Most applications work fine since there is little difference between WMs. That said there are two issues Window Maker has that nobody has fixed:
1. There is practically no RandR support. Sure, you can enable it (and i think it is enabled by default) during compilation but the "support" is really to restart Window Maker whenever the video mode or whatever else changes so that it uses the new resolution. However due to the way Window Maker seems to identify monitors (it seems to use the vertical resolution - probably a hack that worked for someone somewhere around the 90s or early 2000s and nobody bothered to update to use something less hacky) it also causes duplicate dock configurations. Also for some reason if the dock is larger than the vertical resolution anything that doesn't "fit" gets thrown away. Ultimately i've found it easier to just disable RandR support to avoid losing my dock configuration whenever some program changes the resolution.
2. While there is EWMH support, either there is some bug with how some parts are implemented or (most likely) there are subtle differences between Window Maker's implementation and other window managers (e.g. IceWM) that applications assumed would work like that cause issues with Window Maker. The most obvious of those is applications that want to "take over" window management and handle moving and resizing themselves - it either doesn't work (the applications do not move) or the move/resize happens erratically (e.g. Firefox with the titlebar disabled or Steam has this issue). Also many applications do not get the frame size (this is probably some race condition because Window Maker does set the frame size hints properly) correctly, causing them to get wrong sizes and when combined with them trying to handle sizing and position themselves, they can end up flickering by constantly trying to set the "correct" size and/or moving and sizing themselves whenever their UI updates (often becoming smaller and smaller because they assume some frame size of 0). This is most common with applications running under Wine, but some other applications have issues too because of that (e.g. Virtualbox).
I've tried to figure out the #2 (for #1 i just don't care that much since i'm using a single monitor anyway) but from what i could tell Window Maker seems to be doing everything properly. I didn't spent that much time on it though. At some point (and assuming nobody else does, though it has been like that for years) i'll try and compare what Window Maker does and what IceWM does (which works fine) and where their behavior differs. My guess is some race condition, perhaps Window Maker sets the hints too late or something, though this is just a guess. I'll need first to write a small X11 program that replicates the issue.
As a workaround for #2 i've been using a feature i added to Window Maker years ago to ignore any decoration changes for windows (it is in Attributes -> Advanced Options -> Ignore decoration changes), essentially forcing all windows to have a resize frame and titlebar, ignoring any requests for hiding them. This lets me move around and resize, e.g., Steam (and also use all window management functionality that Window Maker provides - like rolling the window up/down using the mouse wheel - instead of whatever Valve thought i'd need).
One other issue with Window Maker (though it isn't really a Window Maker issue per-se) is that since Window Maker is not a (desktop) compositor, Gtk4 applications that assume a compositor will use black colors for whatever would be beneath a window - this mainly means that popup menus with rounded corners will actually get black corners. This is really a side-effect of Gtk4 assuming a compositor is there and not having a fallback for when there isn't one and would be an issue with other window managers too, but it should be solvable (if you care about it, i don't) by using a dedicated compositor (i think compiz or something like that may work).
Nice startup time, and just works -- especially if all you use are terminals and browser windows. Things like firefox look a little out of place, now that they are pushing their UI chrome into their own title bars.
I really wouldn't want to host my stuff on any Microsoft controlled sites.
In fact, this should rather be considered a Window Maker based Debian/Bookworm distribution instead the stated reverse. Certainly more then 95% of the shipped packages are plain Debian/Bookworm packages, with only a few additional packages contributed by yours truly.
The main merit of wmlive is providing the necessary glue to properly preconfigure Window Maker with an out of the box usable environment (unlike Debian's crude/primitive Window Maker configs) and make it the default GUI.
The other main merit is to make the supplied software complete enough to serve as a standalone system without the immediate need to connect to the internet to install more useful packages than are normally supplied by distributions in their quest to provide an initial system too generic to be really useful by already experienced users. This is not meant for beginners,
While some work went in homogenizing the overall looks with Window Maker's own WINGs widget set, no efforts were wasted with further eye candy stuff. The themeability of the WINGs widgets are limited to that crufty NeXTSTEP look everybody either loves or despises, being the least common visual denominator. Not being particularly enamored of these visuals, but this was the only way to find some common ground for the look and feel.
Window Maker is just a highly compatible X11 window manager and is supposed to work as such. There is no interest to specifically integrate it with the provided GNUstep applications, as this is not supposed to be predominantly a GNUstep desktop. The included GNUstep applications are just an addon to give people a practical way to verify what GNUstep has to offer. In fact, wmlive would be perfectly usable without providing any single GNUstep application. The freedom and flexibility provided by an X11 window manager instead of the walled garden of a specific desktop system is much more preferable to many Linux users. NeXT nostalgists might want to look elsewhere. [1][2]
What most people don't seem to get is that there is much more to wmlive than just the visible desktop. Below the hood is a wide range of command line tools suitable for system rescue and repair when using it as a live system booted from an USB stick. Supposedly many youngsters who were yet to be born when we already grew up with Linux from day one have never learned to look beyond what's visually obvious.
If anyone who downloaded it does like wmlive, I'd appreciate a donation via the download pages. While i hate sounding like a beggar, given the current economic situation i could really use it. Thanks!
[1] https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace [2] https://github.com/onflapp/gs-desktop
indrora•4h ago
Is it perfect? No, but it's sure a step closer to an ideal than whatever .so hell that we came up with before.