GNUSTEP CD 2.0 released

[Posted December 10, 2009 by cook]

From:		Gürkan Sengün <gurkan-AT-phys.ethz.ch>
To:		pr-AT-lwn.net
Subject:		Distributions: GNUSTEP CD 2.0 released
Date:		Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:37:16 +0100
Message-ID:		<4B213FDC.9040008@phys.ethz.ch>

The http://livecd.gnustep.org/ project has a new version out
including many GNUstep software forming a development environment.
As a bonus you get some classic games like nethack, and quite a few
network and system recovery and administrator tools. There is also a
few 3D and audio programs on it. It's based on the 2.6.31 Linux
kernel, and on the Debian Linux distribution, created using the
live-helper package. It is available for i386, powerpc, ultrasparc, and 
amd64. It comes with some added multimedia software packages like
mplayer, lame, lives, vamps, mypaint, milkytracker, schismtracker, 
goattracker, opencubicplayer, and a nice selection of free fonts (like 
M+) and fontmatrix a nice font manager.

Yours,
Gürkan Sengün

to post comments

GNUSTEP CD 2.0 released

Posted Dec 11, 2009 10:17 UTC (Fri) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link] (6 responses)

Wondering if this can be booted off USB flash stick

GNUSTEP CD 2.0 released

Posted Dec 11, 2009 14:45 UTC (Fri) by tarzeau (guest, #25248) [Link] (5 responses)

This sure can be made, I think I'll create an USB image and put that online
too.

GNUSTEP CD 2.0 released

Posted Dec 13, 2009 10:07 UTC (Sun) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (4 responses)

That would be good.

I needed to install GNU/Linux via USB recently and it took me weeks to find working USB images. Each distro provided detailed documentation (usually multiple methods) for how to make a USB image from the CD/DVD images, but I never got them working. I have a programming background and have been using GNU/Linux 11 years, so I can only imagine the problems that non-techs have when trying to do this.

It should be as simple as two steps: "1. download this; 2. here's the command to correctly put that on your USB key (a 'dd' command?)".

GNUSTEP CD 2.0 released

Posted Dec 13, 2009 11:14 UTC (Sun) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link] (2 responses)

In Fedora 12 Live images you can just use dd or if you need persistence, the cross platform Fedora Live USB creator and livecd-iso-to-disk (part of liveusb-tools). It can't be simpler than that.

GNUSTEP CD 2.0 released

Posted Dec 13, 2009 16:37 UTC (Sun) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (1 responses)

I can't remember what problem I had, but I did try Fedora multiple times and I kept failing :-/

Debian is what worked in the end, but even that was only because I downloaded the two necessary files on about 10 different days until I got lucky and ended up with two compatible files. They have a base file and an image file and the kernel version of each has to be identical, but each seems to be made by a separate person, so finding two compatible files is down to chance.

GNUSTEP CD 2.0 released

Posted Dec 15, 2009 16:36 UTC (Tue) by dr@jones.dk (subscriber, #7907) [Link]

Debian images changing every day are _development_ _snapshots_ - no wonder those didn't just work out of the box.

GNUSTEP CD 2.0 released

Posted Dec 14, 2009 14:23 UTC (Mon) by tarzeau (guest, #25248) [Link]

I hope you will enjoy the USB image, it's online now.

Use of GNUSTEP

Posted Dec 11, 2009 10:38 UTC (Fri) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (8 responses)

Is anyone using GNUSTEP as their desktop environment? It seems to have been rather left behind - I see reviews of LXDE, ROX and so on as alternatives to the GNOME/KDE duopoly, but nobody ever seems to get excited about GNUSTEP.

Even the list of software has a charmingly antiquated feel - nethack, tracker players, font managers.

I don't know what exactly caused KDE and later GNOME to take off, while GNUSTEP remained kind of stuck. I would have expected the success of Mac OS X to rekindle interest in Objective-C and the NeXT-derived libraries.

Use of GNUSTEP

Posted Dec 11, 2009 12:22 UTC (Fri) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link] (3 responses)

Maybe the insistence of the GNUStep maintainers that GNUStep was an
application framework, not a desktop environment?

Use of GNUSTEP

Posted Dec 11, 2009 13:47 UTC (Fri) by epa (subscriber, #39769) [Link] (2 responses)

GNOME and KDE are also application frameworks (and that part is certainly more important than a window manager or panel menu thing). I suppose, though, my question would be why GNUSTEP didn't become the standard application framework.

Use of GNUSTEP

Posted Dec 11, 2009 14:42 UTC (Fri) by tarzeau (guest, #25248) [Link]

http://gnustep.istheshit.net/

Seriously, on Mac OS X "Cocoa" is the standard, and that was based on the
OPENSTEP standard. GNUstep follows both, good stuff needs time.

Use of GNUSTEP

Posted Dec 11, 2009 14:52 UTC (Fri) by halla (subscriber, #14185) [Link]

Well, KDE and GTK apps do fit in somewhat well with other desktop environments -- it's not perfect, or even very good, but GNUStep applications in a non-GNUStep environment are so strange with all the nextstep-inspired theming, widgets, menubars and everything.

And as an application development environment, I don't think it's easier or more productive than Qt, and if the applications aren't very stable and don't fit in very well, it's hard to justify a choice for GNUStep. Even though there is a quite a bit of source compatibility with cocoa.

So, it it looks alien on all other platforms than nextstep clones, it wasn't stable before other options became stable, isn't more productive than other options -- I think those are fair reasons it never got a lot of traction.

Use of GNUSTEP

Posted Dec 11, 2009 14:44 UTC (Fri) by tarzeau (guest, #25248) [Link] (2 responses)

I do! It's great, it's fast: http://quadhead.istheshit.net/ ;)

Use of GNUSTEP

Posted Dec 11, 2009 15:05 UTC (Fri) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link] (1 responses)

I'm not normally very interested in "show off your rig" images, but that is indeed a very impressive setup.

It mainly shows off Windowmaker though, and not GNUStep. Maybe that's a part of the problem GNUStep faces, the explicit debundling.
I use Windowmaker myself but I always need to lookup which is which and what is related to what in which way whenever I want to say something that makes sense about it.
Maybe it would make sense to at least "sell" it all together as a single desktop environment under a common name, just like GNOME and (formerly) KDE.

Use of GNUSTEP

Posted Dec 11, 2009 15:11 UTC (Fri) by tarzeau (guest, #25248) [Link]

Window Maker is the window manager that works together with GNUstep based
applications, however it's not written in Objective-C, and not using any of
the NS* objects. On the screenshot you see many terminals, these are all
Terminal.app (GNUstep) programs, openable with meta-n.

Use of GNUSTEP

Posted Dec 11, 2009 17:14 UTC (Fri) by marduk (subscriber, #3831) [Link]

I used to follow GNUSTEP in the early days (pre GNOME/KDE/OSX). It seemed pretty promissing because, in those days, NextStep seemed way ahead of anything else.

GNUSTEP seemed slow in devlepment, GNOME and KDE quickly caught up and then surpassed. OpenStep as a standard is pretty much deprecated. I'd imagine the Cocoa API has changed significantly since then.

I tried their first LiveCD. It was nice, but it seemed like I was taking a trip back in time. NextStep was ahead of its time, but it has evolved a lot since then via OSX. When I look at GNUSTEP I no longer see the future but the past.