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The NeXT-Best Thing: GNUSTEP 0.9.4 Live CD
roard writes "Following the NeXT tradition with mixed case, GNUSTEP is a live CD/distribution while GNUstep is an implementation of the OpenStep API. GNUSTEP is based on Morphix, and uses the GNUstep libraries and GNUstep-based applications to provide a NeXTSTEP-like environment that people can easily test and use. This new 0.9.4 release comes 8 months since the precedent 0.5 release, and brings a lot of new GNUstep applications with it, as well as an upgrade of the GNUstep libraries and the development tools. In other news, a small demonstration of GNUstep development tools is available in Flash or divx. The old dream of having a GNU OS with Hurd and an OpenStep implementation doesn't seems that far now ;)"
i'Ve aLWaYs wOndEReD.
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Is this some "hyper bowl" thing or somewhaT?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
is not divx, its mpeg(1 or 2, haven't finished downloading yet)
Candle burns its brightest in the dark
Does Hurd have anything to do with this? (Can't get to the article). I don't see how this brings the Hurd closer to "release", any more that it does Duke Nukem Forever.
We apologize for the inconvenience.
with a really small patch to libobjc,
available in a gcc/libobjc bug report.
Microkernel, unix-like userspace, Nextstep-based application development?
Right here.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Off topic? It was an ON-TOPIC response to a troll. It was also meant as humorous. As in, us geeks don't even know how to say "Super Bowl". Ha ha, very funny.
Why are the mods here obsessed with downmodding things?
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Another LiveCD based on Morphix.
The only true heir to Next is already here. OS X has all the brilliant design and usability, runs on the best hardware and runs all the best software. GNUStep, being based on Linux, is crap by comparison, and probably always will be.
Preach on brother!
Plus since it isn't open source, it has a significant advantage over Linux and GNU-Step when it comes to security and protection of intellectual property. It is no co-incidence that OS X is ranked as the most secure OS and that unlike Linux, there aren't a dozen lawsuits flying back and forth over who actually owns the code.
This UI and development environment seems so much better than the standard KDE/GNOME stuff, I've always wondered why this was not championed as a default desktop environment for Linux. There is also some OS X compatibility there as well as far as getting a single code base to compile for both environments. That, the unified display postscript, the great development environment, etc. seem to make it a natural and *sane* front end to the otherwise fragmented UI world of Linux.
With the relative compatibility to the OS X/OPENSTEP libraries and code re-use, there could be a real network effect by making this a default environment for Linux and other Unixes.
does it run GNU Hurd L4?
nah, Mac OS X is not i microkernel design.
It uses MACH as a HAL, not for message passing.
And it got a fucked up filesystem hiarchy.
Makes me want to play with GNUstep. Only 2 lines of code for this simple app. The rest was built with the GUI, cool.
People should not fear what they do not understand; people should fear because they do not understand.
What we need GNUStep for is as a platform to port OS X software to Windows and Linux, or ideally to turn Cocoa into a common crossplatform development platform of sorts. In that capacity it has the potential to be someday useful, as opposed to just another long-forgotten alternative to
That's never going to happen, is it? Does the GNUStep AppKit even mostly work yet?
Thanks Department of Physics, ETHZ, GNUSTEP-i386-0.9.4.iso
Thanks inode.at and Robe GNUSTEP-i386-0.9.4.iso
Thanks Lyle E. Dodge, GNUSTEP-i386-0.9.4.iso
Thanks Philipp, GNUSTEP-i386-0.9.4.iso
Thanks Daniel Aubry, GNUSTEP-i386-0.9.4.iso
Thanks Peter Samuelson, GNUSTEP-i386-0.9.4.iso
Windoze not found: (C)heer, (P)arty or (D)ance
I'm a bit confused, is this a full os or does it run over linux/windows/whatever?
This guy are sick.
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but... Is GNUStep really like NextStep, in that it's a development framework with a spiffy highly integrated drag-and-drop environment, etc., etc.... Or is it like AfterStep, where on the surface it's "NeXT-like" but it's only skin deep?
I hit "submit" by accident. I'm going back to bed.
I wonder how feasible it would be to put GNUstep on top of Darwin/X11? Has anybody tried this?
We apologize for the inconvenience.
It WAS championed as the default for GNU, like 10 years ago. Except it took forever go get usable, has like three serious developers and very few applications, and therefore is almost entirely useless to the end user. As for OS X compatibility, name one OS X program that has been ported to GNUStep. Thought not.
If you want an evironment where The Voice Of God comes down and tells everyone stop their C/C++ crap and go write Objective C programs, use OS X. It's never going to happen with Linux.
I just wanted to note that this was created based on morphix using a tool called ibuild that eases creation of Linux LiveCDs.
It was also meant as humorous.
A for effort, but D- for execution. It wasn't funny, first because it just wasn't funny, and second because it's God's own cliché: "Hey, I'll pretend not to know about some massively significant event in order simultaneously to perpetuate and to mock the stereotype that people like me are unaware of their surroundings." It was old when one antediluvian nerd said to another antediluvian nerd, "What's this I hear about rain?"
Wow, I really appreciate the Borland/Delphi/Kylix/C++ Builder/JBuilder IDE now. Even the VB ide was easier to build a gui app in.
I was just looking at OpenStep/GNUstep/Cocoa stuff before browsing Slashdot today, and I came here to search for old GNUstep articles. Interesting....
