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Nextspace: a desktop environment that brings a NeXTSTEP look and feel to Linux
- codpiece 5y agoI love this. I was driving my NeXTStation this weekend, it's a wonderful UI and system.
- mattl 5y agoNice. What do you have?
- classichasclass 5y agoNot OP, but I have a SAIC Galaxy 1100, which is a portable HP "Gecko" 9000/712. It runs NeXTSTEP 3.3 for PA-RISC and it's lovely.
- codpiece 5y agoI have to say, you are most likely --truly-- the only person on earth doing this. Salut!
- HeckFeck 5y agoContinuing on today's theme of GNUstep, here is a modern and maintained attempt to build a full desktop environment atop GNUstep. And before the question arises: "Workspace is NOT WindowMaker... Workspace is written from scratch."
- pelagicAustral 5y agoSadly my work laptop is on Ubuntu (macOS at home) GNUstep inspired me to try Chicago 95, so I will probably go with that later on... Nextspace looks amazing tho'
- mysterydip 5y agoThanks for the mention of Chicago95! I hadn't heard of it before, looks like just what I wanted to try. The various early windows themes for things like icewm left me wanting a bit more "authenticity".
- gattilorenz 5y agoBut isn't it painfully wrong on the title bar size/font, the highlight around icons, etc? If this is the better one, I can't imagine the alternatives... https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95/blob/master/Screenshots/Chicago95_Desktop.png https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95/blob/master/Screensho...
- badsectoracula 5y agoThe titlebar size is fine, however the title is a pixel off vertically as is the icon too. The biggest issue i can see in the screenshot is the menubar spacing being too large and the scrollbar's top/left bevel lines using the "button shadow" instead of "button" color. In addition the bevel lines use the wrong overlap in the corner. For some reason this is only the case for the first button (up, left) and the second button (bottom, right) looks correct. The icon views (small and large) in lists also use too much spacing around the contents as well as between the icons and the icon captions in the desktop also use too much padding. Finally the window frame seems to also have too much padding between the bevel and the actual window contents (i.e. in the file manager views the outer bevel lines for the tree and icons should align with the titlebar, but here they are pushed a couple of pixels inside). Ah yeah, also the shortcut icon overlay seems too scaled down and blurry for some reason. These are what i noticed from the screenshot. They're fixable for the most part though, i had played around with Chigago95 at the past to make it a bit more faithful. The biggest effort was modifying Gtk's theme engine to remove the outline from the menu bar :-P. And TBH i think that for pixel perfect accuracy you'd need to modify some code, which goes a bit outside the scope of a theme.
- lproven 5y agoExactly. Nearly but not quite right. I am in no way nostalgic for 1990s OSes -- I remember the pain too vividly -- but I think this look would be like a hangnail or a toothache: just wrong enough to be constantly irritating. Now, 1980s OSes, when stuff was still a challenge, now that was fun. :-D
- wonks 5y agoIs there any particular reason why GNUstep is getting so much attention today, or are people just posting all these things in response to each other?
- musicale 5y agoI don't know, but I think GNUstep deserves more appreciation and use. Modern hardware is drastically more powerful than what NeXT had to work with, yet it often bogs down just trying to implement a usable and responsive GUI.
- badsectoracula 5y ago> Workspace is NOT WindowMaker... Workspace is written from scratch Kinda, but not exactly and for some reason the author has always been vague when it comes to that. Nextspace's Workspace has been written "from scratch" in the sense that it is a new (sub)project, however it is meant to be the full desktop experience instead of just a window manager. The window management part however is based on a fork of Window Maker, you can find the relevant files (with their copyrights, etc) under Applications/Workspace/WM. The build system has changed to Nextspace's (which seems to be just GNU make) and some glue code with the rest of the system is made.
- ianhanschen 5y ago"Workspace is written from scratch. Some WindowMaker code is a part of Workspace (as well as configuration defaults) to provide window management functions. The code is tightly coupled with Workspace to provide seamless intergation. Configurable parameters of the integrated WindowMaker are spread across Workspace's Preferences and Preferences application."
