GNOME on GNUstep: First look | Hacker News Reader

GNOME on GNUstep: First look

heronsperch.blogspot.com

35 pointsrbanffy15 comments

This is a serious question, not a troll. I seriously want to know why someone would want to do this. If you want to run Gnome, just run Gnome. What is the difference between running Gnome + GNUStep vs. just running Gnome normally?

This effort allows GNUStep applications to share GNOME configurations (themes, menus, icons, etc). It's designed for people who want to develop Cocoa applications in Linux without dealing with the horrid-looking NeXTStep theme.

I understand what you mean, but I don't think it's horrid. I would call it retro-chic.

I think you'd be one of the few.

http://www.gnustep.org/images/full-screenshot1.png

Why is the services menu popping up on top but not next to the services element in the list? What's the difference between the menu dock things on the top right and the bottom left, and why isn't it obvious? I love how the "25.54GB free" text is just floating about randomly in the file viewer. I can see the pixels in the gradient on the recycle symbol at the bottom right.

http://www.gnustep.org/images/full-screenshot2.png

In this one, why are the docks eating up so much screen real estate? On the bottom dock, I see two of the same yin-yang icon w/ squiggly, how am I supposed to differentiate?

Nah, I think GNUStep's appearance is provably horrid.

I think the squiggly yin-yang is a "no icon" placeholder; presumably the user knows which is which.

> Nah, I think GNUStep's appearance is provably horrid.

GNUStep is the library; it doesn't have an appearance. You're objecting to the NeXTStep theme, which is designed to imitate the now 20-years-old NeXT OS. You can see a screenshot of NeXT at < http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/3b/NeXTSTEP_deskt... >

Keep in mind that the main goal of GNUStep is to provide compatibility for a long-obsolete spec, so naturally the applications it runs are not up to modern standards. It's no different from Win95 applications running in Wine.

> to provide compatibility for a long-obsolete spec

I believe contemporary Mac users would disagree about the obsoleteness of the spec. There is a lot of NeXT in OSX.

That's so, but modern Mac applications can't run in GNUStep; Apple has added too many new APIs which aren't covered by the OpenStep standard.

GNUStep is trying to catch up.

http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Writing_portable_code#Port...

Why not just make a new theme? Integrating with Gnome seems a lot more work.

Here's a blog post from today showing more progress:

http://heronsperch.blogspot.com/2010/12/bean-running-with-gn...

As one who loves GNUstep/WindowMaker, but kind of gags about Gnome while tolerating it, I don't know exactly how to feel about this one. It looks... interesting?

You can always theme Gnome to look like GNUStep...

It's good to know there's still interest in GNUstep. You barely ever see work with it or on it any more, Sony's work being a rare exception and only temporary.

My understanding is that the audio processing done by shazam is done mostly on linux boxes running GNUstep.

I love the NeXT desktop...takes me back.

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