Anyways, GNUstep sounds like a very interesting platform. I have always been fond of NEXTSTEP and Mac OS X, and I have been curious about Objective-C and Cocoa. GNUstep gives me an opportunity to learn Objective-C and the OpenStep specification, before I switch to Mac OS X. I seem very impressed by the development environment, and as soon as I build up my C programming skills and learn Objective-C, I'll be developing programs, too.
I only wish, though, that GNUstep was a bit more popular among developers. GNUstep seems to lack programs such as web browsers, word processors, and spreadsheets. Porting applications such as Firefox, Abiword, and Gnumeric, for example, would be difficult because those applications are written in C++, not in C. (GNUstep still doesn't support Objective-C++, because of some difficulties that Apple and GCC has with Apple's Objective-C++ implementation). Even so, I feel that GNUstep has the potential to become a very powerful and influential platform for developers. If it can build its developer base and developers start building applications that are just as good, or better, than what NEXTSTEP and OPENSTEP offered, just imagine the possibilities....
And it got a fucked up filesystem hiarchy.
/Applications than /NextApps?
Are you saying it's fucked up compared to *STEP or Linux? Solaris? HP-UX? Xenix? AIX? Hell, A/UX?
Don't get me wrong, I love NeXTSTEP and OPENSTEP. Ran em both for a long time. I'd rather be using them than OS X. But if the complaint is that OS X's fs hierarchy is screwed up compared to *STEP... Seems a bit much. I mean, how much harder is
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
I'm waiting for the MP/M LiveCD!
really, it looks terrible.
it is a good framework, and brilliantly implemented in OS X... but this GNU look is really awful! they need artists... LOTS of artists.
i could barely even follow the demo as the IDE and general look of the thing was so confusing and horrible that i wasn't able to even see where the obvious buttons were to press.
they may be doing wonders with implementing the whole framework... but it needs polish.
That demo is pretty nifty. But still too much typing: not just to bind the object interfaces to each other, but also in the controller coding. Is there any way to draw flowchart-style graphical indicators between object interface GUI representations? And any way to drag/drop primitives like the "*" and "=" operators into scopes of objects, much like drag/dropping the GUI textfields into their group? Finally, does it run on Linux ;)?
--
make install -not war
10 minutes of clicking to make a fricking calculator ? I almost fell a sleep :(
Does this Gnustep does something usefull for a change ? hmm maybe it has some NEXTSTEP apps ? Like this supercool mail client and network client ?
Go grab those torrents.
"If you want an evironment where The Voice Of God comes down and tells everyone stop their C/C++ crap and go write Objective C programs, use OS X. It's never going to happen with Linux."
Uh...
I'd rather use a dynamic language like Objective-C than C++ any day. C++ is so limiting, it makes me feel like I'm sitting on my hands while programming (to paraphrase Don Yacktman, another Obj-C developer). The only thing people ever seem to complain about anyway is the message-passing syntax, because they (boo hoo) don't like putting colons in the middle of a method name. Never mind its expressiveness. And slow? Come on. Method dispatch is very close to the time it takes to call a virtual function in C++.
GNUmail.app is one app that runs on both OS X and GNUstep. I've seen a small handful of others. However, there are some hurdles in porting an OS X app to GNUstep- if you use any Quartz compositing, it just won't work, for one. Or if you use any Carbon convenience functions, or any number of other non-OpenStep APIs that exist within OS X.
But you are quite right in the last part. No way will your average Linux h4ck3r drop C/C++ and go to ObjC. A shame, as ObjC is a lot nicer, but it just won't happen.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Oh, gosh, we have another asshole on Slashdot posting anonymously saying trash about something he knows nothing about. What a surprise.
I hate it when twits who have never accomplished anything in life leave little childish flames like this on Slashdot.
C++ is dying as an application language, and Obj-C is basically in the undead category (unlike C++, there's very little legacy Obj-C code still being supported). So, it's a pointless argument left over from 1993. Get with the times and start writing C#.
By compatibility with OS X, they mean that a GNUStep app can easily be compiled in OS X. I think that is what they mean at least.
Opener, to name one. ASTrojan to name abother. Why is there OSX antivirus software? (Which I'll admit is useless, because viruses aren't a real threat on OSX, even if they exist)
/= Virus. Look it up.
Trojan
There are two trojans and NO VIRUSES. Opener does NOT self replicate, nor does it use any vulnerabilities (you have to deliberately execute it and then type in your password for it to install itself). Therefore it is NOT a virus.
And there are many OS 9 viruses, and Word Macro viruses (not a threat to OS X, but a thread to your Word documents), which explains the OS X antivirus software.
But the fact remains, there are no viruses. There is only two trojans, both of which require you to install them yourself.
C#?
Does Microsoft even support C# anymore?
Comparing to unix...
Its not much harder though.
...did he... just say the "L" word in vain? ... on slashdot?
I do, however, have two minor criticisms.
Firstly, please, please update the look-and-feel. If you want to be taken seriously, don't look like a reject from the 80s. Given GNUsteps modularity, this should be easy enough to do. So, do it. (Tip: application icons should always have labels, because since they're supposed to be unique you can pretty much guarantee they're going to be unfamiliar to someone.)
