Has the Development of Window Managers Slowed? 437
al3x asks: "When I first got into Linux nearly five years ago, the new releases of competing window managers (like Blackbox, Enlightenment, Sawfish, etc.) were a constant thrill, and great strides were made with every release. I can't count the number of nights spent trying to get that sexy new E build to work, and what fun it was! But these days, window manager development seems to be stagnating. The last stable release of Enlightenment is from last year. Sawfish hasn't done much of anything in months, nor has Blackbox. WindowMaker had a recent update, but not with any exciting new features (it is rock solid, however). Now, verging from the paths of window manager favoritism or "they haven't been updated because they just work," why has development in this arena slowed to a crawl, and what's on the horizon?"
Enough already? (Score:3, Insightful)
We've had the pre-cambrian explosion, time for the mass extinction.
Re:Enough already? - nope, still one to go: ION (Score:2, Informative)
Sounds like it's time to check out ion: http://www.students.tut.fi/~tuomov/ion/ [students.tut.fi]. It's based on non-overlapping windows, made for easy keyboard navigation. Supports prefix keymaps so you can easily avoid key binding conflicts. Give it a try!
Re:Enough already? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Enough already? (Score:2)
Golem (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Golem (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Golem (Score:2, Interesting)
Couple possabilities (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Couple possabilities (Score:3, Informative)
I think the development team should just declare it to be version 1.0. Windowmaker is stable and full-featured enough for it.
Re:Couple possabilities (Score:3, Informative)
And if you're even more of a control freak than that (like i sometimes am), you can use the wdwrite utility to store selected preferences, and then use the WPrefs tool and whatnot to handle the rest.
I think the development team should just declare it to be version 1.0. Windowmaker is stable and full-featured enough for it. :)
Close, but not quite. Alfredo's working on support for the _NET_WM spec (or whatever the devil that Grand Unified Post-ICCCCCM Extension is called nowadays), to support next-generation KDE and GNOME and whatnot. Once that's there, together with up-to-date documentation, then i would agree with the v1.0 thing.
Re:Couple possabilities (Score:2)
Exactly. I use Sawfish and I love it. It's much lighter than E, hasn't crashed yet, and integrates nicely with Gnome 1.4. And it's not ugly (with the right theme).
Plus it supports xinerama pretty nicely, aside from dialogs popping up in between screens once in a while.
Re:Couple possabilities (Score:3, Insightful)
Then ya look at some of the minimal ones, notably Blackbox and Sawfish, they both do what they were intended to do. new features aren't in the focus of some of the more minimalistic projects, so anything at this point is bug fixes.
[/blockquote]
Which brings up one of the big differences between Free software and Commercial software; Since there is no real revenue stream to maintain, there isn't a long string of marketing dictatated releases after the project reaches maturity. TeX is a notable example, freezing the features, and working towards bugs (and extending the version number towards Pi).
I'm sure everyone here has heard the "release early, release often" mantra/slogan which applies to the early part of the development process, but what universal wisdom about the back-side of the dev. process do we have? We can follow the steps of TeX (as it appears many window managers have), and be happy with a solid, stable program, or we can take the path of feature-bloat, and keep adding things because they're nifty. (Mozilla comes to mind..)
Re:blackbox (Score:2)
They matured (Score:3, Insightful)
Until someone comes with a unbelievable great idea, things will go slow for a while.
And since the window managers "market" (don't know if this word can be applied to open source) are stable now, only the best and most used WM (gnome, WindowMaker, KDE) sees any development.
Somebody has to say it... (Score:2, Insightful)
And the finder is yet something else (I'll leave to
Mac users to explain exactly what that thing is). I
know this rebuttal is annoying but hey, can't compare
apple to orange as they say !
Re:They matured (Score:2)
I use a GNOME desktop with the Sawfish window manager. There are exactly no things I wish were better; as far as I am concerned, GNOME is equal to Windows in the window manager department.
I use a pretty theme called aq3, which is vaguely Aqua-ish, but not slavishly. For my wife's account I use RedMonk, which looks and works exactly like the Windows 98 she is used to.
I will be happy when GNOME organizes the control panel thing a bit better, and I'd like a better menu editor, and there are a few other nits I can pick... but I'm completely happy with Sawfish as it is on GNOME today.
steveha
Re:They matured (Score:2)
Finder also happens to be the name that is given to file browser windows, but Finder is the Mac GUI for all versions of 9.x and prior. (In OS X it was Desktop, but has been renamed Finder- although in OS X, it's a process. In 9.x and earlier, it's the whole GUI, and that's it.)
In Windows, Windows Explorer is the file browser, Internet Explorer is the Internet browser, and Explorer.exe is the whole GUI the mess sits on.
GO KDE! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GO KDE! (Score:5, Informative)
For a while there was a debate about "the GNOME window manager" and then there was the whole E thing when people were getting frustrated and quitting their jobs. Sawfish came out to fill a void and that's what it has done and now it doesn't seem as important that it get's all the newest wiz-bang gadgetry.
Newer versions of E are sounding more and more like they are trying to build a desktop or new environment than simply a window manager, that's great, more power to them.
But the essential truth is that for the majority of Linux users the window manager concept has come and gone and that desktops are where it is all happening now.
Gtk broke E (Score:2, Interesting)
The gimp toolkit (gtk) has of course improved enormourly since then and is now cross platform. Athough, if something like thai language support in pango is broken, then it won't compile. It was an intersting exercise finding that I couldn't configure pango to leave it out and couldn't have gtk without pango.
The bit about Raster getting frustrated with his job was between him and an unprofessional middle manager at RedHat (who probably didn't last long) that hadn't quite worked out how to use email. It became very public because the guy didn't know how to use email.
Re:Gtk broke E (Score:2, Interesting)
Also I think at that time of the switch "certain interests" had never heard of gnome or Enlightenment - it was well before the fanfare of the gnome 1.0 release, and RedHat was almost the only company that was paying people to write linux applications.
