Re: GNUstep distro

[Liam Proven]

On 9 May 2013 16:34, Richard Stonehouse <richard@rstonehouse.co.uk> wrote:
>> On 9 May 2013 08:27, Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola@libero.it> wrote:
>
>>> Richard Stonehouse provides a bootable VM
>>> image which is quite nice.
>>
>> I had not heard of this. I have downloaded it now. It will not import
>> into VirtualBox, nor can VBox mount its hard disk on its own.
>
> It used to work in VirtualBox under Linux - see:
>    www.rstonehouse.co.uk/extras/GNUstep-VM-0.9
> You need to download both the .ovf and the .vmdk file, probably the .mf file
> too.

Aha! Thanks for the reply!

Yes, I downloaded all 3 and put them in a directory of their own and
tried to import them as described, although I used the "import
appliance" menu option rather than the CLI.

When importing, I get an error that the VMDK file is already attached.
If I create a new VM and tell it to use the VMDK as its hard disk,
VBox complains that it is invalid -- it cannot read its size, free
space or anything else.

> Can you tell me what version of VBox you're using and what platform you're
> running on?

Latest VBox (4.2.12 r84980) on the latest Ubuntu (13.04), 64-bit, on a
Core 2 Quad Extreme with 8GB RAM, 1TB HD. So plenty of room.

> As a possible alternative, I've had it working under a recent VMware Player
> (though only tried under MS Windows).

[Nod] I have not yet reinstalled VMware Player - I prefer to use FOSS
tools if possible - but this was my next plan. I'm busy on something
else right now, though.

>>> Richard makes his RPM packages public too.
>
> My RPM packages that are available just now are rather old, built for
> gnustep-make 2.6.0 etc on an openSUSE 11.4 platform.  I'm building a set of
> the latest GNUstep releases on openSUSE 12.3 and hope to have at least some
> of them available in the next week or two.  I think Fred Kiefer has GNUstep
> RPM packages available on the openSUSE Build Service.

I don't have OpenSUSE running any more - after some years with it as
my main OS, I switched away in 2004 when Ubuntu first appeared and
have not regretted it for an instant. :¬)

(I must confess that for the first year or 2, I kept a parallel
install of the current OpenSUSE so that I could configure my twin
screens -- originally on a pair of Matrox cards, later on a single
Matrox G550 -- under OpenSUSE and then copy across the XFree86/X.Org
conf file.)

I really do not miss YAST at all. ;¬) Once I learned APT, I could not
stomach YAST2 at all any more. Red Hat's YUM is catching up these days
but I favour the more mature tool. Also, RHEL is too expensive, CentOS
is free but always rather behind the times, and Fedora is too unstable
for me.

However, I'll see if I can locate the packages to which you refer and
will spin up a SUSE VM to give it a try.

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