Secondly, I didn't see any support for layout management in Gorm --- that application was constructed by just placing absolute-sized objects at absolute positions in a window. Please tell me this isn't how you design all applications... because that way leads to inflexible, unscalable, uncustomisable applications, and there's no excuse for that any more. Fixed layouts mean you can't let the user change fonts, because different fonts are different shapes (you can't just scale linearly). Fixed layouts mean wasted screen estate (remember the old Mac file browser dialogues that would float a tiny, eight-line scrollable list in the middle of a 21" monitor?). Fixed layouts are just wrong.
Morphix is a damn fine distro and mostly unknown. Morphix lightGUI is the fastest functional debian distro I could find and Morphix Game is the original gaming live cd.
It seems the chief strength of Cocoa is in InterfaceBuilder and the chief weaknewss of GNUStep is in their InterfaceBuilder workalike. Kind of funny that.
You have it ass-backwards. This is due to inefficiency of closed driver source and/or hardware interfaces. Every ACPI implementation is different enough to where if you don't account for the differences you lock up machines, confuse interrupt controllers, et cetera.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The appearance is only skin deep. Creating a theme that looks "good"? That's easy, get some graphic designers together with a usability safety inspector.
Writing a complete framework with rich, well thought-out object libraries? Now that is a feat. GNUStep is a lurker project that is getting close to hitting critical mass. They've got the hard stuff done that others are still swinging at but not quite hitting.
No, the GNUStep people have been much more concerned with laying sewer lines, roadways, electrical grids, water, gas, etc. When they get around to picking the color for their street signs, it'll be good.
Some work is already going into theming.
Now that GNUStep is getting really close to being complete, I hope they look at Cairo as a base for doing something similar to Quartz.
-Peter
. Penguins Surely Ca
This is free software, dude. If you don't like it, you can do more than whine and moan on Slashdot. You can: *difficult options*
Here's a better option: I can totally ignore GNUStep and its inadequacies, and continue using my Macintosh.
I dunno about being slow and shitty.... I am currently learning Objective-C and I find it more elegant then C++.
Plus, combined with InterfaceBuidler/GORM you can do some very very interesting stuff with it.
"If you want an evironment where The Voice Of God comes down and tells everyone stop their C/C++ crap and go write Objective C programs, use OS X. It's never going to happen with Linux." This comes off a lot like, "who cares if it's better, we're all used to something worse and we plan on sticking with it." Which is very much the same argument made by Windows advocates against Linux.
No OS does all those things, so you should be complaining about the inefficiencies of all software development, not just open source.
It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
After seeing this screenshot I have to disagree. I'm very comfy around windows/KDE interfaces (Haven't played as much with Gnome but it looks ok), but this looks like quite a mess to me. Hopefully the screenshot isn't very representative of what your desktop usually looks like. Quite a mess if you ask me.
///<sig
As for OS X compatibility, name one OS X program that has been ported to GNUStep.
There's many more than one.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
What's sane about it? Though there are still devotees of the Windowmaker, NextStep, AfterStep UI thing, the rest of the world's moved on. I used WM for a long time but eventually changed to something which demands less desktop real estate for the useless diplay of multiple icons and random widgets. It has to be one of the least space efficient desktops out there.
I have to disagree with you on the UI. It looks really ugly. Like, motif-level ugly. I'm sure it's all just themes, but open one of those apps and open a default kde app along side it and tell me the user is going to choose that one. If they want this to be a serious choice for end users, they're going to have to stick some sheen on it.
I am trolling
ha i was thinking the same, it looks so dated and grey i would just rather pay for windows if thats the alternative, if a salesman demo'd that i would laugh at him for wasting my time
Apple/Sony/Nokia have proved that if you make tech look pretty, people will buy (in massive quantities)
and still we see shit that looks more like it was made in 1985, KDE is getting there but its still not taking the lead in UI presentation, open source needs to get slick.
I don't get it - is having a linux install to put this on a pre-requisite? I thought 'live CD' meant you could just boot it and try it out ... ?
God damn, I wish I was a moderator right now so I could mod you down (-1, Off-topic).
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Another fork in the road? Why is it that UNIX/Linux development forks so GODDAMN many times? Why is it that no one is satisfied with working on the original and staying within that distro's limits? Nope... instead we've got some zipperhead who thinks, "Hey, Steve Jobs never did it right, the last crew couldn't do it, I KNOW I can do it!" And instead of something successful, we've got 2 marginally different distros, neither of which is going to win more market share than the other. So what have you accomplished?
Keep it up, we'll have nothing left but crumbs! We'll have hundreds of distributions, and 1 or 2 users running each flavor. Open source will be terribly important cuz you'll NEVER get a working piece of software without spending a decade writing it yourself, or recompile, troubleshoot, recompile, troubleshoot, repeat, repeat, etc on someone's port for GNUStep, GNUSTEP, OpenStep, or NeXT.
This is getting out of hand.
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/
This is developed (apparently) by folks from Intel. It's just that nobody can't be bothered to include it into the kernel.
ACPI spec is publicly available, but nobody can be bothered to fully implement it.
Finally, nice examples of UI are available even within OSS community, yet every distro out there ships with UI that was, it seems, put together by a teenager.
Okay, now that was funny. I loves me some rich, juicy irony. All is forgiven. You can crack lame jokes all you want, as long as you follow 'em up with great ones.
