[criddell]

What's been your favorite?

I wasted too much time tweaking Enlightenment. I remember that was fun but I don't really remember much about actually using it.

OS/2's Workplace Shell feels like the biggest lost opportunity (and has nothing to do with UNIXy stuff). I really liked Rexx and the SOM stuff felt cleaner than what became COM in Windows.

[pjmlp]

Window Maker/AfterStep were my all time favourites in GNU/Linux world.

I used to be in the GNOME camp during its early days, even wrote a tiny article to The C/C++ User's Journal regarding Gtkmm, nowadays I rather use XFCE.

The original fvwm also holds a special place, that was the first I used in GNU/Linux, back in 1995, and I got to customise it quite a bit.

SOM was great, it also supported implementation inheritance, and had metaclasses concept as well.

I like COM as idea, I dislike how badly Microsoft keeps rebooting the developer experience, and isn't able to provide modern toolig as easy as it was from VB 6, Delphi, C++ Builder. For something that has become the central mechanism how Windows APIs are delivered.

[baobun]

Some underappreciated and forgotten tiling wms that are still viable today:

- ratpoison ("tmux for X11". Ultralight, great for kiosks and similar where you barely want a WM at all)

- stumpwm (ratpoison on steroids in Lisp)

- Xmonad (A bit different tiling dynamic that some prefer. I dig it despite Haskell, not because of it)

- Qtile (Very flexible and easily hackable in python yet reasonably stable and fast. You can reproduce for example the Xmonad or i3 experiences pretty easily)

[leephillips]

And the one I use and love: DWM.

(which I use on top of Pop!_OS, oddly enough).

[mghackerlady]

Enlightenment still exists and works well, I just wish more apps were written around EFL so themes were easier

[LargoLasskhyfv]

In two variations actually. One is a fork of E17: https://mokshadesktop.github.io

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moksha_(window_manager)

https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/02/av_linux_25/

[throwaway888666]

Enlightenment? Nothing beats the bodhi moksha desktop https://www.bodhilinux.com/moksha-desktop/