Productivity in Window Maker

I use the old school, lightweight Window Maker window manager on Debian Unstable.

Since Window Maker is only a “window manager” and not a full environment it may feel backwards to use it in 2024, there’s a lot of things you may miss, a lot of work to do from a fresh install.

I’m biased toward selecting apps that are more Window Maker-like in some way or just fit the feel.

You may also want to take a look at Window Maker Live. Possibly a good way to try (or even install) a Window-Maker-centric Debian setup.

My Window Maker setup

Reasons you may want to use Window Maker

• Looks very cool
• Lots of handy (and just plain cool) dockapps (think built-in system info tools)

Things I want to add to this article

• key ring manager
• custom obj for wmcube (maybe write a script)
• my amor buddy–could share.
• deja-dup
• cursor theme
• icon theme
• power daemon management (efficient/battery save vs performance)
• touchpad
• i don’t like middle click paste.
• xsreensaver lock broken? hotkey… startup problem?
• battery performance change (like battery savery mode)
• adjust brightness with gui
• tap touchpad to click

Window Maker-specific and Appearance

Dock apps

Dock apps for Window Maker. Dock apps are such a cool feature of Window Maker.

Check out dockapps.net!

You can sudo apt-get install wm.. for these dockapps I mention below. The dockapps I’ve tried seem to all have good man pages, I think.

What I’m using

• wmclock: I like this because it shows the time and the date as a tear-away date pad graphic.

• wmbattery and wmacpi: two different battery-relaed dockapps! A special note for launch command for wmbattery:

• wmbattery lets you execute a command when the battery is below critical. Here’s a command that will send a notification that the battery is critically low):

  wmbattery -c 10 -l 30 -a /home/tilde/Music/sfx/sosumi.au -x "/usr/bin/espeak -v en-us+whisper 'critically low battery' -a 200 -s 130 && /usr/bin/notify-send -w -u critical -i /usr/share/WindowMaker/Icons/timer.tiff 'Low Battery' 'Battery at %percent%%, with %minutes% minutes left.'"
  

  Note the full/abs/real paths. The audio file is an .au, I feel it’s kind of hard to find .au files these days. Also this command seems to do something strange to my audio, so maybe don’t use -a.

• wmbubble, wmcube, wmforkplop, wmmon, wmtop: fun and/or informative dockapps for system information, a few of which are veyr visually interesting/fun to me.

  • wmbubble: bubbles and duck–animations get more intense/fills up as the system resources get more utilized.
• wmcliphist: keeps (some?) clipboard history

• wmsystemtray: I feel this one is sort of crucial. A system tray for app icons like blueman-applet, nm-applet, redshift-gtk, or the like.

  • I have some notes about how it can’t be ran along side other system trays, or something?
• wmmixer: I really like the way it looks when I turn the volume up and down with this app and the fact that I can twist a graphical knob to do so as well.

• wmweather+: gives me weather data, but it’s sort of complicated to use. I think you need to find a “metar- station”, and define the long+lat, with a command like this: wmweather+ -metar-station SOMEID -location "0.0N 0.0W". It seems to have some neat features if your metar station supports it? You may want to also get radar image from National Weather Service. Please man wmweather+.

  • I haven’t figured out getting actual forecast working outside of current weather
  • wmweather+ -s SOMEMETARHERE -location "0.0N 0.0W" -radar-uri https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/SOMESTATION_loop.gif -radar-crop POSXxPOSY+WIDTH+HEIGHT -radar-cross 244x194 -animate
• wmforecast simple forecast/temperature app. More iconified and simple than wmweather+. Displays handy info in a hover/tooltip, including forecast. This may be the easiest to work with and is perhaps the easiest to work with.

wmbiff

wmbiff needs a config i had an example at /usr/share/doc/wmbiff/examples/sample.wmbiffrc

cp /usr/share/doc/wmbiff/examples/sample.wmbiffrc ~/.wmbiffrc

supports pop3 and imap i think i was able to configure this to work with Protonmail Bridge pretty easily.

label.4=IMAP4
path.4=imap:me@pm.me:password@127.0.0.1:1143
interval.4=300          # 5 minutes
action.4=claws-mail

I also set this to notify me:

globalnotify=aplay /home/tilde/Music/sfx/youvegotmail.wav

I don’t reall like how this app looks, but its features are great!