"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming, is not worth knowing" - Alan Perlis
By "compatibility with OS X" what they really mean is binary compatibility. In theory, you ought to be able to take an app running on OS X and run it on GNUStep unmodified, and without recompiling -- at least on GNUStep/PPC. You should also be able to compile your program into a "fat" binary, which means that it would contain both PPC and x86 (and/or whatever other architecture) code, and the app would be able to run unmodified even on GNUStep/x86.
.NET, except that everything is genuine native code, without a p-code abstraction layer. Neat, huh?
It's actually kind of like Java or
The implication of this is that if GNUStep was complete, and if Apple recompiled Safari (for example) as a PPC/x86 fat binary, you'd be able to copy Safari.app from your Mac to your GNUStep PC, and it would run! In fact, I wish Apple were a little more interested in this since it would provide a relatively cheap and painless way of making a Linux version of iTunes* as well as spark a LOT more interest in making native Mac programs, since they'd be cross-platform programs too.
*iTunes is a Carbon (Mac OS 9 compatibility API) program currently; they'd need to port it to Cocoa first
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
The best thing is how, if you change your Gnustep theme, colours, fonts, etc, Window Maker won't match it. Despite being the Gnustep window manager, Window Maker doesn't seem to share any of the UI code or functionality. Grrrrr!
If you really think the NeXT look is as ugly as Motif, it's clear that you were never forced to actually use a Motif environment, or fvwm as your wm and Xaw-widget apps. Trust me, you're hallucinating.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
'h4ck3r'? Take a look at the open source activity with J2EE or Mono, people are very open to new frameworks and languages. GNUStep never caught on because it an incomplete clone of something most developers don't feel like using.
I've always like NeXT and Windowmaker much better than Gnome and definitely better than KDE (sorry K-guys, it's waaaaay too much like Windows).
In fact, even Gnome is too much like Windows; even tho it does incorporate some OS X like features as well. But it also seems too fragile and it seems to be going more along the lines of C# dev, which I'm definitely not partial to (it's a mistake guys!).
Obviously, I feel that NeXT/OpenStep got a lot of things goin in the right direction. Turning away from the copy-all-Windows-features mindset seems to be the more logical choice. Will Gnome and KDE still exist? Absolutely. But Windowmaker - regardless of its sometimes slow development pace - is much more of a joy to use than whatever the current default Gnome window mananger is.
I spent many years developing in a Windowmaker environment and they were quite productive. That time changed the way I looked at using my desktop and even though I've switched to OS X, I can still tweak it to work like Windowmaker. So I'll have to second it as the official desktop env for Linux, hands down.
Apple is actively disinterested in portable software. It was Next's forte, but the products were pulled when Apple bought them.
Tho they have slowed, the themes over at wm.themes.org are fine. What's the use in some title bar that looks like an alien (besides the k00ln3$$ factor - which lasts about 5 mins)? I don't think a desktop needs all that extra crap and font sizes and the like can all be adjusted if things look like they take up too much space.
I dunno, KDE makes me wanna barf, so I guess I'll choose the one w/out the sheen.
Use WindowMaker before you bash it. It really is a nice environment. The colours need a little work though. If I wasn't using SuperKaramba, I would probably use WindowMaker as my window manager in KDE.
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
Gentoo www.gentoo.org
yes, Im a zealot, but so what?
when Duke Nukem Forever is released, it will only run on Hurd.
Sorry, but Objective-C is the best choice for the apps I write. If you want to use something else for your apps, feel free.
for these cards. And that other manufacturer may not be forthcoming with the hardware docs for an open source product. I think it's unfair to blame intel in this case.
Well, I'd rather look at CDE's tacky pastels than some gothom color scheme designed for 1980's grayscale monitors.
Anyone else having an issue booting the cd? I dont see an issue with the CD, going to try a boot floppy, really wierd.
Beautifully self-referential. The ultimate GNuPost post!
any bitstream torrents of the .ISO?
Did... you... just utter... Its Majesty's name as you would... utter a profanity? On Slashdot?
Given that most of the people running this stuff are not going to be Apple owners, it doesn't make a lot of sense that this is on the Apple server.
I understand the heritage angle, but it really fits better in developers or IT... people interested just in Apple stuff aren't going to care much about this.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Parent poster excepted (I imagine)
The truth about Led Zep should never be told on
Doh! EVERYTHING is more elegant than C++!
will it run on my car?
Microkernel, unix-like userspace, Nextstep-based application development?
Now of only someone will start an open source project to imitate the things about Mac OS X that are worth imitating.
That isn't to say that the above aren't good things, but it's a little sad that open source projects always seem to be either skeletons (like GNUStep), or skins (all of the Aqua-clone themes and skins out there), without ever getting to the meat (the things that make computers truly useful).
Don't become a regular here -- you will become retarded.
I've been a consultant at 3 big financial firms (in the Chicago area) that (are using || have used) Wingz, which is a spreadsheet package that runs/ran under OpenStep. This wouldn't be a problem except the makers of Wings left the marketplace long ago and the file format cannot be read by anyone!
.WKZ format, but there's no way to automate that from a (non-openstep-equipped) Windows or Unix box.
I've tried calling, researching, everything. No one has a file converter that will read files in Wingz and write out anything useable, like CSV, Excel, tab-delimited, or whatever. We had copies of Wingz, and it would save to
If anyone knows of a way to convert these files to an established file format, even if we loose the formulae and only keep the cell values, that's fine.
I've peeked into the binary with a hex editor, and it's not obvious what the format is, but maybe I just needed some more experimenting time. Does anyone know a converter for Wingz?
