Re: Question about WindowMaker

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

Martin, you essentially answered what I would have written. The question 
of Omar is confuse.

At the bare minimum on a unix environment  you need an X server 
(although technically you could make gnustep run on the framebuffer). On 
a typical linux computer, this will be Xorg or Xfree for all 
environments (KDE, GNOME, GNUstep....). This is a common point.

Then you run a WindowManager. We are "agnostic" but we can say that 
WindowMaker is our preferred one. On GNOME you may run sawfish. You will 
always be running a window manager on X. It can be so integrated and 
part of the desktop environment that you aren't aware of it.

At this point you can use applications like Xterm, a calculator or even 
a browser like Firefox.

If you want to have "more" then you need something for your 
workspace/desktop. It can be a simple file manager or something designed 
to be a more complete experience. Nautilus, Thunar... and for GNUstep it 
is GWorkspace. Note that GWorkspace is not strictly needed for a gnustep 
application to work and that it can be replaced by another application 
with corresponding functionality.

So there is no "integration" of these components in the sense that one 
does it all, but they can collaborate each other.

Riccardo


> While the above is pretty much an RTFM question, it is
> probably worthwhile to point out the relationship between
> WindowMaker and GNUstep as well as recent activity on WM
> development.
>
> WindowMaker provides a GNUstep-like look-and-feel, but it is not
> even based on GNUstep (and of course not on GWorkspace!).
> However it is designed to allow good integration of GNUstep
> applications, like GWorkspace is one.
>
> While WindowMaker development had been pretty dead for quite a
> while (in fact, the application is very stable, so development
> was not strictly necessary), there has been quite a bit of
> initiative lately, Carlos Mafra maintains a git repo for bug
> fixes and also one for new WM features. I provide automatic
> Debian builds based on that code (see [2]).