4 ms·

In the long run it might be more fruitful to build a FOSS true clone of the Mac desktop for Linux and the BSDs. It’s going to take a massive amount of work to p

In the long run it might be more fruitful to build a FOSS true clone of the Mac desktop for Linux and the BSDs. It’s going to take a massive amount of work to produce something even as smooth as OS X 10.4, 10.6, or 10.9, though. It’s something I’ve done a little bit of research into, and on top of the usual challenges posed by developing a DE you’d also be fighting the momentum of the two dominant desktop paradigms open *nix software is built for, which is Win9x-type (KDE, Cinnamon, LXDE, and kinda XFCE) or iOS-type (GNOME, Pantheon). Perhaps the hurdle with the most visible impact is the global menubar, which is currently kind of doable with Qt-based apps, but is broken in GTK apps (plugin is unmaintained) and totally nonfunctional in Wayland. I think that perhaps the best approach to solving this is to build a proof of concept generalized approach for applications to expose their menubars to the desktop environment with and submit it as an XDG standard that hopefully the big guys eventually adopt.

logicprog 3y ago
> iOS-type (GNOME, Pantheon). I really don't understand why people keep pushing this misconception. GNOME certainly doesn't have to be for everyone, but this canard is needlessly dismissive and based on a childishly superficial apprehension of GNOME. Just because there is a full screen menu, and the desktop is uncluttered by extranious UI clutter so you can just focus on your task and use the keyboard to control windows and navigate, that makes it "iOS like"? At that point what does that even mean? If anything, I'd say GNOME is far closer to a tiling window manager. Again, I'm not saying this workflow has to be for you, but it is a consistent, desktop class workflow of its own: a keyboard- and virtual desktop-centric workflow focused on filling the screen with applications via full screens or splits so you can focus on your work, with no extraneous UI elements made obsolete by virtual desktops that only stick around because people are used to them like taskbars, docks, and minimization buttons. The logic of this is excellent IMHO. There is no need for a taskbar to manage minimized or occluded windows if you can just banish windows to other virtual desktops to get them out of the way, but still see them immediately in a multidesktop expose view and fuzzy window search, and new desktops will be fluidly created for you as you fill them up; no minimization button for the same reason; no need for a dock or pinned application icons because an extremely powerful spotlight-style fuzzy application launcher (with built in app menu search, calculator, web search, file search, definition finder, etc) and a dock, combined with a very useful expose and workspace overview conveniently arranged there for you in a single screen, is a single click or key tap away, etc. It seems to me people just assume that since GNOME doesn't have things they're used to from UIs they associate with "work", it's must be a "toy."
- jwells89 3y ago
  “iOS like” is not meant to be an insult. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time using GNOME and I find that iPadOS is its closest analogue — to me, it feels like what you’d get if someone were tasked with taking iPadOS and making it workable for desktop usage. There are a great deal of similarities between the two.
  - logicprog 3y ago
    Fair enough! I've never used iPad OS so I wouldn't really have any means of evaluating that it, but the way you frame it seems perfectly reasonable, since it seems like you're granting that GNOME is at least adapted for desktop use. I definitely have seen that statement leveled in a dismissive way, though, quite possibly by people who have never used iPad OS or even regular iPhone OS, so I was assuming it was that again :P
- type0 3y ago
  > "iOS like"? At that point what does that even mean? optimized for touch screens
- linguae 3y ago
  I don’t disagree with you, but I believe I know why there is antipathy against GNOME. GNOME 3 isn’t directly inspired by iOS, but it came about during a time when some people thought that traditional Windows- and Mac-like desktops were outmoded and that the industry should move toward more mobile-friendly user interfaces. This led to Windows 8, Ubuntu’s Unity, and the gradual inclusion of iOS elements in macOS. Generally detractors of GNOME 3 are also detractors of these desktops. Alongside other controversial changes in Linux such as systemd and Wayland, I think some of the antipathy toward GNOME 3 is caused by resentment and the strong network effects these projects have. If GNOME had little influence over other projects, these strong feelings would’ve been much weaker. However, GNOME is one of the most influential projects in the FOSS desktop computing ecosystem, with major consequences even for people who don’t use GNOME. For example, GTK over the years went from a generic toolkit to a much more GNOME-specific one, with consequences for developers and users of GTK-based software who were not fond of GNOME’s major changes beginning with GNOME 3. GNOME also drove the adoption of systemd and Wayland, which is also a source of consternation. Yes, GNOME developers have the freedom to do what they want with their own software. But there is resentment by some users regarding GNOME’s influence and how the goals of GNOME, Red Hat, and other major players in the Linux ecosystem don’t always align with the Unix philosophy. Change is hard for some people to accept, especially changes people feel are for the worst, whether or not they are actually worse.
linguae 3y ago
There are two projects that you may be interested in: - helloSystem (https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/ https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/) —- an OS inspired by macOS that uses FreeBSD as its base and uses the Qt toolkit for rendering UI elements. - ravynOS (https://ravynos.com/ https://ravynos.com/) —- a more ambitious attempt to create a FOSS clone of macOS. FreeBSD is still the base, but it does not use X11 at all for windowing. There is also the venerable GNUstep project, which aims to provide a FOSS implementation of the Cocoa API. These are massive undertakings. I haven’t kept up with these projects in a while, so I don’t know their current status.
- jwells89 3y ago
  Have been keeping my eye on these too. The approaches taken by the first two aren’t how I think I’d go about it, but I don’t have a project yet so what do I know haha. GNUStep is interesting but I don’t see it gaining a significant following with Swift sucking up the majority of air out of the room for apple-platform-adjacent projects.
  - linguae 3y ago
    For years I’ve wanted a FOSS macOS clone, but in recent years my interest has shifted away from that and toward what inspired NeXT (and the Mac) in the first place: the Smalltalk environment. I’ve dug down deep rabbit holes exploring Smalltalk, Lisp machines (particularly the Symbolics Genera and Xerox Interlisp-D environments), HyperCard, Apple’s Lisp-inspired work in the 1990s (Dylan, SK8), and the OpenDoc component-based software framework. My dream OS would be something with malleable, component-based underpinnings (like a Lisp machine or the Smalltalk environment, but with everything we’ve learned about security, type systems, parallelism, and other concerns since the 1980s when Lisp machines and Smalltalk were in vogue), extensive support for programmability (everything is an object), and with an interface inspired by Mac OS 8 (I love Tiger, but from an interface point of view I prefer the classic Mac OS more). Unfortunately my free time is limited, so I haven’t done much work at all, but it hasn’t stopped me from dreaming and writing a few occasional documents.
- classichasclass 3y ago

