GNUstep Live CD

There are several efforts to create Live CDs of GNUstep

GNUSTEP live CD

of Alex Myczko, Version 2.5 released on July 25, 2017

Supported architectures

• i686
• AMD64
• PowerPC
• UltraSPARC

(all with multiple CPUs)

Minimal Requirements

• 128 MB Memory
• CD-ROM drive or USB slot where you can boot from

Notes

I think a lot of the bugs listed below are caused by GNUstep and WindowMaker, and not the Live CD itself. The reason I say this is because I experience some of these issues with my GNUstep installation, and most times I build it from scratch from SVN or stable releases.

Bugs

• Some windows (for instance in DBModeler.app) can't be accessed since the title bar is off-screen (a seasoned GNUstepper knows how to fix this but what about the newbies?) (This happens with most GNUstep apps, and should be fixed in GNUstep/Gorm)

gdl2 doesn't build anymore with the latest gnustep tarball release!

Bugs reported by Fred Kiefer:

• There were no colour schemas predefined.

Can you provide the schemas and tell where they get on the filesystem?

There's some under the Modules/ColorSchemes directory of SystemPreferences in svn. I'm not 100% sure, but I think they go under $GNUSTEP_SYSTEM_ROOT/Library/Colors.

Is it possible that these are not installed? Where should I find those if I have /usr/lib/GNUstep as GNUstep root?

As far as I know, there's no SystemPreferences package under Debian, which might be why you can't find it. For some reason Debian packages Preferences (the Backbone program) and not SystemPreferences (the GNUstep program). SystemPreferences seems to do a little more than Preferences as it's development is active, and I'm not sure if Backbone is. In my opinion, the only Backbone program worth using is Terminal.app, because Ink can replace TextEdit and SystemPreferences can replace Preferences.

I really like the tool "open". TextEdit has several features more that Ink doesn't have. Does Ink handle RTFD, Font ligatures and kerning, Preferences?

SystemPreferences doesn't build/work for me! And backbone is actively developped!

Feature Requests

• it should be obvious how to install GNUstep on HD from within the Live CD (ideally by employing a GUI based wizard)

I've got a text file on how to do it, what about you write an installer?

Can you mail me that file? How much is the effort needed to build such an installer (roundabout)?

Feel free to put it up on a server some where, cause I'd be interested too! If the procedures aren't too intensive, it could probably be done by FOSDEM with sh scripts.

The file is online and linked at the Installing as install.txt

Future

Future versions are planned, help is welcome and needed that gnustep-make,base,gui,back in Debian packages are updated to the latest tarball releases. It's about time for a new version... work has started. I'd like to have Emacs.app, Chess.app, and TextEdit.app updated... feedback and discussion, preferably on the official #gnustep irc channel.

ALT Linux GNUstep starterkit

• Blame: Michael Shigorin, Eugene Rostovtsev, Aleksey Novodvorsky of ALT Linux Team
• Releases: March/April/June 2014 so far, joined quarterly starterkits
• Platforms: i586/x86_64 (BIOS/UEFI)
• Wiki page (info, screenshots, downloads...)