The GNUstep project has released a new version of its Live CD, including many GNUstep software and developer tools. As a bonus you get some classic games like nethack, and quite a few network and system recovery and administrator tools. There are also a few 3D and audio programs on it. It’s based on the 2.6.31 Linux kernel and Debian Linux distribution, and is 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. Google Chrome is installed too.
It’s GNUstep.
Edited 2009-12-11 19:42 UTC
I’d like to see if I can move my Mac OS X compatible projects to it and build them again. It would be nice to see more Objective-C on more platforms but two would be good.
GNUstep is supported on Windows, Linux, *BSD, Solaris and Darwin, and should be possible to get working on most POSIX systems. Plus there is another implementation, QuantumSTEP, which runs on small devices such as the Zaurus and Openmoko phones.
That’s way more than two platforms for sure
Doesn’t appear to be an AMD64 release of 2.0 yet.
I am certainly glad to see that this project finally kicked out a 2.0 release, I was afraid that it would die from disinterest. ANY desktop alternative to Gnome or KDE is welcome but I always had a certain fondness for NeXTstep.
I wonder why GNUstep doesn’t use Étoilé, which looks much more modern?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89toil%C3%A9
I fully agree with you here. This project is really nice, but it lacks publicity.
I’m saying this as a person, who just discovers Smalltalk/Obj-C.
You have it backwards, Etoile uses/is based on GNUStep. Your question is a little like why doesn’t GTK use GNOME. I think what you mean is why doesn’t GNUStep use the Camaelon theme from Etoile, and the answer is that it can and Camaelon is included in the livecd.
I have an 901 Linux model eeepc that I gave this a spin on thanks to the wonders of UNetbootin. Sadly it failed to detect the WiFi so I was unable to fully test it out. I saw for myself the lack of theming in Windowmaker though, so I don’t consider this a total loss.
The whole thing had the feel of very early technology though, reminding me of OS/2 or earlier versions of WinNT 3.x. Reminded me a bit also of LiteStep which was a Windows shell replacement based on AfterStep, so that was to be expected. Due to the lack of theming support and dated look, I have to echo other posters and wonder why there wasn’t an effort to use Étoilé and slap a developer’s release label on it?
(I know, I know–Étoilé is not yet ready for use by end-users, it is intended for developers only until the next major milestone, which is intended for end-users… Still it seems to me better to generate some excitement than to risk being forgotten about! Which incidentally seems to be the only purpose behind this live-cd release–so why not show your best?)
–bornagainpenguin
It’s ugly. Surely something can be done? I’m not talking 3D acceleration…
I’m a dedicated Window Maker user, which is ugly. It’s more functional that anything else I’ve tried. WM also lets you turn of the dock and app icons which is a godsend as they are god aweful too.
now there’s also the sparc64 iso image, and an USB stick image.