WindowMaker was quite nice, specially the docklets.
It replaced AfterStep for me (around 1999) and I used it mainly until 2004.
Nowadays I just use whatever is the default in any OS I use, as I no longer have the patient to tinker with settings.
Gnome 3 is turning out to be the best DE on any platform. It's by far the most polished and innovative I've seen.
I never thought I'd say that 3 years ago.
Re:30 Window Managers in 30 Days
by dredmorbius on Sunday October 20, 2013 @04:18PM
(#6581295)
WindowMaker was quite nice
Hey! It's not dead yet!
(Entered from my WindowMaker desktop). Development's even restarted in the past year or so, after being on hiatus (other than bug support) since ~2005.
This is one of the things that made me switch back to Linux from OS X. Inspired by this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6270254 I started running #! on a Tecra M2, and I now switch between the standard OpenBox config and dwm pretty constantly. The sheer feeling of freedom that you get from not being limited by a proprietary system where configuration is discouraged is one of the best parts of Linux and free software.
In all honesty though, dwm, awesome, and i3 are probably my favorite picks for minimalism. There's just nothing that comes close to a hybrid/tiling WM in terms of efficiency.
It's like vim. You don't ever realize how awful using the arrow keys and Ctrl-whatever was until you've tried HJKL and the massive amount of keybindings in vim, along with the endless configurability of your .vimrc.
Floating WMs are convenient, but tiling WMs are just quality. On a 1024x768 screen, they save so much space that you never thought you needed.