Anyway, I'm not talking about something that happened last year or the year before - I think it happened early in the days of the 0.16 rewrite of E or late in the days of 0.15 and was dropped within a couple of months. If you can find the e-devel mailing list archeives you'll find more.
Re:GO KDE! (Score:2, Informative)
I've used KDE on pentium I class machines bfore, and it runs quite nicely. However, it's a bit of a memory pig, especially if you want to run (for example) Mozilla, Star Office, and other apps on top of it. To summarize, the desktop environments are memory pigs, but given enough memory, they work nicely.
Re:GO KDE! (Score:2, Informative)
Personally, i find all these "desktop environments" are too heavy for older computers...
You said you would prefer a lightweight window manager anyway, a sentiment I think I second, but if anyone reading this thinks "Oh drat, I wanted to run KDE on my slow box," try KDE on top of Blackbox [draknor.net]. Rumor has it performance is faster than with the default kwin on such machines.
Re:GO KDE! (Score:2)
Having poked and prodded the insides of KWin, it is a very nice window manager. Small, fast, elegant. The philosophy seems to be just manage windows, nothing else. (sort of like sawmill). I don't know much they could do to improve it.
There is no such thing as a pure Window manager. (Score:2)
The concept of `I eschew a desktop environment for a window manager' is false. All window managers are a desktop environment of some kind and contain a window manager along with other features. Got a way of bringing up an app menu? That's not part of window management, so you're also a user environment.
Whether this is a list box or an icon is irrelevant and is certainly not the difference between a desktop env and a wm. Does GNOME stop being a desktop when everybody who runs it turns of Nautilus so that their system works properly, and runs their desktop without icons?
Blackbox/IceWM/Sawfish is a desktop environment. Its just a less bloated / full featured as KDE or GNOME.
Re:GO KDE! (Score:2)
Not completely. 'Simple' WMs still have a 'niche market' (if this term has any meaning in OSS) with people wich use relatively old hardware(and wasn't Linux praised for never obsoleting your hardware?), or for people which prefer snappy response to thight integration.
Like myself: I still use (and hope to use for another couple of years) a Pentium 150 MHz laptop with 80 MB [the maximum it can handle]. Already had performance problems with the 1.x versions of KDE/Gnome. I'm not even going to try the 2.x ones.My current set-up is Window Maker(I like better Sawmill micro-gui theme, but WM gives me the 'dockapps' bonus), coupled with ROX-Filer (with panel).
Not the best integrated of desktops, maybe. But I like it so much that I recently ditched Gnome (which I quite like anyway) also on my 800 MHz Athlon desktop, to try the same setup. From the increase in responsiveness (especially but not only the start/up of apps), I don't think I'll go back.
So, thanks to all the developers of 'simple' window managers and other little tools which allows me (and I believe many others according to what I read on the Net) to build my own dektop interface.
Re:GO KDE! (Score:2)
The advantage environments have over collections of applications is unity of style and theme. For example, all the KDE applications are network transparent, which means that you can type in a ftp or http address in a file/open dialogue and the file will automatically be downloaded. That, together with the interprocess model (DCOP) and the use of the same widget set (QT), make for a much more integrated experience than just using random applications all over the place. See if you can get your workplace to upgrade to KDE 2 -- it's much more integrated and polished than KDE 1.
Of course, you are free to just use random applications if you feel like it.
Re:GO KDE! (Score:2)
It's kind of like an IDE versus vi/make/gcc/gdb, except that you're only giving up a certain amount of system resources and gaining features and integration.
Hmm... (Score:2, Insightful)
Either that or they are really busy watching pr0n...
Re:Hmm... (Score:2)
e17 (Score:3, Informative)
.technomancer
Why E has slowed (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why E has slowed (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why E has slowed (Score:4, Funny)
Seriously - whenever there is a problem just look to Microsoft for the cause.
[note: for the human impaired this is a joke, of course it may or may not be funny]
Re:Why E has slowed (Score:2, Interesting)
IceWM? (Score:3, Insightful)
Really, though, what features are there to add to window managers? If you add too many features, then you end up like Enlightenment, which IMO is more like a desktop environment than a window manager.
Re:IceWM? (Score:2)
Re:IceWM? (Score:2)
If I had to give a snappy answer, I'd say file management in a visual fashion (so 'ls' doesn't really count). Icons on the desktop, drawers, panels, folders, all are basically file management. Using a widget set for apps to utilize and interoperate with each other is also part of what makes a suite considered a single "desktop environment", but you can patch together a desktop environment all your own with different tools, so yes, twm, tkdesk, and an xterm running vi is a desktop environment, and perfectly good for some, unacceptable to others who prefer to have the same keyboard commands and the same common menu items act the same way across applications.
Me, I don't care, I just like the tools that make me productive. I do like having copy/paste and drag&drop work in a sensible fashion across applications tho.
Re:IceWM? (Score:2)
A desktop environment is pretty much everything else on the desktop -- a launcher, file manager, maybe an object system for files and components... it's kind of fuzzy. A window manager is part of a desktop environment.
For a long time no one was stepping up to do the work of making a real desktop environment, so the people who made window managers made small steps in that direction. For instance, the dock in Afterstep and Windowmaker -- there's really no decent reason it should be part of the window manager, but no one else was making it, so what the hell.
It probably also had something to do with a crude interface between the window manager and applications, where the specific behavior that you wanted in a dock wasn't possible to create without being integrated with a window manager. Those interfaces have been improved, so it's no longer necessary to integrate.
Fvwm2 (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't need all these graphical, slow and unintuitive menues. I am completely satisfied if I can add the shortcuts I need in 5 minutes to the pop up menues and have all the desktop space for my own use.
And I don't want to redo customization all the time. Basically I have had the same Fvwm2 configuration for years, with only small modifications. That means I can find everything very fast, because I know where things are!
