Re: Darwin - x86 - GNUSTEP

[Graham J Lee]

JSL wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm just wondering if it is possible to use Darwin x86
> with a GUI or X-Window environment like:
>  
> AQUA (Mac OS X)
> OPENSTEP

Definitely not.  OpenStep was based on the proprietary Display 
PostScript and Aqua on Apple's own closed-source rendering system (think 
DisplayPDF only not quite); neither have been ported to Darwin/x86.  If 
you want to have the OpenStep GUI, try GNUstep (see below) or see if you 
can grab hold of a copy of Rhapsody/x86 or OpenStep/x86, from e.g. eBay 
or BlackHoleInc.

>  
> or
>  
> GnuStep

Indeed so.  Check out the GNUstep CVS from savannah.gnu.org and follow 
the instructions in README.Darwin.  I've done this and have forwarded 
recommendations back to the GNUstep peeps about changes to the docs; I'm 
on a very slow dial-up connection on a very slow computer at the moment 
so can't readily check whether or not they've been implemented :-(.

Once you've built GNUstep you may be interested (or perhaps not) in the 
GNUstep StartupItem I created:
http://users.ox.ac.uk/~wadh1342/GSStartupItem.tar.gz

Good luck!  I'm about 150 miles away from my Darwin machine at the 
moment so if you want help building GNUstep I'm afraid I'm not too 
useful.  However I expect that other people here (or the GNUstep types: 
#gnustep on freenode IRC) will be ;-).

> Any opinion or experience with that?

GNUstep works.  KDE (apparently, never tried myself) works.  Afterstep I 
have no experience with however for a NeXT-esque window manager try 
WindowMaker...although I seem to remember there's a bug with _XSetLocale 
or a similar symbol being unresolved.  Can't remember right now but when 
I get back to my Darwin PC I'll send some patches to whoever would like 
(a DarwinPort file?).

> Ancient NeXTStep user
And there was me thinking it was only the computers that were old ;-).

Graham.