Re: GNUstep distro

[James Carthew]

I think your best bet is to download debian and download the gnustep debian source packages, update the contents and then build newer versions of the packages and install them. That, and installing the newest llvm/clang/gnustep packages from source.

On 9 May 2013 17:27, Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola@libero.it> wrote:

Hi,

On 05/08/13 17:32, Liam Proven wrote:

This may be a silly question - forgive me if so.

Is there a current GNUstep-based distribution, at all?

An official, up-to-date, "GNUstep only" distro doesn't exist. There are several Linux and BSD distributions which provide  packages of GNUstep apps, of varying quality and breadth. Richard Stonehouse provides a bootable VM image which is quite nice.

OpenBSD should be quite decent, since Sebastiaa usually works closely with GNustep to make sure apps work and also many GAP apps are there.
FreeBSD, NetBSD should be decent too.
Linux should be fine with Gentoo.

Saldy (me, as a long long time Debian user), the official Debian packages are among the worst. Many reasons. It is going to improve with the next cycle i think, Yavor did some good work there.

There is one last way: Use unofficial packages. Philippe provides Debian/Ubuntu packages here that are even tracking unstable. Richard makes his RPM packages public too.

Pretty much all the tools to create one are in the Debian
repositories, and thus also in Ubuntu. By "all the tools", I mean a
window manager, text editor, terminal, image viewer, calculator, email
client, media player, etc. The only items missing are the big
productivity apps - an office suite, web browser and chat client.
Fortunately those are easily obtained, although of course they do not
share the look & feel.

Right so.

E.g., menu generation in Window Maker is broken, although there is a
workaround; the wdm desktop manager is unable to shutdown or reboot
the machine; and the FSviewer file manager app is missing, although
its icon set is still present.

Menu entries for WindowMaker in debian work, I get an entry for each installed GS app!
YOu shold not need FSViewer, but use GWorkspace instead (Debian ships like a 2-year old version, pretti ridiculous,  ith as stability and crash problems, but they will update I hope)

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.

You can customize GWorkspace. You can disable the Desktop completely (Tools->Show Desktop) or disable the dock (Preferences->Desktop->General)

I do hide and show the destkop regulary it is quick. When you hide the desktop "windowmaker" takes the control over again with its menu. Else, you work in GWorkspace and so to run application you need to go to your application folder or use its Dock, Fiend, Tabbed Shelf and other means.

Riccardo

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