Re:Fvwm2 (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Fvwm2 (Score:2, Informative)
It took a little fiddling, but I use Fvwm2 and GNOME together; best of both worlds, because I do actually like the GNOME panel and the like.
And the degree of customization that you can do to the look of Fvwm2 is enough for my simple needs -- I don't need to re-do my theme to make everything look like icicles (yes, I found an E theme that did that!); I'm happy enough to change the colours and the buttons and the menus and perhaps a transparent XPM pic or gradients to make it look pretty.
And I don't have to learn Lisp in order to do it, either!
Re:Fvwm2 (Score:2, Informative)
erik
XFce development is still proceeding (Score:3, Interesting)
new ones to try... (Score:2, Informative)
Because nobody's willing two do two things. (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's why the mainstays for Linux development have ground to a halt:
1) Nobody is willing to work on something, pouring hours upon hours of work into it, only to have someone working in Company X take their code, and make a living off of tweaking it. Suppose you're writing a windowmanager for Linux. In order for your windowmanager to succeed, it probably has to be GPL in order for it to really catch on. And if its GPL, surprise-surprise, there are employees of parasitic companies like VA Linux Systems who make a nice living playing with your code. No one in their right mind is going to do something for free, working side by side next to someone who is getting paid to do the same. By simple virtue of the fact that parasitic GPL companies exist, you're effectively letting someone else make the money off your work by making it GPL. This is why companies who capitalize on Linux software development are a (tm) Bad Thing, because they assert a choking influence over the entire community. It stops becoming an exercise in fun, and rapidly becomes an exercise in profiteering.
2) Nobody is willing to think about doing anything different, more useful, or more ergonomic right now. The main driving force driving Linux UI development is "lets make it look like Windows!" which is a horrendously bad move. Instead of giving Linux its own face, its own appeal, and its own distinct look, we're playing Poor-Man's Explorer with X11. Instead of putting our own talents to work, making something useful for us, we're playing second fiddle to a third rate design by copying it.
Now, rather than purely bitching, here's what you can do about it:
Start at the ground up. Get ahold of the source of a weak windowmanager like fvwm, that has all the basic guts you need to work from. Ask yourself what makes sense to you as a user, NOT what makes sense because you've seen the same thing in Windows. Give Linux its own look. Try to avoid imitating other platforms. Build it because it makes sense to build, not because "Windows has it". The sheer number of things that Windows has wrong with its UI would require a completely separate article to discuss them in detail. Think about how to represent things differently. Is there a better way to represent the same information? Do you really want an OS that resembles a browser? Think, ask, and move. Learn, modify, and repeat.
Cheers, (and yes, Propaganda is still running..)
Re:Because nobody's willing two do two things. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Because nobody's willing two do two things. (Score:2)
Why do they start in the first place, then?
If a developer of a GPL project stops working on it, because a co-developer is in the lucky position of being paid to work on it, or because a company takes their great code and incorporates it into the product they need to sell to stay in business, then why did they start working in Open Source to begin with?
I'm not being stroppy, I just don't understand the psychology.
Enlightenment, Windowmaker, Blackbox, every single windowmanager in common usage today found its genesis in the days before the rampant carpetbagging that began in late '99 and early '00. Before then, we were all in it for the sheet fun of it, and money didn't matter. The instant the first GPL-involved programmer went to work for these companies, they began making money off of someone else's freely given work. The incentive for these guys to continue working for free vanished around the same time. Would you continue to code for free if you knew a group of half a dozen guys were fiddling with your code for $50K a year?
Hell no.
Thats why companies that try to make money off of selling GPL'ed software are an inherently Bad Thing (tm) for the Linux community. It destroys the very incentive that caused us all to start coding in the first place.
Cheers,
But if...then.... (Score:2)
Does that include distros? Wouldn't the Linux community be so so tiny without them that no one would start such big projects in the first place?
I get the idea about not working on something when someone else is being paid mucho cash, but would you still bother if were asked to write a windowmanager for some other OS? One nowhere near as popular as Linux?
Re:But if...then.... (Score:2)
My favorite distro is Slackware. Just the basics. Enlightenment is enlightenment is enlightenment. KDE is KDE is KDE. Patrick does what he does best, and that's to integrate everything together into a system. There's no need for him to issue linux-2.4.10-pv9.4.2-pre6 kernels, or tweak the default themes because they aren't purple and gold, or green and white. GNOME and KDE don't get a million new menu items for all the stuff you never installed. etc.
Grapes 'n Axes (Score:2)
So if I understand the argument properly, the Open Source community is full of sour grapes?
I fail to see what someone's income (and where that income is derived) has to do with it. How does a coder being paid to contribute to a project take away from that project?
Of course - I could understand other issues. If those coders were taking the project in a direction that the origional author(s) disagreed with. If there was a feeling that a company with deep pockets was somehow hijacking the code base. And then, of course, there's the possibility that a company one resents is making use of one's work.
You've got all kinds of axes to grind with VA Linux, don't you Bowie?
Sometimes I wonder if the biggest test of the GPL would be if Microsoft embraced it (as unlikely to happen as that is). Would those who flock to Linux and GPL projects abandon them because they're seen as tainted? Or would things go along as normal - maybe a bit faster with some of Microsoft's resources going towards contributing code?
I'd like to think that GPL developers aren't so shallow as to allow Microsoft's presence to derail their work. Whether they like their new contributers or not.
I disagree (Score:4, Insightful)
The reasons, I think, are twofold:
1) It's been done. You can find a window manager out there now that can do just about anything. There's not a lot of "Interesting" problem domain left.
2) There is no itch. My current window manager suits me fine. It does everything I want it to do. I don't really see the point of starting from scratch to code a new one. If I were going to fork a window manager, I'd start with the one that was closest to doing what I needed done.
Re:I disagree (Score:2)
Theres nothing wrong with doing both. I code some things for the movement, and I code other things professionally. I don't mix the two.