Recommendations

• wmnut: Keep track of a Network UPS on the network via NUT

• wmitime: I feel it’s a nice, but confusing clock display. I think it supports Swatch Internet Time

• wmfire: monitor cpu, memory, network, or file with a fiery animation. I think this is cool, but I think there’s maybe a bug where I can’t drag it into my dock.

Honorable mentions

These may be handy or neat:

• wmoonclock: shows phase of the moon! can click to view other info. how to i configure this?
• wmxres: set the resolution/change between xorg modes!
• wmressel: I think this is basically the same as wmxres
• wmsun: displays current day’s sun rise and sun set times.
• wmshutdown: button for shutting down
• wmstickynotes: a really great sticky notes dockapp. You click the pad and a sticky note pops up you can place anywhere on the screen.
• wmpinboard: notes you can place (and maybe draw in) and have pinned on a little corkboard graphic
• wmpuzzle: a sliding puzzle game
• wmclockmon: lcd clock that seems to work well, I just don’t like the look.

Some more:

• wmsysmon: monitors CPU usage, memory, swap, uptime, and interrupts, but I’m not very fond of it.
• wmgtemp: system temp dockapp
• wmtemp: system temp app with lcd screen
• wmcore: graph-like display of the usage of each core
• wmmon: monitors realtime CPU load as well as average system load (graph I think)
• wmcalc: a little calculator
• wmfrog: I think it’s a kind of silly-looking weather app. Launch with something like wmfrog -s METARSTATIONID.
• wmxmms2: “A dockable XMMS2 client.” I don’t use xmms2. Seems pretty nice.
• wmtv: I find this interesting and wish I could see it in action! maybe one day. video4linux TV player.

I didn’t like/didn’t work for me

• wmbutton: a grid of buttons which launch apps or whatever
• wmail: email/inbox docklet which wants qmail’s Maildir format or mbox.
• wmfsm: disk space avaiable
• wmweather: another weather app. i find it hard to read and I don’t like the look.
• wmrack: crashes for me. “CD Player and Mixer dock applet.”
• wmwave: “statistical information for wireless ethernet.”
• wmdocker: I had a note about this working funny. I think it’s probably better to just use wmsystemtray instead.
• wmcpuload: i don’t like how it’s displayed
• wmcpu: I had a note about it being hard to read, basically.

Not relevant to me, or just other ones I tried

In this section the DockApps just weren’t relevant to me, I didn’t care to put much time into using them, or they’re just here…

• wmifs: I think it’s an OK bandwidth usage indicator. I dislike that it didn’t seem to display the names of the interfaces.
• wmmon: works but its not pretty enough. other apps do same but better.
• wmcdplay: I don’t have a CD player on my laptop!
• wmget: maybe a download manager? seems kind of annoying to use.
• wmdiskmon: I get some kind of error. LCD-display-style disk usage monitor?
• wmhdplop: “monitor hard-drive (or partition) activity.”
• wmnet: I have a note “broke or too hard configure”
• wmdrawer needs config file. didn’t really try. maybe i’m wrong, but I’m prety happy with what I think is the built-in drawer thing in Window Maker.

custom wmcube object

You can actually use a custom object for the wmcube, but I think it needs a weird custom format. Maybe I’ll write a conversion script.

Dockapp Archive

Archive.org archvie of dockapps.windowmaker.org

Making a dock app

There’s a ruby SDK, but I wonder if I could bind haskell to the c++ myself? that’d be a great project.

ruby-dockapp: “Ruby-DockApp is a ruby extention library for making dockapps.”

Have a favorite dockapp I haven’t mentioned?

Please email me!

Window doesn’t actually focus on click?

It took me a while to realize, because of my track pad settings, that I would think I’m left clicking to swith focus to another window, and it wouldn’t bring it to the front yet it would focus it. I initially thought it was a bug. Turns out I was middle clicking the window instead of left clicking it. Interesting.

