Thinkpads Forum

Window Maker Live (wmlive) is an installable Linux live DVD/ISO, and is based mostly on the recently released "Wheezy" branch of Debian Linux. While its main purpose is to provide a show case for the lightweight Window Maker window manager, which serves as its default graphical user interface, it is a great all around choice for daily usage. It has received special pre-configuration care, thus making it a much more versatile environment than you'd get by just installing the official wmaker package shipped with Debian. It can also be considered as an alternative installation CD for Debian/Wheezy and, as such, wmlive is fully compatible with and relies on the official Debian/Wheezy repositories for security updates and bug fixes.

Window Maker Live (wmlive) was developed mainly on a Thinkpad T61 and with (mostly older) Thinkpads in mind. So you can for example expect to have tp-smapi and trackpoint scrolling running out of the box. It also includes the very useful ultrabay-scripts package, implementing hot-plugging of UltraBay devices and battery management.

Finally, a new release version of the Window Maker Live Linux distribution ISO images was uploaded to Sourceforge. Now with a different version numbering scheme in order to reflect the actual Window Maker version used:

sourceforge.net/projects/wmlive/files/wmlive_0.95.6-1 Update: sourceforge.net/projects/wmlive/files/wmlive_0.95.6-2

Don't be surprised that it won't fit on a standard CD anymore. Now you will either need a DVD or a USB thumb drive. ISO images for both amd64 and i386 are more than 900MB, but they contain a few additional features, e.g., it comes with a fully working setup of the KVM virtual machine (see screenshot of wmlive running in virt-manager on a running wmlive session) and the latest Firefox/Thunderbird preconfigured with some useful addons.

Visually nothing has changed and you might be disappointed if you are looking for a different visual style than the former offerings. As traditional wisdom suggests, never change an already well working setup, unless there is a very good reason for it!

Under the hood there were quite a few enhancements, though. Unlike former releases, the touchpad of laptops should now hopefully work out of the box. The standard Linux kernel version is 3.14.15 from the Debian/wheezy-backports archive.

For further details about Window Maker Live, and also a few more screenshots, please see wmlive.sourceforge.net.

Urgent update: Due to the infamous shellshock bug, i have uploaded a newer release version of wmlive containing a bash version without that vulnerability today:

sourceforge.net/projects/wmlive/files/wmlive_0.95.6-2/

Apart of the above mentioned serious security issue, it also fixes a few bugs and usability issues reported by some users, and which considerably improve this offering.

Unlike the former version, all language support as available in Debian/Wheezy has been enabled, adding a few dozen more localization on top of the english language basis. The live ISO image offers the choice to boot directly with either an American or British English environment, and also in Catalan, Danish, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Slovak, Norwegian, Polish, and Portuguese. In addition, many more languages are supported via the installation to disk. The language of the installation routine will be the system's default language.

The ISO is offered both for 64bit and 32bit CPU's, making it also an excellent choice for older Thinkpads. For 32bit systems, to enable bootstrapping and installing Window Maker Live also on vintage computers, a i486 Linux kernel is used as least common denominator. The multi core features of Core2Duo and later processors require a i686-pae kernel, which will be available via the boot menu once the system has been installed to disk.

The system uses the backported Linux kernel version 3.16.3 as its standard kernel. The debian installer's installation routine still relies on the the standard Wheezy 3.2 Linux kernel.

See the project website at wmlive.sourceforge.net for further details and some screenshots.

Nice distro with a MUCH more useful program selection (for me anyway) than on most live distros.

I booted i686 wmlive from live DVD on a T61 and it used only about 1GB RAM at idle, similar to what it does booted live in a VM. (This was play with live distro night...)

Next to it on another T61 I booted i686 Debian Live xfce (which is much more stripped down and not optimised for a T61) and it used a bit over 600MB at idle for comparison.

Remember running live uses more memory than a hard disk install.

I suggest anyone curious give wmlive a try. I suggest if you run it live you run it from USB flash for faster boot but I used DVDs to test.

You can load any Linux (or Windows) .iso to USB using Rufus on Windows.

https://rufus.akeo.ie/

Quick hint for German members of this forum: wmlive 0.95.6-2 is currently featured in the the German LinuxUser magazine (print edition) and contains both the 32bit and the 64bit version on DVD. Check out www.linux-user.de for details.