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wmaker
Mirror of the official repository repo.or.cz/wmaker-crm.git. Do not send pull requests here, send your patches to [email protected] instead
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In case you want to have a NeXT-like experience on Linux, I’ve had good fun with NEXTSPACE:
- https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace
Alas, the developer is Ukrainian, and hasn’t committed anything in a long while. But maybe someone could help out?
Like NsCDE [1], these kinds of old school environments are nice an all until you fire up a modern browser or an app made for Gnome and you end up in a kind of aesthetic mess.
[1] https://github.com/NsCDE/NsCDE
I have been using Windowmaker for years back in the day, and just to be sure reinstalled it a few minutes ago to check how it behaves today: no problems whatsoever with Firefox, LibreOffice, Gimp, Handbrake, and other modern apps. Using it right now to write this post with Firefox, in fact. Not that I didn't expect it to work since the last stable version is dated 2020 and the GitHub repo is quite active (last update 3 days ago).
Nostalgia aside (I was lucky enough to attend a real NeXT demonstration in 1994/1995) WindowMaker has been literally a life saver over 20 years ago when I had to build a desktop for ~50 remote points of sale in which the operator could only perform a few tasks, and setting up it as a locked "kiosk on steroids" with a fixed dock that could open only the 4-5 needed apps allowed them to do their jobs without distractions or exposing the unnecessary/dangerous parts of the system.
https://www.windowmaker.org/
https://github.com/window-maker/wmaker
Xfce + a GTK theme that mimics CDE is probably a good option: https://github.com/B00merang-Project/Solaris-9 I couldn't get this theme to work on a modern gnome/GTK4 environment, sadly, but suspect it would still work with something GTK3 like xfce.
> Like the volume controls on my keyboard don't work
Perhaps some dockapp will work? Window Maker does not really handle volume controls itself, but you can use some other application for that stuff. My USB headset's volume controls do work but AFAIK that is done via Pulseaudio.
> some loading screen windows for some games flicker like hell... I'm sure these are solvable.
Not sure this is a Window Maker issue, perhaps it is some issue with the game or with Wine/Proton that if you use a compositor it masks it?
I often use Gamescope for games that do not work with Linux desktop nicely (also lets me switch virtual desktops seamlessly). I have my own fork of gamescope[0] that allows remapping keys which helps a lot with some indie games that do not do proper remapping too. Note though that this is almost two years old out of sync with Valve's gamescope (i should try and bring it up to date at some point).
[0] https://github.com/badsectoracula/gamescope/