8 ms·

GNUstep LiveCD 2017

156 points by mondoshawan 9y ago

yellowapple 9y ago
I was kind of hoping this would be built on top of XNU/Darwin. Still cool, though.
- favorited 9y ago
  Relatedly, someone was working on bringing Mach IPC, kernel-space libdispatch, etc. to FreeBSD. Doesn't look like it's still active, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NextBSD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NextBSD
justin66 9y ago
Two interesting things: No systemd but classic init Well, that's one quick way to win a few people over. Among future items: Versions based on ReactOS, Minix3, Plan 9, and GNU/kFreeBSD Really intriguing, but how many people have you got working on this?
- Fnoord 9y ago
  Is it a quick way to lose a few people as well? Is it going to be a net gain or net loss?
  - yebyen 9y ago
    It appears to be based on Debian 9, which means that there is systemd support too, it just must be disabled by default. (In Debian 8, systemd was made the default init system.)
- geofft 9y ago
  I feel like the anti-systemd folks are just helping systemd by portraying the only two choices as systemd and classic init. It used to be the consensus that there were real problems solved by non-classic init systems, of which there were several decent options, systemd being the most popular but also the most controversial. I think there are serious problems with systemd and I want a decent featureful init / boot-ordering system, but given the choice between classic init and systemd I'd definitely pick systemd. As an example of the most basic improvements over classic init, here's a paper from 2001 from OpenBSD about dependency-based init with no runlevels: https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix01/freenix01/full_papers/mewburn/mewburn_html/ https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix01/freenix01/full_... Since this is Debian-based, does "classic init" in this context mean they're using insserv? That's definitely not "classic," but it's definitely a better option IMO. If so, are they interested in helping out with maintaining insserv in Debian? It hasn't seen a maintainer upload for almost five years, and help is requested: https://bugs.debian.org/834284 https://bugs.debian.org/834284
  - _jal 9y ago
    I don't know who the "anti-systemd folks" you're talking to are, but I haven't seen that. I see several different projects using several different inits, including, yes, "classic init". The only folks I hear talking about One True Init (which will also take over completely unrelated functions, poorly) are the systemd folks. Also, it sounds like you're unaware of the distinction, but the BSDs have never had sysvinit-style runlevels. You can kinda hack them in if you like, but there's no native notion of runlevel; you get single-user or multi-user.
  - ginreaper 9y ago
    I think the biggest issue of SystemD was not only the controversial development process, but the dependencies of other projects like udev into SystemD's repo and packaging.
    - digi_owl 9y ago
      Bingo. Rarely if ever have i seen someone considered anti-systemd as being pro-sysv. What they are pro however is init diversity. With sysv, it was relatively easy to slot in a different init as the admin wanted. A distro i have used for some time, Gobolinux, may use the sysv init binary for example. But it forgoes the usual sysv layout for one more akin to just a rc.local. But with systemd it is systemd, and only systemd, because systemd is so "invasive". And the real worry is when third party developers assume systemd as the default and make it hard, or resist, supporting alternatives.
- snakeanus 9y ago
  Not HURD? Quite sad when considering that GNUstep is a GNU project.
  - yebyen 9y ago
    Insisting that it must run only on HURD... now that's a way to lose a lot of people! :D It is surprising that this list does not include HURD though! > Future Plans > Versions based on ReactOS, Minix3, Plan 9, and GNU/kFreeBSD
- alexmyczko 9y ago
  me, feel free to help. reactos and gnustep should be not too hard. i am so sorry i forgot Hurd but no sound drivers turned me so off.
  - yebyen 9y ago
    Thank you so much for your contribution! I'm going to try it later, but your page and links did a great job of explaining to me what is the point of NeXTstep and why I as a (pragmatic) developer in 2017 should care at all about it.
    - alexmyczko 9y ago
      Thank you!
- alexmyczko 9y ago
  me, feel free to help. reactos and gnustep should be not too hard. i am so sorry i forgot Hurd but no sound drivers turned me so off.
vesinisa 9y ago
Happy to see the GNUstep project still alive and kicking. WindowMaker has been the daily driver at my home desktop since 2000 when I first installed Debian and found the KDE & GNOME desktops way too heavy and unstable. At this point, I am just too accustomed to WM to try anything different. It's a great window manager and has all the bells & whistles I ever need, yet it's blazingly fast. Though lately some KDE software has been misbehaving under my present-day Arch Linux install (small rendering issues, probably a theme configuration error), but as long as GTK + Firefox + xterm work, I am happy enough.
- cpach 9y ago
  Do you still get plug and play for e.g. USB drives and such when using Windowmaker? (As compared to a full desktop environment such as XFCE or KDE.)
  - notalaser 9y ago
    Yes. This is all handled via udev, udisks & co., XFCE, Gnome and KDE have nothing to do with it (other than having it work more or less out of the box).
    - cpach 9y ago
      Cool. Is much tweaking needed to get it to work smoothly?
      - vesinisa 9y ago
