I also use very stoked Unix boxes at school, and I realized how weak the macintosh windowing system is, compared to X11 running 'vtwm'. I tried to help remedy this problem. I wrote a new window definition, or WDEF which allows the user to iconify windows and move them out of the way. It also gives your windows a nice minimalist look which I like much better than the big, clunky sys7 windows.
The program I wrote is shareware. I ask for $5 US if you decide to keep it for your own use. If you want to use it on a lot of machines at a given site (like at a company) then I ask for $50 US. If you are a student, I only ask for a post card from anywhere saying hello.
Icon Windows itself is freely redistributable, provided you distribute the whole package together. There is more info in the package.
The source is freely available, but not redistributable. See inside for more info.
Both files are compressed with Stuffit and binhex'ed.
It *does* work on '040s, but it is somewhat sensitive to certain other extensions.
I have no completely happy reports from PowerMac owners. I've only tried it on a PowerMac for 10 mins, and I crashed it pretty reliably. One PowerMac user claimed it worked most of the time but crashed when using zterm. Most seem to be able to use if for a few minutes only.
I haven't worked on IW for a year or more. Sometime I may work on it again, but chances are that I won't do so before I buy myself a PowerMac. Chances are that I won't buy a PowerMac before a free UNIX runs on it natively. I might work on it this summer (maybe).
magnus@mit.edu