Thanks--
-- Kevin
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
The whole GUI library - the shapes of widgets, the color scheme, the window layout with its floating menu - is very NeXT, and very very dated. Compare a modern app like firefox, on a modern desktop like KDE. Everything is there when you need it, but wastes minimum space when not. And it's not stylistically intrusive.
I hate to say this, because NeXT was a style god when it came out, but the state of the art has moved on since.
Why do most open source programmers always seem to have the tendency to go with oppressive dark UI colours? It's not cool and it's not pretty. It's along the lines of someone creating their first webpage, complete with black background and white text.
I'd rather use NeXT's widgets in 1bpp than Motif's in 24 bits, and you can quote me on that. (Especially since motif in 1bpp is indistinguishable from Windows 3.1.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
...square and grey.
Too late! The KDE and Gnome projects are three releases ahead. Last year I installed GNUStep on SuSE 9.1, it is usable but compared to KDE 3.3.2 it seemed like going back to the stone age. These days we are accustomed to self-contained applications, I mean, having navigation menus and pannels in the main window. GNUStep menus are not so difficult to use but it becomes a mess when several windows contend for the same screen region. I have used NeXTSTEP in the past and think GNUStep is wonderful but it needs a major revision in order to be a GUI as easy to use as KDE or Windows.
Blasphemer!
Too bad it doesn't work.
It starts off by telling me that it's found every SCSI adapter on the planet in my computer, except the one actually I have, of course.
Moving on, it also finds my FireWire adapter, which is great, considering I don't have one.
After that, the hotplug-o-meter fills up and then it just stays full. I've waited for about 10 minutes now, it doesn't get any further.
Oh well, guess my 4 year old computer is too new for Morphix.
Slagborr
Hehe. Well this is my IDE The rest of the os isn't too bad.
You, two, can run a 20 year old GUI. At least Mac OS X has better theming.
I'm really tired of this. Why is the GNU vision to duplicate Mac OS X? Go buy a mac mini!
Hurd == MACH (OLD!) 1984 people!
darwin = MACH/FreeBSD hybrid = GOOD
Think Different.
If you seriously believe that NeXTStep and Mach are the way of the future, please do us all a favor and go buy a Macintosh (OS X doesn't really have a microkernel anymore, but who cares; it sounds good).
For the rest of us, fortunately, there are Gnome and KDE.
I've always wondered why this was not championed as a default desktop environment for Linux.
Because people apparently didn't like hacking GUIs in Postscript and Objective C 20 years ago. And they sure as hell aren't going to like it now that they have things like Cairo, SVG, and C# available to them.
That, the unified display postscript, the great development environment, etc. seem to make it a natural and *sane* front end to the otherwise fragmented UI world of Linux.
The variety of desktops available for Linux is actually a great thing. Even if it weren't, you aren't going to fix it by adding another desktop into the mix, one with almost no users and no applications.
With the relative compatibility to the OS X/OPENSTEP libraries and code re-use, there could be a real network effect by making this a default environment for Linux and other Unixes.
How do you propose to "make it"? People choose the desktop they like, and that happens to be either Gnome or KDE.
"The key to managing schematics is scope management - zooming on scope containers, and consistent labeling, as well as maximum reuse of components, to prevent special cases from propagating schemas beyond comprehensibility."
Sounds like you're looking for a ZOOMing interface with progressive disclosure.
NeXT interface has several really deep problems, and theyre not only related to the bad selection of colors.
"..Now of only someone will start an open source project to imitate the things about Mac OS X that are worth imitating."
Enlightenment, Cairo, X.org, etc..
It's all going to happen, not just because it's bringing over all the Apple-ness that's fit to port, but because that's the way it's all headed.
We're probably going to have to settle for having it the other way around - with the innovation being done in the GNU camp, with the heartiest/apple-iest concepts being assimilated, examined, and enhanced (?) by Apple, as with KDE/Safari, Watson, Konfabulator, etc.
.2, the GNUSTEP Live CD was worth using, and gave a decent Linux/Step experience. At 0.9.4, I can only expect things to be 7 Tenths better, which might be enough to get some more Steppy apps flowing back and forth.
That's the Apple way when it comes to user-contributions. Successful, user supported apps rise to the top, and get Apple's attention. They take it from there, and choose to do the right thing in regards to developer relations, source-openness, etc.
At
As far as iTunes goes - keep on wishin. iTunes is an interface for Apple's proprietary stuff, and a key to their business model. The day they become friendly about their file formats and publish an API for dealing with ITMS is the day the port will start. Unless this has already happened, and it will be proven that I'm talking out my ass!
Chances are better of having a fat binary of Konqueror or a GNUStep Browser running across Win/Lin/Ten, which is probably better anyway.
"If you want an evironment where The Voice Of God comes down and tells everyone stop their C/C++ crap and go write Objective C programs, use OS X. It's never going to happen with Linux."
This comes off a lot like, "who cares if it's better, we're all used to something worse and we plan on sticking with it." Which is very much the same argument made by Windows advocates against Linux.
And this does not sum up the attitude of a lot of Linux users? What if it was stated like this:
"Who cares if it's better, we're all used to the same tools we had 30 years ago and we plan on sticking with them."
[[Non-troll disclaimer:]]
Yes, this is a broad generalization. No, it doesn't describe every Linux/Unix user. Yes, there is still a lot of truth in it.