- hbbio 5y agoThe wiki explicitly mentions forking WindowMaker "with numerous fixes, enhancements": https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/wiki/Architecture-and-design https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/wiki/Architecture-a...
- marbu 5y agoGiven the effort required to build this, I wonder what does Nextspace differently compared to Window Maker.
- touggourt 5y agoWindowMaker is a window manager. NextSpace is a full desktop with guidelines, specific behavior and utilities (file manager, terminal, inspectors, ...).
- dredmorbius 5y agoWindowMaker is a component of GNUStep, which is a ... if not full, then more complete ... reimplementation of the NeXTSTEP / OpenStep environment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUstep https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNUstep
- lproven 5y agoNeXTspace is a desktop on top of CentOS Linux. Window Maker is a window manager, not a desktop.
- itomato 5y agoUnless anything has changed, it is a brittle rebuild of GNUstep and WindowMaker for a single distribution.
- xattt 5y agoHere’s something I’ve been pondering: how did the first window managers visually fail when a program hung or had a fault? With older Windows version, you got pretty GDI “trails” as you dragged a window around. Now you get blanked out elements. For some reason, I thought that something like Plan 9 would have been flawlessly written (like their CLI counterparts) and that it would be immune to visual issues like that.
- pram 5y agoNextstep did exactly what MacOS does today with the pinwheel of death.
- codpiece 5y agoI have a color turbo. Wonderful. Nearly useless, but wonderful. I would like a Cube so that I can relive the wonder of its release at a Seybold tradeshow way back when I was early in my career.
- technothrasher 5y agoAt one point in the early 00’s I had twelve Cubes that I picked up for free from a company that was getting rid of them. I was flush with geek treasure, and wanted to generously share my hoard with friends. By the time I realized what I’d done, I’d give them all away. D’oh! But at least I made twelve people very happy, and I still have a big stack of Nextstep install CDs.
- codpiece 5y agoWow, that is amazing. You belong in the geek pantheon for that. Two of the defining moments for young me were seeing the NeXT Cube in action, and seeing the original introduction of Adobe Acrobat. Seems mundane now, but grasping the potential of these things was profound.
- spitfire 5y agoHave any software? My Turbostation is looking for more software.
- sockaddr 5y agoLove this. One productivity hack I discovered for myself was to set my background to a solid color I like and to make my windowing experience as "boring" as possible. Id otherwise sit and tweak my UI instead of working. This sort of project is quite possibly the next step in that optimization for myself.
- Fnoord 5y agoI get the Bing Wallpaper of the day on my desktop (be it Windows, macOS, or Gnome). I love it because it is consistent on my devices (except (work)phone and Citrix). Its a surprise every day, usually positive. My oldest likes it, too.
- mattl 5y agoI've had my desktop background be the same NeXT default color for years. Same on my iPhone and iPad.
- qubex 5y agoMy desktop backgrounds have been solid black since 1993.
- brnt 5y agoWho spends time looking at their wallpaper? I couldn't tell you what my desktop background is.
- bananamerica 5y agoI'm pretty sure that wallpapers are something you put so that others can see.
- 0des 5y agoIt keeps my Bonzi Buddy entertained when I'm busy working.
- utexaspunk 5y ago
- phkahler 5y agoIs it a Wayland compositor? Does it support OpenGL ES? Is it easy to port a simple C++ GTK app? If the answer to all 3 of those is "yes" then one should be able to port Solvespace to this UI fairly easy (it's one source file per platform). You know, if you want a CAD program...
- smarx007 5y agohttps://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/wiki/Architecture-and-design https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/wiki/Architecture-a... looks like it’s not Wayland-based.
- haolez 5y agoIt's not Wayland-based, but if I'm not mistaken, GNUStep supports Wayland.
- lproven 5y agoThey're working on it. There are some demos but it's not there yet.
- qubex 5y ago(!TRUE)³
- shrubble 5y agoNone of those; and not half-rewritten in Rust either :-)
- math-dev 5y agoThat looks damn good!
