Things to look forward to:
- AfterStep Window Manager
New: Well, it would appear that there's a new kid on the block, WindowMaker! WindowMaker was written by superman programmer Alfredo Kojima, and is the first GnuStep compliant window manager (actually, the first gnustep compliant anything!). I've just started using it myself, so I'm not going to officially say that everyone should start using WindowMaker instead of AfterStep. That being said, if my experiences with WindowMaker continue to be so pleasant, you can expect the WindowMaker preaching to begin in the very near future! To wet your appetite, know that WindowMaker (aside from being GnuStep) has drag-and-drop icon placement onto the "dock", live reads the menu config files, is written from scratch for a huge speed boost, mimics the NeXTStep look almost perfectly, and his nifty animations. It's just plain slick. It compiled pretty much out of the box for me on FreeBSD - just make sure you have GNU Make (gmake), and the latest xpm-lib stuff. The default config files seemed to have some problems, but a little hacking around fixed things up. If you try out WM and can't get the configs going, email me and I'll send you mine. Anyways, this is an exciting program, and may be just the kick-start that's needed to get the entire GnuStep project running quicker. Check out The X Window Manager Page for more info. Now back to your regularly scheduled AfterStep program:
Update: I've been using WindowMaker for a few months now, and I can say that it's very solid, and very fast. I'm currently in the process of creating a FreeBSD port for WindowMaker with my menu patches, and when I get it done I'll post it here. In the mean time, you can grab it from the link above. Also check out Enlightenment and the 'K' Desktop thing. Enlightenment is a very artsy window manager that I personally find too distracting, but many love simply because of the 'Wow factor'. The K Desktop window manager isn't that great IMHO, but the rest of the project is very cool, and worth checking out: www.kde.org.
First and foremost, since you're running a Unix X workstation, you're going to need a good Window Manager to manage your desktop! Without a doubt, AfterStep is the best. AfterStep mimics the look of the NeXTStep interface, and the final release even does windows and icon animation! A graphical configuration tool is in the works as well. For now, you customize the look and feel with an init file, ".steprc". The format is similar to the popular FVWM init file. One final note about AfterStep: it's a pig. If you don't have a nice graphics card running in 15-bit or higher color depth you're much better off running FVWM. I've tried running AfterStep on 8-bit (256 color) video, but before you know it all of your color palette is gone and everything looks shitty. Basically, you'll enjoy AfterStep much more if you're using a Pentium class machine with 24MB of RAM or more. At any rate, give it a shot and see what you think!
AfterStep-1.0.tar.gz
steprc steprc
- Adobe Acrobat Reader 3.0
A really cool piece of software that lets you view PDF (Portable Document Format) files. Many sites store technical specs in this format, and it's probably the best looking Font Renderer I've seen in Unix. A great piece of software. The trick is that it's a Linux ELF binary, and the script needs a little hacking to make it run on FreeBSD. Luckily, there's also a "FreeBSD Package" available. Pick whichever one you're more comfortable with! Read the Linux Emulation section of the Handbook (www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook) for instructions on how to install the Linux emulator on FreeBSD. Don't forget you need 2.2 for this.
acroread_linux_30.tar.gz
acroread-3.0.tgz
- Real Audio Player 3.0
The folks at RealAudio actually bothered to produce a native FreeBSD version! Here is the dynamically linked version of the player, so you can enjoy streamed audio through the Internet:
v30_freebsd21d.tar.Z
- Java - The Sun JDK 1.0.2
You've been living in a cave if you haven't heard about Java these days, and now you can join the Java craze and develop your apps and applets in FreeBSD. This is an unsupported port of the JDK, so you won't find it on the Javasoft site anywhere. It's simple to install, just extract the tar file, and move the 'java' directory into /usr/local (so you have /usr/local/java). Then, follow the instructions in the readme file (like all versions of the JDK, you need to set the environment variable CLASSPATH, and LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Here are my entries in my .cshrcsetenv CLASSPATH .:/usr/local/java/classes.zip
setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/java/lib/i386The FreeBSD JDK1.1.5 - is now a killer piece of software, and at least 95% as stable and fast as the native Solaris version. Get it at www.freebsd.org/java/ along with a FreeBSD version of the JRE!! Yah!
- More to come really soon, including the DDD Graphical Front-End for Unix Debuggers, the GIMP, and the Java JIT compiler: Kaffe.
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