Awesome: A window manager that gets out of the way

Posted Nov 18, 2011 9:48 UTC (Fri) by Yenya (subscriber, #52846)
In reply to: Awesome: A window manager that gets out of the way by nix
Parent article: Awesome: A window manager that gets out of the way

> I see awesome as the first window manager in donkey's years
> that stands a chance of being configurable enough to supplant
> fvwm on my desktop.

Awesome is hardly the first programmable window manager (or even window manager programmable in a functional language). You must have missed at least sawfish (former sawmill), which has been the default WM in GNOME for years.

Yes, I am a happy sawfish user (now with XFCE), thanks for asking ;-)

Awesome: A window manager that gets out of the way

Posted Nov 21, 2011 14:51 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (3 responses)

I used sawfish intermittently for a bit, but it kept on rusting and then went maintenance-dead for years. I really should try again.

Awesome: A window manager that gets out of the way

Posted Nov 21, 2011 15:02 UTC (Mon) by Yenya (subscriber, #52846) [Link] (2 responses)

Yes, the original author (John Harper, IIRC) has abandoned it after GNOME has gone the metacity way, but now a new group of people picked it up, and continue its development.

Awesome: A window manager that gets out of the way

Posted Nov 21, 2011 22:31 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

IIRC, for "abandoned" you should read "went to work for Apple, who demanded as a condition of employment that he cease work on Sawfish". Rather nasty of them, if true.

Awesome: A window manager that gets out of the way

Posted Nov 22, 2011 8:12 UTC (Tue) by Yenya (subscriber, #52846) [Link]

Interesting, I did not know that.

I had the impression that he declared sawfish has reached the mature state, so it did not need further development at all.

I have even managed to look it up - I think this was the point where the group of developers decided to take over the sawfish development, and make a formal release after long time:

http://www.mail-archive.com/sawfish-list@gnome.org/msg005...