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#11
Virtualization / Re: What Needs to be done for ...
Last post by ptek - Feb 20, 2026, 07:26 PMQuote from: ramalhais on Feb 19, 2026, 06:45 PMHi all, first post here.Is this the one where at the login screen you use username "console" and it boots to the terminal and asks for your username and password?
How do i get to the serial console(s) in previous? Is there any branch that has this functionality?
Thanks!
#12
Software / Re: Programmatically Controlli...
Last post by tygre - Feb 19, 2026, 11:16 PMHi there,
I made some progress today! I managed to compile and run successfully the two simple client/server programs by replacing inet_aton() with inet_addr() and making a few other minor changes.
Let's see now if I can adapt the code of my FTP and HTTP clients...
Cheers!
Tygre
I made some progress today! I managed to compile and run successfully the two simple client/server programs by replacing inet_aton() with inet_addr() and making a few other minor changes.
Let's see now if I can adapt the code of my FTP and HTTP clients...
Cheers!
Tygre
#13
Off Topic / Re: Inaugural off-topic thread
Last post by stepleton - Feb 19, 2026, 09:30 PMQuote from: Rhetorica on Feb 16, 2026, 06:06 AMThat sounds like misery to deal with. What sort of things were you doing on the PERQ?
Nothing particularly redeeming --- of note lately has been the investigation of an unusual operating environment called Flex, which is nothing like any other OS I've used before. Here is a kind of introduction to it, amidst other papers.
But fixing PERQs is basically what you do with the things. It's part of the "fun"...
#14
Virtualization / Re: What Needs to be done for ...
Last post by ramalhais - Feb 19, 2026, 06:45 PMHi all, first post here.
How do i get to the serial console(s) in previous? Is there any branch that has this functionality?
Thanks!
How do i get to the serial console(s) in previous? Is there any branch that has this functionality?
Thanks!
#15
Software / Re: Programmatically Controlli...
Last post by tygre - Feb 18, 2026, 02:11 AMHi @marvin !
I hadn't tried, but no luck with them.
First, I tried gcc -o client -posix -lposix client.c, but I got dozens of errors: "multiple definitions of symbol".
Then, I tried gcc -o client -posix -lposix -Xlinker -m client.c to change the errors into warnings, but I still got "undefined symbols... _inet_aton".
I grep'ed the libs on my system (like libiberty.a, libgcc.a...) and none contain anything "inet" anyway. I must be missing something
but where to find it? 
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
Tygre
I hadn't tried, but no luck with them.
First, I tried gcc -o client -posix -lposix client.c, but I got dozens of errors: "multiple definitions of symbol".
Then, I tried gcc -o client -posix -lposix -Xlinker -m client.c to change the errors into warnings, but I still got "undefined symbols... _inet_aton".
I grep'ed the libs on my system (like libiberty.a, libgcc.a...) and none contain anything "inet" anyway. I must be missing something
but where to find it? 
Thanks in advance for any suggestions!
Tygre
#16
Off Topic / Reverse Engineering iTunes
Last post by jeffburg - Feb 17, 2026, 01:13 AMThis is my first reverse engineering project... and probably stupid to start with iTunes which is a massively huge and complex App that is mostly written in Core Foundation and C++ as opposed to Foundation and Objective-C, but I had a goal in mind and I succeeded! So if you want to see how to use GDB to try and reverse engineer apps, take a look
https://jeffburg.com/retro-tech/2026/02/16/Reverse-iTunes-1.html
https://jeffburg.com/retro-tech/2026/02/16/Reverse-iTunes-1.html
#17
Software / Re: Programmatically Controlli...
Last post by marvin - Feb 16, 2026, 05:57 PM #18
Software / Re: GNUstepOfficial meeting mi...
Last post by Rhetorica - Feb 16, 2026, 09:04 AM...and it turns out that video was rather short because it is only Part 1. Part 2 is much longer.
Around this point the conversation turns to web browsers; there is a bit of discussion about how the world ended up being dominated by forks of the rendering engine from Konqueror, the throw-away KDE browser that not even KDE uses anymore.