1) There isnt a single windowmanager for Linux that makes anyone's life simpler.
2) Half of the problem is, most of the people coding windowmanagers grew up suckling the teats of Windows 95. Thats their baseline to which they will compare everything they create against, and its the ideal they will try to emulate until they're exposed to something genuinely different. None of them have stopped and looked at articles that were written at the time, or posts on Usenet about how absolutely terrible Windows 95's UI was compared to common UIs of the day. It didn't win by popular vote--It won because Microsoft had nothing else to push.
Right, Right, Right, you misunderstand me (Score:2)
wrt. 1: What's a windowmanager do, really? Manages windows. Only so much you can do with that to make someone's life easier, in my opinion.
wrt. 2: My biggest gripes with WinXX are that modal and system modal dialogs are ever used. These two UI components need to simply go away. Also, the fact that the program manages its frame controls means that if that program hangs and stops processing, you can't minimize it. No matter how much your Window manager looks like WinXX, if it doesn't have these features, it's infinitely better. Also, since a window manager simply manages windows, there's not a lot beyond frame look and feel that you're going to get with any Window manager.
Of course, I prefer a clean environment; No icons on my desktop please! I never liked the idea of having to move an application to find the icon to launch another application. Gnome's mini button holder that you can put on the panel is acceptable though. That is mostly not obnoxious.
Re:Because nobody's willing two do two things. (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, what would that be, exactly? There are a few basic tennants of a GUI that appear similar on all platforms:
Text boxes
Combo boxes
Drop Down menus
Radio Buttons
Check Boxes
Scroll Bars
Buttons
Tab Panels
Icons
Shortcuts/Aliases
Start Menu/Apple Menu/KDE Menu/GNOME Menu
etc...
These are basic items that are the foundation of a GUI. Yet, when people implement these things we get the cries of, "That's just a poor man's Windows. Create what the users *want*!"
Well, what do the users want? Don't you think that Apple and Microsoft have invested quite large sums of money figuring out what the users want? Realistically, in this day and age, if you build a GUI that completely changes the paradigm of a desktop with items on it, folders, widgets, etc... you better have an idea that immediately resonates with everyone. Else it will look alien and nobody will use it.
So, why doesn't anyone ever list the items that would make a desktop that would be Linux's own? Isn't it about time for somebody to pony up with this grand vision, instead of just crowing about the fact that we should all be reaching for this mythic concept?
Really, what is it that we should be doing? Which path should we be taking to achieve this epiphany in UIs?
Re:Because nobody's willing two do two things. (Score:4, Insightful)
For the record, the last "real" desktop I ever used was AmigaDOS 3.1. Fast, elegant, simple, all-encompassing, good design, clearly understandable, flexible, extensible and neat. The closest thing i've been able to look like it is WindowMaker, and even WindowMaker doesn't quite have it right.
A windowmanager need not occupy anything more than a single slat at the top of every screen. Why the top? Simple. The human eye, in Western cultures, tracks diagonally from northwest to southeast whenever it encounters an image. The flow of information should conform to that--Its absolutely opposite in Windows, where the origin of an action begins in the southwest corner (the Start button) and traverses awkwardly northeast. By the way, dont whine about "Well, what about non-Western cultures??? Are we just going to leave them out???" because the answer is YES. Let them come up with their own design. We do it our way, they do it their way.
A book is a perfect example of a proper user interface that has undergone hundreds of years of refinement. The title is at the top, relevant information is in the corners, and the page (or screen, if you will) is dominated by the body of the data. UIs should follow this convention.
Suppose you want to do a simple action. Start a program. In Windows, there are no less than 7 or so ways to start a program. Sometimes its an icon. Sometimes in an icon in the Tray. Sometimes its an icon in the Quick Launch bar. Sometimes its in the task bar. Sometimes its in Explorer. Sometimes its in the Start Menu. Sometimes its in DOS. On, and on, and on, ad infinitum, ad stupiditum.
A computer's UI should look and react like a television set, where all the channels are nothing but top-down views of books. Each channel has a single line across the top. It shows memory usage on the left, a date-clock on the right, and a single [x] button to kill the whole fucking thing and drop down to console. The remaining 99% of the screen can be occupied with any number of windows. No Docks. No taskbars. no trays. No icons.
All programs that exist on the system can be listed in a single pull-down menu. Right-clicking anywhere on the backdrop of that "channel" (or workspace) will give you the option of selecting a program to launch from a menu. A single, authoritative way of launching a program, not 7 of them.
Suppose you want to delete some junk--Fine. You need a filemanager. Not a filemanager, a browser, a text editor, a Trashcan, and a "delete" command. The filemanager is listed no differently than any other program in the menu listed above. One way for all. If you dont like it, use another OS.
Those are just two simple little improvements that would simplify the task of using Linux with a GUI a hundredfold. More options don't always means more flexibility. More options ALWAYS mean more complexity, and more intimidation for first-time users.
What I basically described to you is AmigaDOS 3.1's appearance in a nutshell. Installation of new apps was a snap, and it all worked out of the box. Instead, Linux has two maddenly different standards that fight for the same square foot of turf and both look retarded in the process. Until that gets resolved, you and I are stuck.
Re:Because nobody's willing two do two things. (Score:2, Insightful)
A window manager need not occupy any space on your screen. A window manager need only manage the windows on your screen - allow you to move them about and iconify them, give them titlebars, etcetera. If you want some special window with buttons, menus, icons, and so on, fine, but that's not a window manager, that's one of the things you put together with a window manager to make a "desktop environment".
And if you want such a special window, top or bottom is IMHO all wrong - it should be on the side. I want my application windows to have the whole screen height, but not the whole width. We've generally got portait-mode windows (like paper pages) on a landscape-mode monitors.
Re:Because nobody's willing two do two things. (Score:2)
Yes. They aren't very popular though. Apple (maybe others) had a monitor that would physicaly rotate from portrait to landscape mode. Awfully expsensive though.
