 There are literally hundreds of Linux distributions out there and it's rare that I see a new Linux Distribution that I've never heard of before that kind of shocks me like I'm Generally curious about why this thing exists today. I came across one of that just blows my mind Window maker live. So this uses the old window maker Window manager for those that are not familiar with window maker. There's a reason you're not familiar with it This is a window manager from like 30 years ago, 35 years. It's been around for a long long time I'm talking about at the very beginning of Linux, you know, we're going back way back into the 90s for this thing and It's kind of ugly. It's kind of hideous looking by modern standards Honestly, it's kind of confusing to use. I've used window maker on a couple of occasions in the past I can't remember if I've ever did any videos on it Way back in the early days of my channel I know I did the obscure window manager series where I looked at about 10 or 12 Kind of obscure window managers that in some cases not a lot of people had heard of I don't think I did window maker on that one. I know I did FVWM Which is another very similar looking window manager. That's also very dated back from the 1990s So, you know, this has me interested window maker live It's basically Debian stable with window maker and I was wondering if this was their very first release or not and Oddly enough, they've actually had previous releases The problem was the last release before this one that was just dropped here in the last day or two was way back in 2014 September 20th of 2014 was the previous release. So nine years between releases So that's nice that a distribution that was kind of dormant if not dead is now Back from the grave essentially. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna go ahead and download window maker live Their ISOs are hosted over on SourceForge and I'm gonna spin this up in a VM I'm just gonna take a look at it. We'll run the live environment in a VM I'm not gonna run through an installation because the installation is just a Debian installation again This is basically just an alternative way to install Debian essentially if you want Debian stable with you know A very minimal window manager already installed window maker. This is probably a way for you to go here So I'm booting directly off of the ISO. This is essentially like running a live USB stick And so, you know, I'm doing this in a virtual machine. So I'm just running directly off the ISO We're in our desktop environment essentially here, right? This is window maker. There's really not much to it By default, it doesn't even draw a wallpaper. You just have a solid color for a background You have your little paper clip icon here that says desk one So I guess this would be our desktops and if I double click By the way, a lot of the buttons you'll have to double click for any kind of actions And that's kind of an old-school thing Nowadays a lot of modern desktops are moving toward a single-click action for most things But you'll double click for example If I double-clicked this quick launcher here with the Debian installer Yeah, you can see the install guide start installation. So if I launched it It actually launches me back out to the boot menu where I would actually have to install window maker live So this would be where you'd probably run through the standard Debian incurses installer I'm not gonna do that. You guys have seen Debian installed before and it boots us back into our live environment again Of course the display is all messed up. So I'm going to right-click on the desktop So we have a right-click menu similar to things like open box and flux box and those kinds of window managers, right? Window maker has that right-click menu where I could search under applications. There is an application finder Let's see what they're using here. This is the XFCE application finder. And if I search for display Yep, right there. Let's open XFCE's display program And I will use the GUI tool to change to a 1920 by 1080 resolution apply and Keep this configuration and then we need to restart the window manager because obviously when I change the screen resolution all the widgets are not in the correct spot. So if I right-click and go to session menu and Restart GUI which it looks like mod 4 plus the home key is a key binding for that I don't have a home key readily available on my keyboard unfortunately So I'll just click on it which accomplishes the same thing there. We get a little welcome screen here Which there's not much to it. We have what is new. So what's new I guess in this release So this is the release notes known issues. So there's some bugs Please provide corrections for machine translated text via this email. So they're having problems with some of the Translations the internationalization, especially revolving around the window maker window manager So if anybody wants to help them with translations, they they can use your help There is also a button for the change log. So what has changed between releases? It's probably a change log for window maker. Yeah, it is window maker does actually see development I actually went to the window maker org website and it sees a release I don't know like every year or so like people are actively still working on window maker No, I don't know if you've noticed but when the welcome screen was up I had a little box a little widget down here in the bottom left hand a corner of the screen here letting me know It was open. So if I open something that doesn't already have a widget over here on the right-hand side So the application finder. So there's not already a box for it over here So it's gonna put it over here. So we're gonna get it down here at the bottom of the screen Let me just close that and that goes away over here on the right-hand side of the screen Let's see what these are just hovering over them really doesn't do much Although I can tell what some of them do just by the icons. Let me double-click this one So this is the window maker preferences So if you click on various things you can go in here and adjust Certain settings for window maker or is how it looks some of the functionality and sure you can change some of the keybindings Etc. I'm not gonna cover any of that on camera for the most part They've probably got some sensible defaults already set for this. So I don't want to mess with it This is a live environment. Anyway, it's not properly installed. So anything I do here wouldn't be saved permanently And we've got the Swiss Army knife here. I'm wondering what this is probably like a settings manager or a control center No, it's a it's almost like a sub menu like a drawer full of other Applications so this one here obviously would be our text editor. Let's see what text editor there. They're using so if I double-click They're using mouse pad. So they were using the X FCE application finder They're using mouse pad, which is the X FCE plain text editor So a lot of X FCE applications emcee, of course is midnight commander. That's gonna be a terminal based file manager I'll double-click on it for those of you that have never seen midnight commander before it's been around forever It's one of the standard Terminal file managers that's been available on Linux and other Unix like operating systems for a very long time Then we got this file cabinet here. That would probably be our file manager. Let's