After many months of hard work by Sasha, he’s happy to announce the birth of AfterStep 2.0 beta to the world, packed with new features and enhancements.
AfterStep 2.0 beta1 Released
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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What’s the difference between this and FLuxbox, Enlightenment or XFCE?
What’s the difference between Windows, Gnome and MacOS X?
A more valid question would be about the differences of AfterStep and WindowMaker.
is if they rewrote it all (or all of WindowMaker) in ObjectiveC using the GNUStep frameworks.
What’s the difference between this and WindowMaker.
Will it become the WM of the GNUstep project ?
Actually, perhaps I should be helpful
First we’ll establish the similarities.
1. They’re all window managers or desktop environments.
2. They all can manage windows in X.
3. None of them are the major ones for Linux
And for the differences:
1. Enlightenment and XFCE are desktop environments. AfterStep heads in this direction, but I’m not sure if I’d classify it as one (if only because it was the first window manager I chose to use after being disappointed with fvwm95 on RH 5.1). As dekstop environments, they contain more than just the ability to manage windows—in fact, you can run XFCE with another window manager, or you can run xfwm (the window manager that comes with XFCE) with another desktop environment (I ran it with ROX for a while, though I’m now using Sawfish+ROX).
Enlightenment, I think, tries to do everything. I could never successfully use it, so I can’t comment much on it. Enlightenment has a bunch of libraries, many of which are used by people who don’t use the WM. Eterm is a well-known terminal emulator; it comes from here. IIRC, Enlightenment was the default wm with Gnome in RedHat 5.1, but this was a pre-1 version (but even then I preferred it to KDE
).
XFCE began by attempting to bring the CDE environment to Opensourceland, though I think now it’s diverged from that ideal somewhat. It includes, among other things, a filemanager and a GTK settings configurer. XFCE, like ROX-Desktop and Gnome, use GTK+ 2. XFCE is best compared with ROX-Desktop, though these two groups don’t try to compete (the ROX website suggests xfwm4 as a window manager, and the XFCE website suggests ROX if you want icons on the desktop). XFCE has no applications written for it in the sense that Gnome, ROX-Desktop or KDE do, but it appears to be designed to work alongside GTK apps of any discription.
AfterStep aimed to bring the NeXTSTEP environment to Opensourceland. Judging by the screenshots, they’ve departed from that ideal too much (for instance, useability is decreased by the lumping together of destructive and non-destructive buttons on the right-side of the window frame</increadibly opinionated utterance>). AfterStep is mostly just a windowmanager/application launcher, though it does contain a few libraries and aterm (a terminal emulator). AfterStep used to be best compared to Window Maker.
Fluxbox (and the other *boxes) try to be very small and efficient, something of the antithesis of KDE and Enlightenment. Fluxbox should be compared with twm. However, Fluxbox and co. look much newer. I think in looks they compare in some ways to Enlightenment.
The above descriptions don’t give much of a difference really, but you have to extrapolate. AfterStep is going to have a wharf/dock with all that that entails; XFCE is going to be more complete (in that you need fewer other apps to use it); Fluxbox is going to be simpler.
What’s the difference between this and WindowMaker.
Will it become the WM of the GNUstep project ?
To your second question: I find it incredibly unlikely. AfterStep has been around for a while (I used it when I first used Linux on RH 5.1), so it’s not like this is something new. While neither are written using the OPENSTEP API (or is that OpenStep—for all the useability, NeXT certainly did that badly), Window Maker seems more like a GNUStep app. GNUStep, for example, looks pretty similar to OpenStep (OPENSTEP?); Window Maker looks pretty similar to OpenStep (OPENSTEP?), whereas AfterStep looks more like a *box/enlightenment (not ‘looks like’, it’s a comparison on a scale).
To your first: there’s a world of difference. Take a look at the screenshots to get the beginnings of the difference. Run the two yourself to get the middle. Read the source to get the end
AfterStep has a taskbar; Window Maker doesn’t. astep has a pager; wmaker has a clip. astep is eyecandiful, wmaker is simple. When I first switched from astep to wmaker, astep needed manual editing of a configfile but wmaker had a prefs app. astep has more buttons on the window decoration thes wmaker. This may have changed but I’m happy with sawfish so I won’t be bothered checking.
Anyway, there’s more than that, but that’s just a first course
When is the second cource?