- a-dub 5y agohow does it compare to windowmaker, the open source nextstep inspired window manager/desktop environment from 20 years ago?
- badsectoracula 5y agoIt uses a Window Maker fork for its workspace so i guess it'd be similar but more integrated.
- dugmartin 5y agoAfter using a tiling window system for a few years now the screenshot on that page is an affront to all that is good and holy. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/master/Documentation/NEXTSPACE_Screenshot.png https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/mast...
- tomc1985 5y agoWait so now we have tiling vs overlapping window manager holy wars? Sigh...
- leetrout 5y agoThis makes me pine for IRIX.
- Maursault 5y agohttps://sgi.neocities.org/index.html https://sgi.neocities.org/index.html
- innocentoldguy 5y agoYour comment reminded me of my old SGI Octane 2. I loved that computer.
- touggourt 5y agoYou may like this one https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/ https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/ a full reimplatation of the great SGI Desktop on IRIX
- leetrout 5y agoThat's awesome, thank you!
- rcarmo 5y agoI’d really like to run this on a Raspberry Pi, but alas that does not seem easy to pull off unless I find a different base distro.
- belenos46 5y agoI thought I had read something about this, and behold: https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-centos/ https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-centos/
- lproven 5y agoThat's CentOS, not NEXTSPACE. Not the same thing.
- belenos46 5y agoSo you're not great at the whole reading-comprehension, are you? From, as they say, TFA >For now, I want a fast, accurate, and stable version for RedHat-based Linux distributions. Currently these are CentOS 7, CentOS Stream and Fedora. Those are the systems this thing runs on. The parent post I replied to wished they could run this on a raspi. I linked them to how to get CentOS running on a raspi, which would make the damned thing a supported configuration. See, my reading comprehension? Excellent.
- pakl 5y agoIn case you are looking for a way to build GNUstep for Raspberry Pi (and use GWorkspace, etc), we have build scripts here: https://github.com/plaurent/gnustep-build https://github.com/plaurent/gnustep-build
- petilon 5y agoWhat is incredible here is that a UI developed in the 1980s is still attractive, and is arguably better looking and more usable than Windows 11 and Mac OS 12. What does that say about the last 40 years of usability and user experience research?
- justbaker 5y ago> What does that say about the last 40 years of usability and user experience research? Bias. Attractive and usability/UX are not one in the same. I find this appalling yet likely good usability.
- sneak 5y agoA lot of UI development is resume-driven, or marketing-driven. Users buy hardware based on UI appearance, and regular changes make it feel fresh and new. Those of us who use computers for more serious types of work generally prefer more consistency. The goals are different.
- darkwater 5y agoYou know that the "better looking" part is totally personal, don't you? Personally, I never liked NeXTSTEP looks, not even 25 years ago when I saw some reimplementation under *nix (never touched a NeXT workstation unfortunately).
- beebeepka 5y agoIndeed. I was around at the time this was considered beautiful. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now. I guess not sharing the same taste or fanboyism is offensive. Good thing you weren't flagged. The night is young though Edit: case in point haha. The squad is working overtime to protect the precious from evil non positive words
- blacksmith_tb 5y agoIt would be interesting to have some insight into how much UX / UI goes into macOS and Windows releases, especially if things are tested with representative, non-technical users and then sent back for changes. My cynical take aligns with yours, for every clever small touch there seems to be a half-dozen awkward design choices to work around.
- eagsalazar2 5y agoAmiga and NeXT people, right when you think the passion has finally died out, nope!
- throwawaybutwhy 5y agoLook and feel can be transplanted [0] onto existing DE's. Just sayin'. [0] https://github.com/B00merang-Project https://github.com/B00merang-Project
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoWhile I'm aware of that project, and used some of their works for a time, that's only the look, not the feel.
- unzadunza 5y agoDoes anyone know if Nextspace apps have emacs keybidings just like NeXTSTEP (and MacOS)? If so, this is the Linux desktop I've been craving.
- touggourt 5y agoNot yet. Until https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/issues/60 https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/issues/60 it use the host system shortcuts.
