Re: GNUstep on Hackernews

[Riccardo Mottola]

Hi,

Liam Proven wrote:
> This discussion contains some useful points. There may be stuff here
> that should be addressed right on the homepage.
>
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29537172
>
> Étoilé is there too. I wonder if this is because I mentioned both in my 
> article?
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29537538
>
> As I have said more than once before, IMHO, the GNUstep project
> *really* _NEEDS_ a version of a mainstream distro based on the desktop
> environment, as a showcase.

It is a high burden to maintain, there was one official, one
not-official... I agree that it is useful, but I consider having ready
working packages of quality of much higher impact. That distribution
would be just a show-case, but then the majority of people would still
want to use GNUstep things in their current OS. Maybe one day our impact
will be so great that GSUbuntu will spread, but I doubt.
Also, the strength of GNUstep is its portability, so the target OS shoud
be too.

I wonder if Richard Stonehouse still reads us? His ready VM images was
excellent! What more convenient than trying in a virtual machine before
deciding to install?

> The HelloSystem evaluated it and discarded it, and the GNUstep project
> missed a _huge_ opportunity there. That made me very sad.
>
> https://hellosystem.github.io/docs/
>
> Hello is getting some attention. I managed to get a recent build to
> boot on hardware on one of my machines recently for the first time (I
> tried 0.5 & 0.6 with no success except in a VM) and while it's still
> very basic, it is there, it works, you can use it, and people are
> trying it.

These "mac-like graphic-refined OS forks" come and go... they are nice,
but have no foundations. It was ElementaryOS before, something else even
before. The contribute to fragmentation of the Linux/BSD desktop.
They evaluated us and discarded GNUstep on what basis? I had no
interaction with any of them nor did i see things on the mailing list. I
doubt someone without prior knowledge can grasp GS  all by onself
without help. So you think "our loss", but I'd say also "their loss".
Now they have a mesh of python stuff, simplified and different App
bunles... but at the end where are the "apps" for HelloSystem?

We have few, but it is possible to make a full, consistent environment
of GNUstep. Several attempts have proven that!

A bad evaluation of GNUstep was done years ago.. then GNOME was created
and now we know the monstrum that came out which reinvented fromt eh
toolkit to distributed objects and now has a lot of disgruntled users.
We are adding theme support while they remove it... and GTK in general
cas cliend side drawing which makes a mess, wheras ours works better
(but is messy too if one mixes applications)

Riccardo