        If you mean auto-mounting on inserting USB devices, it is handled a bit differently depending on your distribution. E.g. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Udisks https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Udisks https://wiki.debian.org/AutoFs https://wiki.debian.org/AutoFs I personally don't think it's that much of a trouble to just journalctl for the /dev/sdX of the inserted device and then sudo mount /dev/sdX /mnt/tmp manually, because I so rarely plug USB drives. For permanently attached or frequently used devices you can add them to fstab and mount by UUID to a fixed path. Either way, you will still always need to umount manually or risk loosing data.
jampola 9y ago
Lunduke did a pretty funny "review" of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFSTnZM27Gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFSTnZM27Gc
- desireco42 9y ago
  Thank you. It helps me understand how it looks and works.
duckson 9y ago
Is there a Swift environment running on this yet? /s
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- mondoshawan 9y ago
  There's steptalk which is effectively a smalltalk environment embedded inside of the Objc runtime. See also the Etoile project here: http://etoileos.com/news/archive/2006/05/28/2222/ http://etoileos.com/news/archive/2006/05/28/2222/
  - chriswarbo 9y ago
    I was going to bring up Etoile; I assume it's dead, since there doesn't seem to been any activity for a few years?
    - mondoshawan 9y ago
      At least in the blog/news areas sure. I wouldn't doubt if there's been development on the IRC channels and the mailing lists, though. I does seem like they were having a bit of an identity crisis around the time steptalk was put together, though.
- alexmyczko 9y ago
  I am still waiting for a properly packaged swift 3 for debian. Of course I could add the swift from apple as ubuntu deb pkg. but still we will get gnustep swift bindings some day...
michrassena 9y ago
I used WindowMaker in the late 90s on Redhat 5.0. At the time it was the most Windows-like environment (e.g. icons could be added using the GUI instead of editing a config file) I had access to on Linux, and that similarity made it more usable to me that FLWM or whatever came with Redhat. The dock and applets were what kept me using it even after KDE and Gnome came out. Off and on I'd try it, but the progress seemed extremely slow. For those that have used NextStep, how does the GNUstep environment compare?
- mondoshawan 9y ago
  In actual day to day use, I've found it to be a little wonky. Wmaker has its own widget system similar to the Foundation stuff that GNUStep uses, and the two sometimes run afoul of each other (dockapps, withdrawn windows, even the menu bars). Never could get the GFiler project to quite jive with wmaker. Most of the apps written using GNUstep work fine, though. I should note, I haven't given this liveCD a whirl just yet -- my last attempt with GNUstep was about 6-9 months ago, building from source.
k_sze 9y ago
"One could say that GNUstep is a very nice woman, but without proper make-up and with a shabby dress. Although the expert eye could see the star sparkle, the average person maybe would prefer a more normal female with choosen make-up and dress." I'm sure everybody here will appreciate this nice nugget of gentlemanly wisdom. (Should I add </sarcasm> here?)
- mondoshawan 9y ago
  Comparisons like this always make me cringe. Do we have to use women as the comparison for things like this? As a woman in tech, this kind of comparison almost always makes me want to disengage.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - laumars 9y ago
    As a man in tech I still had the same reaction. At best it just screams amature hour. At worst it is downright misogynistic. Frankly, to me it comes off a little of both. The only redeeming thing here is that quote wasn't made by the GNUstep maintainers but from the comments section on the blog. However the GNUstep maintainers should have known better than to include said quote on their homepage.
    - abrowne 9y ago
      As a person in the world I had the same reaction!
  - pjmlp 9y ago
    As man in tech, that had the pleasure of working with very good fellow technical females, I fully agree with you. We don't need stuff that turns good professionals away from our field.
  - _jal 9y ago
    Don't blame you a bit. I do dismiss people like this - life is too short for dealing with them, even the ones who are clueless rather than actively hostile. Suggestion for clueless men who think this makes you look worldly or cool: if you can easily substitute inanimate objects in your metaphor that otherwise involves the dehumanizing half the planet, do so. You might eventually become actually worldly and cool someday if you start practicing now. If, on the other hand, the esteem and praise of 14 year old boys and men who still act like them is all you care about, please, by all means, keep it up. It makes my life easier when people I don't want to be around advertise.
TomMasz 9y ago
I was really interested in the NeXT machine but couldn't afford one. So when I got my hands on a surplus PC I set it up with Red Hat and WindowMaker. WM was okay as long you used programs intended for it but I never really got used to it. Then I switched to S.u.S.E and using KDE and never looked back.
snakeanus 9y ago
Weirdly enough when trying to install wmaker on debian it seems that it does not depend on any GNUstep packages. Indeed, it seems to be using libwutil5 instead.
- mondoshawan 9y ago
  Wmaker is not actually affiliated with GNUstep, and in fact has its own Foundation-style widget set written in straight C called WINGs. WMakerPrefs uses this to do its work.
- jhbadger 9y ago
  WindowMaker predates GNUStep and is just a window manager that has a NextStep theme. I used it on Linux in the late 1990s.
  - reubenmorais 9y ago
    GNUStep predates WindowMaker by a couple of years, and windowmaker.org states: Window Maker is an X11 window manager originally designed to provide integration support for the GNUstep Desktop Environment.
    - jhbadger 9y ago
