[HN Gopher] Nextspace, a desktop environment that brings a NeXTS...
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Nextspace, a desktop environment that brings a NeXTSTEP look and
feel to Linux
Author : HeckFeck
Score : 142 points
Date : 2021-12-13 18:11 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| unzadunza wrote:
| Does anyone know if Nextspace apps have emacs keybidings just
| like NeXTSTEP (and MacOS)? If so, this is the Linux desktop I've
| been craving.
| touggourt wrote:
| Not yet. Until
| https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/issues/60 it use the
| host system shortcuts.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| Continuing on today's theme of GNUstep, here is a modern and
| maintained attempt to build a full desktop environment atop
| GNUstep.
|
| And before the question arises: "Workspace is NOT WindowMaker...
| Workspace is written from scratch."
| pelagicAustral wrote:
| Sadly my work laptop is on Ubuntu (macOS at home) GNUstep
| inspired me to try Chicago 95, so I will probably go with that
| later on... Nextspace looks amazing tho'
| mysterydip wrote:
| Thanks for the mention of Chicago95! I hadn't heard of it
| before, looks like just what I wanted to try. The various
| early windows themes for things like icewm left me wanting a
| bit more "authenticity".
| gattilorenz wrote:
| But isn't it painfully wrong on the title bar size/font,
| the highlight around icons, etc? If this is the better one,
| I can't imagine the alternatives...
|
| https://github.com/grassmunk/Chicago95/blob/master/Screensh
| o...
| badsectoracula wrote:
| > Workspace is NOT WindowMaker... Workspace is written from
| scratch
|
| Kinda, but not exactly and for some reason the author has
| always been vague when it comes to that.
|
| Nextspace's Workspace has been written "from scratch" in the
| sense that it is a new (sub)project, however it is meant to be
| the full desktop experience instead of just a window manager.
| The window management part however is based on a fork of Window
| Maker, you can find the relevant files (with their copyrights,
| etc) under Applications/Workspace/WM. The build system has
| changed to Nextspace's (which seems to be just GNU make) and
| some glue code with the rest of the system is made.
| wonks wrote:
| Is there any particular reason why GNUstep is getting so much
| attention today, or are people just posting all these things in
| response to each other?
| xattt wrote:
| Here's something I've been pondering: how did the first window
| managers visually fail when a program hung or had a fault?
|
| With older Windows version, you got pretty GDI "trails" as you
| dragged a window around. Now you get blanked out elements.
|
| For some reason, I thought that something like Plan 9 would have
| been flawlessly written (like their CLI counterparts) and that it
| would be immune to visual issues like that.
| p_l wrote:
| GDI "trails" are due to specific of how GDI drawing worked
| before WinNT6 and DWM.
|
| Specifically, applications were issuing drawing commands which
| were executed directly onto the framebuffer - there was no
| "draw into rectangle then another process will compose it",
| because GDI was written for systems that simply didn't have
| enough memory for that.
|
| Essentially the process looked like this:
|
| 1. Windows GUI system figures that a specific window (this
| could be everything from full application window to individual
| control) became visible
|
| 2. WM_PAINT (iirc) message is sent to the application, to
| specific window
|
| 3. the handler for WM_PAINT of the specific window is triggered
| (there might have been support for buffering pre-existing
| draws, too), and executed GDI calls to draw the component
| (canonically using a state pointer to associated data block
| with everything necessary for repaint)
|
| 4. The GDI system does the drawing directly on the graphic card
| (either fully in software, or through accelerated calls exposed
| by driver)
|
| 5. Next window that needs painting gets called etc.
|
| This meant that when the applications hanged, or simply didn't
| have time to process drawing requests fast enough, you ended up
| with "trails" due to remaining old data in framebuffer.
|
| With WinNT6+ and DWM, GDI applications each draw into their own
| buffer which is then composited by DWM. This means that at
| worst they break their own windows' contents, but not the
| global framebuffer.
| pram wrote:
| Nextstep did exactly what MacOS does today with the pinwheel of
| death.
| codpiece wrote:
| I have a color turbo. Wonderful. Nearly useless, but
| wonderful. I would like a Cube so that I can relive the
| wonder of its release at a Seybold tradeshow way back when I
| was early in my career.
| technothrasher wrote:
| At one point in the early 00's I had twelve Cubes that I
| picked up for free from a company that was getting rid of
| them. I was flush with geek treasure, and wanted to
| generously share my hoard with friends. By the time I
| realized what I'd done, I'd give them all away. D'oh! But
| at least I made twelve people very happy, and I still have
| a big stack of Nextstep install CDs.
| spitfire wrote:
| Have any software? My Turbostation is looking for more
| software.
| leetrout wrote:
| This makes me pine for IRIX.
| innocentoldguy wrote:
| Your comment reminded me of my old SGI Octane 2. I loved that
| computer.
| touggourt wrote:
| You may like this one https://docs.maxxinteractive.com/ a full
| reimplatation of the great SGI Desktop on IRIX
| Maursault wrote:
| https://sgi.neocities.org/index.html
| sockaddr wrote:
| Love this.
