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- McDutchie, on 03/15/2009, -2/+20GNOME and KDE are not WMs but desktop environments, so they would be off topic for that article. (The WMs that come with GNOME and KDE are Metacity and KWin, respectively.)
- ArthurSucks, on 03/15/2009, -2/+10Yay! Lack of choice! Woot!
- derbloodlust, on 03/15/2009, -0/+8You don't have to do that much anymore. Most all of that has been automated. Sure, it wasn't too long ago when 1920x1200 wasn't supported well out of the box, but times have changed. Where have you been? I haven't had to configure xorg.conf for my displays in a long time.
- ratsg, on 03/15/2009, -0/+7"@There seem to be a lot of wellmeaning GNU/Linux articles lately that actually hurt peoples image of it. Perhaps people have stopped caring, or are just being plain careless."
With the exception of Plan 9, all of this took place before Linux. I'm at odds as to why linux is even in the title. - DigitalPioneer, on 03/15/2009, -3/+9Ditto that, these WMs are deprecated. Sure, they may still have use SOMEWHERE, but not on the modern desktop. Servers shouldn't have X installed at all, and nodes shouldn't either. These might be suitable on some kind of appliance, but other than that, why bother?
Buried... - GrmRpr3000, on 03/15/2009, -0/+6I don't think that's what it's about though. The summary on the site says this: "In this text we took a look at the very first window managers and the window manager capabilities: in part two the material will branch out into the beginnings of the more full fledged desktop environments and how they related to window managers."
In other words, it's a history of X window managers. Considering that, why would they go straight in with GNOME or KDE? They are probably going to start covering those next time. I think it served its purpose very well. I do not think it is necessary for articles with a completely different purpose to consider what people who don't use Linux might think about Linux after seeing them. Besides, if people read the article instead of just looking at the pictures they will likely realise what it is about anyway. - irisblaze, on 03/15/2009, -1/+7you forgot the sarcasm tag
- T8erT0T, on 03/15/2009, -0/+5Perhaps in Part 2.
- WildTang3nt, on 03/15/2009, -0/+5I haven't had to touch my xorg.conf file in at least a year now, probably more. Linux is getting much better at auto-detection now.
- CATSCEO2, on 03/15/2009, -2/+7No fluxbox?
- MadHarvey, on 03/15/2009, -0/+4I think people should stop caring about what other people think, and just talk about what interests them. One of Linux strengths is that it can adapt to individual needs/interests.
It is completely retarded to censor your interests because it might "scare off" the mainstream Linux users...
On that note, check out Ratpoison. Its the best! - eNz1m3, on 03/15/2009, -6/+9Great article. Very well explained
- int19h, on 03/15/2009, -0/+3FVWM2 is great. The default configuration looks outdated, but one can configure it to be really kick-ass. I use FVWM2 together with the KDE4 desktop, which is just brilliant.
- MattBD, on 03/15/2009, -0/+3Well, to be fair different desktops work well for different people. I work in customer services dealing with written queries and complaints and I would kill to be able to have a tiling window manager on my XP machine at work - I'd only really want to see two windows at once, the letter we had in and the letter I was writing - and that would make it easy.
Also, if you have an old computer that's quite slow, you can use a window manager such as Fluxbox instead of a full desktop like Gnome or KDE as they are a lot faster. There's plenty of good Fluxbox distros - I like the Fluxbox version of Linux Mint, check it out when the new version is released at http://www.linuxmint.com/download.php .
No matter what you think about Linux, it's great to be able to use something lighter and so make sure that older computers are still useful and don't just wind up on the scrapheap. - SteveMax, on 03/16/2009, -0/+2Of course they had to start with Gnome and KDE. Just like an article about the evolution of Windows should start with Windows 7 and never DREAM about including Windows 1.0; or the evolution of the Mac OS starts with Snow Leopard.
For the FSM's sake, READ the article! It's not a "hey Windows users, look how pretty Linux is!!" type of article; it's aimed at people who (gasp!) already use Unix! Not every article needs to be aimed at newbies, not every article needs to try to convert people to Linux (and not every article needs to go on about RMS, Gnu and the GPL). - Artemis3, on 03/15/2009, -0/+2For the meaning of the m in mwm, the hint is in the widget used: Motif...
- inactive, on 03/15/2009, -1/+3I learnt myself something new today!
- Cupantae, on 03/16/2009, -0/+2AHEM:
*"UNIX: X Window Managers Part 1."
The author doesn't even use Linux, by the looks of it. Not mentioned once, and the screenshots show OpenBSD... - Cupantae, on 03/16/2009, -0/+2I'm happy that there's an article in this section that isn't "OMG UBUNTU (=LINUX) IS CHANGING THE WORLD" or "Why your dog should switch to Linux". It doesn't have to be preached every ***** day. It's a quality system and people will switch when they know what it is.
- MattBD, on 03/16/2009, -0/+2FVWM Crystal is quite nice.
- derbloodlust, on 03/15/2009, -1/+3Exactly... they definitely need Compiz and Fluxbox in the next article... hell, even ***** like Ratpoison. Also XFCE uses xfwm4.
- MattBD, on 03/15/2009, -0/+2I tried dwm lately and really liked it, but I didn't like the fact that it was only possible to customise it by actually editing the source code and recompiling it. I hear wmii is basically a more advanced version of dwm that can be customised , so I may try that.
