@th Oh, that one did exist though. I worked with that for quite some time (screenshot of OpenStep for Solaris back here, and I also should still have the installation files somewhere): https://mastodon.infra.de/@galaxis/100772106437750714). I think there was something like Sun had bought Lighthouse and wanted to publish their Nextstep productivity suite for Solaris or something like that? Never released, though.
Also, the full OpenStep 4 system was ported to sparc (and hppa) a little later on.
@th (Your screencap from that show still looks like a fake though😉...)
@galaxis that is an amazing bit of digital archaeology.
@th Well, the image is like, from decades ago 😉
Probably couldn't figure out how to take a screenshot without using xv back then.
Since OpenStep/Solaris ran on top of X (actually taking the role of a window manager, I assume?), it was kind of cool you could just have all the usual programs inside... Also I don't think anyone ever ported any OpenStep applications other than those that came with the initial distribution.
I should probably try to recreate that setup one day...
@eiZen My memories about the xv situation are hazy... I think it was shareware, but the source was available nevertheless?
The problem was more that almost no one had access to an compiler, so binary distribution was required (also, binaries were a smaller download). This only changed when gcc showed up, and I think it became possible at some point to bootstrap gcc from the cc fragment that Sun shipped in order to recompile customized SunOS kernels. Not sure about the timeline?
@th I think there was a X window manager that emulated the NeXTstep visual appearance, including those big launcher buttons. Can't remember the name though.
@th AfterStep. Goddamn does this bring back memories. https://www.gilesorr.com/wm/table.html
@th
GNUStep? 🤓