|
| One productivity hack I discovered for myself was to set my
| background to a solid color I like and to make my windowing
| experience as "boring" as possible. Id otherwise sit and tweak my
| UI instead of working.
|
| This sort of project is quite possibly the next step in that
| optimization for myself.
| lproven wrote:
| Fair. Perhaps a tad extreme but fair.
|
| My favourite, and I kinda miss it, was a neat little
| hack/exploit of a new Windows feature in 95/NT4 + PowerToys. It
| gained a new option to stretch the wallpaper to fit the screen
| resolution.
|
| If you set the wallpaper to a tiny 2x3 BMP -- literally just a
| rectangle of 6 differently-coloured pixels -- then in its
| efforts to scale that, it turned the background into a cool
| smooth set of blends, just a wash of gradients.
|
| It was attractive but totally undistracting, and a ~6 byte
| wallpaper file took an _extremely_ small amount of RAM. :-)
|
| Eventually, if I remember correctly, it got "fixed" and the
| scaling algorithm recognised sharply differing pixel colours
| and scaled them into GIIIAAANNNT PIIIXEEELLLS. :-(
| hhh wrote:
| Interesting, I find that I spend a day or two getting
| everything 'right' for me, which tends to end up in this exact
| state where it's both boring and pleasant to look at. I also
| use a solid black background.
|
| example: https://files.catbox.moe/fr6hq9.png
| qubex wrote:
| My desktop backgrounds have been solid black since 1993.
| brnt wrote:
| Who spends time looking at their wallpaper? I couldn't tell
| you what my desktop background is.
| bananamerica wrote:
| I'm pretty sure that wallpapers are something you put so
| that others can see.
| utexaspunk wrote:
| Mine's been solid black back since 1986 :)
| xdennis wrote:
| Mine's #333 since 2003... is what I'd like to say because
| it rhymes, but it's actually since 2013.
|
| I tried black, but it's easy to confuse for the monitor
| being off since I don't have any fixed elements on the
| screen.
| cpill wrote:
| it's black when I close my eyes since I was born!
| quirino wrote:
| On Linux a window manager might be another option in that
| direction. I use i3 (with a solid #1F4437 background :) and
| find it's the best way to make your desktop invisible.
| mattl wrote:
| I've had my desktop background be the same NeXT default color
| for years. Same on my iPhone and iPad.
| dugmartin wrote:
| After using a tiling window system for a few years now the
| screenshot on that page is an affront to all that is good and
| holy.
|
| https://raw.githubusercontent.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/mast...
| bendhoefs wrote:
| There must be someone out there in the wide world who
| configures their tiling WM to default to floating windows.
| p_l wrote:
| Surprisingly many of them - not for me, but godspeed to them,
| configurability and freedom of X11 environment was big part
| of what made linux great for me.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Wait so now we have tiling vs overlapping window manager holy
| wars?
|
| Sigh...
| Lex-2008 wrote:
| and in the "tiling WMs" camp there is subdivision into
| "dynamic" and "static" tiling window managers
| 1_player wrote:
| Humans are tribal.
| tomc1985 wrote:
| Our worst and ugliest trait
| tssva wrote:
| There are multiple worse human traits, and I can't be
| associated with anyone who would think this is our worst
| and ugliest.
| phkahler wrote:
| Is it a Wayland compositor?
|
| Does it support OpenGL ES?
|
| Is it easy to port a simple C++ GTK app?
|
| If the answer to all 3 of those is "yes" then one should be able
| to port Solvespace to this UI fairly easy (it's one source file
| per platform). You know, if you want a CAD program...
| qubex wrote:
| (!TRUE)3
| haolez wrote:
| It's not Wayland-based, but if I'm not mistaken, GNUStep
| supports Wayland.
| lproven wrote:
| They're working on it. There are some demos but it's not
| there yet.
| smarx007 wrote:
| https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace/wiki/Architecture-a...
| looks like it's not Wayland-based.
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| What's with all the NeXTSTEP postings on HN all of a sudden? They
| really just came out all at once.
| eagsalazar2 wrote:
| Amiga and NeXT people, right when you think the passion has
| finally died out, nope!
| throwawaybutwhy wrote:
| Look and feel can be transplanted [0] onto existing DE's. Just
| sayin'.
|
| [0] https://github.com/B00merang-Project
| math-dev wrote:
| That looks damn good!
| sigmonsays wrote:
| spending the effort to learn to have a keyboard driven workflow
| for common things as been tremendous for me. it effortlessly
| allows me to recreate my various workspaces (chat, music, email,
| browsers, work specific things, terminals, production, etc).
|
| For coding I usually always dragged windows to the same setup, w/
| i3, it's easy to automate that and control it all via the
| keyboard.
| codpiece wrote:
| I love this. I was driving my NeXTStation this weekend, it's a
| wonderful UI and system.
| mattl wrote:
| Nice. What do you have?
| rcarmo wrote:
| I'd really like to run this on a Raspberry Pi, but alas that does
| not seem easy to pull off unless I find a different base distro.
