Jesse Ross | jesseross.com

One of the core GNUstep developers, Richard Frith-Macdonald, posted a great recap of the entire FOSDEM from the GNUstep perspective. It’s a great, very accurate read, and, as my Etoile-buddy Nicolas says: “it makes you want to go to the fosdem :)”.

Tanya is trying to get me to stick to my commitment of posting once a week. Damn, I’m so far behind already. Lots of fun new stuff… here we go:

Classes started up again. I teach, for those just tuning in. I am teaching Intro to Interactive Media at the College of Visual Arts. You can unwatch the course unfold on the class blog. So far, the class is looking good. We’ll see if I can whip them into shape ;)

In more school related news, Ali started her first year of Montessori this year. She’s doing great so far, and I’m constantly impressed at the level of trust the teachers put in the students, and how much responsibility the kids learn because of that. This can only be a great experience for her.

In other news, I’m trying to get back into the Etoile and GNUstep communities after a summer haitus. Have been making both new friends and new icons. I’m thinking we might have some really cool stuff to show at FOSDEM next year.

Also, I’m working on my Internet fame. You should hopefully be seeing me pop up in a little video blog series I’m now a part of called Chasing Windmills. The folks who started it, Cristina Cordova and Juan Antonio del Rosario, are simply amazing. If you’ve got an evening or two on your hands, check out their first season… certainly some of the best video stuff being done on the web right now.

I think that’s about it… let’s see if I can’t be a bit more consistent about these updates, huh?

Now that I have my laptop, and I have working installations of GNUstep and Etoile, I feel ready to start making apps. But where to start…

I once read that one should “scratch their own itch” — make software that you personally need; chances are others need it too. Since Etoile is just starting out, I need pretty much everything. Most of what I need is outside the scope of my abilities, however: a web browser, an image editor, a Flash replacement. I could maybe see if I could steal some pre-existing code and flesh out the chat client and the file format/bundle for the Contact file type. Yeah, the Contact file type would be good — maybe a wizard for creating a new Contact.

Good work, Jesse. Let’s start there.

Went laptop shopping today.

What a freakin disappointment.

Allow me to explain:

First of all, I am in the market for a new laptop. As many people may know, my previous laptop, which I had been using up until a little over a month ago, was a 500MHz G3 iBook. This iBook got me through many a battle: college, freelance, “real” work. Sadly, it was time to retire my little buddy, which, through various circumstances, had become permanently desk-bound, housed inside of a shelled out cardboard box, because it could no longer support its own monitor nor hold a charge in its battery.

Needless to say, I was in need of an upgrade.

From almost out of nowhere, I was blessed with a very inexpensive second-hand Mac Mini, still under warranty. That’s what I’m using right now. It’s a great machine for what I do, and a dramatic improvement over what I was using.

But, while it is a great machine, it’s not a laptop — can’t take it on travels, can’t work on it in the living room couch or in bed, can’t bring it to user-group meetings and conventions, etc. Now, the logical thing would be to get a MacBook Pro, seeing as how I have no idea when Apple will release any other modern laptops (as of this writing, the MacBook Pro is the only laptop to have moved over to Intel — my other options are an iBook or Powerbook, both of which are still running on a PowerPC G4 processor, and thus don’t have the longest of shelf-lives remaining).

A MacBook Pro would be logical, and anticipated, based on my history. All of my primary machines have been Macs:

• 1997 – 1999: Centris 650, 25MHz 68040
• 1999 – 2001: Lime Green iMac, 333MHz G3
• 2001 – 2006: 2001 iBook, 500MHz G3
• 2006: Mac Mini, 1.25GHz G4

Currently, I am in possession of three other machines I use off and on: two identical generic white-box machines I use for toying around with Linux, and a Zaurus. I do have a fetish for open source software, and it is precisely that which brings me to my problem.

I love Macs, and I love OS X. I really do. But I am also a developer on an open source project that is trying to do what OS X does and more, and the more time I spend using OS X, the less time I spend using Linux and Etoile and GNUstep, and thus the less motivation I have for helping my software grow.

And this is where it comes back to laptop shopping: I am looking for a laptop that I cannot run OS X on.

This means I am looking at the Sonys and the Toshibas and the Gateways and the Lenovos and the Dells and the HP/Compaqs of the world. And looking at them is hurting my eyes. Honestly, is there no one other than Apple who designs nice-looking, high-quality machines? I’m not sure who the audience is for these computers, but by the looks of them, they’re aiming squarely for the Borg — they are the epitome of horrible faux-future: black plastic and cheap brushed metal and glossy screens and blue LEDs. They have the worst port integration I have ever seen. And the excessive icons and decals! I believe by 2008, at the latest, when you buy an HP or Toshiba, it won’t even come in a plastic case, but rather a thin varnish of logos.

Really, all this is to say is that I’m disappointed. I’m disappointed that Apple is the only competitor for my money. Their machines are comparible, cost-wise, to most everything I’ve looked at, and infinitely more attractive, and their quality ensures that they last long after the tech magazines say they’re obsolete. I’m going to keep looking, but I’m really losing hope in the other hardware vendors. Seriously, people, make some nice machines and I will shower you with cash.

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.