Application Menu

edit ~/GNUstep/Defaults/WMRootMenu

(
  Debian,
  (
    Applications,
    OPEN_PLMENU,
    "|| wmmenugen -parser:xdg /usr/share/applications/"
  ),
  (Run..., EXEC, "%A(Run,Type command to run)"),
  (
    "Window Maker",
    ("Info Panel ...", INFO_PANEL),
    ("Legal Panel ...", LEGAL_PANEL),
    (Preferences, EXEC, WPrefs),
    ("Refresh screen", REFRESH),
    (Restart, RESTART)
  ),
  (
    WorkSpace,
    (Appearance, OPEN_MENU, appearance.menu),
    ("Arrange Icons", ARRANGE_ICONS),
    ("Clear Session", CLEAR_SESSION),
    ("Hide Others", HIDE_OTHERS),
    ("Save Session", SAVE_SESSION),
    ("Show All", SHOW_ALL),
    (Workspaces, WORKSPACE_MENU)
  ),
  (Exit, EXIT),
  ("Exit session", SHUTDOWN)
)

Just edit the rest through the app editor thing.

Add things to startup

I add things I want to autostart to the Window Maker autostart script (followed by &, like below):

➜  ~ cat ~/GNUstep/Library/Window Maker/autostart
#!/bin/sh
blueman-applet &
amor &
xscreensaver --no-splash &
xeyes &
xpenguins -a -b -t "Big Penguins" &
oneko &
redshift-gtk -m randr -l 37.8044:122.2712 &
deja-dup &
nm-applet &

App icons

I wanted to change the Thunar icon for my launcher (or whatever it’s called) so I did this and was able to select it through something like settings > icon image:

cp /usr/share/icons/hicolor/48x48/apps/org.xfce.thunar.png ~/GNUstep/Library/Icons/thunar.png

GTK theme switch & theme

Some apps use GTK for their GUI.

For appearance consistency you may want to install a GTK theme which compliments Window Maker and some tool for managing the GTK theme you’re using.

I like to use lxappearance to manage my GTK theme (I used sudo apt-get install lxappearance).

I installed and use the redmond97 GTK theme, specifically the redmond cde theme, to match the overal purplish thing I have going on. I think it matches the SteelBlueSilk Window Maker theme.

Bonus: https://github.com/mgsander/wmstep/tree/master/WMStep: something I found but I didn’t get working.

I went ahead and disabled the GTK window decoration hints or the like in the advanced section of WPrefs or something. I think this maybe makes things look more consistent.

Adding hotkeys

You can add hotkeys by editing the Window Maker menu through WPrefs, under Applications Menu Definition. I like to create a special submenu that holds all the run program entries which have hotkeys associated to them.

For example, I set lock (xscreensaver-command -lock) to my super key + l.

I think sometimes (?) you may need to restart the session for hotkeys to come into effect.

Control Screen Brightness

Use brightnessctl set 10%- and brightnessctl set 10%+ then add to menu and assign hotkeys.

Essential programs

Other/quick mentions

• RSS: Liferea

Login manager

I recommend using LightDM as your login manager. One thing I like about it is I can switch the environment/WM I log into. This can be handy because sometimes you come across something like how Waydroid only runs in Wayland.

Archivers

xarchiver

Browsers

firefox-esrMy main web browser is just the Debian-provided Firefox.

https://github.com/dillo-browser/dillo – you actually may not want to use the repo version and build it from there, because of the time of writing this i’m told the repo verison is ten years old. https://github.com/dillo-browser/dillo/blob/master/doc/install.md gopher plugin: https://github.com/dillo-browser/dillo-plugin-gopher

KeepassXC

Password manager.

deja-dup

I just find it’s very reliable for backups and easy to use.

audacious

Audio player.

The gtk audacious is great! the hotkeys seem to mostly work out-of-the-box for what I’ve used, I think? You can use Winamp skins if you want to go the extra mile. If you want to go even further, milkdrop is available for linux.

Language switcher

I’m using IBUS.

IBus is an intelligent input bus for Linux/Unix.

it shows up as a language switcher in the system tray. i don’t know how or why. i can switch with super + space.

Thunar

I feel like Thunar is a wonderful file manager with a great amount of features and fits the Window Maker feel and lightness and kidn of retro look.

sudo apt-get install thunar

For thumbnails you may also want to install tumbler.

Bluetooth and Wifi GUI

These two apps will enable a GUI through the system tray (dockapp).

I use nm-applet for all my needs. I add it to autostart.

i also use blueman-applet (you can just install through blueman package), add it to autostart for Window Maker.

xfce4-terminal

I find that this is a nice terminal to use in Window Maker.

