Slashdot Mirror
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 ;)"
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Well, I'd rather go with the GNUstep vision of duplicating and improving on OS X, than the KDE/GNOME vision of duplicating Windows...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News