Top all-time · #11191
Michael McThrow
Personal blog · mmcthrow-musings.blogspot.comprogrammingsystemsdesign
Michael McThrow's personal blog at mmcthrow-musings.blogspot.com covers programming, systems and design. Since 2019, 7 different Hacker News readers have linked it 24 times, most often “A Proposal for a Flexible, Composable, Libre Desktop Environment”. The last post was in 2022, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (1) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
One HN commenter links a 2020 post by Michael McThrow, cited as a sign of an alternative publishing economy for researchers that doesn't require registering on Substack.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 1 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- A Proposal for a Flexible, Composable, Libre Desktop Environment3 people · 8 mentions · first linked 2020-06-02
- Where Did Personal Computing Go Wrong (2020)2 people · 5 mentions · first linked 2020-10-15
- Some Thoughts About GNUstep2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2020-01-25
What Hacker News says?
I have a similar idea. I've been working on a design for a Common Lisp-based desktop environment that can run on top of Linux and the BSDs. It's inspired by the Lisp machines of old and OpenDoc, an API for building component-based software that was championed by Apple and IBM back in the 1990s before Steve Jobs returned. I haven't started writing any code yet, partly because I've been learning X programming and othe…
Comment linking /2020/04/a-proposal-for-flexible-composable.html
on “Snakeware – Linux distro with Python userspace inspired by Commodore 64”Submitted Some Thoughts About GNUstep as a story · 7 points
HN discussionI largely agree with you, and I share many of the same sentiments. Personal computing is supposed to be about user empowerment; the ability for users to not only communicate with other people and to get work done, but to also automate their tasks through programming. Early personal computing was about achieving this vision, and while it may not have fully attained this vision, companies in the 1980s and 1990s at lea…
Comment linking /2020/10/where-did-personal-computing-go-wrong.html
on “The Coming Civil War over General Purpose Computing (2012)”Submitted Where Did Personal Computing Go Wrong (2020) as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI have a slightly older Power Mac G4, a 350MHz "Yikes!" PCI Power Mac G4 from 1999 ( https://lowendmac.com/1999/power-mac-g4-yikes/ ) that I purchased in 2009 for $40 while I was a senior at Cal Poly. The reason I got it for only $40 was because it had a broken hard drive, but the sellers didn't know that. I was able to replace the hard drive with one that was given away by Cal Poly's computer science department, wh…
Comment linking /2009/04/new-power-mac-g4.html
on “I bought a Mac”Submitted A Proposal for a Flexible, Composable, Libre Desktop Environment as a story · 3 points
HN discussionI was going to make a snarky remark like “Researchers are just going to have to write on Substack”. Then I read this: http://mmcthrow-musings.blogspot.com/2020/10/interesting-opi... I think the alt-economy that you describe may turn up soon. at least the one that I’m imagining that doesn’t involve registering for Substack.
Comment linking /2020/10/interesting-opinion-piece-at-chronicle.html
on “The Influence of Bell Labs”Submitted A Proposal for a Flexible, Composable, Libre Desktop Environment (2020) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionThat's unfortunate about Étoilé, which looked promising and cool. Last summer I wrote an article about the current state of GNUstep, and I was hoping that someone would pick up from where Étoilé left off. http://mmcthrow-musings.blogspot.com/2019/06/some-thoughts-a... However, I just saw a recent comment from one of the current GNUstep maintainers that said that the GNUstep Foundation Kit is now at par with macOS Ca…
Comment linking /2019/06/some-thoughts-about-gnustep.html
on “Nextspace – NeXTSTEP-like desktop environment for Linux”Submitted A Proposal for a Flexible, Composable, Libre Desktop Environment as a story · 2 points
HN discussion"Do we continue to dumb down software to exclusive casual usage for house-moms or we try to move our society to be more techn savy as we are clearly moving to a more tech relying world. Why shouldn't everyone know how to code?" To quote a commonly-used Web meme: "Why not both?" In my opinion, why should a software tool only have one interface to it? What if there were many possible interfaces available, from very si…
Comment linking /2020/10/where-did-personal-computing-go-wrong.html
on “Re-Thinking the Desktop OS”Submitted A Proposal for a Flexible, Composable, Libre Desktop Environment as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI am working on a side project where I am building a desktop environment for Linux and the BSDs that implements OpenDoc-style components using Common Lisp, where components are objects and where they could be combined not only by using code, but graphically as well. This is inspired by Smalltalk, Lisp machines, and OpenDoc. Another aspect of this desktop environment is its support for very flexible user interfaces t…
