The releases just keep on coming, don’t they? The GNUstep live CD has been updated “The GNUstep live CD contains a lot of software for GNUstep, a free implementation of the OPENSTEP framework (which was also the base as Cocoa in Mac OS X).” The GNUstep page can tell you more about GNUstep itself.
Hows the developement of the native browser for project, the WebKit powered Vespucci coming along?
It’s ugly even by 1995 standards. There are plenty of fast desktops out there that don’t make your eyes bleed. What exactly is the appeal?
uh, because lots of people have lots of varying opinions on aesthetics. I, for one, despise GUIs KDE and Gnome. I just can’t stand it. I still use a NeXT regularly and love how unobtrusive the GUI is. It’s slick, out of the way, and awesome. Eye-candy just gets on my nerves
Some people actually LIKE minimum and out of the way. It leaves lots of screen space for actual work.
Granted, it isn’t for everyone. But people that like minimum GUIs like Flux, ratpoison, etc etc, would probably like the NeXT GUI (which wmaker is a clone of).
Heres a screenshot from my NeXT
http://helf.freeshell.org/screengrab-02-15-2008.jpg
Edited 2008-04-04 16:55 UTC
There is however a difference between ‘simplistic’ and ‘ugly’. I hate eye candy too, and am a quite happy user of dwm. I know it is personal but I think GNUstep is ugly. Not because there is too little eye candy but because imo the colours a badly chosen, the shades feel strange and the style uses in icons seem to be random. It seems there is no consistency at all.
I think if it was simpler ( eg. remove the shades, making all icons flat and the same etc. ) it would be more beautiful.
That’s true. I really don’t like the shading either.
heh, I’m happy at a full screen terminal with just text
I really wish that they’d find someone to re-design the look of it and get Apple to work with them on some enhancements so that the same developer could deploy on various Linux and BSD based operating systems without trouble and enjoy the efficiency of Objective-C and the NeXTStep/OpenStep frameworks.
The language starts out as unusual but it combines a lot of good points into one language and the inbuilt behaviours of the frameworks make the job easier than, say, Microsoft’s MFC, where you end up using an OO-flavoured library and still have to do the work to make it truly object-oriented.
Aren’t the etoile guys using pretty much vanilla gnustep? It isn’t quite gorgeous but it’s certainly less eye stabbingly ugly.
Etoile is using vanilla GNUstep. It uses a feature called GSAppKitUserBundles to add the themes to GNUstep. Also a more integrated theme system is being developed as part of the core of GNUstep.
On a subjective point. I don’t think “eye stabbingly ugly” is appropriate. Different people have different preferences. I’m somewhat biased, but I, personally, don’t like GNOME or KDE’s looks very much. They seem to be trying to imitate the Mac, but with none of the elegance that underlies the look. They want the look, but they don’t care about what really makes a make cool and that’s the API.
Being pretty is one thing… being elegant is quite another. GNUstep wants to be both.
GJC
I am not going to claim that it is the best looking environment (in my mind, that’s a toss-up between KDE4 and Mac OS 10.5) but personally, I think it looks nice enough. Clean and simple.
It’s always cool to see something a little unusual… And to those who say that the NeXT look is ugly… What are you smoking? I’ve always found the gray NeXT to be the most elegant-looking of any Unix GUI ever (and that includes more recent versions of NeXT, aka OS X)
Unusual? Not even a little. I’m using WindowMaker (GNUstep’s official WM) for almost 10 years now, almost exclusively on my BSD boxes. I’ve tried many, even KDE, but I always came back. Keyboard support is excellent (special WM and app functions controlled by additional keys on Sun USB type 6 keyboard), window handling is great, and the whole UI system is excitingly fast. There are many nice apps running as dock applets. And yes, I don’t care for “inconsistency”, I use GNUstep applications along with gv, xmms, gmencoder, acroread4, Gimp, Kino, mplayer, Skype, OpenOffice, K3b or Sylpheed. 🙂
To the screenshot linked some posts above: I suggest having the doc icons on the right side 32×32 so they don’t consume too much space. Hey, this even matters on a 1400×1050 21″ CRT! 🙂
In fact, I changed many of the standard settings regarding colors, but it still looks great. Eye candy does not matter to me anyway, because in most cases it consumes ressources and consumes time (accumulated for animations n stuff) which generates an overall feeling of slowlyness. But to those who suggest a more “modern” look: I do understand this point of view. The first impression that users usually get comes from their first view of the GUI. If it doesn’t look the way they expect a GUI to look like (many are already spoiled by MICROS~1’s ideas of how things are required to look like), they think the software sucks, no matter if it would eventually be perfect for their needs.
Sorry but I thought that NeXTStep looked bad in 1988. It may be elegant, but if it doesn’t have appeal, other than its elegance, it’s going to end up in a museum, not on someone’s desktop. Moreso, for an optional desktop environment.
I always thought that BeOS was far more pleasant to use and achieved a lot of the same design goals. Mac OS X Leopard has finally gotten to a point where it’s comfortable, and without 6 different styles. GNOME 2.20 isn’t bad but I miss the original design, as it looked less like Win95 et al. and the same with KDE.
As previously discussed, this type of thing is highly subjective.
This is why GNUstep has an existing theme engine which lets you change the look. Also, we’re working on a more integrated theme engine.
Greg C.
Sorry, but that is really your personal opinion. I thought NeXT looked great back then.. .and it still looks fine. I love an UI which doesn’t come into your way. Also it is a nice combination of Look and Ergonomics, since many details of the GUI are not designed with the same user access guidelines as windows.
After all, compare win95 to win31. Look at the style of the widgets, the colors (not the ugly icons). They maintained most of the old windows feel, but the Look is clearly NeXT inspired! For me, the first thing to do on XP or Vista is to turn of the plastic/rubber look.
Ten posts have passed since i made my query about the current state of the native web browser developement and not one replyin to it or even relating to it. As for those calling it ugly – do you even understand the principles of design? Over twenty years have passed since its introduction and yet not one of the following Desktop Enviroment have managed to surpass it for clarity of design and purpose.
I believe that Riccardo should speak to the point of Vespucci’s maturity and usability. SimpleWebKit is able to parse webpages, but doesn’t display them correctly yet.
A decent amount of progress has been made towards getting it to work. I look forward to when it can be used practically.
Greg Casamento
I had problems registering myself here.
Progress has been consistent, taking in account everything was done from scratch. Still, the power of Obj-C has been amazing.
Nikolaus has done a great job on SimpleWebKit. The library is available in gnustep daily snapshots. Vespucci instead is available as CVS from the GNUstep Application Project.
I would not call it usable yet, too many things are missing or buggy, but a target like “dillo” is indeed in sight.
The problem is clearly lack of manpower and interest from the community.
If you check my blog, status is usually reported there.
Riccardo