What does HackerNews think of nextspace?
NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux
https://onflapp.github.io/gs-desktop/index.html
This is a modern setup for Debian 9, 10 & 11.
(Not 12 yet AFAIK.)
It inherits a little bit of code from the earlier NEXTSPACE desktop, which was based on CentOS Linux:
https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace
NEXTSPACE is Ukrainian and development has been on hold since Russia invaded the author's country.
Now the keybinding tangent: If you're not rolling VIM keybindings in the whole desktop (which is tricky for non-modal interfaces and alienating a large amount of users), the next best ergonomic keybinding scheme is the Emacs / Gnu Readline system [2]. It allows moving the cursor without having to move hands around (e.g. going to the arrow keys, coming back to the alphabetical keys). It is one of the base tenets of unix systems. Every terminal supports it. Yet, the whole bunch of Linux Desktop systems completely ignored these keybindings and copypastaed the Windows concept instead, coming up with a weird chimera of readline in some places, and half-windows, half-self-invented in others.
Gnome used to have an Emacs compatibility mode that was somehow off by default and had to be enabled in a tweak. It was removed with GTK 4 however. If you want to do that in KDE, you have to run a weird python daemon, and half the apps constantly stop working because they key codes are being messed with.
MacOS on the other hand, supports these keybindings in every input dialog, it is a pleasure to use. Even more so, to have the same keybindings in every app and not having to learn new ones on a per-app basis.
Of course, running weird python key code daemons runs into the other problem that macOS & Gnustep solved in a much nicer way: By copying the shortcut system from Windows and patching it on top of Readline, many shortcuts have double entries. Printing is CTRL-P, but so is readline "Previous Line". macOS and Gnustep solve this by having a separate key for app actions: Command (or Hyper or Alt). So print is Command+P. Everywhere. Previous line is CTRL-P. This is always my go-to Linux joke where "Copy" is "CTRl-C" everywhere, except in the Terminal, where it's CTRL-SHIFT-C because yeah, CTRL-C has another meaning. Talk about a sane shortcut system if apps have to use different ones per shortcut because the amalgamation of Windows Shortcuts + Readline is a match made in hell.
[1]: https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Readline
https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/17/linux_desktop_feature...
My personal preference, and what I'm writing on right now, is Unity.
I am also very fond of the ROX Desktop.
What would I really like to see? Well, barring attempts to just rip up everything and start again for no good reason, I think there would be a lot of mileage in recreating some of the classic UIs of the past that many people have loved.
* Classic MacOS was a sublime UI, with a lot of subtle non-obvious features. In its way it was far more polished than Mac OS X, even now.
* OS/2 2.x's Workplace Shell was not one of my personal favourites, but it had some excellent design features, and was loved by many.
* I have an Amiga but I never was a big fan back in the day, but a good solid modern Amiga Workbench clone would have some mileage, and as I said in the article, there are already FOSS implementations, just not for xNix.
* GEM is FOSS now. Why not recreate DR's multitasking GEM/X on Linux, or any of the late-era multitasking GEM desktops from the Atari ST, such as Thing or TeraDesk?
One of my favourite UIs is undergoing a pretty good re-implementation effort, in the form of NeXTspace:
https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace
There are more than half a dozen non-Windows-like desktop metaphors. Is that enough for you or shall I find some more? :-)
> I think my ideal Linux OS is probably Ubuntu/CentOS + something like macOS’s .app bundle file format for distributing end-user applications.
Then I suggest looking at NeXTspace:
https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace
It does exactly that. CentOS, plus .app bundles, all integrated into a single bundle.
But the .app bundles come from GNUstep, so you can't pick your own desktop.
EDIT: 5 mins later I found this submission to the homepage https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace
The whole UI was a lot more complex, and IMHO, probably the best-looking GUI ever designed. There's an effort to bring it back to life via GNUStep, and as a desktop environment, NEXTSpace:
Had GNUStep or something like it been able to marshal the resources that have been poured into multiple rewrites of Gnome & KDE, I think we’d have the basis for the low-churn system we wish Apple had provided us.
Maybe if someone like this had come along 20 years ago things would be different https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace
Installs on top of a minimal install of Centos 7,8, Fedora 31.
I installed it in a VM and it worked pretty well, but does need more apps installed by default.
The person behind it seems to still be plugging away. I’d love to see some real inertia behind this kind of effort.
"NEXTSPACE is a desktop environment that brings a NeXTSTEP look and feel to Linux."
I wish someone like Scott Forestall will come up and make a new, user-friendly OS.
There is a lot about those early computing environments that we still haven't caught up on, and probably never will--they're different evolutionary branches that went nowhere (especially Plan 9, which I rather liked but is unusable without a 3-button mouse).
I'm tempted to grab one of my 3A+ and either install Plan 9 or see if I can cross-compile NextSpace (https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace) and get a working environment.