Perlbox: A Unix Desktop Written in Perl

cascadefx writes "It appears that this programmer has created an Open Sourced Unix Desktop, PerlBox, written in Perl and Tk. I found this posted in response to an article on Perl Monks asking if Perl was obsessed with CGI?. Apparently not. Check it out, it looks pretty interesting." I wonder how fast it runs?

Comments

It's a speed demon

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how fast it runs?

About

this

fast

.

Dammit

[Screaming Lunatic]

Dammit!!! I would have had first post if it wasn't for this perlbox desktop. ;)

funding

[psyclone]

I think it's cool that this group received part of a research grant to fund this project. An important thing to note is that software experiments like this are a science in a way -- they're looking at a problem and trying to solve it in a new way, and publishing their results.

more open source projects could easily benefit from a funding model like this. There seems to be research money floating around universities (mine included) that could easily go to open source projects; it just may not be the project you want to work on, but hey, getting paid isn't so bad.

Also of note..

[zapfie]

If you like stuff like PerlBox, you might also want to check out ROX-filer while you're at it. ROX-Filer an excellent file manager written in Python, and also offers a session manager, a wallpaper utility, a clock, etc, all written in Python. I'd recommend checking both PerlBox and ROX-Filer out.

mod_perlbox

[phillct]

You need mod_perlbox.

That way you can access your desktop through lynx at a speed increase of 800%. Just format your urls like this:

http://localhost/desktop/?action=leftclick&xcord=3 21&ycord=567

Re:I wish...

[Shiny Metal S.]

Now, if someone wanted to write a real abstraction layer, maybe one that would let you use either Perl/Tk, Perl/GTK+, or something else... that coule be interesting :-)

See Wx.

Perl and XUL

[Cally]

I've just started looking at XUL, the Mozilla XML User interface Language. All the Mozilla chrome - dialogs, menus, toolbars etc, all of it - is defined in XUL, which looks straightforward XML, driven by Javascript (which /I believe/ is compiled in the binary: yes? no?)

The only thing really holding me back from using this in my current project (front end management console for the build and test scripts used to QA $AntiVirus_app) in XUL is the lack of a nice drag and drop formbuilder. There's a project to build one - XULMaker - but it seems to be making pretty slow progress and be short of people working on it. Anyway, what I was wondering was, where's the Perl bindings? Being able to say :


my $g = XUL->new();
$g->set_window(
title=> 'Hello world',
geometry => ([500, 200]),
...
)

...and so on would be verrrrry cool. And then we could ALL build our own window managers, using Perl. And this post would be on-topic ;)

All-Way Flamewar!

[krmt]

Does this mean perl is now trying to compete with Emacs? This could get ugly...

Ruby vs Python vs Perl running Perlbox vs Emacs running everything vs Linux running KDE vs BSD running Gnome vs Windows vs Solaris running Emacs vs OSX running Virtual PC running Activestate Perl running Perlbox...

I think we need big a flow chart for this one.

GNOME: A Unix Desktop Written in C

[tps12]

It appears that this programmer has created an Open Sourced Unix Desktop, GNOME, written in C. I found this posted in response to an article on C Monks asking if C was obsessed with device drivers? Apparently not. Check it out, it looks pretty interesting. I wonder how fast it runs?

Re:I wish...

[FortKnox]

Perl would kick Java's ass as a cross-platform app development language if it did

Seems a bit trollish, but I'll bite. If I wanted to make a large maintainable and updatable cross-platform app, with lots of time I'd choose Java. If I needed a cross-platform app that needed to be up in little time, and was never gonna be changed, I might chose your PERL with GUI Abstraction.

Honestly, though, I don't think it would "kick java's ass", its like compairing C and C++. Is one better than the other? Depends on how you use it!
A quick and powerful scripting language versus a high level object oriented language?
Apples and Oranges.

Surprisingly, though, they appear to be competing. Parrot, perls next version, contains error handling similar to Java, and Java1.4 added regexp.

Re:Speed

[Fweeky]

> Don't Perl scripts get compiled every time they are run?

Yes, but it's compiled into an internal bytecode format, not an executable binary.

In this sense it's more like Java -> Bytecode -> JVM (hence Perl -> Bytecode -> PVM) than, say, C -> Object code -> Native Binary. Not quite, but near enough.

Python has the same property, as do many otherwise interpreted languages. Parrot (the engine Perl 6 will use) is also bytecode based, and probably has more in common with a Java VM, in that it impliments a sort of dynamic-language CPU with registers and instructions, rather than just a tree of tokens the interpreter can easily walk along.

Re:B - The Perl Compiler

[Shiny Metal S.]

Damn it, I @#%!$& up the links! Of course it's Overrated since it's broken. Here:

• B The Perl Compiler
• B::Asmdata Autogenerated data about Perl ops, used to generate bytecode
• B::Assembler Assemble Perl bytecode
• B::Bblock Walk basic blocks
• B::Bytecode Perl compiler's bytecode backend
• B::C Perl compiler's C backend
• B::CC Perl compiler's optimized C translation backend
• B::Concise Walk Perl syntax tree, printing concise info about ops
• B::Debug Walk Perl syntax tree, printing debug info about ops
• B::Deparse Perl compiler backend to produce perl code
• B::Disassembler Disassemble Perl bytecode
• B::Lint Perl lint
• B::Showlex Show lexical variables used in functions or files
• B::Stackobj Helper module for CC backend
• B::Terse Walk Perl syntax tree, printing terse info about ops
• B::Xref Generates cross reference reports for Perl programs

See also perlcompile, perlhack, perlguts, perlxstut, perlxs, perldebtut, perldebug and perldebguts manpages.

(Note to self: Check those URLs!)