Screenshots

Scrot and Maim didn’t seem to work well with WindowMaker hotkey or the like. So I’m using xfce4-screenshooter, which seems to segfault if I capture window border when capturing the active window.

I made two entries:

• Active window (alt + prt scr): xfce4-screenshooter -w --no-border
• Default (prt scr): xfce4-screenshooter

xscreensaver

The power management features are also nice and it provides the ability to lock the screen.

don’t forget to add to autostart

For images you may be able to set both the text manipulation and the random image to atom/rss feeds:

• https://planet.debian.org/rss20.xml - debian news
• You can search a “booru” like Konachan which has wallpapers and provides RSS/ATOM feeds for search results, and you can specifically filter by “safe”
  • Some early 2000s, late 90s vibes: https://konachan.net/post/atom?tags=SOMETAG+rating%3Asafe
• https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/rss/index.html

redshift

I like using redshift to change the color temperature. I installed redshift-gtk to get the system tray:

sudo apt-get install redshift redshift-gtk

You can run with a command like redshift-gtk -m randr -l long:lat.

Beware as north is represented as a positive number and west is represented as a negative number. This messed me up for a bit.

Don’t forget to add to Window Maker’s startup.

Example ~/.config/redshift.conf config:

[redshift]
; Set the day and night screen temperatures
temp-day=5700
temp-night=3500

; Enable/Disable fade effect (0 or 1)
fade=1

; Set the location provider: 'manual' (for manual geolocation) or 'geoclue2' (for automatic geolocation)
;location-provider=geoclue2
location-provider=manual

; Set your location if you're using manual geolocation
[manual]
lat=...
lon=...

Claws/claws-mail

I use this email client with Protonmail Bridge and wmbiff (mentioned in this document).

Really feels like it fits the spirit of Window Maker, to me.

I also recommend installing claws-mail-plugins and laws-mail-extra-plugins.

Configuration

I think I did create ~/.claws-mail/queue and set it as the Preferences for current account then advanced tand put queued messages in and I used the absolute path/realpath, because it complained about the queue directory or something. even then it didn’t work

I finally set the queue folder to the IMAP Drafts folder or whatever and now it works!

It may also complain about not being able to open signature.

Bonus software+ apps i like using with

shotwell for viewing photos

deja-dup has been good to me. but does it need something to actually launch backups in gui more than just running in bg or whatever?

For torrents I tried using transmission-qt for a while, but actually that doesn’t look right and I experienced some problems with it. I highly recommend just using Deluge for torrents. I do think transmission-daemon is great for servers, though.

ted https://www.nllgg.nl/Ted/#How_to_install_Ted

I recommend installing libreoffice-gtk3 for office. lyx seems interesting but I haven’t used it much yet. also sudo apt install texlive-full

XMPP client: gajim (seen below, connected to my XMPP server which is also connected to my IRC server, edited to respect privacy):

Set default apps

sudo update-alternatives –config x-www-browser

xdg-mime default Thunar.desktop inode/directory

➜  ~ vim .config/mimeapps.list 
➜  ~ xdg-mime default Thunar.desktop inode/directory

➜  ~ update-mime-database ~/.local/share/mime

➜  ~ mimeopen -d Downloads
Please choose a default application for files of type inode/directory

	1) Visual Studio Code  (code)
	2) VSCodium  (codium)
	3) Konqueror  (kfmclient_dir)
	4) Files  (org.gnome.Nautilus)
	5) Disk Usage Analyzer  (org.gnome.baobab)
	6) Dolphin  (org.kde.dolphin)
	7) Gwenview  (org.kde.gwenview)
	8) Kate  (org.kde.kate)
	9) Thunar File Manager  (thunar)
	10) Other...

use application #9
Opening "Downloads" with Thunar File Manager  (inode/directory)
➜  ~ 

Bonus

rofi

great for…

sudo apt-get install rofi

create ~/.config/rofi/config.rasi:

configuration {
  display-drun: "Applications:";
  display-window: "Windows:";
  drun-display-format: "{icon} {name}";
  show-icons: true;
  icon-theme: "Papirus";
}

look at the commands possible:

rofi

you can use as an application launcher, window switcher… i’d like to install the emoji selector but i’m feeling lazy.

add to various key shortcuts hotkeys, i did this by making entries to my applications menu. some i did:

