Submitted by During FOSDEM 2007, a live CD using the Etoile desktop environment was demonstrated, and this live CD can now be downloaded (screenshots inside the link, boys and girls). Etoile is a desktop environment based on GNUstep. “This is the 0.2 prerelease that we worked on at FOSDEM 2007. There’s still quite a lot of problems on it (check the bugtracker), so we expect the final 0.2 release in about a month. In the meantime, feel free to download the iso and to play with it.”
is so cooooooooooooooool. Grab it from FreeBSD ports or get the CD, I wish there was a Linux/netbsd distro with gnusatep/windomaker/etoile and no gnome/kde.
Well…..this is close:
http://www.linuks.mine.nu/gnustep/
Only one screenshot actually works, and none of the thumbnails do. Bad impression, especially to someone like me who’s always been a fan of GNUstep…
The screenshots and thumbnails worked for me from the beginning. But until just now the download link didn’t work for me.
Besides Gnome I also have GNUstep and étoilé installed on my gentoo system. GNUstep+WindowMaker+étoilé simply rule. What we need now is a Linux/*BSD/Darwin OS based on this combination, using an OPENSTEP-compliant FHS. No more /usr/lib, /usr/bin, /opt/xyz/A/abc_123/smth, but rather /System/AdminTools, /System/Applications, /System/Library, /System/Logs, /Users/(username)
And yes – étoilé looks delicious with the Nesedah theme. Modern, yet faithful to the good ol’ look.
EDIT: fixed some wording
Edited 2007-02-27 23:08
Probably just bandwith issues. They worked fine for me. I did notice that when you clicked on of the thumbnails, that the image was shown near the bottom of the page (you had to scroll down to see it) and that it loaded slowly.
That may be the OS-Snoozed effect!
the actual link to the iso was broken (the iso file was misnamed) the first couple of hours after sending the mail to the *-dev mailing lists.
So you just happened to look at the page while I was regenerating thumbnails and the webpage… again, didn’t expect an osnews story, and certainly not as quickly after sending the mail.
Sowwy
– that’s my fault. But I didn’t expect it to be posted so quickly after my submission 
Huh?
http://jesseross.com/clients/gnustep/ui/concepts/
etoile3.png’s Inspector window/app fonts are looking very nice, crisp, compared to the average X window server ones. Does GNUStep have it’s own sets of fonts or are they the same regular ones?
When installing GNUstep it typically installs some truetype fonts as well as postscript fonts (type 1-fonts).
There is no particular difference in regard to font rendering, using the same technology. Among type 1 fonts often shipped with GNUstep in distributions are the Nimbus-fonts from URW++.
Compared with KDE or Gnome the font collection is usually identical. There is however some differences in regard to font sizes. 10 point Helvetica in GNUstep is usually somewhat smaller than 10 point Helvetica in Gnome. More like 8 point than 10 point actually. But same underlying technology though.
EDIT: Personally I cannot see the difference between the font rendering in the concept images and the font rendering for Gnome/KDE apps. People complaining about font rendering (in Linux) are typically using a binary distribution that ships FT2 compiled without support for the patented BCI.
Edited 2007-02-28 00:04
Those are mockups.
…shame that GNUstep has so few desktop applications.
I know you can run other apps in GNUstep, but without applications that are specifically designed for its UI you lose consistency, one of the main things that made NeXTSTEP such a joy to use.
I can’t really see it building up enough momentum to get the same quantity or quality of applications that are available for KDE. It certainly isn’t going to happen in the near future.
GNUstep has applications for several categories, but you’re right that there are nowhere the same amount of applications for GNUstep as there is for KDE/Gnome.
OTOH, KDE/QT and Gnome/GTK+ applications can be modified using themes to have a behaviour close to that of GNUstep – and using gnome-session-daemon makes Gnome/GTK+ apps using GTK+-themes. Now choose a NextSTEP’ish theme, and the visual difference is less terrifying.
One ought to look here: http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Category:Applications
Note though that while the “visual” difference (the graphical theme) can be reduced… the actual behaviour of the apps won’t — no services menu in kde/gnome apps, etc.
If I’m not mistaken though, one of the advantages to GNUStep is that it allows developers to write apps that can also be compiled and run natively under OS X. (E.g., GNUMail – http://www.collaboration-world.com/cgi-bin/project/index.cgi?pid=2 ).
I should mention that we weren’t exactly expecting or looking for osnews or other news site covering that pre-release — it was mainly for etoile dev and gnustep dev that wanted to play with the livecd, specially considering that many gnustep dev couldn’t have the iso during the fosdem (as we finished it too late and still with bugs)..
So don’t expect it to *work*, and if it does, don’t expect it to work *well*
— there’s a bunch of bugs and glitches we uncovered already, and we’ll surely find others. Again, it’s not really a “public” release — we would prefer that you’d wait for the real 0.2 release to try etoile and make up your mind about it 
That beeing say, it more or less work, and most bugs are graphic glitches, although the various menu bugs tends to be fairly annoying. You’re warned! — if you want to try it anyway, do it, and if you have bugs we’d gladly appreciate if you’d fill a bug report (but I would even more appreciate people checking the bug is not already in the tracker before submitting one ;-).
Considering our current buglist, we’ll probably release the real 0.2 in a month or so — real life has a nasty habit of pulling back release so realistically it could be longer.
real life has a nasty habit of pulling back release
Darn that real life!
Just browsing the screenshots made me more excited than I’ve been for a while about unix desktops.
I’m glad they have introduced top menus as the traditional GNUstep side menus are a little dated now.
i wonder if they can be compiled using gnustep. camino uses cocoa and iterm uses cocoa too.