I have a couple of updates to share with you today.

[onionmixer]

Of course, as always, this was done with the help of AI.

1. I packaged NEXTSPACE for Ubuntu.

https://github.com/onionmixer/nextspace-ubuntu

As of right now, there are no official Ubuntu packages provided for this project. So, I pushed AI hard to add a few patches and some extra configurations—keeping Korean (or rather, CJK) users in mind—so that the input method setup works properly on Ubuntu.

I built it based on Ubuntu 22.04 and made all the materials for creating a `.deb` package publicly available. If anyone needs to package it for a different version, feel free to use it however you like.



2. I improved a few things in qemu-NeXT.

https://github.com/onionmixer/qemu-NeXT

Drawing inspiration from the Previous emulator, I filled in some of the missing pieces in the qemu-NeXT project. Using an OPENSTEP 4.2j ISO and an FDD image, I actually managed to successfully install the OS on a NeXT color turbo station. I'm going to submit a pull request, but... I'm not really sure if the developer will accept it or not.

That said, since QEMU already supports installing OPENSTEP on Intel and SPARC, I found QEMU a bit more convenient to work with for my purposes. So, I naturally ended up improving the overall completeness of qemu-NeXT along the way.

My original goal was to submit a PR to the qemu-NeXT repo.... But since they didn't have PRs enabled, I had no choice but to fork the project and upload it to my own repository.

With this, QEMU has become an emulator capable of installing OPENSTEP (I haven't tested NeXTSTEP yet) across Intel, m68k, and SPARC architectures.

PS. If anyone happens to know or can get in touch with the creator of the qemu-NeXT project, could you please let them know about this? My goal isn't to maintain a separate fork forever, but rather to help make the original project more complete.

[jade_nekotenshi]

Awesome, thanks for the contributions!

By the way, do you know of a good guide for OPENSTEP on qemu-SPARC? I've got Previous and 86box, that'd be a great addition.

[don_apple]

PS. If anyone happens to know or can get in touch with the creator of the qemu-NeXT project, could you please let them know about this?

There is a gmail address listed on his main github page: https://github.com/blanham

[onionmixer]

Awesome, thanks for the contributions!

By the way, do you know of a good guide for OPENSTEP on qemu-SPARC? I've got Previous and 86box, that'd be a great addition.

qemu-system-sparc \
    -M SS-20 \
    -smp 2 \
    -m 128 \
    -drive file=disk.img,if=scsi,format=raw \
    -cdrom install.iso \
    -boot d

I'm not entirely sure about the exact options... but roughly speaking, I fed something like this into the Codex CLI and asked it to make it bootable with an ISO file. I also told it to use firmware version 2.22.

[onionmixer]

PS. If anyone happens to know or can get in touch with the creator of the qemu-NeXT project, could you please let them know about this?

There is a gmail address listed on his main github page: https://github.com/blanham

Thanks a lot! I'll shoot him an email. I honestly didn't even think to check his main page for an email address!

[ChickeNES]

PS. If anyone happens to know or can get in touch with the creator of the qemu-NeXT project, could you please let them know about this?

There is a gmail address listed on his main github page: https://github.com/blanham

Thanks a lot! I'll shoot him an email. I honestly didn't even think to check his main page for an email address!

I'm here! If you did send an email it seems to not have to gone through (it's just my (GitHub) username@gmail). I have PRs open now, so feel free to fire away. All of my 2026 work is AI too, so it's no problem haha (it fixed the two sticking issues that had prevented full NeXTstep boot since 2011...in one night). NeXTDimension is on the table, but will require heterogeneous TCG backends, which I am working on right now for a different hw target.

[jade_nekotenshi]

Speaking of qemu, a particularly useful thing for some enterprising soul would be to fix the SCSI bug in qemu-SPARC that makes installing OPENSTEP nearly impossible. (It happily boots, but freezes during disk preparation.)

[onionmixer]

I'm here! If you did send an email it seems to not have to gone through (it's just my (GitHub) username@gmail). I have PRs open now, so feel free to fire away. All of my 2026 work is AI too, so it's no problem haha (it fixed the two sticking issues that had prevented full NeXTstep boot since 2011...in one night). NeXTDimension is on the table, but will require heterogeneous TCG backends, which I am working on right now for a different hw target.

I sent an email on September 26, 2026. I'm guessing it might have been caught in a spam filter or something..... would it be alright if I tried submitting the PR again?

[onionmixer]

Speaking of qemu, a particularly useful thing for some enterprising soul would be to fix the SCSI bug in qemu-SPARC that makes installing OPENSTEP nearly impossible. (It happily boots, but freezes during disk preparation.)

If it's okay if it takes some time, I'll take a look at it once I finish developing the Radeon 9250 PCI driver I'm currently working on. I think it might actually be possible. After all, QEMU lets you attach GDB directly (which is why I love QEMU )