
Étoilé Desktop Environment - apgwoz
http://etoileos.com/etoile/
======
GeneralMaximus
I've been looking at this project for a couple of months now, mostly because
it's the closest you can come to OS X and the Cocoa framework on your Linux
PC.

A few details for those who'd like to know: GNUStep is a reimpementation of
the OpenStep API, which was an effort by Apple and Sun to bring the insanely
great NextStep API to your regular workstation (I think my facts may be a
little wrong here ; feel free to correct me). Etoile is built using GNUStep,
with the desktop model based around the OS X dekstop (check out my desktop and
compare it to Etoile:
<http://img136.imageshack.us/my.php?image=picture1rn3.png>).

The best part about Etoile is not that you get to use a fast, lightweight,
(sorta) modern desktop environment for your favorite open source OS, it's the
fact that you get a great oject oriented API similar to Apple's Cocoa for
writing applications with. I've been looking at Cocoa for the past month or
so, and I can assure you it's a great framework to write desktop apps in.
Sure, Objective-C can be a little weird at first, but once you get used to it
you'll find it's a very well thought out language. And BTW, GNUStep even has
replacements for Apple's XCode and Interface Builder. I don't quite remember
what the XCode replacement was called, but the IB replacement is called Gorm
(which is _not_ a cool name).

Upvoted for awesomeness.

~~~
shiranaihito
So there's no way you could just use Cocoa? Maybe it's not tinkery/Free
enough? :)

~~~
GeneralMaximus
I do use Cocoa on the Mac, but sometimes I go, "What if Apple decides to drop
this stuff, like what they did with Carbon?", and I shudder.

~~~
access_denied
Then your internalized knowledge is something worth for doing webstuff with
SproutCore.

~~~
GeneralMaximus
That certainly looks interesting. I skimmed through the Hello World tutorial,
and it looks like they use many of the same concepts as Cocoa. Will keep this
in mind when Apple drops Cocoa ;)

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nihilocrat
This really needs a video of some sort to show the desktop in action. From
just reading things and looking at screenshots, it looks like it provides a
better platform for developers but is a quantum leap backwards for users. I
assume applications have to be specifically developed for the platform, so
that cuts out 99% of the applications users are going to want to use (Firefox,
Gimp, OOo, etc.).

Still, if it's really a nice platform, I hope it would become popular enough
that popular applications could be easily coded to work with it.

~~~
krakensden
It runs on top of X11 just like every other Unix GUI, so Firefox, Gimp, OOo,
etc will all run just fine.

They'll just look different from the etoile applications.

------
moe
Looks like the average linux desktop - in 2001.

~~~
apgwoz
I think it's only partially about the desktop and more about the experience.
I'm fairly certain they're looking for help, you know, if you'd like to make
it look like something in 2009, or maybe something for the future!

~~~
moe
I don't believe in building the umpteenth desktop environment unless you can
add something new to the pool. There are OSX style themes for all major window
managers and many of them look way better than what I see in those
screenshots.

I could turn your question around: Why did they start their own instead of
just supporting, say, XFCE?

~~~
bonaldi
Because getting rid of X would be a win?

~~~
krakensden
It doesn't get rid of X, it sits on top of it just like XFCE, KDE, Gnome, etc.

It's easy to say that getting rid of X would be a win, but replacing it at
this point would be much more work than fixing what's wrong with it.

------
halo
Any chance of a version (or even a separate project) aiming at binary
compatibility with Mac OS X? I think a Wine-style project for Mac OS X would
more a more interesting and popular development than a niche platform.

~~~
pavlov
Cocotron -- <http://cocotron.org> \-- is a project that goes a fair way in
that direction, although through source compatibility rather than binary
compability. It's two things:

    
    
      1) An MIT-licensed reimplementation of Cocoa (Foundation + AppKit + some CoreFoundation plain-C APIs)
    
      2) A cross-compiler GCC toolchain that produces native Win32 binaries and installs into Xcode. (There is also some degree of Linux support.)
    

The benefit of this combination is that you can basically add a Windows target
to an existing Cocoa project in Xcode and have it produce an .exe file... At
least if all the methods used by your application happen to be implemented in
Cocotron.

There's still quite a bit of the Cocoa API missing, but the amount of work
already done is impressive -- and one of the really great things about
Cocotron is that it feels so easy to contribute to the base frameworks. The
Foundation and AppKit projects are clean of cruft, neatly laid out, and they
are built as Xcode projects so there's no toolchain learning curve: if your
favorite esoteric NSString method is missing, you can simply open
Foundation.xcodeproj and implement it.

For me, Cocotron is cross-platform Objective-C that "just works". YMMV.

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tlrobinson
Compared to GNUstep it looks nice, but that's not saying much. GNUstep is
incredibly dated and downright hideous:
[http://www.gnu.org/software/gnustep/images/full-
screenshot1....](http://www.gnu.org/software/gnustep/images/full-
screenshot1.png)

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apgwoz
There's a conversation with the developers on TWIT's FLOSS podcast:
<http://twit.tv/FLOSS>

The thing that's sort most interesting about this is CoreObject, which is
modeled off of the ideas of SmallTalk images.

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antipax
This is really quite cool. I think it has potential, and if they can truly
unify user experience application-to-application like OS X does, Linux has a
chance at more desktop uptake with the non-hacker population.

