UKLinux.net - an ISP that supports Open Source. Free to sign up, you pay for the calls, they get a cut of the call charges and spend all their profits on Open Source projects. If you need a dial-up ISP (and we're all on the road sometimes), then these are your boys.....

LinuxWorld in the UK - next September there will be a LinuxWorld conference/expo at the NEC. Superb!

I have learned to install apps from .tar.gz files! :)
It's not a s bad as I was expecting; I'll write an overview soon.
Anyway, I have used that method to install an updated version of the wmapm dockapp and to install the wmMatrix dockapp, neither of which were easily available as an rpm.
The problem I now want to solve is how to get them to start automatically - when Window Maker starts, they just appear in the dock where I left them, but only as a default icon. They need to be double-clicked to start them.
I have found a potentially useful page here. The parent archive contains loads of useful-looking Window Maker docs, but I haven't found an index page linking them together yet.

Right, I've got the wmapm dockapp running now, and will hopefully soon have a few more!
Next project is to get the machine running Apache and Samba so that I can serve web pages and share directories over a LAN.
There's a potentially useful reference for Apache here.
More to follow when I have time.....

Another fan of Window Maker. I've blogged this as I want to look up some of the dockapps this guy uses.......

Window Maker is great. I was knackered and hence perhaps a bit over-excited when the thing finally worked last night, but it really does rock. On my P120 laptop with 32MB RAM it honestly feels at least 10x as fast as Gnome running on the default Window Manager - it's made the machine so much more useable.
The reduced memory overhead also means that apps start faster. Mozilla and Nautilus are still too bloated to be of any use (they use way too much memory), but using Opera and xfm instead means that I can really do stuff. I'm back up to running two desktops as well!
Now I just need to learn to drive Window Maker properly.......

Here is an example of (I think) a genuine NeXTStep desktop which comes from a nice article about NeXTStep.
Window Maker is so close to this it's unreal.... :)

It turns out that libPropList is the problem :(
The symbol PLShallowSynchronise is in the libPropList library, and there are a number of people who've posted at the Window Maker Bug Tracker with the same error.
I've always been a fan of the acronym RTFM (although I only tend to do that when something breaks if I'm honest, but it's something I'm workin on). Anyway, I had a look in the BugTraq RTFM section, and there's the answer (apparently) - it is to do with multiple instances of libPropList on the system.
In amongst all this, I discovered the ldd utility, which tells you which libraries a program is linked against. the syntax is:
ldd
so for Window Maker on my system, it is ldd /usr/bin/wmaker
I tried a couple of things, including dropping back a revision of libPropList (which sticks the library in a completely different directory) which gave the same error, and copying libPropList.so.xxx so that all versions would be the same (but they were anyway).
Finally, I tried using a bang up-to-date version of libPropList, and it all works :))

For reference, I am using Red Hat 7.2, with the following rpm's (you can find them all at tuxfinder):
WindowMaker-0.65.1-3,
WindowMaker-libs-0.65.1-3
libPropList-0.10.1-265.i386.rpm
libpng-1.2.2-6.i386.rpm

Window Maker ROCKS!

I got fed up trying with Window Maker and the libpng problem, and I think that maybe you need to be running Red Hat 8.0 to use the libpng version that it requires. I found the rpm that contains libpng12.so.0, but trying to install it threw up so many warnings about other packages being dependent on the stuff I was about to overwrite that I bailed.
What I have done, is dropped back a version on Window Maker - previously I was trying v0.80, and now I am trying v0.65. The Window Maker 0.65 RPM dropped in fine, with only a dependency on libPropList. That was easy enough to sort as I had no versions of libPropList on the system, so I just downloaded the RPM and stuck that on as well.
I then used the Desktop Switching Tool from within a Gnome X session to select Window Maker, and this is the top tip: I specified that the change was only for this session, which means that it only affects that user.
Now I am really frustrated though: when I run startx it fires up X, and you get a tantalising glimpse of the NeXtStep desktop before it crashes. THis is why the top tip above is so important - I can still start X as root or another user and get a Gnome desktop, so I haven't completely clobbered X.
Anyway, the error I get is /usr/bin/wmaker: relocation error: /usr/bin/wmaker: undefined symbol: PLShallowSynchronise, which according to a post at the Debian FAQ Chest means that one of the libraries that Window Maker uses "must be incompatible or something".
Now I just need to find out which one........

On the Window Maker front, I have found that there are dependencies on cpp and libpng. I have installed cpp from an rpm, which is fine, and updated libpng using up2date, but when I try and load the Window Maker rpm's, it still moans that it requires libpng12.so.0 - this is a bit of a bummer as there are no further updates available from up2date. I'll keep trying to work this one out though, as I really want that NeXTStep desktop!

Got sound working!
The specs for this laptop from Tosh say that it has a OPL-SAx 3 sound chip or something, which doesn't work no matter what settings you try under sndconfig. However, a tip from a friend was to look at the BIOS, and on the third page of the BIOS there are some details about I/O, IRQ and DMA settings for the WSS sound and for SB Pro sound. Tried sndconfig using a SoundBlaster SB Pro driver and the associated settings given in the BIOS, and hey presto!
It turns out that the mpg321 player in Red Hat 7.2 doesn't work too well with this setup, so I used up2date to update to the latest version, and can now play mp3's from the command line with no worries!
Yet to try XMMS or a regular audio CD though........

A bit of research has revealed that the NeXTstep "feel" is default for Window Maker, which is superb news. GNUStep seems to be more of a developers environment (apparently with toolsets to port apps to MacOS X!!), so I won't be bothering with that.
Anyway, a quick test on a Red Hat 8.0 machine at work revealed that C Compilers and development libraries were required for the Window Maker install from the tar file on their site. I don't have the disk space on the crappy Tecra, so I looked for an rpm, and was pointed to tuxfinder, which is possibly one of the most useful resources for Linux ever!
I've found an rpm for the latest release of Window Maker, and will be trying it over the weekend..........

So, I tried icewm from the "default" rpm, but it has a dependency on "icewm-common = 1.2.2-1", whatever that is. I'll look into it later when I find some time.
In the meanwhile, I found some notes I took about a year ago when I was trying to get Linux onto a Tosh Libretto 70ct (I succeeded in the end, but the 640x480 screen made it an extra pointless exercise, as it was useless for anything except command-line, even when I got X running). Anyway, there is some reference in those notes to Window Maker, which is also a lightweight Window Manager. It also supports the GNUStep desktop, which (if you're a geek like me) mimics the NeXTstep desktop pioneered by Steve Jobs in his wilderness years.
There's also some useful links to some documentation here and here.
I do fancy having a go at GNUStep, so I'll have a play and update later.......

A useful page regarding icewm.

Bit of a pause there on the Tecra project....
Still no sound, but I'm also looking to improve performance. Now, I don't know a huge amount about the way that Window Managers and desktops work, but I've discovered that icewm is supposed to be a pretty efficient window manager, so I'm looking into that. There's also an rpm for it :)