| belenos46 wrote:
| I thought I had read something about this, and behold:
| https://pimylifeup.com/raspberry-pi-centos/
| sleepycatgirl wrote:
| Man, the build instructions.. are mess. It depending on specific
| distro, is such... a turn off.. Too bad, because otherwise its
| amazing project, and I wish them the best... Pain.
| petilon wrote:
| What is incredible here is that a UI developed in the 1980s is
| still attractive, and is arguably better looking and more usable
| than Windows 11 and Mac OS 12. What does that say about the last
| 40 years of usability and user experience research?
| darkwater wrote:
| You know that the "better looking" part is totally personal,
| don't you? Personally, I never liked NeXTSTEP looks, not even
| 25 years ago when I saw some reimplementation under *nix (never
| touched a NeXT workstation unfortunately).
| beebeepka wrote:
| Indeed. I was around at the time this was considered
| beautiful. I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now. I
| guess not sharing the same taste or fanboyism is offensive.
| Good thing you weren't flagged. The night is young though
|
| Edit: case in point haha. The squad is working overtime to
| protect the precious from evil non positive words
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| It would be interesting to have some insight into how much UX /
| UI goes into macOS and Windows releases, especially if things
| are tested with representative, non-technical users and then
| sent back for changes. My cynical take aligns with yours, for
| every clever small touch there seems to be a half-dozen awkward
| design choices to work around.
| SllX wrote:
| Not enough if the Dock is any measure. It's been bad for over
| 20 years and in some ways still a downgrade from the NeXTSTEP
| Dock (and to be fair, in some ways an upgrade since it has a
| few tricks now the NeXTSTEP Dock didn't).
|
| Same for the Finder. There's been ample opportunity to
| revisit the original compromises made, fix some of the
| behavioral and consistency issues and just not touch it ever
| again. That, hasn't happened. To be fair, Spotlight and Quick
| Look are major feature upgrades over the initial Mac OS X
| Finder, but pretty much all of the criticisms from 20 years
| ago, well documented by John Siracusa at one point, stand.
| Also nobody wants .DS_Store files on their servers and it's
| probably worth revisiting that decision.
| KronisLV wrote:
| > What is incredible here is that a UI developed in the 1980s
| is still attractive, and is arguably better looking and more
| usable than Windows 11 and Mac OS 12.
|
| I somewhat agree. To me, the utilitarian GUI options and
| desktops have always had some appeal: i've found the likes of
| LXDE and XFCE to be wonderfully usable and still have a soft
| spot for the Redmond theme, alongside boring looking pieces of
| software that just fit in really well with the overall theme
| and style of the OS.
|
| Of course, that's a subjective point and opinions might differ:
| even in regards to *nix, some much rather would work with
| something like KDE Plasma, GNOME or something else entirely,
| and that's okay.
| dntrkv wrote:
| The last 40 years of UX research has given us the iPhone that
| my mom learned how to use within a couple hours.
|
| > still attractive
|
| I don't think many people outside of the "Everything New Sucks"
| crowd here on HN would agree there.
| jrm4 wrote:
| Sure, but I'd say the problem is it also left us with the
| idea that "because Mom's iPhone is so popular, everything, no
| matter how complex, should look and feel like that," leaving
| out e.g. a great deal of _useful_ complexity.
| hulitu wrote:
| Because it is so limited. Why teach the grandma something
| instead of putting her neurons at rest ?
| alimov wrote:
| Wonder what limits you are referring to
| yepthatsreality wrote:
| Anecdotally to this anecdote about iOS usability, my mom
| didn't know about the control center or how to switch from
| wifi to cellular data.
|
| iOS isn't easy to use because Apple markets itself as special
| and smart, instead it's easy to use because we live in an age
| where people use computers and can guess at most things.
| sneak wrote:
| A lot of UI development is resume-driven, or marketing-driven.
| Users buy hardware based on UI appearance, and regular changes
| make it feel fresh and new.
|
| Those of us who use computers for more serious types of work
| generally prefer more consistency.
|
| The goals are different.
| henry_bone wrote:
| It's interesting and surprising to me that so many like the look
| of this. The fonts look grainy. The widgets are blocky and crude.
| At least, that's my take on the aesthetic. To each his own, I
| guess.
| winrid wrote:
| It's less that it looks nice and rather that there isn't
| anything _surprising_. No scrollbars that only show up when you
| mouse over them, buttons without borders, horizontal lists that
| aren 't obviously a scrollable list... the list goes on. :)
| marbu wrote:
| Given the effort required to build this, I wonder what does
| Nextspace differently compared to Window Maker.
| touggourt wrote:
| WindowMaker is a window manager. NextSpace is a full desktop
| with guidelines, specific behavior and utilities (file manager,
| terminal, inspectors, ...).
| lproven wrote:
| NeXTspace is a desktop on top of CentOS Linux.
|
| Window Maker is a window manager, not a desktop.
| itomato wrote:
| Unless anything has changed, it is a brittle rebuild of GNUstep
| and WindowMaker for a single distribution.
| a-dub wrote:
| how does it compare to windowmaker, the open source nextstep
| inspired window manager/desktop environment from 20 years ago?
| badsectoracula wrote:
| It uses a Window Maker fork for its workspace so i guess it'd
| be similar but more integrated.
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