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GNUstep On LinuxFocus

Posted by Hemos on from the looking-at-it dept.

Dennis Leeuw writes "Linux focus has a very good article on GNUstep and it's status. It might have been a long time in the making, but they seem to pull it off." GNUstep doesn't get the attention that some of the window managers' get, but I think the diversity of the desktop interface is one of the more fun aspects of open source.

3 of 72 comments (clear)

  1. Why GNUStep matters. by jcr · · Score: 5

    GNUStep is a re-implementation of what is probably the most productive set of software development tools I've ever seen.

    NeXTSTEP was revelation to me. When I went from the Mac to NeXT machines in 1989, I knew the mac *cold.* Within a month, I was a productive on NeXT as I had ever been on the Mac. Within three months, I could do anything on NeXT in about 1/3 of the time that it would take me on a mac.

    There's an amazing culture shock you get when you step up to this kind of tool set. The amount of code you don't have to write will make you wonder why you ever put up with X windows, the Mac ToolBox, or (god forbid) the win32 API.

    The downside to using NeXTSTEP, was always the vendor. They were notoriously difficult to do business with, and every NeXT customer I know always said that they would *love* to be able to keep this technology, while dropping the vendor.

    GNUStep lets us drop the vendor.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  2. Let's hear some more! by update() · · Score: 5
    GNUstep doesn't get the attention that some of the window managers' get, but I think the diversity of the desktop interface is one of the more fun aspects of open source.

    Absolutely - and being a founder of Slashdot, it seems to me you're in a better than usual position to do something about it.

    /.'s coverage of the Unix desktop has essentially dwindled to KDE vs. Gnome with occasional news about highly vaporous 3-D environments. WindowMaker is probably more popular than Evolution and a lot of the other stuff that gets hyped around here. E used to get covered in embarassingly obsessive detail about Rasterman's life but since parting company with Miguel and Gnome, it's become the David Lee Roth of Linux. Blackbox, icewm, UDE, some cool new thing I haven't heard of -- that would be "News for Nerds. Stuff that Matters" to me.

    Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

  3. Confused Article by Matthias+Wiesmann · · Score: 5

    Maybe it's me, but this article seemed very confused to me. The guy is basically mixing up Window Maker (a window manager for X11) and OpenStep. The distinction between the original NeXT System, Open Step, GNU Step and Mac OS X is not very clear either. He talks a little bit about Interface Builder, but not a word on the different technologies that power the thing.

    This is really a shame, because a good explanation about the NeXT technologies would be the most welcome on slashdot. It would be intersting to compare features of the GNUStep/NeXT/OS X Framework against GNU frameworks like Gnome or KDE. This would make it possible to compare them, but also to see if they could be integrated.

    Of course this would imply a real discussion, not the usual arguments like Gnome is going to rule the world and everything else is obsolete etc...