4 ms·

Window Maker is great, inspired on NeXTSTEP. On Windows there is LiteStep which is free and fully customizable. Makes Windows more palatable.

digi_owl 10y ago
But then Windows was never really designed to handle anything but explorer.exe as its "WM".
- preid24 10y ago
  That's my worry with Wayland. Everything will be designed around GNOME and KDE and it will be difficult to run "alternative" WMs.
  - peller 10y ago
    I don't think this is anymore a valid concern. From the Wayland FAQ: "How can I replace Wayland's Window Manager? The Wayland architecture integrates the display server, window manager and compositor into one process. You can think of Wayland as a toolkit for creating clients and compositors. It is not a specific single compositor or window manager. If you want a different window manager, you can write a new one. A 'libweston' effort is underway in order to allow new environments to reuse Weston's codebase and mechanics, whilst providing their own look and feel." And here's a list of "alternative" WMs already in progress for Wayland/Weston: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wayland#Window_managers_and_desktop_shells https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wayland#Window_managers...
    - digi_owl 10y ago
      That leaves it up to the WM to allow or deny "accessories"...
  - vertex-four 10y ago
    There's a handful of Wayland compositor frameworks - including one built by the KDE project - and Weston provides an interface by which custom UIs can be created. I don't think there's going to be much of an issue, aside from potential problems with the spec itself.
- laumars 10y ago
  Windows 95 and 98 worked pretty well with alternative shells. I think originally the option was there just so users could run the classic 3.x shell (progman.exe I think it was called) but it was pretty trivial to write you own ones; as I often did when I was bored. You couldn't do much to change the title bars et al though.
  - Zardoz84 10y ago
    Yeah. I remember using an alternative shell for Windows that improve it a lot. Evince or Evance I think that was called.
- rhabarba 10y ago
  But you can easily replace your default "shell" from the registry, e.g. by KDE for Windows.
msie 10y ago
Wow! I've been looking for a Windows 10 explorer replacement for some time. Thanks! Wishes for a return to Windows 95/Windows 2000 server UI...

digi_owl 10y ago

But then Windows was never really designed to handle anything but explorer.exe as its "WM".

preid24 10y ago
That's my worry with Wayland. Everything will be designed around GNOME and KDE and it will be difficult to run "alternative" WMs.
- peller 10y ago
  I don't think this is anymore a valid concern. From the Wayland FAQ: "How can I replace Wayland's Window Manager? The Wayland architecture integrates the display server, window manager and compositor into one process. You can think of Wayland as a toolkit for creating clients and compositors. It is not a specific single compositor or window manager. If you want a different window manager, you can write a new one. A 'libweston' effort is underway in order to allow new environments to reuse Weston's codebase and mechanics, whilst providing their own look and feel." And here's a list of "alternative" WMs already in progress for Wayland/Weston: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wayland#Window_managers_and_desktop_shells https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wayland#Window_managers...
  - digi_owl 10y ago
    That leaves it up to the WM to allow or deny "accessories"...
- vertex-four 10y ago
  There's a handful of Wayland compositor frameworks - including one built by the KDE project - and Weston provides an interface by which custom UIs can be created. I don't think there's going to be much of an issue, aside from potential problems with the spec itself.
laumars 10y ago
Windows 95 and 98 worked pretty well with alternative shells. I think originally the option was there just so users could run the classic 3.x shell (progman.exe I think it was called) but it was pretty trivial to write you own ones; as I often did when I was bored. You couldn't do much to change the title bars et al though.
- Zardoz84 10y ago
  Yeah. I remember using an alternative shell for Windows that improve it a lot. Evince or Evance I think that was called.
rhabarba 10y ago
But you can easily replace your default "shell" from the registry, e.g. by KDE for Windows.

msie 10y ago

Wow! I've been looking for a Windows 10 explorer replacement for some time. Thanks! Wishes for a return to Windows 95/Windows 2000 server UI...