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Ambient Desktop Goes Open Source

Posted by timothy on from the pretty-pictures dept.

mlankton writes "The only thing that looked neat about MorphOS is now free. The Ambient desktop has been open sourced, with source code here. It would be cool if someone ported this to Darwin so Apple users could play with it. I always thought MorphOS looked great, just no apps."

23 comments

  1. fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    your a fruitbasket

    1. Re:fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      your a fruitbasket

      "You're", ".".

  2. Good question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It would be cool if someone ported this to Darwin so Apple users could play with it.

    That was exactly my first reaction. But then, I started worndering. That GNU-Darwin people decides not to link to proprietary libraries is, of course, a result of them using the GNU Public License so extensively and now because of that decision the primary Darwin development platform is no longer supported in this project!

    This makes me shake my head and wonder WTF? This project is not only shooting itself in the foot by choosing a platform not fully supported by the OS, but is also screwing over the real meat of Darwin's userbase: PowerPC owners. This move is akin to opening a car garage (in America) whose mechanics are all experienced in servicing American cars, and then changing policy months later, stating that the garage will only work on foreign models. Where is the logic here?

    Seriously, am I the only one who is wondering who the Hell is in charge at that project? Kool-Aid Man? This move makes so little sense I can't tell if the people at GNU-Darwin are really that stupid, or if I am waking up in alternate realities every damn morning. I almost kind of hope for the latter. This is the GPL in action, Mac faithful. Get down on your knees and kiss Apple's butt for choosing the BSD license.

    Could that be the reason we might never see the Ambient Desktop ported this to Darwin? Or maybe the Ambient Desktop is one of those apps that you complain there are none by saying: "I always thought MorphOS looked great, just no apps"? Good question.

    1. Re:Good question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      This is already being implemented in the Phillipines.

    2. Re:Good question by mlankton · · Score: 1

      Really I could care less about GPL compliance. For years I was a NeXT user that also had a PC with FreeBSD on it so I could have A) a workstation with fantastic gui integration, a sophisticated environment to work in (NeXT), and B) apps (FreeBSD). Since switching to mac with OS X 10.1 I have everything I need in terms of unix apps, commercial apps, and the nicest looking, fastest, and most cohesive gui to date.
      OS X isn't for everyone, but if some of the mac haters out there ever had a chance to use one they would see what a mess all the X11 environments are. I guess if you like reliving what using a pentium 200 with less than 256mb of ram was like, the X11 desktops do a pretty good job of slowing down your user experience to that level.
      I missed the whole Amiga thing. I used to think I wanted to pick up an amigaone or a pegasos to play with. Unfortunately it looks like both those projects are just as doomed as the classic amiga they seek to replace.

      --
      http://pseudoexpert.com
  3. Vewy pretty by m50d · · Score: 2, Interesting

    From the screenshots on the site, it does look really nice. I doubt it will immediately replace KDE and GNOME, but if enough of a developer community springs up around it, it has the potential to do so.

    --
    I am trolling
  4. Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    My question is this. What PCs are currently on the market to compete with this? When my wife asks for the "cute little MAC", what real computer can I buy instead?

    In my experience with Macs, you're going to get the same computing power out of an old TI graphing calculator. Get her like a TI-82, that should satisfy her need for speed.

  5. Built-ins. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    "Built-in disk formatting
    Actual formatting of disk partitions can be done from Ambient. The various modes includes quick format, full format and a complex verification format."

    Ummm...isn't that the job of the OS? Instead of what's basically a WE.

  6. Huzzah! by SPQRDecker · · Score: 1

    Wow, from the screenshots, Ambient looks beautiful. I, for one, am elated that it's now open source. Although I don't think that it will catch on as a mainstream desktop as a real alternative to Gnome or KDE, developers in either camp (or maybe even MorphOS developers) would be wise to take a good look and incorporate some of this into their own work. Alternately, if this could be ported or made compatible with Gtk or Qt,it could be integrated into an already functional desktop environment. It's bitmapped and creative eye candy like this (see the screenshots section for many interesting examples) that has the potential to entice more casual computer users to explore alternative OSes, whose dominant desktop environments, for the most part, only try to emulate, rather than compete with or improve opon, the standard Windows featureset (like the silly 'start' button) that people are used to.

    1. Re:Huzzah! by dont_think_twice · · Score: 1

      What exactly do you find so beautiful about Ambient? It looks just like any of the typical gnu/linux window managers: fvwm, openbox, fluxbox, etc. I don't have anything against Ambient - I am just wondering what exactly you think should be copied. I can't find anything on any of those screenshots that I havent seen many times before.

    2. Re:Huzzah! by SPQRDecker · · Score: 1

      For one thing, MUI. It provides the user a very powerful way of customizing his or her own desktop environment to a rediculous degree. In other words, point and click theme creation and editing. It is to Ambient what the Gimp is to images. As far as I know, there isn't much that one can do to design a custom theme in either Gnome or KDE without editing text files by hand. The most either of the two of them will let you do is specify a premade theme for individual parts of the desktop (background, window manager, gui toolkit, etc.). I use Gnome, and there are so many GTK and Metacity themes that I really like except for one or two little things that bug me, but that I'm to lazy to edit the files directly (not to mention that I'm certainly too lazy to figure out how). Something like MUI would be great to have around for fixing the odd ugly scrollbar or widget. But that's just my opinion.

  7. X11 port ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Hmm, this ough to make room for an X11 port.
    Any takers ?

  8. Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? by Gherald · · Score: 2, Funny
    When MAC announced their "Mini", it caught my eye. Wanting to buy/build a small computer for my already cramped breakfast bar, I started pricing out similar hardware. The results startled me. Most of the configurations I found were more than the humble US$499 of the "Mini", often much more. To match price I had to configure with a much bigger shuttle-style case.

    My question is this. What PCs are currently on the market to compete with this? When my wife asks for the "cute little MAC", what real computer can I buy instead?
    And what an interesting question that is!

    But lucky for you

    this very question

    has been discussed before!

    Quite a happy coincidence, wouldn't you say?
    --
    The unofficial /. digest
  9. hmmm by XO · · Score: 2, Funny

    Why won't he use the acronym form of the Ambient's Sound System? Hmm...

    Jerkoff.

    --
    "Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
  10. Re:PC competition for the Mini-MAC? by jcenters · · Score: 1

    [Quagmire] Heh heh. I got a question for you. Why are you still here? [/Quagmire]

    --

    vi ~/.emacs

  11. may i be the first to say... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    that it looks total crap. Been messing about with e17 pre10 recently, now that looks cool. If only they'd actually finish it :( (posting AC for obvious reasons)

  12. More or less bound to Morphos by frederik · · Score: 1

    Porting this to GNU/Linux or BSD or whatever - as it was suggested here - should be pretty hard. I didn't look at the sources, but I suppose it was neither written for a POSIX environment nor does it use a GUI toolkit that is available on any other platform than the AMIGAish (MUI afaik - there once was a free MUI clone for X11 http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Park/3883/z une/). So rewriting an Ambient-like Desktop for X11 from scratch might even be easier than porting it. But the free sources should be pretty interesting for the AROS folks.