Window Maker Nostalgia

2014-11-01 16:53

Window Maker is one of the very few graphical user interfaces which I would call timeless. Despite the fact it hasn't evolved graphically for almost 20 years, it still looks clean and beautiful by today standards, whereas AfterStep now looks terribly old and outdated.

In fact, it is one of those very few intemporal interfaces which left a huge impact on me over the years:

Early Macintosh System Software on the Macintosh Plus, the first GUI I ever used in the mid-eighties

GEM (Graphical Environment Manager), customized CGA version on an Amstrad PC 1512

FVWM (F Virtual Window Manager), my first X11 love story

BeOS, in the late nineties, a clean, bright, and colorful UI which still looks crisp and modern

I loved the default BeOS color scheme so much that I'm using it as my Window Maker theme:

In retrospect, I have very fond memories of the few years during which I used it as my sole window manager, circa 15 years ago. Window Maker allowed the rest of us to experience NeXTSTEP.