see if they're using Thunar Which would be X FCE's file manager. They are not they're actually using PC man FM They're actually using PC man FM the cute version. Okay Not crazy about the cute theme. We're the on God said this is really old school looking This has a very retro feel and then we've got this grid of like nine applications in this one box Including one that has the Netscape Icon if I click on it Has something to do with pill moon pill moon choose user profile So they're gonna use the pill moon browser and looks like some some of these icons. Is that a gimp icon? I can't tell what that is if I double-click on it. Would it actually launch something? It doesn't look like it did anything double-click this one. Ah So the Debian one here and the I just a very small icon I don't know if you can see the little Debian logo that actually launches the synaptic package manager where we could Obviously install anything that's available in the Debian repositories By the way, this is based on the latest Debian Debian bookworm Let's get rid of the Swiss army knife stuff there and then we have our clock So I'm assuming that if I double-click this probably give me a calendar. Yeah, it does Orage and that's xfce another xfce application So kind of standard on xfce distros So still a lot of xfce stuff and this is obviously a sys tray because we've got all these like battery icons a clipboard Icon, so let's see what clipboard manager. They're using Edit clipboard I'm not sure what program that is and but below that that looks like a media player because it looks like I have a Button like to open a CD drive and then we got forward and backwards buttons by double-click Nothing happens. It's probably a front end to probably a command line Music player probably MPD or something like that and then it looks like this would be probably a mail client So let's double-click on it. That is claws mill not my favorite email client if I double-click this This is pale moon once again So that would be our browser once we get it all set up and this guy on the surfboard Please tell me that is not sucklaces surf browser. Are they actually shipping that? This might be the very first Linux distribution. I've ever seen that actually ships surf the surf browser out of the box That's interesting and then below that is that a telegram icon? Double-clicked it. It's taking a while telegram is an electron out though So it's gonna take a second to load when there is telegram. That's interesting being proprietary software Well, the telegram app itself is open source But obviously the telegram back in the servers is all closed source But they're probably using that as a way to get support I guess maybe that's one of the the channels they use for support is telegram and the computer icon here is the terminal What terminal emulator are they using? Well, let me resize it. Let me grab that corner there And let me zoom in. Yeah. Well, I zoomed in I guess by zoomed in I didn't have to drag the corner to resize anything If I run X prop for X properties a X window property my cursor turns into X Let me click any window to get the properties of it I'm gonna click on the terminal window and is this the XFC terminal. No, it is the Mate terminal so that is the terminal emulator They are using and then this button here with the BSD devil that's interesting. That's another terminal But that is root so you're logged in as root on that terminal and then finally this last button here is The synaptic package manager once again, it's gonna try to sync the repositories I'm gonna cancel that because that may take a second one thing I would want to look for is I'm gonna go to the application finder Wallpapers, do they actually have wallpapers? There's the XFC desktop application Go to background and Of course, there is nothing set for a wallpaper. So let's go into wallpaper Stretch to fit the screen and then the path to an image. So on Linux systems The directory that contains most of your default wallpapers is going to be in the root directory Obviously, you're gonna go into slash user slash share slash backgrounds There is not user share backgrounds. So they don't have any standard wallpaper packs already installed I wonder if I could install some I Don't know how this will work in a live environment, but let's see. Let's see if I do a sudo apt update and and sudo apt install GNOME dash backgrounds Just because I know that package exists GNOME dash backgrounds The GNOME wallpaper pack that ships with the GNOME desktop environment Yeah, it's not going to be able to install it. I don't think in the yeah, there it goes It looked like some of the mirrors Connection refused. Yeah, so it's not going to be able to install that but if I actually had this installed I'm assuming I could install that wallpaper pack and then choose a proper wallpaper to get rid of this solid gray color Background here. So that is just a very quick and cursory look at the window maker live Linux Distribution, this is a very specialty Distribution very niche not a lot of people are gonna want to run this because honestly The only people that are gonna want this are people that want to run window maker for nostalgia Reasons right window maker actually just looked up the initial release of window maker the first release of window maker came out 1997 so not quite as old as I remember but you know It's window maker is a fork of a previous desktop environment called Gnu step, which was a bit older It was released a little earlier in the 1990s. So it has its roots going back 30 years I will say it's not the most user-friendly desktop environment because The documentation for one thing the website window maker org looking at the dogs you go through it you know some of What they talk about what they explain? It's kind of confusing. There's a lot to it the website I don't think it's laid out as well as it could be because the website looks like it was also written in 1997 the other thing about window maker is there's several configuration files to it. It's not all one Unified config file like so many window managers these days just have the one config file that you set everything in that one file Window makers got a few different config files overall. I do think window maker live does serve a purpose I do think it provides a nice Alternative ISO or Debian not that Debian doesn't have a million isos if you go to the Debian website Debian org and you navigate to where all their isos are Debian actually has a variety of isos to choose from but it's always nice to have Alternatives now before I go. I need to thank a few special people I need to thank the producers of this episode gave names Matt Paul Royal West armor dragon commander angry George Lee Methos Nate or young Paul peace arch of Dora realities for less red-profit role in soul ashtray tools Devler wards into in a boon to and Willie these guys They're my house tiered patrons over on patreon without these guys this quick look at window maker live It wouldn't have been possible the show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen All these names you're seeing on the screen right now. These are all my supporters over on patreon I don't have any corporate sponsors Sponsored by you guys the community if you like my work and want to see more videos about Linux and free and open source software Subscribe to distro tube over on patreon peace Xfce looks modern compared to window maker