This by the way ties into stagnation of UI design. Many years ago someone decided that a monitor should conform to the "golden rectangle" ratio (approximately 4:3) as rectangles of this shape are pleasing to the eye. We haven't moved passed that despite the fact that most people work with documents that are taller then wide.
Re:That's "Academy" ratio (Score:2)
Great. So we are stuck with the the wrong sized screens because that is what they used in movies?
Choice is good until you get it... (Score:3, Insightful)
The majority of comments I hear from opensource/Linux people is 'choice is good', 'no choice is bad', 'I choose to do things in manner X', etc. However, having those choices in WM front ends apparently is NOT a good thing. Apparently we need just 'one' way of doing something (actually, I'm not all that opposed, if everyone would just write to that standard instead of bitching about it).
But... here we have an OS which is accused of being monolithic (Windows) yet it's also being criticized because there's more than one way to launch a program? So - if they lock you in to one method - it's bad. If you have choice - it's bad. Is this only because it's MS?
Re:Choice is good until you get it... (Score:3, Insightful)
My first reaction was exactly that. But then it dawned on me that there's another way to look at this.
Say you're running Windows and need to launch Program X. There are 7 (I think that was the number used) different places you may have to look to run that app. Sometimes there's more than one way to launch the app - sometimes there's just the one. This means there's potential for a user to have to hunt around before they're able to figure out how to launch the app.
Having said that - I would agree that having only ONE way to do something isn't a plus. One standard way would be good. But giving power users additional ways would be my choice. I'd be a bit miffed if the only way to launch an app was through the Start button (or its equivilant).
Re:Because nobody's willing two do two things. (Score:2)
But you wanted a list. Well lists are a dime a dozen.
You can get a mutually inconsistent set of lists in any of the books which lament the current user interface: See "The Humane Interface", "The Unfinished Revolution", "The Invisible Computer". Full of great ideas, but no coherent designs. This is the hard part. We need a Christopher Columbus or two to do the hard discovery work.
What? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this is a troll, but I think I should at least be a voice of dissent...
Lots of people, including me, work on software or do research for free, and don't mind when companies profit from our code or ideas. Mainly, this is because we believe that there is a great deal more work necessary to turn code or research into a product, and that work is primarily very tedious. I like the idea of a company using my code (I don't know of any who do, but I would) because they do work that otherwise wouldn't get done.
Second, I actually think the Windows UI is pretty good. More importantly, it is standard, which means that I can use KDE without reading any documentation. Regardless of how it might revolutionize the world (I don't think it would; the UI is pretty superficial and pretty subjective), new users are not going to switch to linux if they have to learn a lot just to use the UI.
So, I'm not saying that your opinion is wrong, but that asserting it as an "obvious" truth is.
Define weak. (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not trying to disagree with you or berate you or flame you or anything. I'm honestly curious -- what's FVWM2 missing? What's wrong with it? What would you do to it?
Re:Because nobody's willing two do two things. (Score:2)
Right, they'd much rather pour hours upon hours of work into something that no one else ever works on, contributes to, or manages to make a living off of, much less profit from. That's why they give it away for free.
Um. Okay.
Re:I don't understand your critic to GPL (Score:2)
I'm suggesting the GPL only works in environments where there is no parasitism.
The GPL works when no one is trying to capitalize and exploit it. In instances like those, the GPL is pointless, and GPL'ing your code is akin to hanging a sign on your ass saying "screw me over". The GPL is basically unprepared to remain sturdy and secure in environments like these. It was written under the assumption that we all give and take equally. Thats not the case anymore, because there is no way to ensure your work won't be co-opted by an individual or organization with less than purely altruistic intent.
Re:I don't understand your critic to GPL (Score:2)
The GPL works when no one is trying to capitalize and exploit it. In instances like those, the GPL is pointless, and GPL'ing your code is akin to hanging a sign on your ass saying "screw me over".
Most of the code I've released for free is microcontroller firmware, and I just put it into the public domain so it can get combined with proprietary code without any strings attached.
The result has been that my little 8051 microcontroller web page has grown in popularity [pjrc.com] over the years and regularily swaps with a page at Reynold's as the #1 or #2 search result at google [google.com] (for the query "8051"). A few years ago we started selling circuit boards and pre-programmed chips.
Long ago the site was hosted at a university (for free), and they refusted to continue hosting it. That was about the same time the boards started selling. In the last year, the web site has actually been able to pay for it's (rather spendy) hosting and other expenses, and soon the site will pay me back for all the electronic parts and other expenses over the last couple years.
I won't be rich from this, and in fact I probably won't ever be able to quit my day job and do it full time... but seeing it stand on its own financially is a long way from "screw me over", and it's almost all due to giving away source code, schematics, and know-how for free (public domain, not even GPL'd) and somewhere along the way enough people wanted to buy the circuit board. I never intended to sell anything when I stated the site in 1995, but after getting message after message asking for a source for the special parts or if I would make just one board for them, I had to do something. It's all worked out quite well.. and while it can be a lot of work at times, it's something I started simply to share my own projects and ideas with others for free.
Re:Because nobody's willing two do two things. (Score:2)
"They make their work GPL for other reasons, and the fact that some people are making money of their work is a side-effect of GPL which is not a big deal so far."
See, I would argue that.. I think its had a tremendous chilling effect on the OSS movement thats only bound to get worse. Just look at Gnome.
Re:I disagree to your disagreement (Score:2, Insightful)
If a user wants to create a document, they should be able to "create a document", not "create an object which has document-specific properties".
A good example of a UI model that matches an implementation model is the UI for file systems. Lots of users that I know throw everything on their desktop because they can't handle understanding a file system. Furthermore, who's to say they're wrong or "messy" for doing it? Current day UIs for file systems suck because they directly reflect the implementation model instead of a model that users are more natural with (such as a document stack interface).
