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Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

etoileos.com

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Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#61

Post by mpweiher »

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…

Objective-S builds in these directions, starting with the linguistic foundations. Note: author speaking.

Those linguistic foundations take the form of a CLOS-like metaobject protocol, but organized not on OO lines, but rather on software-architectural lines, so including OO as a subset.

On top of the metaobject protocol sits a roughly Smalltalk-ish language, with extensions for dataflow ("!", "?", so CSP-inspired, but not CSP-based, fewer processes) in-process-REST like data access and identifiers (URIs in the language) and last not least component connection (→).

With that, you have a good basis for diverse environments that blend the Smalltalk and Unix/Plan 9 styles.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#62

Post by lproven »

gnoack wrote: post #35
SillyUsername wrote: post #33

I miss the days of Sun Solaris' CDE desktop. Afterstep looks too much like Stardock's Window Blinds from around 2000 (see the weird glass effect, font etc), but Etolie seems to nail the aesthetic for me. I hope this comes back, I'd love to use it on an old netbook I have for accessing my servers remotely.

CDE was open sourced a while back: https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/

CDE is included as one of the options in Sparky Linux:

https://sparkylinux.org/cde-common-desktop-environment/

For me, it's a bit broken, though; I can't get the terminal to launch, and without that, you can't do much.

I wrote a comparison of CDE and modern recreation NotSoCDE:

https://www.theregister.com/2022/07/28/battle_of_the_retro_d...

A chap I know led the campaign to open-source it and I wrote about it at the time:

https://www.theregister.com/2012/08/09/cde_goes_opensource/

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#63

Post by fithisux »

gnoack wrote: post #36
fithisux wrote: post #16

GNUStep lost its opportunity to use D to go further and stuck with old ObjC. Very good piece of software though.

Etoile had its own Smalltalk dialect back in the day, Pragmatic Smalltalk. This was a Smalltalk based on the Objective-C runtime, based on an OMeta implementation and a LLVM backend. David Chisnall, who created it at the time, ended up getting involved more in LLVM in the long run, I believe.

Indeed, still gcc objC has not been updated but D which shares a lot in gcc 15 was upgraded to the latest release.

Pragmatic SmalltaLk can still rely on LLVM since there is LDC.

No objection against objC but on windows it is not the best.

D has 3 compilers with similar or beter ergonomics than ObjC

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#64

Post by rollcat »

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…

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

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#65

Post by tombert »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #59
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 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?

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#66

Post by cess11 »

sorrythanks wrote: post #27
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…

I love the ideas of Smalltalk and Lisp machines too. Do you know of anything promising in that area? (other than Ink & Switch)

Are you using Pharo already? If not, give it a go: https://pharo.org/

For taking notes and stuff you'd otherwise do in Jupyter or Livebook, try GT: https://gtoolkit.com/

It's not an OS, but you can just abstract over OS actions within either and keep them as your main interface, similar to how some people rarely leave Emacs.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#67

Post by realA12l »

linguae wrote: post #54
realA12l wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

David Chisnall (one of the main developers behind Étoilé) has been working full-time on CHERI for the last decade to bring hardware that enables Étoilé's vision. > I’d spent a lot of the previous years on Étoilé, which was a project to build a user-focused desktop environment that was built out of composable components with end-user programming as a key focus. We were inspired by the STEPS project at VPRI, which trie…

Thank you for sharing this interview link! I didn’t know that Étoilé was inspired by Alan Kay’s STEPS project. It makes a lot of sense. It would have been really cool to see a desktop environment that pushed Alan Kay’s ideas further.

Chisnall has stated several times over on Lobsters that he's thinking of basing is future project on Arcan (https://arcan-fe.com/). It's a very interesting project.

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#68

Post by paride5745 »

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...

Re: Étoilé – desktop built on GNUStep

#70

Post by pjmlp »

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/ >

I also advise reading through the manuals at https://www.nextop.de/ while they exist, or save local copies.
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