      WindowMaker was released in 1997. GnuStep in 1998 (yes, it had been announced years earlier). While it may have been the author's intent all along to support GNUStep, the reason why it doesn't rely on any GNUStep libraries is that they didn't exist at the time.
finnjohnsen2 9y ago
GNU and terrible looking web pages and logos correlate still :D
- davexunit 9y ago
  For the record, this is not a GNU web page. The logo is the real GNUstep logo, and yeah plenty of GNU logos aren't great, but bashing the work of volunteers is really mean.
  - finnjohnsen2 9y ago
    Maybe you're right. Sorry. It was just my initial reaction based on that this GNU design issue has been raised to my attention before.
    - davexunit 9y ago
      It's all good. GNU has traditionally lacked volunteers experienced in graphic design/marketing.
      - sigjuice 9y ago
        https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ and https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/ https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/ two good looking (IMHO) GNU project websites that I know of. There may be others.
        mega-tux 9y ago
        Nice to see Guile so improved lastly. Also https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/ https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/ is nice.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- ungzd 9y ago
hackbinary 9y ago
Any word on Étoilé? That seemed to be interesting project built using GNUstep. Doesn't seem to be any activity in the repo since Dec 2016. http://etoileos.com/etoile/ http://etoileos.com/etoile/ http://etoileos.com/ http://etoileos.com/
- alexmyczko 9y ago
  the important parts were added back to gnustep.
  - favorited 9y ago
    Including libobjc2, which is a substantial improvement over the old GNU implementation. And it's MIT licensed! https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2 https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2
ams6110 9y ago
What do the words "man", "woman", "male", "female" really even mean these days?
- dang 9y ago
  We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14979330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14979330 and marked it off-topic.
AdmiralAsshat 9y ago
An interesting video showing some features of NeXTSTEP, on which GNUStep is based: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGhfB-NICzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGhfB-NICzg
noisy_boy 9y ago
Reminds me of early 2000 when I started with WindowMaker, moved to Fluxbox, then Enligtenment and finally kept switching between KDE and Gnome.
aphextron 9y ago
Laptop support?
torrent-of-ions 9y ago
>As a woman in tech, this kind of comparison almost always makes me want to disengage. And that's why there are not many women in tech. Stop taking things personally. I don't care if you're a woman. Is that a good thing or bad thing? I'm not sure any more. Is it not OK to use people to make analogies?
- mondoshawan 9y ago
  I'd like to clarify something here: I'm not taking this personally. I mentioned that it's off-putting and makes me not want to be in the field, and I'm part of one of the groups that we're all so concerned with getting more of in tech lately. If you care, you'll listen. If not, well, so be it. I don't care. Normally I'd keep my mouth shut about this kind of thing, but I spoke up because I've finally run headlong into this kind of crap in the workplace, despite my 20 years of experience in the field, and I don't want to deal with it anymore. It's unprofessional and unwelcome. I've been shouted down, talked over, laughed at, yelled at, and fought with, demoralized, and stepped on. And I'm used to dealing with the usual technical fracas with intelligent folks in IT, and can go toe-to-toe with others on technical issues without taking it personally. Up until recently, I've been lucky enough to avoid all of the crap by working with people that actually respect me for my talent. Now that I've moved out east and experienced it first hand, I don't want to experience it again. So I'm speaking up and asking you and others to stop it, and telling you it's one of the reasons my particular subgroup is being driven out. Take it or leave it.
  - torrent-of-ions 9y ago
    What are you even talking about? I've also been shouted down, talked over and the rest. What does that have to do with the analogy for which you felt the need to express disapproval and play your "woman in tech" card? You have a strong air of superiority. You seem to think that because you are a woman that you are more important than me. I'm sure this is because you are a part of the group that "we're all so concerned with". Well, guess what? I am not concerned about getting more of any group of people in tech. I want people in tech who want to be in tech. Simple as that. I support lowering the barriers to entry even lower than they are right now. Free software and Raspberry Pis are great. They are cheaper than Barbie dolls now. We're doing really well. What I don't support is trying to force a particular group of people to do something that most of them don't want to do. As a woman in tech yourself you must surely see that it is possible and that there are no extra barriers to any other woman who wants to pursue the same path. Or do you think that you are special and all those other, weaker women need more help to do what they want?
smhenderson 9y ago
I've always been intrigued by GNUstep but never kept it around for long. I think I'll give this a spin. I notice it's based on Debian but uses classic init. I switched all my workflow to OpenBSD on servers and Slackware on a couple of laptops and desktops over the last year or so but before that I'd used Debian exclusively on everything for over 15 years. This offering has definitely piqued my curiosity! At least enough to try it in a VM...
youdontknowtho 9y ago
I like that GnuStep is still out there. That's awesome. Quoting a study from 1992 is kinda funny. But NextStep is a faster development environment than SunOS. Preach on, brother.