Re:nahh..Pillsbury Dough fuck is more like it (Score:2)
Hopefully (Score:3, Insightful)
Well.. (Score:2)
Then.. things stabilized.... I mean, if you wanted to make a new wm. how do you compete with E? nothing is that sexy looking (or that bloated.. of course).
There are basically enough window managers already... there's nothing else you need.
You want a new release of E? Why? is it a car, where the manufacturer has to release a new model every year? Come on.. they only do that to try to make you think your car is 'old'.
Perhaps it's not nessecary (The goal of OSS)? (Score:2, Interesting)
Perhaps the development cycle has slowed down because most of the nicer and more mature window managers have become quite stable and there are becoming less and less bugs to fix. Isn't that the eventual goal of OSS, to become as stable and usable as possible. So there must be some saturation point when as we approach that peak.
If you think about other pieces of OSS software, there is nearly no development. Utilities such as GNU text-utils or even emacs don't get updated more than once a year or two.
Deja vu (Score:2, Insightful)
In the early 90's, there were many window managers, lots of hacking and configuring them, and at least I got bored with that and settled with one that did most of job right out of the box (mwm if anyone is interested--not free, but it worked). I liked gwm very much, but who wants to keep hacking a window manager with lisp--at least for me, emacs is enough.
Time passed by, and then there were lots of linux generation window managers. Sexier, very graphical, themable, what else. Again, boredom hit me and I settled with the one that did the job needed out of the box (kde if anyone is interested, and with the default theme when themes came out). But this time, it took far less my time than during the first iteration, remembering the pain and ultimate result, and knowing what I want from a window manager.
It least for me, window managers main function is to manage windows, and do it with resonable speed and predictability. No fancy graphics or animations, and not lots of customizations if I have to setup a new environment from scratch, thank you.
I presume that my attitude will continue and I am not even interested about new development unless someone can show some real innovation in this area. I don't care if it looks like Windows--I have never used it, so I have no feelings in this area. The idea is simple, to manage windows, and at least currently no one has figured out how to do it differently.
Simplicity (Score:2)
(I don't know much about WM development, but...)
Honestly, the only two window managers that I ever felt comfortable with are fvwm [fvwm.org] (v2 if you like) and twm (didn't find a really good link, but it's standard on NetBSD systems, so you all know what I'm talking about right?). All other managers are just visual fluff that eats memory, occupies the palette, and slows the computer down.
There has been some other really great ideas during the last few years, like the pwm [students.tut.fi] and wm2 [all-day-breakfast.com] (and its sibling, wmx [all-day-breakfast.com]) window managers. They simple, easy to configure, and does NOT rely on tons of extra libraries.
Someone else here was talking about environments, but I just can't see why you would want an extra "environment" on top of the perfectly usable standard Unix environment that's already there... Also, some of them comes packed with applications tailored especially for use within that particular window manager, which in reality turns each "environment" into its own, well, distribution. One can devote a separate CD for GNOME or KDE applications and support libraries, many of which just duplicates the function of already existing Unix commands. Sometimes I think someone ought start a KDE/Linux distribution just to spare everyone else from having to download that extra CD ISO.
Then again, we might be talking about different audiences here. The teenagers might need cool "environments" to get lured into using GNU/Linux, and that might have a positive effect in 5 to 10 years. But I wouldn't be very surprised if the adoption of GNU/Linux (or any other of the free Unices for that matter) by desktop users would be slowed down by offering a vast amount of conflicting graphical environments.
I think it would be a good idea to correct the bugs and stabilise the already existing window manages, maybe even to unify some of the more similar ones. You can make most of the more configurable managers look like each other anyway.
All that you need is some xterm windows.
Re:Simplicity (Score:2)
I'm the same way. I try to like KDE and Gnome every now and then, but I always end up ripping them out in disgust. It's far easier for me to just use an xterm for most things. The only reason I use X is for multiple xterms, graphical web browsers, xdvi & gv, Jamie's unparalleled collection of screensavers, Image Magick and the Gimp. Oh, and GKrellM is kind of nice...
Hmmm, I guess I do need more than just xterms. But I'll be damned if I need a bunch of desktop icons, bloated file mangler, a graphical front-end to 'less', or an "office suite" for kiddies (who needs an office suite when you have emacs, TeX and perl? Heheheh.)
Ubiquity breeds transparency (Score:4, Interesting)
Asking if the development of Window Managers has slowed is like asking if the development of television remote controls has slowed down.
Window Managers have faded into the background as it is the tools and information inside the windows that (rightfully) recieves the focus. Since the advent of the Mac, the incredible uniqueness of windowing and the desktop metaphor in general has meant that we've spent an exorbinant amount of time focused on the UI itself instead of the tools contained by the UI.
To put it another way... imagine I was a caveman transported to today and placed inside of a room with a window. First, I would marvel at the incredible transparent substance that formed a barrier between me and the outside world, but after a while, I would take it for granted and simply use the window to see outside.
Where are the pie wms? (Score:2)
Where does the linux UI want to go? (Score:2, Insightful)
MacOS looks fucking cool, and they have a clear design concept. They're selling a consumer products computer, not a computer computer. It looks sweet, it goes fast, and ANYONE can use it. The quick start guide for an ibook is 4 color pictures.
The big change they made with OS X is that they made lots of really cool eye candy and put the whole gui on top of an industrial strength bsd unix base. They've succeeded in having a consumer products computer that is CAPABLE of supporting super user expert use.
The linux user is a completely different kind of user. Linux is used in a server market, specialized research computing, and super user geekware. Linux users need/want a functional, nice looking UI, and indeed I think linux UI surpasses windows handilly.
Open source distributed development has its advantages (lots of customizabiliy and options) but it makes a centralized design methadology hard. Things come together, but an organized UI development which links applications, windows manager, OS together etc.... appear hard.
