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This is cool. I didn't even know GNUStep was being actively developed or maintained. I'd love to be able to use GNUStep as my primary workstation environment.

This is cool. I didn't even know GNUStep was being actively developed or maintained. I'd love to be able to use GNUStep as my primary workstation environment. Does anybody have any recent experience with attempting such a thing?

toenail 3y ago
Probably not what you want to hear, but I used it/WindowMaker in the early 2000s, it was alright and worked well on my underpowered machine. Moved on to a more modern environment after maybe two or three years.
mattl 3y ago
GNUStep isn't a window manager, it's a development framework... think OpenStep, not OPENSTEP. People use it with WindowMaker but people can also use it with whatever other desktop environment they're using.
- unixhero 3y ago
  Like enlightenment
zare_st 3y ago
Yes. The bane of old X11 environments and UI toolkits is the DPI/resolution of modern screens. Usually the sweet spot for them is around 1600x1200, usable on Full HD, unusable on 2K. Windowmaker and GNUstep included. I used Windowmaker with GNOME session running in background for years as a main driver, and went KDE Plasma due to the reasons above. Windowmaker icons are 64x64 and while there might be a way to increase them, dockapps are rendered in 64x64 max. Devs used the display limit to achieve a certain style, such as LCD dockapps. Useful and charming but it's small and unusable at 2K or above. So the first thing you're going to get yourself wrapped into are the fonts and font sizes in Windowmaker and GNUstep, and you'll never achieve the same look and feel as default on appropriate resolution.
- ratmice 3y ago
  I don't develop for GNUstep anymore, but I remember making scalable dock apps possible some decades ago. You need to configure the size of icon windows in windowmaker WPrefs, the app then needs then to query the [[[NSApp iconWindow] contentView] bounds] that it was created with. There are almost certainly still some dockapps in existence that don't do that and just use hard coded sizes though. I know that the clock app AClock, implements it correctly.
  - zare_st 3y ago
    Most of the dockapps I used do not use GNUstep. I peeked into two now, one is libdockapp based, the other has internal code, both of them assume a default size, because it's not trivial for them to query the configuration in GNUstep format without the libraries. I'll try messing around Windowmaker in the next few days, this discussion fueled some old interest.
    - ratmice 3y ago
      It is easier to just use `XGetIconSizes` on the `DefaultRootWindow` than try to pull it out of configs or doing some kind of plist parsing. Here is the function GNUstep uses... It should not be difficult to pull the relevant stuff out for use in C. https://github.com/gnustep/libs-back/blob/master/Source/x11/XGServerWindow.m#L4729-L4760 https://github.com/gnustep/libs-back/blob/master/Source/x11/... (-iconSize)
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  > unusable on 2K. Windowmaker and GNUstep included. I'm not sure what you find unusable but i'm using Window Maker at 2560x1440 (i assume that is what you mean with 2K) perfectly fine[0]. Though note that the overwhelming majority of monitors out there isn't 2K or greater but 1080p and 768p[1] :-P. [0] https://i.imgur.com/yaU5OLn.png https://i.imgur.com/yaU5OLn.png (my WM setup with a few utilities i made in a custom toolkit that has a WM/NS-like style) [1] https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware (scroll down to Display Resolution)

toenail 3y ago

Probably not what you want to hear, but I used it/WindowMaker in the early 2000s, it was alright and worked well on my underpowered machine. Moved on to a more modern environment after maybe two or three years.

mattl 3y ago

GNUStep isn't a window manager, it's a development framework... think OpenStep, not OPENSTEP. People use it with WindowMaker but people can also use it with whatever other desktop environment they're using.

unixhero 3y ago
Like enlightenment

zare_st 3y ago

Yes. The bane of old X11 environments and UI toolkits is the DPI/resolution of modern screens. Usually the sweet spot for them is around 1600x1200, usable on Full HD, unusable on 2K. Windowmaker and GNUstep included. I used Windowmaker with GNOME session running in background for years as a main driver, and went KDE Plasma due to the reasons above. Windowmaker icons are 64x64 and while there might be a way to increase them, dockapps are rendered in 64x64 max. Devs used the display limit to achieve a certain style, such as LCD dockapps. Useful and charming but it's small and unusable at 2K or above. So the first thing you're going to get yourself wrapped into are the fonts and font sizes in Windowmaker and GNUstep, and you'll never achieve the same look and feel as default on appropriate resolution.

ratmice 3y ago
I don't develop for GNUstep anymore, but I remember making scalable dock apps possible some decades ago. You need to configure the size of icon windows in windowmaker WPrefs, the app then needs then to query the [[[NSApp iconWindow] contentView] bounds] that it was created with. There are almost certainly still some dockapps in existence that don't do that and just use hard coded sizes though. I know that the clock app AClock, implements it correctly.
- zare_st 3y ago
  Most of the dockapps I used do not use GNUstep. I peeked into two now, one is libdockapp based, the other has internal code, both of them assume a default size, because it's not trivial for them to query the configuration in GNUstep format without the libraries. I'll try messing around Windowmaker in the next few days, this discussion fueled some old interest.
  - ratmice 3y ago
    It is easier to just use `XGetIconSizes` on the `DefaultRootWindow` than try to pull it out of configs or doing some kind of plist parsing. Here is the function GNUstep uses... It should not be difficult to pull the relevant stuff out for use in C. https://github.com/gnustep/libs-back/blob/master/Source/x11/XGServerWindow.m#L4729-L4760 https://github.com/gnustep/libs-back/blob/master/Source/x11/... (-iconSize)
badsectoracula 3y ago
> unusable on 2K. Windowmaker and GNUstep included. I'm not sure what you find unusable but i'm using Window Maker at 2560x1440 (i assume that is what you mean with 2K) perfectly fine[0]. Though note that the overwhelming majority of monitors out there isn't 2K or greater but 1080p and 768p[1] :-P. [0] https://i.imgur.com/yaU5OLn.png https://i.imgur.com/yaU5OLn.png (my WM setup with a few utilities i made in a custom toolkit that has a WM/NS-like style) [1] https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware (scroll down to Display Resolution)