GNUstep LiveCD 2017

156 points by mondoshawan 9y ago

yellowapple 9y ago

I was kind of hoping this would be built on top of XNU/Darwin. Still cool, though.

favorited 9y ago
Relatedly, someone was working on bringing Mach IPC, kernel-space libdispatch, etc. to FreeBSD. Doesn't look like it's still active, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NextBSD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NextBSD

justin66 9y ago

Two interesting things: No systemd but classic init Well, that's one quick way to win a few people over. Among future items: Versions based on ReactOS, Minix3, Plan 9, and GNU/kFreeBSD Really intriguing, but how many people have you got working on this?

Fnoord 9y ago
Is it a quick way to lose a few people as well? Is it going to be a net gain or net loss?
- yebyen 9y ago
  It appears to be based on Debian 9, which means that there is systemd support too, it just must be disabled by default. (In Debian 8, systemd was made the default init system.)
geofft 9y ago
I feel like the anti-systemd folks are just helping systemd by portraying the only two choices as systemd and classic init. It used to be the consensus that there were real problems solved by non-classic init systems, of which there were several decent options, systemd being the most popular but also the most controversial. I think there are serious problems with systemd and I want a decent featureful init / boot-ordering system, but given the choice between classic init and systemd I'd definitely pick systemd. As an example of the most basic improvements over classic init, here's a paper from 2001 from OpenBSD about dependency-based init with no runlevels: https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix01/freenix01/full_papers/mewburn/mewburn_html/ https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix01/freenix01/full_... Since this is Debian-based, does "classic init" in this context mean they're using insserv? That's definitely not "classic," but it's definitely a better option IMO. If so, are they interested in helping out with maintaining insserv in Debian? It hasn't seen a maintainer upload for almost five years, and help is requested: https://bugs.debian.org/834284 https://bugs.debian.org/834284
- _jal 9y ago
  I don't know who the "anti-systemd folks" you're talking to are, but I haven't seen that. I see several different projects using several different inits, including, yes, "classic init". The only folks I hear talking about One True Init (which will also take over completely unrelated functions, poorly) are the systemd folks. Also, it sounds like you're unaware of the distinction, but the BSDs have never had sysvinit-style runlevels. You can kinda hack them in if you like, but there's no native notion of runlevel; you get single-user or multi-user.
- ginreaper 9y ago
  I think the biggest issue of SystemD was not only the controversial development process, but the dependencies of other projects like udev into SystemD's repo and packaging.
  - digi_owl 9y ago
    Bingo. Rarely if ever have i seen someone considered anti-systemd as being pro-sysv. What they are pro however is init diversity. With sysv, it was relatively easy to slot in a different init as the admin wanted. A distro i have used for some time, Gobolinux, may use the sysv init binary for example. But it forgoes the usual sysv layout for one more akin to just a rc.local. But with systemd it is systemd, and only systemd, because systemd is so "invasive". And the real worry is when third party developers assume systemd as the default and make it hard, or resist, supporting alternatives.
snakeanus 9y ago
Not HURD? Quite sad when considering that GNUstep is a GNU project.
- yebyen 9y ago
