Window Maker Live (wmlive) is an installable Linux live CD/ISO, and is based mostly on the recently released “Bookworm” branch of Debian Linux. It relies on the extensively preconfigured Window Maker window manager as its default graphical user interface. It can also be considered as an alternative installation medium for Debian/Bookworm. As such, wmlive is fully compatible with the official Debian/Bookworm repositories for security updates and bug fixes.
We’re not a Linux distribution website, but I do like to highlight the ones that are doing something different. While Window Maker can be installed on pretty much anything that pulsates electricity, I always prefer to have a preconfigured experience with these less popular environments, if only to get a better idea of what veteran users like. Distributions such as these are an excellent way of doing that.
So, if you’ve always wanted to try Window Maker – here’s a good option.
Same, and I’m going to try out this new Window Maker Live release so I can compare it to the last GnuSTEP Live CD release, which was a bit buggy and underwhelming in my experience.
Window Maker != GNUstep.
Window Maker is just a window manager.
GNUstep is a whole desktop environment.
Not a complete one because that is not their goal but other projects are filling in the gaps, notably GSDE:
https://github.com/onflapp/gs-desktop
I’m not sure if you were replying to me, but if so yes, I’m well aware. 🙂 Window Maker was my first window manager back when I was getting into Linux in the late 90s, and from it I learned about GNUstep and NeXTSTEP. If you look into the Window Maker Live distro, it also includes a nearly complete GNUstep environment. This is copied from their readme.txt:
I did try it out for a little while last night and it definitely is a better overall experience than the much older GNUstep Live CD, as I suspected. It’s not perfect but it’s a nice default configuration and I’ll probably install it on a spare drive this week to give it a full go.
People like to roll their eyes at Window Maker but it’s very good. Quite configurable, my “home” screen with Window Maker, when first logged in is nothing (just the background, nothing else).
God I love this guy’s website. It reminds me of how things used to be.