The question is posed as to how hard it would be to repackage Ladybird's renderer into a reusable WebKit framework—Joe thinks it shouldn't be too hard, since Ladybird has a good, modular design already. There is an ongoing issue on the Ladybird GitHub repo for officially merging GNUstep support into Ladybird; no objections have been yet made to the notion.
Adrian Gjonca remarks he has implemented a version of Conway's Game of Life in GNUstep and is interested in making it a screen saver but needs a framework for doing so. Gregory suggests a module for his InnerSpace implementation (think GNUstep BackSpace—I've never gotten it to work personally) which is similar to the Screen Saver framework from OS X 10.0+.
Gregory talks a bit about Gorm (GNUstep Interface Builder) and how Apple's switch from self-serializing classes to Xcode doing the serialization itself has opened the door to Gorm doing the same, meaning AppKit and Gorm no longer have to be updated in lockstep. He is currently working on XIB support in Gorm, though it is still very unstable.
probono starts a Gershwin demo at 35:25.
[post to be continued]
Around this point the conversation turns to web browsers; there is a bit of discussion about how the world ended up being dominated by forks of the rendering engine from Konqueror, the throw-away KDE browser that not even KDE uses anymore.
The question is posed as to how hard it would be to repackage Ladybird's renderer into a reusable WebKit framework—Joe thinks it shouldn't be too hard, since Ladybird has a good, modular design already. There is an ongoing issue on the Ladybird GitHub repo for officially merging GNUstep support into Ladybird; no objections have been yet made to the notion.
Adrian Gjonca remarks he has implemented a version of Conway's Game of Life in GNUstep and is interested in making it a screen saver but needs a framework for doing so. Gregory suggests a module for his InnerSpace implementation (think GNUstep BackSpace—I've never gotten it to work personally) which is similar to the Screen Saver framework from OS X 10.0+.
Gregory talks a bit about Gorm (GNUstep Interface Builder) and how Apple's switch from self-serializing classes to Xcode doing the serialization itself has opened the door to Gorm doing the same, meaning AppKit and Gorm no longer have to be updated in lockstep. He is currently working on XIB support in Gorm, though it is still very unstable.
probono starts a Gershwin demo at 35:25.
[post to be continued]
#19
Software / Re: GNUstepOfficial meeting mi...
Last post by Rhetorica - Feb 16, 2026, 07:26 AMAnother GNUstepOfficial meeting was posted today. Here are some highlights:
Gregory Casamento is working on NSDiffableDatasource still. This is a performant cache for table views that triggers updates when its dependencies change. They were mentioned last meeting offhandedly as a WIP.
He also finished a working implementation of NSDataLink, which is the dumbed down OpenStep version of the ObjectLinks that Steve Jobs showed off in this NS3.0 preview video. Transport mechanisms like this are notoriously tricky to keep functional in heterogeneous networked environments, and sadly they were removed entirely in Cocoa. Microsoft's DDE was primarily used for similar functions, but was much less comprehensive in what it could do. Today features like this only exist in a handful of commercial applications in very narrow contexts, like Photoshop's Smart Objects—a clear-cut example of 90s tech being superior to the modern day. The file AppKit/Draw/Links.rtf from OS4.2's NextDeveloper documentation relates that full ObjectLink support was still tentatively planned for OpenStep at some point but never got finished, and warns that the code in the Draw example may not compile by the time it ships because the code refers to unfinished APIs that might have been renamed.
Gregory also reports that he has encountered disappointments when asking LLMs to generate Objective-C code. This isn't terribly surprising since there's a lot less Objective-C out there than other languages, and it is no longer the primary language for Mac or iOS application development. (Moreover, it seems likely that one will get a mixture of different API versions when trying to generate code—possibly this is what he encountered, though he doesn't elaborate.) Lars feels that the new Kimi Code model does a decent job at porting C to Obj-C, however, and suggests Gregory try it.
While explaining the purpose of the GNUstep project (which is now defined as "making Cocoa applications portable") Gregory incidentally noted that he used to work for Keysight (formerly Eggplant), on the same product, Keysight Eggplant Test, where Doug Simon of HyperSense fame ended up. Small world, huh? (Their Windows version uses GNUstep.)