- henry_bone 5y agoIt's interesting and surprising to me that so many like the look of this. The fonts look grainy. The widgets are blocky and crude. At least, that's my take on the aesthetic. To each his own, I guess.
- winrid 5y agoIt's less that it looks nice and rather that there isn't anything surprising. No scrollbars that only show up when you mouse over them, buttons without borders, horizontal lists that aren't obviously a scrollable list... the list goes on. :)
- pipeline_peak 5y agoWhat's with all the NeXTSTEP postings on HN all of a sudden? They really just came out all at once.
- em-bee 5y agoa popular topic among the hn readers that comes up once in a while. i guess it starts with one and then people submit interesting links they found from that discussion
- sleepycatgirl 5y agoMan, the build instructions.. are mess. It depending on specific distro, is such... a turn off.. Too bad, because otherwise its amazing project, and I wish them the best... Pain.
- sigmonsays 5y agospending the effort to learn to have a keyboard driven workflow for common things as been tremendous for me. it effortlessly allows me to recreate my various workspaces (chat, music, email, browsers, work specific things, terminals, production, etc). For coding I usually always dragged windows to the same setup, w/ i3, it's easy to automate that and control it all via the keyboard.
- theodric 5y agoWhy not just contribute to windowmaker? This is such a duplication of effort for nothing.
- em-bee 5y agobecause window maker is not, and never was, anywhere near the look and (most importantly) FEEL of a real NeXTstep GUI. i have used both for a few years. window maker is a nice windowmanager for X11 but everything else is still standard X11 fare from style of widgets to the behavior. in particular, this matters for how X11 apps interact with the window maker dock. an actual NeXTstep workspace and dock is quite something different. NEXTSPACE is interesting specifically because it is not just window maker with some apps that emulate the look.
- PeterWhittaker 5y agoCDE flashback! Seriously, this reminds me of the worst of CDE and Motif, all not-quite-finished looking. I ran a NextStep machine for a while (lipo is the best command name ever, IM(NS)HO) and loved it, and it looked nothing like this weird semi flat pseudo X11 ugliness. (Only reason I switched away was that the rest of my co was Windows and loved themselves their Office docs and there was no equivalent for OpenStep.)
- eddieh 5y agoHaving just built Motif and mwm (the Motif window manager) I can safely say that this looks nothing like Motif or CDE. https://twitter.com/haltingproblems/status/1430655104349138949 https://twitter.com/haltingproblems/status/14306551043491389...
- smackeyacky 5y agoIt kinda does - all the isometric drop shadows and whatnot. It's a lot cleaner (none of the weird beveled stuff) but all the sharp edged UI from that era look pretty much the same to me.
- dang 5y agoA couple past threads: Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22308138 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22308138 - Feb 2020 (80 comments) Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18002626 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18002626 - Sept 2018 (172 comments)
- mahrain 5y agoIn the PPC era I once installed X11 on 10.3 Panther and compiled KDE. I then had a MacOS X running a KDE shell and various X11 applications, while maintaining compatibility with OSX apps. I'm wondering if something like this would still be possible on macOS 12 Monterey and using Nextspace as a shell?
- vijucat 5y agoLove this look, but isn't this basically the look of SGI IRIX, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRIX, IBM's AIX, and other Unix-es of that time?
- Blahagun 5y agoNot really. Although there are of course similarities, NeXTSTEP as a graphical interface was implemented from the ground up by NeXT (Jobs' new computer company after he left Apple). The GUI of almost all other commercial UNIX operating systems was developed with the Motif toolkit and there was a whole desktop environment - Common Desktop Environment - which was popular for some time. Motif wasn't free though, so new GUI toolkits were being developed, most of them free, like GTK (initially for building the GIMP UI), and desktop environments were being created on top of them like GNOME. Because they were free and feature rich, Motif and CDE started declining and that's why you don't see them anymore as GUIs on UNIX based OSes. Then Apple bought NeXT and redesigned NeXTSTEP's UI and called it MacOS X.
- sh4un 5y agoReminds me of how old I am. I fondly remember wanting one of these. UI was very similar to GEOS.