6 ms·

http://etoileos.com/etoile/ http://etoileos.com/etoile/ http://fluxbox.org/screenshots/ http://fluxbox.org/screenshots/ http://awesome.naquadah.org/ http://aw

by wtracy 12y ago

http://etoileos.com/etoile/ http://etoileos.com/etoile/ http://fluxbox.org/screenshots/ http://fluxbox.org/screenshots/ http://awesome.naquadah.org/ http://awesome.naquadah.org/ http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ http://www.enlightenment.org/ss/ http://www.enlightenment.org/ss/ http://windowmaker.org/ http://windowmaker.org/

WoodenChair 12y ago
etoileos - last news update 2012 and wasn't even about the project fluxbox - active and kind've interesting awesome - more of just a WM than full DE ratpoison - ditto enlightenment - okay, kind've resembles Win 95 too... but more of a DE than the others you listed windowmaker - been around forever; hasn't really "innovated" in forever; just a NeXT clone if I remember correctly for GNUStep I think my point stands. I was talking about LXDE, Xfce, and RazorQT.
- girvo 12y ago
  etioleos actually does have some stuff happening, if you go and look at the mailing list :)
  - voltagex_ 12y ago
    I really really think these projects need to have an automated notification to the devs to update their news page, or even automagically post a digest of mailing list activity. Lots of projects I've thought were dead have had lots of stuff going on behind the scenes.
  - astrobe_ 12y ago
    > etioleos dat Typo. "étiolé"= withered in French.
- scythe 12y ago
  >windowmaker - been around forever; hasn't really "innovated" in forever; just a NeXT clone if I remember correctly for GNUStep >enlightenment - okay, kind've resembles Win 95 too... but more of a DE than the others you listed > etoileos - last news update 2012 and wasn't even about the project What you seem to be missing is that these projects died because people thought they were weird, which is to say, innovation in the DE space pays negative rent, and that's no good, especially not from the perspective of an open-source project, which, the social dynamics of open-source dictate that projects need to acquire a large userbase to sustain an active development community for more than a couple years, that is to say, to make people keep working on it after the "new project smell" wears off. In other words your observation is a direct consequence of the choices in DE that users have made and continue to make. The recent trend has been towards modularity, and while you dismiss awesome and ratpoison, a major boon of LXDE et al is that, unlike Windows 95, you can replace the window manager with xmonad and still use all of the other components of LXDE. Modularity brings innovation to the people who want it while satisfying the large majority of users who apparently do not. There's no reason for LXDE to ship anything but Openbox; LXDE could certainly switch to xmonad tomorrow, but their users wouldn't be happy. And who wants that?
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    these projects died because people thought they were weird Actually, at least two of those (E and WindowMaker) remain alive. And WindowMaker's got its fervent fans (you're hearing from one here). While Raster's continued to plink away at Enlightenment, among the reasons WindowMaker development's been so modest is that it accomplished its mission: provide an implementation of the NexTstep interface. I use wmaker without most of the rest of the GNUstep tools (I find them kind of funky and cumbersome), but the window manager itself is simple, straightforward, and rocks. It's also very similar under the hood to Aqua as used now in OS X, which for the most part just skins it differently and removes a bunch of features I like -- so while I love wmaker, I really can't function on Macs. As for userbase. Yeah. I'm aware that I'm in the minority. I'm totally OK with that.
    - 2muchcoffeeman 12y ago
      window maker was pretty great. I wish they kept going with it. It's still one of the best window managers I've ever used.
      - dredmorbius 12y ago
        As I said: you can still get it. It's packages with most distros (I'm running it on Debian). The only thing that's not happening is a whole lot of development. And I'm actually totally OK with that.
      - ttflee 12y ago
        I love Window Maker and hope its development will go on, however, its lack of features really hurts, if you are an Asian language user and have an enthusiastic taste for typeface rendering. It is not a problem for Window Maker alone, but also problems in many other WMs that do not rely on a heavy and frequently maintained toolkit, i.e. GTK or Qt, as perfectly supporting font rendering and i18n has never been a simple job. BTW, putting off window manager/desktop environment philosophy arguments, Input Method Engine is one of those constantly neglected aspects that really matter for East Asian users. It seems that the ones making plans for WM/DE and other infrastructure had little overlap with users, and their designing decisions were very likely to omit the requirements necessary to cooperate with IMEs.
panzi 12y ago
Well, Window Maker is basically a NeXTSTEP clone. If there is innovation it was done by NeXT in the late 80ies/early 90ies. So even an older concept than Windows 95.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
theGimp 12y ago
Funny, I've been looking for something like ratpoison for a while, and though the name seems familiar, I had never tried it before. I'm using it now... I think my search is over :) Thank you!
- pyre 12y ago
  Take a look at StumpWM. IIRC it's done by the author of ratpoison. Bonus: If you're an Emacs user the interface/keyboard shortcuts should make you feel at home (or so I've heard).
  - theGimp 12y ago
    I am overjoyed. Thank you :) I've set a reminder to switch to StumpWM 2 days from now. Emacs is something I've never tried though Lisp is amazing and that's reason enough to use it. So many fun toys, so little time...
  - 616c 12y ago
    Got into StumpWM about two months ago after living in tmux and emacsclient all day. Now I have a super minimalist desktop, all the key shortcuts I need (and mouse like I need, where as ratposion makes it a little too difficult), on the fly restart and command reload, Lisp, and oh my god so much flexibility. Before that, I used XFCE. I have realized there is always another level of minimalism down from where you were before in Linux, until you hit the Linux console. But I love StumpWM. They might say it is not minimalist, but it is for me and it rocks my world. I am going to hit submit and then hit a shortcut to open running term emulator and find my running mutt instance in tmux. Later full DE users.
- tomorokoshi 12y ago
  You might also like i3. I tried many tiling window managers, and i3 is my favorite. Its "manual tiling" works well with my brain. Also see this comparison of tiling WMs: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_Tiling_Window_Managers https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_Tiling_Wi...
  - 12y ago
andrewstuart 12y ago
They all look clunky and unrefined.