  Insisting that it must run only on HURD... now that's a way to lose a lot of people! :D It is surprising that this list does not include HURD though! > Future Plans > Versions based on ReactOS, Minix3, Plan 9, and GNU/kFreeBSD
alexmyczko 9y ago
me, feel free to help. reactos and gnustep should be not too hard. i am so sorry i forgot Hurd but no sound drivers turned me so off.
- yebyen 9y ago
  Thank you so much for your contribution! I'm going to try it later, but your page and links did a great job of explaining to me what is the point of NeXTstep and why I as a (pragmatic) developer in 2017 should care at all about it.
  - alexmyczko 9y ago
    Thank you!
alexmyczko 9y ago
me, feel free to help. reactos and gnustep should be not too hard. i am so sorry i forgot Hurd but no sound drivers turned me so off.

vesinisa 9y ago

Happy to see the GNUstep project still alive and kicking. WindowMaker has been the daily driver at my home desktop since 2000 when I first installed Debian and found the KDE & GNOME desktops way too heavy and unstable. At this point, I am just too accustomed to WM to try anything different. It's a great window manager and has all the bells & whistles I ever need, yet it's blazingly fast. Though lately some KDE software has been misbehaving under my present-day Arch Linux install (small rendering issues, probably a theme configuration error), but as long as GTK + Firefox + xterm work, I am happy enough.

cpach 9y ago
Do you still get plug and play for e.g. USB drives and such when using Windowmaker? (As compared to a full desktop environment such as XFCE or KDE.)
- notalaser 9y ago
  Yes. This is all handled via udev, udisks & co., XFCE, Gnome and KDE have nothing to do with it (other than having it work more or less out of the box).
  - cpach 9y ago
    Cool. Is much tweaking needed to get it to work smoothly?
    - vesinisa 9y ago
      If you mean auto-mounting on inserting USB devices, it is handled a bit differently depending on your distribution. E.g. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Udisks https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Udisks https://wiki.debian.org/AutoFs https://wiki.debian.org/AutoFs I personally don't think it's that much of a trouble to just journalctl for the /dev/sdX of the inserted device and then sudo mount /dev/sdX /mnt/tmp manually, because I so rarely plug USB drives. For permanently attached or frequently used devices you can add them to fstab and mount by UUID to a fixed path. Either way, you will still always need to umount manually or risk loosing data.

jampola 9y ago

Lunduke did a pretty funny "review" of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFSTnZM27Gc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFSTnZM27Gc

desireco42 9y ago
Thank you. It helps me understand how it looks and works.

duckson 9y ago

Is there a Swift environment running on this yet? /s

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
mondoshawan 9y ago
There's steptalk which is effectively a smalltalk environment embedded inside of the Objc runtime. See also the Etoile project here: http://etoileos.com/news/archive/2006/05/28/2222/ http://etoileos.com/news/archive/2006/05/28/2222/
- chriswarbo 9y ago
  I was going to bring up Etoile; I assume it's dead, since there doesn't seem to been any activity for a few years?
  - mondoshawan 9y ago
    At least in the blog/news areas sure. I wouldn't doubt if there's been development on the IRC channels and the mailing lists, though. I does seem like they were having a bit of an identity crisis around the time steptalk was put together, though.
alexmyczko 9y ago
I am still waiting for a properly packaged swift 3 for debian. Of course I could add the swift from apple as ubuntu deb pkg. but still we will get gnustep swift bindings some day...

