5 ms·
I used WindowMaker for years and liked it too, but to be fair, pretty much all decent WMs of the 1990s could implement a custom menu in the way you describe. It
by asveikau 7y ago
I used WindowMaker for years and liked it too, but to be fair, pretty much all decent WMs of the 1990s could implement a custom menu in the way you describe. It wasn't unique to wmaker.
These days it seems like people are coming up not realizing that X desktops can be anything else than what Ubuntu gives on a default install, as if a full DE is mandatory. They don't know about launching a simple wm from ~/.xsession or ~/.xinitrc or editing the menus in such a WM.
- pantulis 7y agoAnd let's not forget WindowMaker's daddy, AfterStep.
- squarefoot 7y ago"It wasn't unique to wmaker." True but I wanted to avoid menus so that users would have immediately the options at hand, and other WMs, most of them at least, didn't allow fixed buttons on the desktop. If I recall there was also a kiosk mode on KDE which was more advanced than WindowMaker's but at that time one would have to double the system RAM just to run KDE without swapping, while Wmaker (as AfterStep before, thanks to another commenter for mentioning it) was much faster and less memory hungry. There was also a less known WM, probably Openbox or a similar named one which could be arranged with a kiosk mode, but turned out to be less stable and less udser friendly, so in the end WindowMaker made the best compromise. The purpose was essentially to give users a panel with buttons, to avoid those errors most of us would never think as possible but non technical users often do, like losing icons by dropping them into windows they then close, or call a software with the wrong argument by dropping an icon onto another icon, delete them accidentally, clogging the desktop with files, etc. A powerful unrestricted desktop environment in the hands of a non technical user can turn into many otherwise unneeded support calls, so it was necessary in that context.
- asveikau 7y agoIt doesn't sound like we are discussing it in a "timely" fashion :-) but I seriously bet fvwm would have fit the bill for these requirements. I recently started to revisit fvwm2 as a sort of retro/nostalgia thing. It was nice.