• windows: rofi -show window (win+w)
• apps: rofi -show drun (win+r)
• files: rofi -show filebrowser (win+f)

skippy-xd

sudo apt-get install git build-essential libx11-dev libxcomposite-dev libxdamage-dev libxrender-dev libxext-dev libxft-dev libxinerama-dev libpng-dev libimlib2-dev libwnck-dev libstartup-notification0-dev
sudo apt-get install libgif-dev

git clone https://github.com/richardgv/skippy-xd.git
cd skippy-xd
make
sudo make install

now you can add skippy-xd --start-daemon to your autostart… and assign the skippy-xd --toggle-window-picker to a hotkey (i added toggle skippy to my hotkeys section in applications menu, basically assigned to super + s)

in ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/autostart add skippy-xd --start-daemon &

it can also be configured…

Laptop

tap to click

sudo apt update
sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-libinput
sudo mkdir -p /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d
sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/40-libinput.conf

contents:

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "libinput touchpad catchall"
    MatchIsTouchpad "on"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    Driver "libinput"
    Option "Tapping" "on"
EndSection

restart your x session.

Language switcher

I use ibus-pinyin.

Add the following command to your Window Maker startup script, such as ~/GNUstep/Library/WindowMaker/autostart:

ibus-daemon -drx

It should appear in system tray for you to switch between.

I have it configured so windows+ space switches.

ibus-setup

Toys

xpenguins

Penguins to walk and fall off windows and more.

xpenguins -ab t "Big Penguins"

I find it has a good deal of nice config options.

oneko

Cat chases your cursor. Note there are different flags you can use for different skins.

kde amor

# sudo apt-get update
# sudo apt-get install libqt5x11extras5-dev
# sudo apt-get install libkf5doctools-dev


# apt install build-essential cmake qtbase5-dev libqt5svg5-dev qttools5-dev libkf5windowsystem-dev libkf5configwidgets-dev libkf5xmlgui-dev libkf5dbusaddons-dev libkf5archive-dev libkf5notifications-dev libkf5completion-dev libkf5iconthemes-dev libkf5globalaccel-dev libkf5crash-dev libkf5kcmutils-dev libkf5declarative-dev libkf5service-dev libkf5parts-dev libkf5kio-dev libkf5coreaddons-dev libkf5guiaddons-dev

$ git clone https://github.com/KDE/amor.git
$ cd amor
$ mkdir build
$ cd build
$ cmake ..
# make install

install theme: https://www.opendesktop.org/p/1219081

copy theme files something like:

 $ mkdir outputtheme
 $ tar zxf sometheme.tar.tar -C outputtheme
 $ sudo cp -r . /usr/share/amor
 

Make your own custom AMOR buddy

You could do something like the following for a quick-ish custom AMOR buddy or whatever:

➜  amor cat examplerc 
# KDE Config File
[Config]
PixmapPath=pics/static
Static=true
Description=Unanimated example
Icon=../preview/example.png

[Base]
Sequence=example.png
HotspotX=0
HotspotY=58

➜  amor realpath examplerc
/usr/share/amor/examplerc

With the image in /usr/share/amor/pics/static/example.png.

Expose-like

Want something like the Gnome or Mac OSX Expose feature, where you can hit some hotkey and then see all the windows at once? skippy-xd is actually being maintained:

https://github.com/dreamcat4/skippy-xd

All you have to do is:

git clone https://github.com/dreamcat4/skippy-xd
cd skippy-xd
make
sudo make install
skippy-xd

You can map skippy-xd to whatever.

Unfortunately, this will also show all the little wm* dockapps.

Other

• xeyes: eyes that look at your cursor.
• A thread on Linux Questions about Virtual Pets
• xsnow
• xteddy

Troubleshooting

Apps keep autostarting when I don’t want them to

I had to figure out why things kept autostarting despite not being in my autostart file nor was I saving session on exit nor set in WPrefs. Apparently checkout ~/GNUstep/Defaults. You should make sure to edit it while windowmaker isn’t running because of the .lck (lock) it creates in the same directory.

I saw in the aforementioned directory a file called WMState, which indeed had all the applications autostarting which I didn’t want to do so.

https://www.windowmaker.org/docs/chap4.html

Original content in gopherspace: gopher://gopher.someodd.zip:70/0/phlog/window-maker.gopher.txt