Sunday, February 15, 2009

A browser on HURD


From time to time I check how the status of GNUstep is on GNU/HURD. After all, the goal of GNUstep and the GNUstep Application Project is to provide a complete Workspace or, in current speak, a Desktop Environment.


So, why do not use it on HURD, the crown of the GNU OS? Hurd is a project always in an unkown status, with the menace of changing the microkernel to something unknown, but with nobody taking GNU-Mach to top-notch status.


In any case, the combination of Debian on HURD is pretty interesting and complete and the advantage is that getting a "familiar" environment is relatively easy.


In any case, currently GNUstep on HURD runs pretty reasonable. With pedning limitaitons, the core seems to work, Workspace runs, the Terminal application does work and what is perhaps coolest, the Vespucci browser runs! So this not only proves the portability of gnustep core and simplewebkit, but also gives hope for a decent graphical web browser for Hurd once simplewebkit progresses more.

5 comments:

Sean said...

This is fantastic news, thanks for making my day!

I'm currently looking through some HURD installation guides and trying to install it on my other hard drive. Hope it all works out.

Cheers!
-Sean

Riccardo said...

Sean,
I just installed Hurd with Debian, it works fairly well. In apt-get you will find all the required dependencies of GNUstep, I compiled then GNUstep from source and install it with prefix=/ instead of the default /usr/GNUstep to mimic OpenStep to the most.
Standard linux guide will apply, just remember at the end to disable unix-domain sockets which are buggy (NSPortIsMessagePort=NO) and to start up gdomap and gdnc manually.

Arne Babenhauserheide said...

Many thanks for sharing this!

I'm thrilled to see GNUStep on the Hurd!

Arne Babenhauserheide said...

Would you allow me to quote parts of your blog entry on the Hurd status page?

-> http://www.gnu.org/software/hurd/hurd/status.html

It requires assigning copyright of the included passage to the FSF.

ArneBab said...

Can we use your picture in the status page of the Hurd (naturally with backlink)?

It requires copyright attribution, though (like allGNU projects).