The OP has it right. It's impossible to enforce a development environment or methodology (or pretty much any standard) unless either you control the platform (like Apple does), or there's already a de facto standard in place (C programming, for instance).
Java: the bastard demon spawn of C++ and Ada
How about this:
4 4.png
4 3.png 4 2.png 4 1.png
http://www.roard.com/screenshots/screenshot_theme
or that:
http://www.roard.com/screenshots/screenshot_theme
http://www.roard.com/screenshots/screenshot_theme
http://www.roard.com/screenshots/screenshot_theme
and so on
It looks like ass. It may be a thousand times more sensible than Gnome or KDE, but being the facile person I am, I equate black text on dark grey background to mean old school Unix 'Window Manager + crappy menu to launch programs' environment.
"The OP has it right"
Ok dimwit. Tell us how Apple stops anyone from using C/C++?
Here's a clue dummy, Obj C is not a replacement for C/C++...
You don't have to use the full KDE environment to use SuperKaramba.
WindowMaker works great with SuperKaramba. You can even turn off the dock and/or clip altogether and use Kicker and Konqueror instead.
[shameless_plug] There are a few attractive themes for WindowMaker that either don't date back to 1999, or look like it. Like mine![/shameless_plug]
Though it's not entirely true anymore, the goal of GNUStep is to emulate the look/feel of NeXTSTEP 3.X.
There's Camaelon, which lends some themability to GNUStep, but the interoperability isn't there.
Grab your can o' Simoniz!
Camaelon.
AFAIK, you have to patch the GNUStep source, which makes it an impractical pain in the ass for a lot of people, but it's there anyway.
There's no support for traditional pixmap swapping like in so many other environments, but there might be one fine day.
The fonts are user-configurable, BTW.
For unix-space apps, OS X has an almost standard heirarchy.
/bin. /sbin /usr/local/ (=/opt/ if you like) /etc
/home/ has become /Users/)
/Applications (apps for all users) /Library (system-wide resources, settings, data) /System (the system. break stuff in here and don't expect it to work right after)
bins in
system bins in
non-distro apps (at least that's what I use it for) in
config, etc. in
(the only glaringly odd one from a Unix perspective is that
Having thought about that little list, OS X isn't that inconsistent when compared to the several different layouts common across other Unixes.
As for the Nextish heirarchy, it's pretty clean really. Nice scoping:
~/Applications (apps for this user only)
~/Library (as above, but for this user)
Basically it, isn't it?
What's the frequency, Kenneth?
(S) and (T) for making connections. Interface Builder under OPENSTEP actually drew a line from where you started the drag to the object, which avoids the multiple problems of internationalization (which OPENSTEP exceled at) and having to decode what exactly (S) and (T) stood for
having vim pop up from the GNUSTEP Project Builder - this is somewhat minor, and I'm hoping it's a customization, but it's a shame that GNUSTEP had to resort to the command line for editing. Now vi is an excellent editor ;) but OPENSTEP had the benefit of very rarely ever resorting to the command line for everything - a big plus for usability. However, if this is a customization, that would be nice
Gorm is an unintuitive name for an interface editor.
That being said, GNUSTEP looks interesting enough for me to try at some point.
Well, it has been in the works for a long time. Trouble is, there's only a handful of people who are re-implementing an entire environment. An environment that didn't have a huge following to begin with, then was languishing, then was transformed into another platform entirely.
Have you looked into how many NSSuchAndSuch APIs there are? Not to mention ObjC - which not too many people code with, not to mention -code- period.
GNOME and KDE both have heavy corporate sponsorship. GNUstep does not.
It does seem like a long time since the old graph where the components were listed with their level of completion, where it was months between the little box would fill in under "Will Compile" and "For Crazy Developers Only". Then "Not Fit For End Users", etc.
It's a niche project - just thank your lucky stars that there are enough passionate people who sing the *Step tune to have us at a point where we (as free software users) are just "steps" (oh the irony) behind the number one brand in the world - who has undeniably bitchin' computers, and an undeniably bitchin development environment.
It may have taken ten years to get this far, but think about where we'd be if people were just now going "Whoa! Look at this XCode! If only we had something like it on Linux!"
Can you name three really deep interface problems?
I hope nobody thinks they're the first to notice that GNUStep has a "dated" look.. The users know, hence: itomatOS-icons and these GNUStep Icons They are also contracting out an icon set by a professional artist - Jasper Hauser
That looks like it was originally developed for the Lisa!
Getting GNUstep up and running - the environment, and the Applications, can be a real pain in the ass unless you're using a Debian derivative.
This gets the entire kit and kaboodle into the hands of people. The Development stuff is there, user apps are there, games are there, utilities are there..
This Live CD is the first (well, now the third) place where you can see it all happening without having to download and compile everything just to see how NeXT-like/Apple-like it is, or how good it is on as it's own critter.
It's a sort of showcase, and the most complete GNUStep implementation out there.
GNUStep - small 'tep' is a free implementation of the OPENSTEP Frameworks. A set of libraries, basically.
GNUSTEP - BIG 'TEP' is a live CD with the GNUStep Environment present in full force.
GNUStep - small 'tep' runs on Linux and *BSD primarily, but there's an installer for Windows, which is similar, at least in theory, to Apple's abandoned 'YellowBox'.
