I am a happy Wayland user but I do have nostalgia for some of these window managers.

My very first UNIX experience was on Sun workstations running Open Look. And my first moment getting X working on Linux at home allowed me to apply the TWM config from these machines and feel like I had my own Sun. Many people cut their teeth on CDE (MWM). The versions on Linux are not just look-alike but the “real deal”. This is the actual code that was running on big iron all these years ago.

Perhaps the biggest loss is FVWM. People still use it and it is the base for other stuff (like NsCDE).

I have no doubt that somebody will make an FVWM Wayland compositor at some point. No doubt there will be something like NsCDE available too.

Some of these experiences are available on Wayland already. Wayland Maker for example: https://github.com/phkaeser/wlmaker

Sadly, I doubt there will ever be another Open Look.

But so few people use these environments that it is effectively zero. The article says Open Look will not run on 64 bit. The reason NsCDE exists is that, even for fans, CDE is not practical. You will always be able to “run” them, even if only in a VM. So, they will not be gone.

One problem with these is that using them breaks things like file open/save dialogs for modern apps which use some (DBus-based?) way of invoking those and expect a modern desktop environment to provide one.

Also, did the source code for the proprietary parts of Open Look ever make it out? That was probably the most handsome GUI of its era, certainly more so than Motif (the “yo dawg I heard you like bas-relief shading” GUI) and arguably NeXTStep.

It’s slightly amusing that with X.Org slowly becoming totally unmaintained that every WM is gonna end up in this category as Wayland compositors displace them.