
GNUstep LiveCD 2017 - mondoshawan
http://www.aiei.ch/gnustep/
======
vesinisa
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
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
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).

~~~
JdeBP
Of course, since the headlined article mentions the absence of systemd, this
raises the question of whether there is udev in there.

~~~
vesinisa
They do have it:
[http://www.aiei.ch/gnustep/gnustep-2.5.txt](http://www.aiei.ch/gnustep/gnustep-2.5.txt)

udev existed before systemd, but was merged to it sometime in 2014. By quick
Googling there are still several forks that maintain it as a separate
component.

~~~
ktRolster
My understanding is it's in the same repository (for convenience), but is
logically separate, so "forking" it mainly means copying the correct
directory.

~~~
gens
No, it's tied to systemd. That was one of the big reasons behind systemd
adoption in the first place.

~~~
LukeShu
Eh, not really. Many Parabola users who use OpenRC instead of systemd still
use systemd-udev, as opposed to eudev or one of the other non-system forks.

------
justin66
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?

~~~
geofft
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_...](https://www.usenix.org/legacy/event/usenix01/freenix01/full_papers/mewburn/mewburn_html/)

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)

~~~
ginreaper
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
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.

------
hackbinary
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
the important parts were added back to gnustep.

~~~
favorited
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)

------
jampola
Lunduke did a pretty funny "review" of it:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFSTnZM27Gc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFSTnZM27Gc)

~~~
desireco42
Thank you. It helps me understand how it looks and works.

------
michrassena
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
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.

------
youdontknowtho
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.

------
AdmiralAsshat
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)

------
smhenderson
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...

------
TomMasz
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.

------
yellowapple
I was kind of hoping this would be built on top of XNU/Darwin.

Still cool, though.

~~~
favorited
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)

------
finnjohnsen2
GNU and terrible looking web pages and logos correlate still :D

~~~
ungzd
At least not standard three-column landing page with huge fonts, cheesy icons
and "testimonials", like most of corporate opensource.

~~~
sigjuice
I hope
[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/)
don't disappoint you :)

------
snakeanus
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.

~~~
jhbadger
WindowMaker predates GNUStep and is just a window manager that has a NextStep
theme. I used it on Linux in the late 1990s.

~~~
reubenmorais
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
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.

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

------
aphextron
Laptop support?

------
k_sze
"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
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.

~~~
laumars
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
As a person in the world I had the same reaction!

------
torrent-of-ions
>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
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
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?

~~~
dang
The personal attack you crossed into here is completely unacceptable on HN.
I've banned this account.

All: introducing personal abuse into what is already a divisive and
inflammatory topic will get you banned here, so please just don't do it.

------
ams6110
What do the words "man", "woman", "male", "female" really even mean these
days?

~~~
dang
We detached this comment from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14979330](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14979330)
and marked it off-topic.

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

~~~
mondoshawan
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
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
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.

