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Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

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Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#101

Post by hulitu »

andai wrote: post #25
linguae wrote: post #11

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 É…

Modern computing is bloat for the mind.

> Modern computing is bloat for the mind.

and for the computer also.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#103

Post by badsectoracula »

paride5745 wrote: post #68
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.

The main issue of GNUStep was that, when KDE appeared, the GNU project used GTK+ as a base for GNOME, instead of GNUStep. This basically killed the momentum behind GNUStep as a base for the official GNU Desktop. It is sad because GNUStep is incredible, the IDEs alone are more advanced than anything in GNOME-space, even today. Oh well...

The other main issue is that GNUstep is incredibly bug prone and fragile. Case in point, two years ago i installed GNUstep from source and then built a pixelart editor called PikoPixel. The app felt very clunky, like all GNUstep apps do (note that i'm using Window Maker as my main WM so GNUstep gets the best environment it can hope for). Then two years later with some OS updates in between it doesn't work anymore.

Meanwhile i'm still using the same mediaplayer binary i built ~7 years ago on a different computer against a C GUI library.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#104

Post by steve1977 »

lelanthran wrote: post #76
tombert wrote: post #15

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…

> 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. I dunno if it was a joke or not, but I can confirm that I used Windowmaker as my daily driver from around 2004-ish to 2019-ish.[1] The only reason I switched, and did not switch back, is due wanting my virtual deskto…

WindowMaker certainly was quite popular for a while, probably also because it can be used without GNUstep, just as a plain X11 window manager.

Actually, it has its own toolkit named WINGs. Which stands for WINGs is not GNUstep ;)

https://www.windowmaker.org/docs/wings.html

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#105

Post by cestith »

LeFantome wrote: post #23
linguae wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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/G…

Actually, GNUstep has always had an Interface Builder: https://www.gnustep.org/experience/Gorm.html My own take is actually that GNUstep spent too long trying to be an OpenStep successor instead of being a way to run Mac apps on Linux. It took them ages to even clarify if it was a desktop environment or an SDK (and I am not sure it is even clear now). There has never been a tonne of love for Objective C either. Prett…

>It took them ages to even clarify if it was a desktop environment or an SDK

Yes. In my eyes it’s both. I mean that in a good way, relative to the way Oberon is both an OS and a language or that Smalltalk is both a language and its authoring environment. Or how Bash is an interactive command shell and a language.

Some people might not like that tight coupling, but sometimes it can be really powerful.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#106

Post by p_l »

tombert wrote: post #65
phendrenad2 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that most active, current Linux users see fragmentation as a good thing, because they absolutely don't want consolidation of power. Many will point to a time when GNOME reigned supreme, and how did they use that power? To repeatedly completely redesign the GUI in ways that the community hated, because "we know better". There is a much larger group of people who would support "One Desktop Framework To Rule The…

Wait, did Gnome ever reign supreme? I feel like there was always a back and forth with Gnome and KDE?

Never fully, but it's how we got systemd nearly everywhere - GNOME 3.8 arrived with support for polkit-based approach for, among other things, power management, and mandated logind. Which at the time was very much a banana that required the gorilla and the whole jungle to run. Some tried to deal with it, some managed to even separate udev and logind out, but the immediate effect was that distributions that avoided systemd or made it optional - including ones that were exploring alternative paths, were forced to adopt systemd or remove support for GNOME 3.8 and newer.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#107

Post by evereverever »

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.

Microsoft tried to replicate the iOS libraries and everything with project Islandwood. It was a valiant effort but that moment (iOS 5->6->7) was a major time of upheaval for iOS libraries and they matured and this project was ultimately canceled.

https://github.com/Microsoft/WinObjC

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#108

Post by rhet0rica »

pdw wrote: post #49
sunshine-o wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20-25 years ago, one of the problem GNUStep had is it was never packaged in the Linux distros. You had to compile everything. One of the reason might have been GCC refused to include the Objective C extensions or something like that. I vaguely remember there might have been some legal concerns. Maybe someone can clarify this. But damn GNUStep was fast, snappy and a much better platform than let's say Gnome at the tim…

Debian woody (2002) shipped gnustep. I tried it back then, but as far as I remember, it was weird enough that anybody who didn't have NEXTSTEP experience would bounce right off. The floating menus, the weird scrollbars, etc. There were also no non-trivial applications that I can remember. People back then were looking for something that would be familiar to Windows/Mac users. GNUStep (at least at the time) was not in…

The current best GNUstep distro is WMlive: https://sourceforge.net/projects/wmlive/

It's based on Debian Bookworm.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#109

Post by rhet0rica »

rollcat wrote: post #64
pdw wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian woody (2002) shipped gnustep. I tried it back then, but as far as I remember, it was weird enough that anybody who didn't have NEXTSTEP experience would bounce right off. The floating menus, the weird scrollbars, etc. There were also no non-trivial applications that I can remember. People back then were looking for something that would be familiar to Windows/Mac users. GNUStep (at least at the time) was not in…

Anyone interested in trying NeXTStep, it's included on https://infinitemac.org/ >

Be aware that these are built on very barebones disk images compiled by a community member many years ago; the NeXT community is working on more tourist-friendly packages that we hope to offer to Mihai soon.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#110

Post by wmlive »

rhet0rica wrote: post #108
pdw wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian woody (2002) shipped gnustep. I tried it back then, but as far as I remember, it was weird enough that anybody who didn't have NEXTSTEP experience would bounce right off. The floating menus, the weird scrollbars, etc. There were also no non-trivial applications that I can remember. People back then were looking for something that would be familiar to Windows/Mac users. GNUStep (at least at the time) was not in…

The current best GNUstep distro is WMlive: https://sourceforge.net/projects/wmlive/ It's based on Debian Bookworm.

Glad you like it and thanks for the recommendation!

Nonetheless, being the maintainer of this project, i'd like to point out that this is no dedicated GNUstep distro, but a mostly Debian based distribution using a thoroughly preconfigured Window Maker as its primary user interface, and that just happens to have the whole range of available GNUstep applications added on.

As already written elsewhere[3], citing my own words, this is a better characterization of its scope:

»Window Maker is just a highly compatible X11 window manager and is supposed to work as such. There is no interest to specifically integrate it with the provided GNUstep applications, as this is not supposed to be predominantly a GNUstep desktop. The included GNUstep applications are just an addon to give people a practical way to verify what GNUstep has to offer. In fact, wmlive would be perfectly usable without providing any single GNUstep application. The freedom and flexibility provided by an X11 window manager instead of the walled garden of a specific desktop system is much more preferable to many Linux users. NeXT nostalgists might want to look elsewhere. [1][2]«

People who's interest has been sufficiently piqued to download wmlive are advised to better wait until after Debian's bookwom 12.12 point release this saturday. A final bookworm based wmlive release will be uploaded shortly after. This will also be the last and final 32bit i386 variant of wmlive. After that work on an exclusively amd64 trixie based wmlive variant will begin.

[1] https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace

[2] https://github.com/onflapp/gs-desktop

[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44640378

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