Jesse Ross | jesseross.com

I’m supposedly involved in Etoile and GNUstep. But — don’t tell anyone — I never really learned how to install GNUstep on Linux. Shhhhh!!! I know, I know. I’ve been faking it this whole time. You get Ubuntu installed, do a little sudo apt-get install gnustep, fight with dependencies, and try to make your way. When you realize you can’t get a single thing to work, you blast your install away and start from scratch.

Today, I had had enough. So I started Adium, found Nicolas, and tricked him into helping me do a proper install.

I grabbed the latest netinst of Debian, installed it, and proceeded to harass Nicolas, pinging him everytime I had no idea what to do. Here’s what it comes down to.

First, log in as root.

Then, get sudo.

     # apt-get install sudo

Then add yourself to the sudoers list:

     # vi /etc/sudoers

When that comes up, arrow down to the bottom line, the last character, then type i, then hit the right arrow once, then hit enter, then enter your username, a space, and ALL=(ALL) ALL. So, if you were me, you’d see something like:

root    ALL=(ALL) ALL
jross   ALL=(ALL) ALL

Since you’re using vi, things are a bit weird, but what you do next is hit the Esc key, then type:

:w!
:q

After that, you’ll have exited vi. Next, you’ll want to upgrade your repositories, since with the netinst you’ll have only stable. You’re gonna want testing and unstable, so do this (via Debian Reference):

     # cd /etc/apt
     # cp -f sources.list sources.list.old
     # :>sources.list
     # apt-setup noprobe
     # cd /etc/apt
     # grep -e "^deb " sources.list >srcs
     # :>sources.list
     # cp -f srcs sources.list
     # sed -e "s/stable/testing/" srcs >>sources.list
     # sed -e "s/stable/unstable/" srcs >>sources.list
     # apt-get update
     # apt-get install apt apt-utils

After you’ve done that, then you can type exit, and log in as yourself.

Okay, now, the dependencies part.

GNUstep depends on a lot of things, but luckily you can use apt-get to install them. So, type in all of the following, and, with each one, you’ll likely get a prompt saying that there are other things that need to be installed. Just hit enter when you see something that looks like [Y|n]

     # sudo apt-get install libtiff4-dev
     # sudo apt-get install libpng12-dev
     # sudo apt-get install gobjc
     # sudo apt-get install make
     # sudo apt-get install subversion
     # sudo apt-get install bzip2
     # sudo apt-get install libart-2.0-dev
     # sudo apt-get install libfreetype6-dev
     # sudo apt-get install xlibs-dev
     # sudo apt-get install libffcall1-dev
     # sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev
     # sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
     # sudo apt-get install xserver-common
     # sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg
     # sudo apt-get install xbase-clients

You’ll have a bunch of strange questions thrown at you when you install the xserver stuff… If you know what kind of video card you have, then you’re in the clear. If you don’t, then you’re SOL. I can’t help you there. That is what ultimately caused my downfall (see below).

If you get through the above list okay, then type:

     # cd ~

That will bring you to your home directory. Now, you’ll need to checkout GNUstep from its Subversion repository:

     # svn co http://svn.gna.org/svn/gnustep/modules

This part takes a long time. Go grab something to eat, then come back. After you’ve gotten everything, you should have a folder called modules. You can type ls to confirm.

If you see the folder, then do the following:

     # cd modules/core/make
     # ./configure
     # make

At this point, it’s good to make a new terminal session. So, hit Alt-F2, and you’ll have a new terminal session. You can go back to the first one by typing Alt-F1. You can basically make a new terminal session for each of your function keys. In this new session, log in as yourself, then type:

     # sudo bash

Change directories to the modules folder in your home folder, then go to core/make

Now, you can source GNUstep and install:

     # . /usr/GNUstep/System/Library/Makefiles/GNUstep.sh
     # make install

Now, you’re gonna want to compile each of the major sections of GNUstep: base, gui and back. Here is the process:

Switch to terminal session 1 using Alt-F1.

Type:

     # . /usr/GNUstep/System/Library/Makefiles/GNUstep.sh
     # cd ../base
     # ./configure
     # make

Switch to terminal session 2 using Alt-F2.

Type:

     # cd ../base
     # make install

Switch to terminal session 1 using Alt-F1.

Type:

     # cd ../gui
     # ./configure
     # make

Switch to terminal session 2 using Alt-F2.

Type:

     # cd ../gui
     # make install

Switch to terminal session 1 using Alt-F1.

Type:

     # cd ../back
     # ./configure --enable-graphics=art
     # make

Switch to terminal session 2 using Alt-F2.

Type:

     # cd ../back
     # make install

Apparently, after you’ve done all this, you should be able to switch back to terminal session 1, type startx, then do something to check the GUI by going into modules/tests/examples/gui/

That was as far as I got before my screen went black. Maybe you’ll have better luck… As for me, I’m back to square one, installing Ubuntu… I think my install disc didn’t get burned properly.

Open source… argh.

Just a few thoughts I’ve had recently or that have come my way…

• Via Sašo:

  In Terry Prattchet’s Discworld there was a nice sentence like “and then he was surprised like a man is surprised by something which he previously thought only happens to other people”.

• The Internet is important for me, because, just as with other forms of publishing technology before it, the burden of remembering things is placed on the network, rather than the individual.
• In my informal testing at work, between Firefox, Flock and Safari, Safari (with the Sogudi extension) wins in terms of just consumer satisfaction and comfort (for me anyway). The only thing I miss from Firefox and Flock are the “Type to search” feature (and, to a lesser extent, the live, incremental search via page indexing).
• Lucid dreaming might just gain me an extra 6 hours or so of productivity a day. I think that’s worth running into walls for.
• Flash is weird. Period.
• Open source developers might just be good at copying the innovations of others, but at least they’re really good at it. [RealPlayer video]
• It’s not important to take over the world — just leave a positive mark on it.
• People like what I do.