Re: GNUstep distro

[Liam Proven]

I just noticed that I inadvertently replied offlist - sorry...

On 8 May 2013 18:41, Sebastian Reitenbach <sebastia@l00-bugdead-prods.de> wrote:
>
> On Wednesday, May 8, 2013 17:32 CEST, Liam Proven <lproven@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> This may be a silly question - forgive me if so.
>>
>> Is there a current GNUstep-based distribution, at all?
>>
>> I have been experimenting with Window Maker and many of the GNUstep
>> apps recently, but my efforts to find a desktop distro based around
>> this have been in vain. I am aware of Window Maker Live and Simply
>> GNUstep, but both are now very dated indeed.
>
> If you don't mind running BSD, there is OpenBSD ;)

It's not that I /mind/ running BSD,  but the last couple of times I
tried FreeBSD -- generally regarded as easier, friendlier & more
compatible than OpenBSD -- I couldn't even get it to open a TCP/IP
connection or install X.11, let alone anything else.

Meanwhile, Ubuntu is the world's second most popular desktop *nix
these days, after Mac OS X. In my experience and recent experiments,
its compatibility and ease of installation is considerably better than
that of its parent Debian, and as such, it is roughly 15y more
advanced, sophisticated and polished than FreeBSD. Of OpenBSD, I
cannot say.

I've only been using, installing, supporting and maintaining Unix
systems since 1988, though, so I am still a bit of a newbie.

So, realistically, no, sorry, but OpenBSD is not a realistic option.
In my professional assessment, the *buntu family is currently the most
mature and widely-supported free desktop OS. OpenSUSE is a bit of a
bloated mess with a rather horrible package manager, Fedora is a
rolling alpha-test, Slackware is deliberately primitive, and most of
the others are far too immature. It's Ubuntu or nothing.

Saying that, I will have a go at getting the OpenBSD GNUstep desktop
up and running in a virtual machine, if only to have a look at the
dependencies.

>> I have also found that the GWorkSpace app seems to conflict with
>> Window Maker itself - you get two Docks, for instance, one positioned
>> top-left in NeXT style and one centred, Mac OS X style. However, I
>> can't find how to add icons to the GWorkSpace dock, nor how to
>> customise its menus, so I have been more or less forced to base my
>> exploratory efforts around Window Maker, which offers quite good
>> customisability.
>
>
> A GWorkspace user-guide, you may find here:
> http://gnustep.made-it.com/Guides/GWorkspace.html

Thank you.

I have already read it, actually. AFAICS it does not answer any of my
questions, such as how to add apps to the Dock or how to customise the
desktop menu. If you have any pointers there, I would really
appreciate them!

--
Liam Proven • Profile: http://lproven.livejournal.com/profile
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