Let's also not forget the unsung hero of the "let's pretend we're NextStep" saga, "bowman" (a fvwm hack). A much shorter shelf-life than its successors AfterStep and WindowMaker, but the one that started it all...
Yep, the main abrahamic lineage of X11 window managers. uwm begat twm which begat fvwm which begat bowman...
For quite a while, the window manager space was really dominated by rewrites and adaptions. Not quite sure what the first window managers of GNOME and the K(ool)DE were based on, but I wouldn't be surprised if some familiar names turned up...
An important second clan would be the 9wm ancestry. lwm, aewm and probably a lot of the tiling wm namespace.
Jeepers, I remember being excited when Xaw3D came out. This thread is really making me feel old, and goshdarnit, Pentium Pros with Slackware didn't happen that long ago..
I had entirely forgotten that one. In fact, I was having a hard time remembering what AfterStep was called. IIRC AfterStep also started as a set of FVWM or maybe FVWM 2 modifications.
i switched from fvwm95 then to afterstep and then settled on windowmaker for my work systems. Come to think of it I ran enlightenment when I had dual sony trinitrons since that supported virtual desktops per head with xinerama. When I got my first lcd (a dell widescreen) I went back to windowmaker. laptops and systems others may use (at home) get xfce.
This brings back memories of going from one window manager to the next (blackbox, fluxbox, or enlightment anyone?) and fiddling with the configuration endlessly. Now I don't think twice and just use whatever the default is.
At my last job, we sat around in the support bullpen trying to outdo each other with our desktops. The more 3D and "Matrix-y" the better. There was so much green phosphor text you'd think you were in a room full of old IBM 3270 CICS terminals.
Aww. I miss using Window Maker. I used to maintain the FAQ as it was the first software project I was involved with. To set the era, newsgroups were active but dying, freenode irc was shiny and new, freshmeat (now defunct) hadn't launched yet, linux.com hadn't lost millions, and slashdot hadn't launched, and Linux was a pita to keep working on my Dell laptops.
I still give people the advice to get involved with a project even if just in a docs roll at first.
The fondest computing memories I have is my Pentium II 233 mhz machine, with 128 MB RAM, running a heavily tuned debian with window maker on a 15 inch trinitron nokia monitor. It was the best window manager on the best monitor of the era. For its time it was an amazing hardware and software combination. I went from that system to a mac mini, and although in many ways it was a step up, the OS X window manager and dock were definitely a step down.
Wow, I have fond memories of using WindowMaker. I was really excited to see some recent development with new featuers this past summer (http://windowmaker.org/news.php). I spent a few days with it, I was surprised at some of the defaults. For instance, click to raise isn't enabled by default. That's probably how I used it all those years ago. Anyway, I agree it's lovely. The main things I was missing were modern looking applets (but the Wolfenstein-face CPU monitor is classic), and also better compositor integration (for stuff like expose-style window switching).
I use a tiling wm (i3) now, but before that it was Window Maker all the way, from 1998 until about 2012. Fantastic piece of software: straightforward, clean, and beautiful to look at.