michrassena 9y ago

I used WindowMaker in the late 90s on Redhat 5.0. At the time it was the most Windows-like environment (e.g. icons could be added using the GUI instead of editing a config file) I had access to on Linux, and that similarity made it more usable to me that FLWM or whatever came with Redhat. The dock and applets were what kept me using it even after KDE and Gnome came out. Off and on I'd try it, but the progress seemed extremely slow. For those that have used NextStep, how does the GNUstep environment compare?

mondoshawan 9y ago
In actual day to day use, I've found it to be a little wonky. Wmaker has its own widget system similar to the Foundation stuff that GNUStep uses, and the two sometimes run afoul of each other (dockapps, withdrawn windows, even the menu bars). Never could get the GFiler project to quite jive with wmaker. Most of the apps written using GNUstep work fine, though. I should note, I haven't given this liveCD a whirl just yet -- my last attempt with GNUstep was about 6-9 months ago, building from source.

k_sze 9y ago

"One could say that GNUstep is a very nice woman, but without proper make-up and with a shabby dress. Although the expert eye could see the star sparkle, the average person maybe would prefer a more normal female with choosen make-up and dress." I'm sure everybody here will appreciate this nice nugget of gentlemanly wisdom. (Should I add </sarcasm> here?)

mondoshawan 9y ago
Comparisons like this always make me cringe. Do we have to use women as the comparison for things like this? As a woman in tech, this kind of comparison almost always makes me want to disengage.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- laumars 9y ago
  As a man in tech I still had the same reaction. At best it just screams amature hour. At worst it is downright misogynistic. Frankly, to me it comes off a little of both. The only redeeming thing here is that quote wasn't made by the GNUstep maintainers but from the comments section on the blog. However the GNUstep maintainers should have known better than to include said quote on their homepage.
  - abrowne 9y ago
    As a person in the world I had the same reaction!
- pjmlp 9y ago
  As man in tech, that had the pleasure of working with very good fellow technical females, I fully agree with you. We don't need stuff that turns good professionals away from our field.
- _jal 9y ago
  Don't blame you a bit. I do dismiss people like this - life is too short for dealing with them, even the ones who are clueless rather than actively hostile. Suggestion for clueless men who think this makes you look worldly or cool: if you can easily substitute inanimate objects in your metaphor that otherwise involves the dehumanizing half the planet, do so. You might eventually become actually worldly and cool someday if you start practicing now. If, on the other hand, the esteem and praise of 14 year old boys and men who still act like them is all you care about, please, by all means, keep it up. It makes my life easier when people I don't want to be around advertise.

TomMasz 9y ago

I was really interested in the NeXT machine but couldn't afford one. So when I got my hands on a surplus PC I set it up with Red Hat and WindowMaker. WM was okay as long you used programs intended for it but I never really got used to it. Then I switched to S.u.S.E and using KDE and never looked back.

snakeanus 9y ago

Weirdly enough when trying to install wmaker on debian it seems that it does not depend on any GNUstep packages. Indeed, it seems to be using libwutil5 instead.

mondoshawan 9y ago
Wmaker is not actually affiliated with GNUstep, and in fact has its own Foundation-style widget set written in straight C called WINGs. WMakerPrefs uses this to do its work.
jhbadger 9y ago
WindowMaker predates GNUStep and is just a window manager that has a NextStep theme. I used it on Linux in the late 1990s.
- reubenmorais 9y ago
  GNUStep predates WindowMaker by a couple of years, and windowmaker.org states: Window Maker is an X11 window manager originally designed to provide integration support for the GNUstep Desktop Environment.
  - jhbadger 9y ago
    WindowMaker was released in 1997. GnuStep in 1998 (yes, it had been announced years earlier). While it may have been the author's intent all along to support GNUStep, the reason why it doesn't rely on any GNUStep libraries is that they didn't exist at the time.