I really like tiling window managers, I like the idea and I've found them to be very handy for making best use of the space available, and they minimise the time you spend sorting out application windows. Unfortunately all the ones i've tried, such as awesome and Xmonad, are all a pain to use - Xmonad requires you to learn Haskell to configure it, and awesome's documentation seem to be aimed at very experienced users (I've been using Linux, mainly Ubuntu, for about two years now). I'm perfectly comfortable configuring IceWM or Fluxbox using text files, because they have a nice simple syntax. - InorganicMatter, on 03/15/2009, -3/+5X sucks.
(Yeah, I said it. Bury me, you know it's true.) - derbloodlust, on 03/15/2009, -2/+3Dugg for Fluxbox... my favorite WM hands down, above Compiz.
- Munshot, on 03/16/2009, -0/+1Not sure about Ibex, but I was massively impressed the other day when I tried out Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope and was able to set up dual monitors from the display settings GUI. This is impressive because although xrandr allows me to configure my resolution and screen placement on the fly, my intel chip is limited by default to a virtual screen of 2048x2048 which isn't big enough to hold two monitors. This can of course be fixed with some xorg.conf modifications, but Ubuntu knew what I was trying to do and added those modifications in there for me. I didn't even have to know the file existed.
As for refresh rates, I think you have to have some pretty exotic hardware for that to still be necessary these days. - pingveno, on 03/15/2009, -0/+1And that is why I stopped using Gentoo: I don't want to screw around with xorg.conf.
- MrViklund, on 03/16/2009, -2/+3Microsoft rules!
- matthekc, on 03/16/2009, -0/+1http://www.fvwm-crystal.org/screenshots.html
I wouldn't count fvwm as dead yet, but the rest of these... - moppsy, on 03/15/2009, -0/+1Yes, the author couldn't even read the page he referenced.
Linked from xwinman's home page, mwm is described on the first line.
"This is the Motif Window Manager." - inactive, on 03/16/2009, -1/+2"If the designers of X Windows built cars, there would be no fewer than five steering wheels hidden about the cockpit, none of which followed the same principles—but you’d be able to shift gears with your car stereo. Useful feature, that."
Marcus J. Ranum
Digital Equipment Corporation - Minishark, on 03/15/2009, -0/+1Auto-detection has gotten a lot better in the past few years. However, I do get where you're coming from. I still have to mess around with my xorg.conf to get multiple monitors working at the right resolution. It's a major pain, and one of my few complaints about Linux.
- dextermanas, on 03/15/2009, -0/+1Fluxbox FTW. When in windows, I use a *box shell (bbClean at the moment). I even carry a *box shell in my USB drive to use in other computers, along with a script that kills the default shell and replaces it with my customized *box. :)
- Solkre, on 03/16/2009, -1/+1Dug for SE:Lain
- economicbob, on 03/15/2009, -1/+1I could see possible use w/ pc over IP technology. Teradici is a complete douche bag technology and yields no benefits when transporting graphics and video over the lan, especially when you cant see whats going on. NO api, no SDK complete ace. I honestly want linux to ramp up this and sooner than later in the open source community. Proprietary win32 apps need to stop.
- EPiXNiCROS, on 03/15/2009, -1/+1Left out ION? http://www.modeemi.fi/~tuomov/ion/
- bigteebo, on 03/15/2009, -5/+5I just hated having to fiddle around in text config files just to get the resolution to work correctly. Never had to know vertical refresh rates in Windows. That's one thing they really need to fix up, period.
- johnnyrotten, on 03/15/2009, -1/+1I claim to have invented the virtual part of TVTWM. Tom will refuse to admit this, even under torture. If I had only known the future, I could be a billionaire now (though not from TVTWM - just from knowing the future). Thanks Tom.
- dextermanas, on 03/15/2009, -1/+0What, no ratpoison? :(
- Nivardus, on 03/15/2009, -5/+3A++++ comment would bury again.
- Rudegar, on 03/15/2009, -5/+1you can change windows to use another shell then explorer.exe and there are others not popular or works well but they are there
and your post is in sharp contrast to the typical windows vs. apple threads where windows users complain apple's lack of being customizable
well guess it takes all sorts :) - PhonicUK, on 03/15/2009, -19/+13OMG it's 1990 again!
Seriously, they should have started with the modern WMs (KDE 4, GNOME, XFCE, etc) before moving to the obscure stuff used exclusively by 'GUI-is-evil' types.
These Windows managers what what the average person thinks about when they think of Linux. Unfriendly and bland.
There seem to be a lot of well-meaning GNU/Linux articles lately that actually hurt peoples image of it. Perhaps people have stopped caring, or are just being plain careless. - przemeklach, on 03/15/2009, -13/+6Ha ha all the anime fans digging me down.
- przemeklach, on 03/15/2009, -21/+11Good article, until I saw the anime crap.
- TrueAmerican64, on 03/15/2009, -15/+2Hmmm how many Window Managers does Microsoft Windows have? Yeah, just one, because it only needs one - explorer.exe does the job just fine. You don't see Microsoft guys arguing over what Window Manager to use, because they already have a nice one that looks great and actually gets work done.
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