by wtracy 12y ago

WoodenChair 12y ago

etoileos - last news update 2012 and wasn't even about the project fluxbox - active and kind've interesting awesome - more of just a WM than full DE ratpoison - ditto enlightenment - okay, kind've resembles Win 95 too... but more of a DE than the others you listed windowmaker - been around forever; hasn't really "innovated" in forever; just a NeXT clone if I remember correctly for GNUStep I think my point stands. I was talking about LXDE, Xfce, and RazorQT.

girvo 12y ago
etioleos actually does have some stuff happening, if you go and look at the mailing list :)
- voltagex_ 12y ago
  I really really think these projects need to have an automated notification to the devs to update their news page, or even automagically post a digest of mailing list activity. Lots of projects I've thought were dead have had lots of stuff going on behind the scenes.
- astrobe_ 12y ago
  > etioleos dat Typo. "étiolé"= withered in French.
scythe 12y ago
>windowmaker - been around forever; hasn't really "innovated" in forever; just a NeXT clone if I remember correctly for GNUStep >enlightenment - okay, kind've resembles Win 95 too... but more of a DE than the others you listed > etoileos - last news update 2012 and wasn't even about the project What you seem to be missing is that these projects died because people thought they were weird, which is to say, innovation in the DE space pays negative rent, and that's no good, especially not from the perspective of an open-source project, which, the social dynamics of open-source dictate that projects need to acquire a large userbase to sustain an active development community for more than a couple years, that is to say, to make people keep working on it after the "new project smell" wears off. In other words your observation is a direct consequence of the choices in DE that users have made and continue to make. The recent trend has been towards modularity, and while you dismiss awesome and ratpoison, a major boon of LXDE et al is that, unlike Windows 95, you can replace the window manager with xmonad and still use all of the other components of LXDE. Modularity brings innovation to the people who want it while satisfying the large majority of users who apparently do not. There's no reason for LXDE to ship anything but Openbox; LXDE could certainly switch to xmonad tomorrow, but their users wouldn't be happy. And who wants that?
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  these projects died because people thought they were weird Actually, at least two of those (E and WindowMaker) remain alive. And WindowMaker's got its fervent fans (you're hearing from one here). While Raster's continued to plink away at Enlightenment, among the reasons WindowMaker development's been so modest is that it accomplished its mission: provide an implementation of the NexTstep interface. I use wmaker without most of the rest of the GNUstep tools (I find them kind of funky and cumbersome), but the window manager itself is simple, straightforward, and rocks. It's also very similar under the hood to Aqua as used now in OS X, which for the most part just skins it differently and removes a bunch of features I like -- so while I love wmaker, I really can't function on Macs. As for userbase. Yeah. I'm aware that I'm in the minority. I'm totally OK with that.
  - 2muchcoffeeman 12y ago
    window maker was pretty great. I wish they kept going with it. It's still one of the best window managers I've ever used.
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      As I said: you can still get it. It's packages with most distros (I'm running it on Debian). The only thing that's not happening is a whole lot of development. And I'm actually totally OK with that.
    - ttflee 12y ago
      I love Window Maker and hope its development will go on, however, its lack of features really hurts, if you are an Asian language user and have an enthusiastic taste for typeface rendering. It is not a problem for Window Maker alone, but also problems in many other WMs that do not rely on a heavy and frequently maintained toolkit, i.e. GTK or Qt, as perfectly supporting font rendering and i18n has never been a simple job. BTW, putting off window manager/desktop environment philosophy arguments, Input Method Engine is one of those constantly neglected aspects that really matter for East Asian users. It seems that the ones making plans for WM/DE and other infrastructure had little overlap with users, and their designing decisions were very likely to omit the requirements necessary to cooperate with IMEs.

panzi 12y ago

Well, Window Maker is basically a NeXTSTEP clone. If there is innovation it was done by NeXT in the late 80ies/early 90ies. So even an older concept than Windows 95.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]

theGimp 12y ago

Funny, I've been looking for something like ratpoison for a while, and though the name seems familiar, I had never tried it before. I'm using it now... I think my search is over :) Thank you!

pyre 12y ago
Take a look at StumpWM. IIRC it's done by the author of ratpoison. Bonus: If you're an Emacs user the interface/keyboard shortcuts should make you feel at home (or so I've heard).
- theGimp 12y ago
  I am overjoyed. Thank you :) I've set a reminder to switch to StumpWM 2 days from now. Emacs is something I've never tried though Lisp is amazing and that's reason enough to use it. So many fun toys, so little time...
- 616c 12y ago
  Got into StumpWM about two months ago after living in tmux and emacsclient all day. Now I have a super minimalist desktop, all the key shortcuts I need (and mouse like I need, where as ratposion makes it a little too difficult), on the fly restart and command reload, Lisp, and oh my god so much flexibility. Before that, I used XFCE. I have realized there is always another level of minimalism down from where you were before in Linux, until you hit the Linux console. But I love StumpWM. They might say it is not minimalist, but it is for me and it rocks my world. I am going to hit submit and then hit a shortcut to open running term emulator and find my running mutt instance in tmux. Later full DE users.
tomorokoshi 12y ago
You might also like i3. I tried many tiling window managers, and i3 is my favorite. Its "manual tiling" works well with my brain. Also see this comparison of tiling WMs: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_Tiling_Window_Managers https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_Tiling_Wi...
- 12y ago

andrewstuart 12y ago

They all look clunky and unrefined.