New GNUstep Releases

Martin writes: "GNUstep has reached release 0.7.5 of the GUI libraries as well as version 1.1.0 of its base library. Some enhancements include anti-aliased font support, spell checking, a great key-bindings system, a tool for inline Obj-C documentation, further Mac OS X compatibility, and much more ..."

Mirrors and useful info

[Adrian Voinea]

There are a few mirrors of the GNUstep pages. Choose the one that is closest to you:
Georgia, USA [403forbidden.net], France, Europe [sbuilders.com], Germany, Europe [peanuts.org].

GNUstep is an attempt to provide an Object-Oriented application development framework and tool set for use on a wide variety of computer platforms. GNUstep is based on the original OpenStep specification provided by NeXT, Inc. (now Apple).

GNUstep is written in Objective-C, the language from which the Signal/Slot concept of Qt was borrowed. Objective-C is basically standard C with one single syntax addition and a dozen or so additional keywords. That is all that is needed to implement an object system that is more powerful than that of that other language. In Objective-C all method calls are done via a mechanism that is similar to, but slighly more efficient than, the signal/slot mechanism of Qt. This has some interesting implications for the implementation of remote method invocation, on object serialization and some other things that are very hip in a Corba context.

Like Nextstep, GNUstep has a record of technical excellence that even today is unmatched by any other object framework, and of abysmal PR performance (also unmatched :-). A current commercial implementation of the same API (same API, different code) is the foundation of MacOS X.

Re:Can I?

[Anonymous Coward]

PI mmx, 166 to 233 mhz: $5-15 on ebay
edo sticks, 8 to 32 mb per: $10-30 new, $cheap on ebay
not having to look at twm/fvwm any more: priceless

;-)

I used a p166 w/ 48 ram for quite a while with Blackbox. It ran like a charm and looked good to boot... GNUstep, sort of like KDE and GNOME, relies on background daemons for some of it's functionality, so there will be more overhead than a "plain" windowmanager. When I played with it I found it to be less resource intensive than either KDE or GNOME. YMWV.

Yes

[nicestepauthor]

The window manager for GNUstep is WindowMaker, and it is lightweight to run on anything. I have run it on a 486/33 with 16 meg of RAM. I also use WindowMaker every day on a Pentium I. with 64 (formerly 32) meg of RAM. It is definitely lighter weight than KDE or GNOME, both of which should still be useable on your Pentium.