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A comment on Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux.

Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by AdmiralAsshat on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @10:27AM (#22309534)
Clearly a hobby/passion project, so, there's no need to justify its existence, but given this point:

>I think GNUstep needs a reference implementation of a user-oriented desktop environment.

I wonder why he didn't just contribute to Étoilé, since he seems aware of it.

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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by pgeorgi on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @10:48AM (#22309760)
> he didn't just contribute to Étoilé, since he seems aware of it.

This is a hobby and passion project and yet it looks more alive and better maintained than Étoilé, which features "news" from 2014 about doing random Smalltalk things - and while I _love_ Smalltalk it doesn't give me confidence that they're focused on building a modern Cocoa-style desktop environment.

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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by kelnos on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @05:43PM (#22313628)
I clicked through a Étoilé's overview page, and the screenshots were from ~2008 (with a system UI panel opening showing a 2.6 kernel!). It made me question how alive the project is.
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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by mondoshawan on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @10:54AM (#22309817)
Because, at least according to him, Etoile is targeting a MacOS level of UX, which is not his preference.

That, and the last activity on Etoile was quite a while ago, and seems to have stalled out rather badly.

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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by hjkgfdfgh on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @10:39AM (#22309655)
Seems clear they are interested in the NeXTSTEP aesthetic in addition to the underlying framework.
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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by JulianMorrison on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @10:47AM (#22309747)
He's not wrong either. That UI is older than Windows 95 (which stole and misused some of its look and UI elements, that is an iconify control dammit) but it still looks fresh, simple, and get-the-job-done. As well as ignoring the "flat" trend and the "pretend to be a touch UI" trend.
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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by brian_herman__ on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @03:57PM (#22312728)
Is there a GTK or KDE competitor that has the Windows 95 theme down like Mate or something?
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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by msla on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @05:04PM (#22313306)
http://fvwm95.sourceforge.net/

There are some similar ones mentioned in its Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FVWM95

IceWM is quite themeable and is actively developed:

https://ice-wm.org/

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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by Lammy on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @11:17AM (#22310053)
> that is an iconify control dammit

Are you talking about Win95's "Maximize" control?

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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by JulianMorrison on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @11:20AM (#22310085)
The one that visually resembles a NeXTStep iconified window, yes.
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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by int_19h on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @08:18PM (#22314516)
The "Maximize" icon in Windows is clearly a stylized depiction of a window with a toolbar, sized to fit the button on which it is. I don't know if it's the perfect icon for this action, but it makes a lot of sense. Why should it stand for iconification, even if Windows still had that feature (last time it did was Win 3.11)
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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by hjkgfdfgh on Thursday February 13, 2020 @02:54AM (#22316077)
In the context of Nextspace, Nextstep, or Windowmaker, it stands for Iconificaiton because it is "clearly a stylized depiction of" the icon that appears when a window is iconified.

Compare the iconify button with the icons representing iconified windows below:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/mast...

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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by Lammy on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @11:23AM (#22310117)
There's no need for the sarcasm.
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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by JulianMorrison on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @11:29AM (#22310187)
It's aimed at Microsoft.
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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by maximilianburke on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @10:45AM (#22309725)
Is Étoilé still under development or has it been abandoned?

I do rather like the NeXT aesthetic more, personally.

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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by scroot on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @12:35PM (#22310788)
I wrote to the maintainer in late 2018 and he informed me that the project is no longer under development. He mentioned that CoreObject (coreobject.org) would still be active, but that was over two years ago and I can't say for sure.
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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by linguae on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @04:49PM (#22313176)
That's unfortunate about Étoilé, which looked promising and cool. Last summer I wrote an article about the current state of GNUstep, and I was hoping that someone would pick up from where Étoilé left off.

http://mmcthrow-musings.blogspot.com/2019/06/some-thoughts-a...

However, I just saw a recent comment from one of the current GNUstep maintainers that said that the GNUstep Foundation Kit is now at par with macOS Catalina, and work will begin on updating GNUstep's Appkit implementation, which is currently roughly compatible with Mac OS X Tiger.

Making GNUstep more compatible with recent versions of macOS's Cocoa API will definitely help with enticing more developers to the platform.

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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by favorited on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @01:57PM (#22311612)
Looks like the CoreObject repo hasn't been touched in a few years either.
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Re:Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux by Fnoord on Wednesday February 12, 2020 @06:13PM (#22313816)
Need a feature comparison between

* NextStep

* macOS

* GNUStep

* Nextspace

* Étoilé

* KDE/Gnome themes emulating any of the above

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