Say you're developing an Application with GNUStep (the frameworks). You can build it so it will run anywhere the frameworks are available - Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, even HURD (I *think*, though it sounds too vaporous to be possible). Build once, run anywhere - the Fat Binary way..
First point:
The Interface Builder demo is pretty slick. I remember being really impressed with IB back when the NeXT first came out (Steve Jobs came to my school and did a demo, and gave us two full systems). I like the business of connecting up the source and target controls with a minimum of (user-entered) glue code.
Of course, the problem with UI generators is that the demo *always* uses something semi-trivial like a calculator or image viewer or something like that. Whoever's selling it says "See, you can create an app in 10 minutes", but once you need to actually make it do something a little more complex or low-level, you inevitably wind up having to do more work trying to get around the limitations. I've seen a lot of sophisticated apps written in ObjectiveC/IB, so I imagine this isn't too much of a problem here. It looks like you really need to change your mindset a lot to code and develop this way, though.
Second point:
I noticed that every time the sample app was run, there was a message to the effect that only a single screen was supported. I'm looking for a live CD to try out on an old 1 Ghz Dell box with a Matrox G450 dual-head video card. Does this message mean that dual monitors are not supported by this distro, or is it an IB thing, or something else altogether?
I kinda like the NeXT/Open/GnuStep environment, especially as compared to the Gnome/KDE weight and glitziness. I've been looking to try a Linux desktop for a while now, but I don't have time to dick around with X configuration and extensions to make it happen. Are there any live distros (based on Debian, perhaps) that do dual monitors out of the box?
(Yes, I know I should be googling, I'm just asking. People seem to like giving suggestions...)
Java: the bastard demon spawn of C++ and Ada
Uh, yeah, that's basically the way it went down. Go back and check your Apple/NeXT lore.
Jobs, Tevanian, Rubenstein.
CEO, Software, Hardware.
It has evolved since then, and that's not a full picture, but it *was* the case.
So are any apps that are built with it.
To get the drag-and-drop goodness, etc., you have to use Apps that are built with GNUStep.
It's only like AfterStep if you use Afterstep or WindowMaker's dock/clip, etc instead of GWorkspace, etc.
There's the potential to have a complete, very *step-like environment, if you can live without the apps that take away from that.
Say 'xyzzy'. Loses it's mystique just the same.
Some things are just meant to be read.
You want something to roll off the tongue prettily, try '.NET' or C#..
Oh, and it is like Cocoa - basically. Like Cocoa before it was Cocoa.
There really are no forks - no boundaries. Everything is one big soup - the illusion of form appears when a project from one dimension intersects with any other.
GNUStep is GNUstep is GNUstep, whether on Windows, OS X, Linux, or the friggin HURD.. You don't have problems compiling against someone's build of GTK/GTK2.
It's a Morphix Live CD with GNUStep and GNUstep apps installed as modules.
You can run it from CD, and you should be able to install it to hd if you like. Otherwise, on a Debian system, it's almost all an apt-get away.
Yes, if you don't know C++.
Well yeah, but then we may as well abandon Gnome and KDE too: There's a perfectly good and usable GUI out there called Microsoft Windows.
Look out!
My god, have you ever actually *used* Microsoft Windows? I'd hardly call it "good and usable".
sure X.org makes computers useful, what's more useful than transparent widows with shadows?
Peh. It works. It supports my sound card and all my fancy games. And it is far more responsive than any Linux desktop I've tried since the old KDE on RedHat 6.2.
Sure it's got problems (you can't open this file because some other program somewhere is maybe kinda looking at it! you need to close that program f00l!), but I find that it's generally more usable than the Linux GUIs. They tend to do stuff like totally hang and force me to SSH in and kill X if I try to start the wrong program.
Not that Linux doesn't make a nice server...
TBH, not for more than running Firefox at work to browse the internet during my break. But it's usable enough, isn't it, that my point still stans? and hasn't it been historically more usable than Linux desktops?
Look out!
I'm not *that* familiar with gnustep, but used to be a webobjects developer. I know a group of WO developers felt disenfranchised when Apple abandoned objective C in WO (and webscript! webscript! :) ). Would there be many obstacles remaining to people in that situation using this as an upgrade over those old environments? Certainly this might be very helpful to people with legacy projects out there who hate the old interface (which looks much like gnustep but is a lot more quirky in nasty ways - broken tab orderings, random segfaults, that sort of thing). Off the top of my head I'd guess the major pieces would be (1) an EOModeller and the model itself and (2) the interface builder. Are there any free implementations of these systems? Not a huge deal to me - I have a mac and write java, but it's still interesting to know the options that are around..
Believe with me, my saplings.
RELEASE!
So *that's* why it looks like shit?!
GNUStep was started at a time when all of us in the old NeXT crowd thought it would be the only way to preserve some of the environment we loved, as NeXT turned its full attention to WebObjects, and Sun's version of OpenStep started to teeter under the weight of bad decisions imposed by the X-windows people there who didn't understand what they were botching.
Once Amelio made the decision to buy NeXT to bail Apple out of the Copland disaster, nearly everyone lost interest in GNUStep, since we expected most of what we wanted to show up in Apple products sooner or later.
Between Bindings and CoreData, Cocoa apps are suddenly getting even smaller in terms of source code, and when I combine that with the other capabilities of OS X and the Mac platform, (like the Acceleration framework, Cocoa Scripting, WebKit, etc, etc.), I've got a better development environment than I've ever seen before.