Here, guys, take a look at this site. Nice summary and some information:
http://www.plig.org/xwinman/
The GNUstep community seems to favour InterfaceWM (interfacewm.sourceforge.net) as the official WM of GNUstep. Working with WindowMaker has proved problematic, since it has a great deal of bloat and some would prefer to see the Dock, for example, in a separate application. Afterstep suffers from the same problems as WindowMaker.
window maker is nice and clean
and bubblemon just makes it
go little ducky!
Enlightenment and XFCE are desktop environments.
The Enlightenment developers seem to emphasize that E is _not_ and is not meant to become a desktop environment. The next version E17 will be a “a window manager and desktop shell”, meaning “it will manage your application windows, being able to launch applications, and also manage your files”.
On the other hand, XFCE, and especially the new XFCE4, is as much a fullblown desktop environment as KDE and GNOME are, but not as bloated, and it is in some ways more modular meaning that you may install and use only those parts that you need.
Afterstep? I like its looks, but personally if I want to use a lightweight window manager instead of KDE, Gnome or XFCE, I’d choose something else than Afterstep – or Enlightenment or Windowmaker. I’m a fan of the *box window managers (Fluxbox, Blackbox, Openbox, Waimea) but also IceWM is quite nice. When compared to E, AS & WM, they are less powerhungry, do not occupy so much desktop space with their big buttons, icons and other features, but still have most of the important features of the three bigger WMs and many more that are lacking from them. Just my opinion though.
cool to see a full version jump! Afterstap is one of my favs especially all the cool transparency stuff.
A little off-topic, but…
Afterstep? I like its looks, but personally if I want to use a lightweight window manager instead of KDE, Gnome or XFCE, I’d choose something else than Afterstep – or Enlightenment or Windowmaker. I’m a fan of the *box window managers
I also want something lightweight, but in my quest (fvwm -> afterstep -> windowmaker …) I’ve settled in one that is *really* small: pwm [ http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/pwm/ ]. Also, it really manages windows (tabbed windows are implemented in the window manager instead of having to implement it in every application).
I’ve also installed in another computer ahwm [ http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~ahiorean/ahwm/ ], that is also small (in both code size and screen real state) and efficient (with a twist: no menus, no handles; apps are launched using keyboard shortcuts, similar to the case of backbox+bbkeys).
Honestly, window managing isn’t a “fixed” matter, and it still can be anhanced a lot.
I’m somewhat sadded that projects like AfterStep advance only in a “predictable” way: more colors, more antialias, more xxxx.
Did anyone notice that the background on the Translunacy theme looked like the “Inside your computer” background theme for the Windows 9x Plus! Pack?
I’m not sure if it is though…
e17 will come out when doom III and duke nukem forever is out
It’s obviously not the same theme, but it IS most CERTAINLY using the same desktop background from the “Inside Your Computer” Windows Plus Pack theme.
–JM
>Working with WindowMaker has proved problematic, since it
>has a great deal of bloat and some would prefer to see the
>Dock, for example, in a separate application. Afterstep
>suffers from the same problems as WindowMaker.
This is not true. The wharf (AfterSteps terminology for the Dock) is a seperate module. As is the pager, the winlist, etc. You only load those modules you like to make use of.
to continue the off topicness of small WMs, I really like LWM, http://www.boognish.org.uk/enh/lwm/
Its great, more confusing for newbies than OpenWin, and much more effective when you get use to it.
Afterstep blows. Windowmaker is so much better.
I don’t understand it. Afterstep has been around for such a long time, but still they cannot get consistent and nice looking interface.
Yes, I’m flaming. But look at the screenshots.
Inconsistencies:
– The titlebar shadows: to upper left on text and lower right on icons
– Dock items: some opaque while others are transparent
– Gradients: again some ligthed from top left while some are from bottom right
I’m not listings things that look not-so-good, because I may not be very objective.
But just look at the screenshots again:
http://www.afterstep.org/look.php
Then compare them with other ones:
http://www.windowmaker.org/gallery.html
http://www.xfce.org/en/screenshots.html
http://www.enlightenment.org/pages/shots.html
http://fluxbox.sourceforge.net/themes.php
OK, I should not call it “ugly” but it’s at least “improfessinal”.
This was a good post. Let the screenshots speak for themselves.
I agree that WindowMaker looks better than AfterStep. And Fluxbox has some very cool themes, but XFce4 is just so easy to configure and use – simple and nice. =^)