There are tradeoffs in UI design. Powerful expert usage vs. easy for average user. Customizability vs. doing one thing well. The linux console is fantastically powerful, but incomprehensible for the average joe schmo computer user. Can linux really move out of the super user dept? Can it do so more than incrementally? I don't see Linux becoming an average desktop environment anytime in the near future (eg. I don't see linux having enough organization to do something at all like os x), but is it moving there? Does gui only need to be strong enough for server/workstation? The requirements for all these apps are different. Ok, I'll stop rambling.
Xinerama Enhancements (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure if any of the other managers are working on this but it should be really cool when it is released.
FVWM (Score:2)
Window Managers are mostly irrelevant (Score:3, Insightful)
This "window manager is everything" view is actually sort of primitive. Most advanced operating systems have turned the window manager into a really mundane implementational detail that even programmers hardly care about. BeOS, Windows, MacOS, etc.
I hope this trend continues to GNOME & KDE...and we see the disappearance of those insanely bloated window manager preference dialogues and see the window manager behaving like the submissive quiet little technical detail it should be (at least from a user's perspective). Check out Havoc's latest project "Metacity" for an example of a well behaved CrackFree(TM) window manager.
-Seth (gnome usability project lead)
for the last time (Score:2, Insightful)
OSX is not a good gui.
1 - dock icon areas do not extend to edge of dock.
2 - dock changes size and icons move as it gets used
3 - what if you don't like grey or blue? Maybe OSX.2 will have green and OSX.3 will have purple
4 - it has vi so when I go to the apple help and type in vi I expect to see at least something.
5 - stupid windowesque scroll bars - the scroll-bars were one of the things which NeXT got right for Steve's sake
6 - way too much eye-candy, at least I can not install Enlightenment.
OSX isn't unix wedded with mac, its unix buried under mac. If anything its BaCKstep.
Maybe... (Score:2, Interesting)
I would also think with the way the economy has been most authors are scrambling to feed themselves, so their projects are a little on the side. How has Rasterman and Mandrake been with E since VA started getting hit? I remember the fast updates of E as well, but those are the good ol' days. If you tossed a chunk of cash at them I bet you they'd respond. :)
Next wave: windowmanagers for handhelds (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem with window manager development (Score:2, Interesting)
That said, I have a cool idea I would like to suggest and work on with other people. The problem is : what place can I go to to talk with *all* of the window manager crowd ? There doesn't seem to be a single gathering point where window manager issues (ideas, comparisons, ...) are discussed.
Now on to my idea : for a project I'm working on I'd like to discuss the possibility of integrating support for joysticks/joypads/remote controls into the window manager, and making sure the window manager works well on a TV screen. This is a wholly different approach from the standard PC desktop window manager needs.
I am not talking about the physical side, I know you can fake your mouse using any of these devices.I am talking about using large fonts, doing more full-screen stuff, starting/stopping applications, and so on. I have worked out a sample user interface using Perl on top of Gnome for my project, but I think that it would be better served using a dedicated window manager.
Anyone wanting to discuss this further can mail me at thomas@apestaart.org
Re:E17 (Score:2, Funny)
</joke, not flamebait>
Re:E17 (Score:2)
Re:E17 (Score:2)
http://rox.sourceforge.net/
and some apps I've written to work with it:
http://freefall.homeip.net/code/
This is a very nice filer, and it uses the filesystem for everything, as opposed to trying to come up with some weird-assed scheme. For example, applications are simply directories with certain files within them. What could be simpler?
Light, fast, elegant, and it makes sense.
Re:Improve Xfree86 (Score:3, Interesting)
1) It's fine to say "use a GeForce3" if you have one. However, the majority of us do NOT have a GeForce3. For some of us (like everybody who's not on an Intel-based system), a GeForce3 may not even be on option. Enlightenment 0.16.5 works fine on my AIX box - it even runs fine on my old home AIX box (a model 350 - a whole whopping 66mz Power chipset). Remember that Sun and SGI are both shipping Enlightenment now, and even in the Intel-based Linux world, I don't think it's safe to assume any more capability than 24-bit color. E17 shouldn't be assuming effects - it should be saying "use options if the X server (which may not be XFree86) says they are available". Last I checked, even XFree86 didn't have XRender extension support for all drivers yet.
2) There's a major distinction to be made between "looks nice" and "is productively useful". Yes, it's good if your window manager looks pretty (I'd like to thank Christian Kreibich for his Ganymede theme) but at least in *my* case, I get paid to get things done on the computer. As a result, I *want* my window manager to look pretty, but I *need* it to help me get things done quickly.
Now, some features are pretty easy to demonstrate why they'd be useful - for instance, it *would* be nice to have sane support for drop shadows. However, the reason for drop shadows isn't "because it's cool" - it's because it's additional visual information that helps you identify the edges of windows and the actual stacking order.
Now maybe there's a good HCI (human computer interaction) reason for supporting motion blur and bump mapping for the window manager. And if there is, I'll be happy to listen. But keep in mind that you're talking about *window manager* controlled screen real estate, not application windows. There seems to be a backlash by at least some users who feel window managers take too much screen space away (I'm one of these - my current theme has only 5 pixels on sides and bottom, and 25 or so in the titlebar). Not much you can *DO* with bump mapping or motion blur in a strip 5 pixels wide
Just keep in mind that "eye candy" and "usability" are not always synonymous....
Re:Configuring Window Managers (Score:5, Interesting)
I recall my recent attempts to install my new Nvidia Gforce MX 200
Linux: No reboots. The new card (the old one was a Voodoo 3) was detected during the boot sequence after adding the card. I configured the card for my setup and it started X using the new card without missing a beat. Time taken: 30 seconds (literally)
Windows: 4 reboots, two failed shut downs, a trip into Linux to download drivers because the ones on the disk didn't work, and finally it worked. Time taken, about an hour (including download time)
Granted, I then had to install the Nvidia version of the liunux drivers to get full value from the card, but that was relatively simple and didn't involve a reboot of the system to achieve, and took less than 30 minutes including downloading the drivers. This process wouldn't even be an issue if Nvidia would GPL their drivers so they could be included in the kernel and X. Yes, that's right, the only hick-up I had with installing a new graphics card under linux was problems caused by non-GPL software.