finnjohnsen2 9y ago

GNU and terrible looking web pages and logos correlate still :D

davexunit 9y ago
For the record, this is not a GNU web page. The logo is the real GNUstep logo, and yeah plenty of GNU logos aren't great, but bashing the work of volunteers is really mean.
- finnjohnsen2 9y ago
  Maybe you're right. Sorry. It was just my initial reaction based on that this GNU design issue has been raised to my attention before.
  - davexunit 9y ago
    It's all good. GNU has traditionally lacked volunteers experienced in graphic design/marketing.
    - sigjuice 9y ago
      https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/ and https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/ https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/ two good looking (IMHO) GNU project websites that I know of. There may be others.
      - mega-tux 9y ago
        Nice to see Guile so improved lastly. Also https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/ https://www.gnu.org/software/guix/ is nice.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
ungzd 9y ago

hackbinary 9y ago

Any word on Étoilé? That seemed to be interesting project built using GNUstep. Doesn't seem to be any activity in the repo since Dec 2016. http://etoileos.com/etoile/ http://etoileos.com/etoile/ http://etoileos.com/ http://etoileos.com/

alexmyczko 9y ago
the important parts were added back to gnustep.
- favorited 9y ago
  Including libobjc2, which is a substantial improvement over the old GNU implementation. And it's MIT licensed! https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2 https://github.com/gnustep/libobjc2

ams6110 9y ago

What do the words "man", "woman", "male", "female" really even mean these days?

dang 9y ago
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14979330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14979330 and marked it off-topic.

AdmiralAsshat 9y ago

An interesting video showing some features of NeXTSTEP, on which GNUStep is based: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGhfB-NICzg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGhfB-NICzg

noisy_boy 9y ago

Reminds me of early 2000 when I started with WindowMaker, moved to Fluxbox, then Enligtenment and finally kept switching between KDE and Gnome.

aphextron 9y ago

Laptop support?

torrent-of-ions 9y ago

>As a woman in tech, this kind of comparison almost always makes me want to disengage. And that's why there are not many women in tech. Stop taking things personally. I don't care if you're a woman. Is that a good thing or bad thing? I'm not sure any more. Is it not OK to use people to make analogies?

mondoshawan 9y ago
I'd like to clarify something here: I'm not taking this personally. I mentioned that it's off-putting and makes me not want to be in the field, and I'm part of one of the groups that we're all so concerned with getting more of in tech lately. If you care, you'll listen. If not, well, so be it. I don't care. Normally I'd keep my mouth shut about this kind of thing, but I spoke up because I've finally run headlong into this kind of crap in the workplace, despite my 20 years of experience in the field, and I don't want to deal with it anymore. It's unprofessional and unwelcome. I've been shouted down, talked over, laughed at, yelled at, and fought with, demoralized, and stepped on. And I'm used to dealing with the usual technical fracas with intelligent folks in IT, and can go toe-to-toe with others on technical issues without taking it personally. Up until recently, I've been lucky enough to avoid all of the crap by working with people that actually respect me for my talent. Now that I've moved out east and experienced it first hand, I don't want to experience it again. So I'm speaking up and asking you and others to stop it, and telling you it's one of the reasons my particular subgroup is being driven out. Take it or leave it.
- torrent-of-ions 9y ago
  What are you even talking about? I've also been shouted down, talked over and the rest. What does that have to do with the analogy for which you felt the need to express disapproval and play your "woman in tech" card? You have a strong air of superiority. You seem to think that because you are a woman that you are more important than me. I'm sure this is because you are a part of the group that "we're all so concerned with". Well, guess what? I am not concerned about getting more of any group of people in tech. I want people in tech who want to be in tech. Simple as that. I support lowering the barriers to entry even lower than they are right now. Free software and Raspberry Pis are great. They are cheaper than Barbie dolls now. We're doing really well. What I don't support is trying to force a particular group of people to do something that most of them don't want to do. As a woman in tech yourself you must surely see that it is possible and that there are no extra barriers to any other woman who wants to pursue the same path. Or do you think that you are special and all those other, weaker women need more help to do what they want?

smhenderson 9y ago

I've always been intrigued by GNUstep but never kept it around for long. I think I'll give this a spin. I notice it's based on Debian but uses classic init. I switched all my workflow to OpenBSD on servers and Slackware on a couple of laptops and desktops over the last year or so but before that I'd used Debian exclusively on everything for over 15 years. This offering has definitely piqued my curiosity! At least enough to try it in a VM...

youdontknowtho 9y ago

I like that GnuStep is still out there. That's awesome. Quoting a study from 1992 is kinda funny. But NextStep is a faster development environment than SunOS. Preach on, brother.