Comment linking /2020/04/a-proposal-for-flexible-composable.html
on “Re-Thinking the Desktop OS”Submitted A Proposal for a Flexible, Composable, Libre Desktop Environment (2020) as a story · 1 points
HN discussionFor the past few years I've felt the same way; I've been wrestling with these feelings since the release of the 2016 MacBook Pro. I haven't upgraded my Macs past Mojave due to the loss of 32-bit application support in Catalina (I still depend on some 32-bit applications) and due to the increased iOS-ification of macOS (e.g., certain UI decisions, notarization). However, for a while I lamented the lack of alternative…
Comment linking /2020/10/where-did-personal-computing-go-wrong.html
on “First Look: macOS Monterey Public Beta”Submitted Some Thoughts About GNUstep as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI had a chance to skim over the paper, and I'm very inspired; I'm looking forward to reading it in depth and considering its lessons while working on my side project. For about a decade, I've been dreaming about building a modern operating system that is highly malleable and encourages component-based software design, and I've collected many thoughts and done a lot of reading. I've been inspired by many projects, in…
Comment linking /2020/04/a-proposal-for-flexible-composable.html
on “The Unix Executable as a Smalltalk Method [pdf]”I also think that the lack of community interest in GNUstep was a missed opportunity. More of my thoughts on the matter can be found at http://mmcthrow-musings.blogspot.com/2019/06/some-thoughts-a... . With that being said, GNUstep is still being worked on. It’s currently roughly compatible with Mac OS X Tiger’s version of Cocoa. While this is far behind macOS Catalina, I’ll be honest and say that Mac OS X Tiger wit…
Comment linking /2019/06/some-thoughts-about-gnustep.html
on “NeXTSTEP on the HP 712 Part 1: Installation”I feel the exact same way. I wish FOSS desktop advocates in the 1990s either rallied behind the development of GNUstep, or I wish that during the time when Qt had a non-FOSS license, the Harmony project ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_(toolkit) ) had gotten greater attention as a workaround against Qt's licensing issues. Even standardizing on Win32/Wine might have been a better outcome. Unfortunately we ende…
Comment linking /2020/04/a-proposal-for-flexible-composable.html
on “Libadwaita: Splitting GTK and Design Language”This is a nice document, and many of the suggestions dovetail with my own ideas for a component-based operating system, which I wrote about in 2020 ( http://mmcthrow-musings.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-proposal-for-... ) but haven’t had the time to work on. I wonder if there’s been any follow-up work on Ideal OS?
Comment linking /2020/04/a-proposal-for-flexible-composable.html
on “Ideal OS: Rebooting the Desktop Operating System (2017)”I wholeheartedly agree. While the technical underpinnings of today's desktop operating systems have never been better (we have come a long way from DOS-based Windows and the somewhat unstable classic Mac OS), I feel that we have experienced a decline in the user experience. I personally believe that Windows 2000 was the best version of Windows despite its security issues. Windows 10 is technically better, especially…
Comment linking /2019/06/my-2019-mac-pro-disappointment-and.html
on “The Future of the Operating System: Revisited, Part 1”I’ve had similar feelings about Apple since the mid-2010s, that my interests as a Mac user are not in line with Apple’s interests as a corporation. Since Steve Jobs passed away, Apple made moves that made the Mac less attractive to me, most notably the shift to soldered RAM throughout its lineup and even moving to soldered storage. I now use Windows as my daily driver on my personal machine, but I’m not happy with m…
Comment linking /2020/10/where-did-personal-computing-go-wrong.html
on “Our Changing Relationship with Apple”Sure: this is the document that I wrote about building a component-based desktop: https://mmcthrow-musings.blogspot.com/2020/04/a-proposal-for...
Comment linking /2020/04/a-proposal-for-flexible-composable.html
on “If you put Apple icons in reverse it looks like someone getting good at design”Yes, I believe the course of the history of the Linux desktop would have been very different had GNUstep took off, especially around the crucial years of 1996-1998. In our timeline KDE started in 1996 and GNOME started in 1997, and neither desktop adopted GNUstep, instead preferring the Qt and GTK+ GUI frameworks, respectively. However, suppose instead of KDE and GNOME being developed, the community rallied behind G…
Comment linking /2019/06/some-thoughts-about-gnustep.html
on “The Graphical User Interface Gallery”
