It really is a great WM, a few updates here and there would be nice but it’s still lightning fast and very cool to look at.

… ever tried

hwinfo –framebuffer

?

In spite of the fact that it’s compatibility issues gradually multiply as the rest of the OpenDesktop community moves on, I can’t seem to find any other wm I like better. I’ve had my curiosity piqued by Openbox, E17, FVWM, XFCE4, and most recently Awesome, due to our host (I intend to give it a serious try soon)… these are all quite nice, but for me WindowMaker is the best compromise between them right now. It’s not as minimal as Openbox (though you can make it pretty close, as you can turn most features off if you want), but it doesn’t have the animated bling of E17. The few animations it does have (all optional) are fast and often pretty useful. Most of the themes for it look horribly outdated, which I’m sure turns most people off of it, if they even hear about it at all. But the framework is there to make your own themes extremely easily. I posted one to box-look, and I hope to post more in the future. You really can make it look very nice.

I know it’s a different paradigm from tiling/console interfaces, but it can be set up to have a lot of overlap in functionality. Like Openbox, it can be almost entirely keyboard-controlled, with easily customizable shortcuts. Unlike Openbox, it has pinnable menus, enabling you to launch several apps or scripts in quick succession. It has customizable menus somewhat similar to Openbox, and any menu entry– whether it points to an application or a custom script– can be assigned its own kb shortcut.

It does have some issues like anything else, but to me they pale next to the overall benefit of the most efficient and comfortable computer interface I’ve used to date. If I had any serious programming skills, I’d be tempted to fork the project just to keep it alive. It’s a real shame to watch it languish.