logicprog 3y ago

> iOS-type (GNOME, Pantheon). I really don't understand why people keep pushing this misconception. GNOME certainly doesn't have to be for everyone, but this canard is needlessly dismissive and based on a childishly superficial apprehension of GNOME. Just because there is a full screen menu, and the desktop is uncluttered by extranious UI clutter so you can just focus on your task and use the keyboard to control windows and navigate, that makes it "iOS like"? At that point what does that even mean? If anything, I'd say GNOME is far closer to a tiling window manager. Again, I'm not saying this workflow has to be for you, but it is a consistent, desktop class workflow of its own: a keyboard- and virtual desktop-centric workflow focused on filling the screen with applications via full screens or splits so you can focus on your work, with no extraneous UI elements made obsolete by virtual desktops that only stick around because people are used to them like taskbars, docks, and minimization buttons. The logic of this is excellent IMHO. There is no need for a taskbar to manage minimized or occluded windows if you can just banish windows to other virtual desktops to get them out of the way, but still see them immediately in a multidesktop expose view and fuzzy window search, and new desktops will be fluidly created for you as you fill them up; no minimization button for the same reason; no need for a dock or pinned application icons because an extremely powerful spotlight-style fuzzy application launcher (with built in app menu search, calculator, web search, file search, definition finder, etc) and a dock, combined with a very useful expose and workspace overview conveniently arranged there for you in a single screen, is a single click or key tap away, etc. It seems to me people just assume that since GNOME doesn't have things they're used to from UIs they associate with "work", it's must be a "toy."