From the Gershwin team, an MCP server was implemented, allowing for AI agents to remotely control the Linux desktop, including GNUstep applications. The demonstration did not go too well (somehow the AI selected a work-in-progress port of TextEdit from later Intel-era 10.x Apple sources instead of a standard build, and didn't get much further) but we can assume that this is something the Gershwin folks intend to get working in the future. They also fiddled with their directory layout (trying to get it right) and have undertaken an initiative to upstream as many changes as possible, undoing some of their libraries that were previously forked. However, they are retaining a forked libdispatch since they've been able to get its CPU usage very low (1-2% on a Core 2 Duo), though they might be able to push that upstream.
probono also reports that Gershwin now builds on a fairly small Raspberry Pi system (4 GB of RAM) in around 10 minutes on FreeBSD. It also runs on half a gig of RAM at a usable speed, though he notes that it's probably not ideal for web browsing in that configuration!
Gregory Casamento is working on NSDiffableDatasource still. This is a performant cache for table views that triggers updates when its dependencies change. They were mentioned last meeting offhandedly as a WIP.
He also finished a working implementation of NSDataLink, which is the dumbed down OpenStep version of the ObjectLinks that Steve Jobs showed off in this NS3.0 preview video. Transport mechanisms like this are notoriously tricky to keep functional in heterogeneous networked environments, and sadly they were removed entirely in Cocoa. Microsoft's DDE was primarily used for similar functions, but was much less comprehensive in what it could do. Today features like this only exist in a handful of commercial applications in very narrow contexts, like Photoshop's Smart Objects—a clear-cut example of 90s tech being superior to the modern day. The file AppKit/Draw/Links.rtf from OS4.2's NextDeveloper documentation relates that full ObjectLink support was still tentatively planned for OpenStep at some point but never got finished, and warns that the code in the Draw example may not compile by the time it ships because the code refers to unfinished APIs that might have been renamed.
Gregory also reports that he has encountered disappointments when asking LLMs to generate Objective-C code. This isn't terribly surprising since there's a lot less Objective-C out there than other languages, and it is no longer the primary language for Mac or iOS application development. (Moreover, it seems likely that one will get a mixture of different API versions when trying to generate code—possibly this is what he encountered, though he doesn't elaborate.) Lars feels that the new Kimi Code model does a decent job at porting C to Obj-C, however, and suggests Gregory try it.
While explaining the purpose of the GNUstep project (which is now defined as "making Cocoa applications portable") Gregory incidentally noted that he used to work for Keysight (formerly Eggplant), on the same product, Keysight Eggplant Test, where Doug Simon of HyperSense fame ended up. Small world, huh? (Their Windows version uses GNUstep.)
From the Gershwin team, an MCP server was implemented, allowing for AI agents to remotely control the Linux desktop, including GNUstep applications. The demonstration did not go too well (somehow the AI selected a work-in-progress port of TextEdit from later Intel-era 10.x Apple sources instead of a standard build, and didn't get much further) but we can assume that this is something the Gershwin folks intend to get working in the future. They also fiddled with their directory layout (trying to get it right) and have undertaken an initiative to upstream as many changes as possible, undoing some of their libraries that were previously forked. However, they are retaining a forked libdispatch since they've been able to get its CPU usage very low (1-2% on a Core 2 Duo), though they might be able to push that upstream.
probono also reports that Gershwin now builds on a fairly small Raspberry Pi system (4 GB of RAM) in around 10 minutes on FreeBSD. It also runs on half a gig of RAM at a usable speed, though he notes that it's probably not ideal for web browsing in that configuration!
#20
Off Topic / Re: Inaugural off-topic thread
Last post by Rhetorica - Feb 16, 2026, 06:06 AMQuote from: stepleton on Feb 15, 2026, 05:02 PMI have been spending a lot of time using a PERQ 2 workstation, an influential predecessor to the NeXT. To run a PERQ is to know sorrow, as a PERQ breaks all the time, what with being made of around 600 discrete ICs. Yesterday something in the guts of the I/O system has broken, and it is now time to attach the logic analyser to try and figure out what it could be. The culprit is almost certainly a single IC that has gone faulty. Alas...That sounds like misery to deal with. What sort of things were you doing on the PERQ?