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Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

etoileos.com

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Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#11

Post by linguae »

Étoilé was so promising….the idea of using OpenStep (via GNUstep) infrastructure in ways that went beyond NeXTstep or Mac OS X. It felt like an even deeper embrace of the Smalltalk influences of the OpenStep API to enhance the desktop computing experience. Étoilé wasn’t merely a clone of NeXTstep or Mac OS X; it was its own thing that could’ve been a compelling contender to KDE, GNOME, and even macOS.

Unfortunately Étoilé seems to have been inactive for a decade, and even Apple seems to be abandoning its Xerox PARC influences as the old guard retires and passes away (RIP Steve Jobs, Larry Tesler, and Bill Atkinson). Ever since Apple struck gold with the iPhone and derivative platforms, Apple hasn’t been the same.

I’d like to see the ideas of Smalltalk and Lisp machines revisited for the modern era as a model for workstation-class personal computing. Smalltalk and Lisp environments pride themselves on flexibility and malleability (though it’s understandable to rethink some of these things in an era where security is very important), while mainstream personal computing these days feel less like productivity boosters (remember “the bicycle for the mind”) and more like advertising platforms and anti-competitive, rent-seeking moats.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#12

Post by pjmlp »

GNUStep is a good example that the bare bones language and compiler being open source it is not enough, when everything else doesn't come along.

Saying this as someone that used Afterstep and Windowmaker alongside GNUStep, and did seat a few times on the GNUStep room at FOSDEM.

Last time I checked was at the level of OS X Panther, and modern Objective-C still wasn't supported.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#14

Post by alephnerd »

pabs3 wrote: post #10
alephnerd wrote: post #5

It makes me glad to see Etoile is still around. I played around with it in HS when it was in it's alpha stages because I wanted to find a Linux distro that had the same polish of MacOS X and on which I could dev Obj-C. It was a good attempt, but sadly I haven't seen any Linux skin or distro that has solved the UX polish issue. Edit: never mind, Étoilé did die around the time I thought it did in the early 2010s.

There were commits in 2024: https://github.com/orgs/etoile/repositories

Just one tiny project. The rest of the Etoile codebase hasn't been touched for at least a decade. Ofc it's not the maintainers fault - it's a FOSS project so imo it's bad form to bemoan release cycles if not contributing as projects are hard even if fully funded.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#15

Post by tombert »

I have never played with GNUStep. By the time I actually started real work as a professional software person (2011) it was already kind of considered a joke, so I never bothered learning how to use it.

It bothers me a bit, though. Developing for desktop Linux is still a pain in the ass, and I really wish the Linux community had agreed on One Desktop Framework To Rule Them All, and I think GNUStep could have been that framework if the community had been willing to embrace it.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#17

Post by linguae »

pjmlp wrote: post #12

GNUStep is a good example that the bare bones language and compiler being open source it is not enough, when everything else doesn't come along. Saying this as someone that used Afterstep and Windowmaker alongside GNUStep, and did seat a few times on the GNUStep room at FOSDEM. Last time I checked was at the level of OS X Panther, and modern Objective-C still wasn't supported.

I’ve been periodically keeping up with GNUstep’s progress since 2004, when I first learned about it as a high school student brand new to Linux and Mac OS X (I grew up on Windows at home and on classic Macs in elementary school). I even wrote a report for a community college class on the history of Mac OS X.

I’ve wanted to see GNUstep succeed, but unfortunately it never got as much attention as the KDE/Qt and GNOME/GTK ecosystems. I have some theories as to why, but I think the biggest barrier is those who really wanted OpenStep/Cocoa in the 1990s and 2000s could’ve used readily-available NeXT/Apple software instead of waiting for GNUstep. It’s the same issue ReactOS and Haiku have; they’re competing against Windows NT/2000/XP/Server 2003 and BeOS, respectively. Even FreeDOS, which is architecturally much simpler, took quite a while to reach version 1.0; people could just get MS-DOS 6.22.

Of course, the Linux kernel and the GNU ecosystem are counterexamples, though I believe it’s easier to reimplement Unix due to its modular nature than to reimplement entire GUI toolkits, especially if source- and/or binary-level compatibility are required.

A GNUstep that was ready around 1998 or 1999 to capture the attention of former NeXT developers and deliver ports of NeXT software to Linux would’ve been the ideal opportunity, though it still would’ve been quite an effort to bring over other things that made the NeXT special, such as Interface Builder. I’ve noticed that most commercial Mac OS X software in the early days were Carbon applications, not Cocoa applications. Many legendary NeXT software products did not make the transition from NeXTstep/OPENSTEP to Mac OS X. They could’ve had a home on Linux or one of the BSDs via GNUstep had GNUstep been ready.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#18

Post by chris_armstrong »

Damn this is a blast from the past - it was such an ambitious project with so many interesting ideas to explore. CoreObject itself was revolutionary in its thinking about distributed document sharing and versioning, let alone some of desktop environment ideas for managing projects.

I know Quentin Mathé, kept CoreObject going for a decade longer, but I haven't heard from the rest of those involved for a very long time.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#20

Post by cosmic_cheese »

alephnerd wrote: post #8
totallykvothe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are your gripes with Elementary? I personally use KDE now, but I used to use Elementary a while ago, and it was very polished

Last I played with Elementary (couple months ago), there was a finickiness and latency issue with icons. Elementary also isn't able to enforce a single unified design pattern the same way Apple is able to from a UX perspective. Linux distros tend to overindex on power users and cli users (makes sense, given the technical userbase) at the expense of building a user experience that is much more user friendly for nontec…

> Linux distros tend to overindex on power users and cli users

Funny enough, in my opinion one of the issues holding elementary/Pantheon back is that it’s too much like Gnome in how it prefers bare-faced simplicity over progressive disclosure.

It fades more with every release but I think much of the magic of macOS (both OS X and Classic) is how on the surface it’s simple which makes it palatable and welcoming for non-technical people, but is packed with touches that users pick up over time, effectively turning them into power users. Some of the people who get the most out of thier macs aren’t particularly technical but have just been using macs for their photography business or what have you for the past 20 years and know their way around the OS better than many software developers do. Sometimes they’ve even done a fair amount of script writing and such.

With Gnome and Pantheon, there’s very little of that. What you see is what you get, and after using it for a week you know everything there is to know about it.

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