Here's another example
A recent change of network card on:
Linux: restarted computer, the change of network cards was detected during boot, the current network config was migrated to the new card (after asking me if I wanted too) and the connection to the network was made without a reboot. Time taken: 10 seconds
Windows 98: The new card was detected, a driver was requested (it was on a floppy) and the machine finished it's boot process. No network connection. I open the network config tools to find that a secondl network card config has been loaded (which doesn't work). I have to remove the original setup, config the new setup and reboot. Time taken: 10 minutes.
Still not convinced? Try it with a sound card.
Sadly, I think Linux gets a hard rap when it comes to hardware. Changing and installing hardware in Linux is exceptionally easy, and limited only by a lack of support by hardware manufacturers. Given support by manufacturers linux ability to hand new hardware or hardware changes leaves Windows for dead. I can even change my processor and motherboard anmd linux will get everything sorted out during the restart without having to reboot once. Try that in Windows!
Oh and before you start telling me that Linux doesn't support as much hardware as Windows, try installing windows on a Macintosh, or a mainframe, or a wristwatch. Many operating system companies won't even move to a new platform for fear of what new hard might do to their stability. Apple's reliability on Macintosh is often cited as a result of a limited hardware base (an that reliability isn't that good. Microsoft originally started NT on an Alpha and said they wanted a kernel that would be easy to port to different processors. They don't even support the Alpha chipset anymore and are having troubles getting Windows to run on x86.
We've got Linux running on three different platforms here at work (x86, PowerPC, M68K) and running well.
Re:Configuring Window Managers (Score:2)
With Windows, I can't even begin to recount my experiences. In a nutshell, when I rebooted, Windows would detect "my new" network card and add another NIC in the list, but refuse to let me remove the original, "shadow" NIC. Because it wouldn't let me remove the original configuration, I couldn't set the IP in the new device. I refused to spend more than 30 minutes on this problem because my time and sanity is worth much more, so in the end I just wound up giving the device a different IP. (Fortunately I had that option available to me.) My father had a very similar experience when moving his NIC to a different slot.
Of course, in Linux it simply wasn't an issue. Linux doesn't care what slot the card is in. It just works.
And then there's the time I tried to install a serial mouse on an NT4 system that originally had a PS/2 mouse. I spent an entire day trying to make that work until finally I just reinstalled NT. (Before you ask, I have years of experience supporting and maintaining NT in a large organization, so I figure I should know how to switch a mouse.)
Jason.
I have another example (Score:2)
Time: 40 seconds.
Then, a few nights later, I booted Windows 2000. It was properly detected, only for it to require that I download some drivers from Logitech. Exactly what I wanted to do with my time. After installing the bloody drivers, I needed a reboot.
Time: 7 minutes (and only because I have ADSL).
Re:Configuring Window Managers (Score:2)
I pass through three logical networks each with wireless and non wireless access points. Any set of IP settings and network card may be in use at any time.
Linux : Take 10 minutes to write and app that changes symlinks for
Note, that you can change network card without dropping tcp connections [e.g. move from non wireless to wireless mid download without it failing]
Windows [98] : Inset new make of network card. Discover you have no drivers. Find another machine with an internet link to download the drivers. Install the drivers. Discover you now have to copy stuff over from the Windows CD. Find copy of Correct Windows CD & CDROM drive. Install stuff. Reboot machine. Change IP settings. Reboot Machine. Reapply service packs & patches. Reboot Machine many times. Plug into network.
Re:Configuring Window Managers (Score:2, Informative)
The RH-based distros have kudzu, which detects hardware changes and (theoretically) configures it and loads the proper driver. I've seen it in action on a friends computer running mandrake...if you have a stock kernel with all the modules compiled, it actually does work pretty well with standard hardware. But yeah, if you change your hardware it will come up during the boot process and ask to to configure it.
Of course when it doesn't work you're arguably worse off than doing it manually, because you have to figure out how to undo whatever changes it makes, prevent it from trying to set up the hardware again, and then configure it yourself. Sort of like windows.
Windows product activation (Score:2, Funny)
Whereas in windows i can change 3/4ths of my hardware and reboot and everything will work.
If you change 7 out of 10 key items in your new Windows computer, it'll boot all right, but only to the "Activate this product" menu; you'll have to call Microsoft (giving your caller id away) to be able to run anything.
Re:Configuring Window Managers (Score:2, Insightful)
until one body can take the linux kernel, the GNU tools, all the GPL'd libraries, xfree86, the apps you use, (/)etc and put them together in a way much more like MS does with the layers of windows and much unlike a modern distro, this is going to happen. nobody wants this though, sorry. geeks only for now.
Windows, 10 minutes (Score:2)
Then another 90 minutes trying to get your modem going again, oh, and then discover that you've tromped a vital DLL, only you're not sure which one... )-:
BTW, you're not using Mandrake, are you? (-:
City of Largo's experience is that users switched across from Windows tweak for a day or few after the switch. This would imply that it has at least some appeal.
Point and click (Score:2)
I don't edit text files to configure my X. Perhaps I should? In any of KDE, Gnome or WindowMaker (and others, I'm sure), it's only a click or two to set background colour, image, series of images, application, whatever.
Have you tried CygWin? It makes life under Windows more bearable. There's also an X server for it. And if you need an instant X server anywhere, try WeirdX.
Sad.
Did you know that you can configure Windows in just the same way? I.e., with regedit and/or at the cmd prompt? If you use point-and-click for Windows, why not for X?
Re:Really though (Score:2)
The workplace shell, and all of my apps speaking to each other and the shell itself (ie, drag a color, font, image to a piece of the app, like its menu, and *poof* new look happens) the way they did in that environment.