I think the GNUStep guys have done heroic work, recreating so much of NeXTSTEP with basically no funding and very little help from the Linux crowd, but I've got more power today in Cocoa than we ever had in NeXTSTEP. Should I ever have need to use a Linux host, I hope it will have GNUStep on it so that I don't have to tolerate a windows knock-off UI, but that circumstance looks very remote.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Those non-OSX native controls will fit right in :p
I really hope this environment becomes very stable. Then I hope that while maintaining this environment at the requirements of only 200MHZ, then they create a more processor expensive icons/theme to represent modern GUI functionality/eyecandy. Then...I hope that mozilla makes a OPENSTEP port. It'll be a very close derivative to the Apple version. Then I hope eclipse follows...Then...the sun java follows with a swing port onto GNUstep. Pretty much all those programs that I use that currently use GTK on linux. Gaim...will of course be a hopeless case (GTK is engrained in that sucker like none other). This technology looks like it could be very stable. The kind of work I'd expect from the GNU project. I can't wait for the completed GNU project...(though I could probably care least about the kernel...boo to Hurd, unless it can handle linux drivers). I hope the unix desktops can finally unite under a common desktop, that way I can stop running two different gui libraries on my computer. But, this is probably all relatively unrealistic for the next decade. :(
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Modern widgets are available to update the UI making it look more like OS-X
Not to flame or bash, but RH 6.2 running ancient KDE is hardly a decent representation of current Linux capabilities. I'm currently stuck with Windows for my USB sound card (TASCAM US-122) and Autodesk software, but I'm switching back as soon as the Tascam works with ALSA better than it does now and when Autodesk stuff will run under any one of the wine family.
I wish I could write clever and witty sigs.
You're smoking crack on that one.
In order to do that, all of the GNUstep classes would have to have exactly the same in-memory layout, encoding methods, and so on, as their Cocoa counterparts. It's complete nonsense to ever expect that OS X binaries will work using the GNUstep libraries.
In addition, Linux systems use a different Objective-C runtime library (GNU's, which was created because NeXT refused to release the code to theirs "back in the day"), with completely different low-level functions.
No, it's about source code portability.
Around '96 it was. WindowMaker was far away the most popular window manager. Then a kid came up with the idea of creating a GUI not just a window manager based on a really interesting set of C++ widgets which some European company had made free (as in beer) for non-commercial use.....
9 years later however Windowmaker isn't really that much more advanced while this GUI for Linux thing worked out pretty well. The GNUStep team dropped the ball. Had they released in '97 what they have today and released in '98 something along the lines of what they will release 8 years from now then they would still be running the show. Windowmaker is still my favorite window manager but a good window manager and a nice interface builder do not a GUI make.
C++ coders may balk at ObjC I see no reason why a C coder wouldn't employ it if necessary. The great thing about ObjC is that it is, unlike a C++ a proper superset of C, thereby making it easier to throw a piece of C code into an ObjC compiler and for it to come out the proper shape.
Seriously, all C coders should have a look a ObjC. Even if you don't ever use it, you will at least know everything there is to know about it with just a half-hour of reading.
As a C++ developer, I have to admit that templates are fucking ugly.
Amen to that, brother.
What's "comparing to unix"? I mean, what Unices have you used? There certainly isn't a consistent standard. Sure, you can have some when you're working within nothing but SysV- or BSD-derived systems only, but even then they can differ quite a bit. For the basics, the kinds of things that most Unices share, as displaced80 points out it's all the same.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
It's still easier to make a program like this in Flash; you can use ruby for a command line version. Why do you think so many are flocking to Flash now. MX 2004 Pro can do amazing things with very little work! And the next version is going to be better.
.swf for you and viola'! a Flash IDE made from Flash to compile Flash.
That's why I hold out hope for native flash compiling solutions like Flirt.
But it's not enough to have Flash being able to be run natively, we also need a free Flash IDE. That's where good OOP scripting languages like Ruby and Flash extensions like Ming/Ruby come in handy. With the mix of the two you can make an open source Flash IDE, using Flash as the interface elements (an interface made in flash that sends the variables on) that could send out all the info through Ruby, which would then compile the
Now all we need is people to help Ming and all the sub project, Ming/php, Ming/Ruby, Ming/perl, et cetera, to keep up with the file format specs released by Macromedia.
My sig is as boring as you...
It's actually a totally separate project, with code written in straight C. I think the only sense in which it's the GNUstep window manager is that it emulates the basic NeXT desktop paradigm and there are a few tweaks to work better with GNUstep applications.
Yep, it's a great environment. So what are you doing still running Linux? If you like it so much, do what the other sane folks have done -- buy a Mac. It's gotten to the point where I can now do a cluefullness assessment quite quickly by seeing what people are using. Those who care about their computing environment are using Macs, hopeless romantics and/or mediocre thinkers are running Linux, and the real dopes are still on Windows.
Of course, GEM can knock them all into a cocked hat.
I am trolling
Thing is you can theme KDE to look like windowmaker in a few seconds, just change the window decorations to KStep and the colours to what you want. But that's true of everything. Real hackers will probably not be happy with any theme you can give them, but that's not a problem as they'll figure out how to change it very quickly. So what DEs should do, and I think KDE does this very well, is have a default theme that's glitzy for the non-technical users, since that's what they will want.
I am trolling