{"slug": "window-maker", "name": "Window Maker", "category": "os", "category_name": "Operating systems and desktop", "description": "", "recommenders": 1, "commenters": 4, "warners": 0, "score": 1.704, "rising": -0.33, "first": "2026-04-07", "latest": "2026-09-02", "why": "I used to use https://www.windowmaker.org/ as my X11 window manager and one of the features I really liked was the ability to shrink a window to an icon", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 4, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I used to use https://www.windowmaker.org/ as my X11 window manager and one of the features I really liked was the ability to shrink a window to an icon", "icon": false, "domain": "windowmaker.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://windowmaker.org", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Window Maker"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 762764000, "item_id": 47672750, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47672750", "by": "DrScientist", "date": "2026-04-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used to use https://www.windowmaker.org/ as my X11 window manager and one of the features I really liked was the ability to shrink a window to an icon", "excerpt": "Has anybody built a UI around the opposite? Shrinking? ie rather that zooming in on the content of interest, shrinking the content not of interest? Long time ago I used to use https://www.windowmaker.org/ as my X11 window manager and one of the features I really liked was the ability to shrink a window to an icon and place that icon on the desktop for future retrieval ( a bit like having the whole desktop like the Ma", "context": "", "use_case": "X11 window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zooming UIs in 2026: Prezi, impress.js, and why I built something different"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["window manager", "main window manager", "x11 window manager"], "compared": [{"slug": "xfce", "name": "Xfce", "co": 1, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49524863", "title": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49366474", "title": "XWayland 26.1-rc1 Released Two Years After the Last Release", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48397011", "title": "Omfreebdy \u2013 Omarchy-Inspired FreeBSD", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47774789", "title": "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47665194", "title": "Zooming UIs in 2026: Prezi, impress.js, and why I built something different", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {}}, "quotes": [{"id": 792542513, "item_id": 49533907, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49533907", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "my Window Maker shortcut for showing the Run dialog", "excerpt": "I still use nedit pretty much daily whenever i want to note something down - basically kinda like Notepad (though obviously nedit is much more featureful... not that i use the extra features though). Win+R (my Window Maker shortcut for showing the Run dialog) -> nedit is something that i do pretty much automatically when i want to take a quick note.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Fine, I'll build my own text editor"}, {"id": 789897328, "item_id": 49368583, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49368583", "by": "badsectoracula", "date": "2026-08-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "My main WM is Window Maker", "excerpt": "My main WM is Window Maker but i use KDE Plasma for secondary accounts when i want to try stuff without 'polluting' my main user account. I can only use X11 with KDE Plasma because, for some unfathomable reason, if i launch `startplasma-wayland` pressing ANY key on my keyboard causes it to crash. Like. How.", "context": "", "use_case": "main window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "XWayland 26.1-rc1 Released Two Years After the Last Release"}, {"id": 774404257, "item_id": 48400266, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48400266", "by": "lanycrost", "date": "2026-06-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used to deal with windowmaker", "excerpt": "The best environment I've seen for freebsd it's trueos, but before running with Mac I used to deal with windowmaker.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Omfreebdy \u2013 Omarchy-Inspired FreeBSD"}, {"id": 764407201, "item_id": 47775450, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47775450", "by": "pjmlp", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "before I settled into Afterstep and soon afterwards Windowmaker", "excerpt": "Oh, people are still using Enlightenment. My last time I used it was still in the 1990's, before I settled into Afterstep and soon afterwards Windowmaker. In what concerns my use of GNU/Linux, it was CDE on others. Apparently nothing big came out of Enlightenment and Tizen.", "context": "", "use_case": "window manager", "switched_from": "AfterStep", "story": "Fixing a 20-year-old bug in Enlightenment E16"}, {"id": 762764000, "item_id": 47672750, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47672750", "by": "DrScientist", "date": "2026-04-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I used to use https://www.windowmaker.org/ as my X11 window manager and one of the features I really liked was the ability to shrink a window to an icon", "excerpt": "Has anybody built a UI around the opposite? Shrinking? ie rather that zooming in on the content of interest, shrinking the content not of interest? Long time ago I used to use https://www.windowmaker.org/ as my X11 window manager and one of the features I really liked was the ability to shrink a window to an icon and place that icon on the desktop for future retrieval ( a bit like having the whole desktop like the Ma", "context": "", "use_case": "X11 window manager", "switched_from": "", "story": "Zooming UIs in 2026: Prezi, impress.js, and why I built something different"}]}