Re: [Announcement] Window Maker Live 12.8 with GNUstep

[Paul Seelig]

On 12/13/24 01:42, Gryllida wrote:

hi paul seelig and thanks for the note. there is also https://onflapp.github.io/gs-desktop/index.html which is a bit similar in its objective, which is supplied as .sh not .iso though. maybe the two groups could share the codes or efforts.

Thanks Gryllida for the heads up!

Of course, i am already aware of both the excellent GS-Desktop and NEXTSPACE projects, although my approach is more simplistic and different.

Window Maker Live doesn't aim for being a GNUstep desktop, but rather intents to be a Linux system using Window Maker as its default GUI, and that contains and uses GNUstep components without actually depending on them. The idea is to have a fully working system even if the user decides to uninstall all things GNUstep apart from Window Maker.

Personally, i am not interested in replicating the NeXTSTEP of the 90's but try to integrate as much useful components as possible taken from everywhere. Our computing happens in the contemporary real world and it makes lots of sense to take advantage of the possibilities it offers.

Nonetheless, with the some effort and time investment, Window Maker Live's build tree could be used to create a true GNUstep live system, instead.

Unfortunately the Window Maker Live desktop cannot easily be made to *not* look as retro as it currently does, because the WINGs widget set used by Window Maker unfortunately dictates and limits what theming could accomplish, and thus effectively becomes the lowest common denominator for a unified look. Probably someone capable enough should rewrite Window Maker to use the GNUstep GUI libraries instead of WINGs (and also leaving out its unnecessary feature creep) .

On a related note: I became shamefully aware that i actually neglected one major aspect of the included GNUstep components:

Window Maker Live is *not* using the outdated GNUstep packages of Debian/Bookworm, but instead relies for this version on the rather up to date GNUstep release versions available in Debian/Testing (aka Trixie). These packages have been recompiled for inclusion with Bookworm dependencies, including the development applications Gorm and ProjectCenter.

This means in first place that Window Maker Live ships with rather up to date GNUstep components and therefore is a much better choice regarding GNUstep than Debian/Stable for users who don't want to take the risk of upgrading to still work in progress Debian/Trixie.

In addition, five typical GNUstep themes and also Thematic.app were packaged and added, in order to enable interested parties to actually try and verify GNUstep's theming capabilities instead of just relying on hearsay and screenshots. The GNUstep variant of current release version of the Netsurf web browser has been packaged and included under the name of of WebSurf and added in GWorkspace as its configured web browser. The current GNU Emacs was included in its GNUstep variant. The vector drawing application Graphos, the editor Gemas, and the directory syncing tool StepSync have also been packaged and included.

None of these mentioned applications are available even in Debian/Unstable, but only in Window Maker Live.

All these mentioned GNUstep packages can be downloaded from the associated repo maintained at https://wmlive.rumbero.org/repo/ for installation even on regular Debian/Bookworm systems without having to install Window Maker Live.

This is why why i stated before that to my knowledge no other Linux distribution comes even close to this level of GNUstep integration and usability.

Hope this makes better understandable why i dare proposing Window Maker Live for your consideration.

Thanks again,
Paul Seelig