jwells89 3y ago
“iOS like” is not meant to be an insult. I’ve spent a considerable amount of time using GNOME and I find that iPadOS is its closest analogue — to me, it feels like what you’d get if someone were tasked with taking iPadOS and making it workable for desktop usage. There are a great deal of similarities between the two.
- logicprog 3y ago
  Fair enough! I've never used iPad OS so I wouldn't really have any means of evaluating that it, but the way you frame it seems perfectly reasonable, since it seems like you're granting that GNOME is at least adapted for desktop use. I definitely have seen that statement leveled in a dismissive way, though, quite possibly by people who have never used iPad OS or even regular iPhone OS, so I was assuming it was that again :P
type0 3y ago
> "iOS like"? At that point what does that even mean? optimized for touch screens
linguae 3y ago
I don’t disagree with you, but I believe I know why there is antipathy against GNOME. GNOME 3 isn’t directly inspired by iOS, but it came about during a time when some people thought that traditional Windows- and Mac-like desktops were outmoded and that the industry should move toward more mobile-friendly user interfaces. This led to Windows 8, Ubuntu’s Unity, and the gradual inclusion of iOS elements in macOS. Generally detractors of GNOME 3 are also detractors of these desktops. Alongside other controversial changes in Linux such as systemd and Wayland, I think some of the antipathy toward GNOME 3 is caused by resentment and the strong network effects these projects have. If GNOME had little influence over other projects, these strong feelings would’ve been much weaker. However, GNOME is one of the most influential projects in the FOSS desktop computing ecosystem, with major consequences even for people who don’t use GNOME. For example, GTK over the years went from a generic toolkit to a much more GNOME-specific one, with consequences for developers and users of GTK-based software who were not fond of GNOME’s major changes beginning with GNOME 3. GNOME also drove the adoption of systemd and Wayland, which is also a source of consternation. Yes, GNOME developers have the freedom to do what they want with their own software. But there is resentment by some users regarding GNOME’s influence and how the goals of GNOME, Red Hat, and other major players in the Linux ecosystem don’t always align with the Unix philosophy. Change is hard for some people to accept, especially changes people feel are for the worst, whether or not they are actually worse.

linguae 3y ago

There are two projects that you may be interested in: - helloSystem (https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/ https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/) —- an OS inspired by macOS that uses FreeBSD as its base and uses the Qt toolkit for rendering UI elements. - ravynOS (https://ravynos.com/ https://ravynos.com/) —- a more ambitious attempt to create a FOSS clone of macOS. FreeBSD is still the base, but it does not use X11 at all for windowing. There is also the venerable GNUstep project, which aims to provide a FOSS implementation of the Cocoa API. These are massive undertakings. I haven’t kept up with these projects in a while, so I don’t know their current status.

jwells89 3y ago
Have been keeping my eye on these too. The approaches taken by the first two aren’t how I think I’d go about it, but I don’t have a project yet so what do I know haha. GNUStep is interesting but I don’t see it gaining a significant following with Swift sucking up the majority of air out of the room for apple-platform-adjacent projects.
- linguae 3y ago
  For years I’ve wanted a FOSS macOS clone, but in recent years my interest has shifted away from that and toward what inspired NeXT (and the Mac) in the first place: the Smalltalk environment. I’ve dug down deep rabbit holes exploring Smalltalk, Lisp machines (particularly the Symbolics Genera and Xerox Interlisp-D environments), HyperCard, Apple’s Lisp-inspired work in the 1990s (Dylan, SK8), and the OpenDoc component-based software framework. My dream OS would be something with malleable, component-based underpinnings (like a Lisp machine or the Smalltalk environment, but with everything we’ve learned about security, type systems, parallelism, and other concerns since the 1980s when Lisp machines and Smalltalk were in vogue), extensive support for programmability (everything is an object), and with an interface inspired by Mac OS 8 (I love Tiger, but from an interface point of view I prefer the classic Mac OS more). Unfortunately my free time is limited, so I haven’t done much work at all, but it hasn’t stopped me from dreaming and writing a few occasional documents.
classichasclass 3y ago