever so humble opinion):

• Very light weight. I don't end up with so many additional process for very little value (at least to me) as I would have with Gnome.
  
• Aesthetically very pleasing. Granted this is mostly a copy of NeXTStep, but there is an amazing utilitarian beauty that's hard to find elsewhere. I spend a lot of time, seems like most of my waking hours, looking at computer screens so I would like something attractive to look at.
• Simplicity of configuration. A nice GUI tool, WPrefs.app, can do pretty much all of the configuration. Of course, you're not limited to that either. All of the configuration is contained in six very simple text files. No XML. No longer many different files scattered across a myriad of different hidden directories. No more plethora of different GUI tools needed to adjust different aspects of the desktop.
• Did I mention simple and straight forward and configurable with only vi?
  

A screen shot of my Linux workstation at home.


It's great to have switched back. It's even more exciting to see that development on the project seems to really be starting back up.