TL;DL On Tuesday, July 12, 2016, Swift Griggs <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Tue, 12 Jul 2016, Liam Proven wrote: > > I vaguely recall seeing some in a mag at the time. It looked a bit like > > Mac apps running on CDE, if I remember correctly. The in-window menus > > were weird (for a Mac) and made it look more Windows-like. > > That's about what I'd expect. I wonder if it could crash as much as OS 8.1 > on my Quadra 700. That's a tough act to follow. :-) > > > Of course, today, GNUstep is something very broadly akin to this, and > > almost nobody pays any attention to it. :-( There have been a couple of > > LiveCDs, never updated, and TTBOMK nobody has ever produced a > > GNUstep-based Linux distro. > > IIRC, there was an alpha-quality liveCD for a while. I never could get > that excited about NeXT, Objective C, or any of that Steve-Jobs-in-limbo > kruft (and by extension GNUStep, either). I saw a Color Turbo slab for > sale recently: > > http://denver.craigslist.org/sys/5677975263.html > > I passed. That machine is sweet, for what it is. However, like most > hobbyists I tend to gravitate toward machines I actually used "back in the > day". In the 90's I was a student, mostly. There was no-freakin-way I was > going to afford a NeXT machine. They were prohibitively expensive (or at > least that's my recollection): even more so than high-end Macs. Plus, back > in the 1990's I met a couple of people who did own them, and they were > *super-snobby* about it, which also turned me off. It's a bit like BMW > owners today. I don't care if they put 1000 HP in them, even most of their > sportscars ('cept the whacky hybrid) still looks to me like mom's car > leaving the tennis courts at the country club to head out to a PTA > meeting. I'm guessing I will never be a BMW fan or a NeXT bigot. > > GNUStep wants to clone their whole API and the UI, as you know. I wish > them luck but it's nothing that exciting to me personally. It's > interesting that you bring it up now that Linux is committing anti-UNIX > heresy on a regular basis. Maybe GNUStep's future is now brighter? It's > still very fiddly and immature the last time I looked at it, but in terms > of the overall approach, it does appear to have some nice plumbing and > backing-ideas. I'd rather see GNUStep succeed than GNOME or KDE (fantasy > on my part), honestly. Those two are just hopeless chaos-impregnated > hairballs with ridiculous dependency chains which are starting to pollute > working/good/not-at-all-broken areas of the *OS* at this point. I've never > liked either project (though I could almost stand GNOME for short periods > in the early days). Then again, I'm not one of those "Linux world > domination" types who want to somehow capture every user, no matter how > low we have to set the bar to snag them. > > Google Android has shown that folks can (successfully) bastardize > Linux/UNIX into something very weird, proprietary, custom, and no longer > even resembling UNIX, much. So, now that this sort of blaspheming is > normal, why not try to make a *decent* desktop OS from it, eh? Lord knows, > Ubuntu is trying. Who knows, maybe Android will become that. I'll catch > the screenshots... I'd rather not use an OS where soooooo many of the apps > are pre-infected with some type of malware or does things behind the > scenes I wouldn't approve of (yet the "store" claims they are "virus" > free, eh?). Funny how they can redefine "virus" or "malware" as it suits > them (ie.. corporate sponsors say it's safe? Oh, ohhhhhkay then, we don't > mind if you steal an address book, log keystrokes, or secretly GPS track > folks - just don't replicate). The countermeasures for these issues seem > to me to be weak and ineffective, so far. > > I'm not sure I'll ever be able to trust commercial OS's or software at > this point, no matter how much bling they cop. I still carry my Philips > Xenium phone running Symbian (and lasting about 20 days before needing a > charge). Tastes great, and less filling. > > I'd love to see a commercial phone OS project start with the mentality of > the OpenBSD project. I'd be willing to try something like that! Features > like totally secure defaults, zero trust for basically anyone or anything, > secure OS protections that are difficult to override by silly apps, etc.. > would be welcome. > > > I've always suspect that, if by some massive effort, ReactOS succeeded > > and produced something that was usefully stable and could run Windows > > apps usefully, Microsoft's attack lawyers would *vaporize* it leaving > > nothing but a smoking stain on the ground. > > I have absolutely zero doubt that you are quite correct. If it took > .000001% bit of market share away from them, they'd have a nuclear > freak-out and figure out a way to hybridize ninjas with their corporate > lawyers and send them out riding elephant sharks for vengeance. What would > be hilarious (but again fantasy) is if ReactOS had a breakthrough in terms > of functionality that got them very close (say 99% or better compat). Then > if they sat on it for a while, getting it right before subsequently > release it the genie would be out of the bottle. If it worked > compatibility-wise even as well as XP or Win7, it'd be a hit and crimp the > snot out of M$. Of course, they'd probably find some way to DCMA it out of > existence. It just depends on how widespread the release got and how > illegal it was to own it. > > > Saying that, I'm amazed at how well WINE works these days. > > It's impressive when it works. There are still a large number of > applications that don't work, too. Even bread-and-butter apps like the > latest Firefox often crash and burn. I have seen a few that are rock > solid, Office 97, Winamp, and a few other "gold" (winehq) or better > certified applications. I run RegexBuddy sometimes in Wine and as you say, > no problems. > > That's not to say the WINE team isn't amazing. They are. It's just a tough > slog. > > -Swift > -- Ian Finder (206) 395-MIPS [email protected]
