Re: elementary OS

[Kevin Ingwersen]

Hey.

I know, I pop in rather random…but i just felt i needed to put my cent here.

First, I share many of your opinions, but I have a few other views. GNUstep is 
indeed a nice project, and it might have chased its own tail…but that was, 
because some important concepts werent done right; Try to redistribute a 
GNUstep app. Its impossible. That is why, when I tried to make an OS X port of 
gnustep so the API could be compared better, i wanted to build essentially 
EVERYTHING as a static library. That way, the resulting binaries would have 
everything they needed.

I do belive that, if some work and major refactoring was done, GNUstep could 
try again. In fact, I was thinking about a way to fork and modify GNUstep 
myself to change it quite some. For one, I wanted to make redistributing 
easier. Second, I wanted to turn it into a portable toolchain - so I could 
embed it into my package manger that also isntalls from source - so the 
toolchain would have been the same across each OS. And then there is also the 
issue that GNUstep has a heavy lot of dependencies - so unless itwas made all 
static, it wouldnt be possible to redistribute a single binary, without 
distributing anything else from GNUstep.

Honestly, I hope that GNUstep can find a way to raise again. The idea is really 
great, and its not only because I love Objective-C++ xD.

Giving the site a redesign might being a bit of reshness into its place… but 
what GNUstep needs, would be a new advertising. Like, the SDK I am almost done 
developing advertises that its ultra easy to use, and brings native API into a 
browser. In fact - I am binding nodejs and CEF so tight together, that it is 
still customizable, but offers unique API. But aside with that… x3. Originally, 
I wanted to develop Deskshell completely in Objective-C++…but then, the 
dependency load came up.

Honestly though, I have not seen elementaryOS yet, but I would try it. Simply 
because I love trying out new things. But GNUstep doesnt really sound like an 
OS - and afaik, its not either x3.

I would list the ideas I had in more detail here, but thats not the right place 
to do so.

Basically, I just want to express that I hope that GNUstep can make its way 
into a userbase, that enjoys to rely on it and using it.


Just my cents ont hat … kind regards, Ingwie~
Am So. Feb. 09 2014 20:41:42 schrieb James Jordan:

> This discussion would be absolutely hilarious if it were not so sad.  To call 
> elementaryOS a rip-off of OS x is a bit of the pot calling the kettle, 
> GNUstep started life as an almost pixel-for-pixel copy of NeXTStep 4.2.  
> elementaryOS is a very usable and viable operating system which is also easy 
> to extend and customize. It has quickly become my choice of OS, as I would 
> much rather build up to my desired state than need to remove a bunch of 
> useless resource hogging garbage.  It is well thought out and extremely 
> attractive in its default incarnation.   The way an operating system looks is 
> important to me or I would never have had an interest in GNUstep.  I have 4 
> Mac computers and all but one of them are running elementaryOS, with 
> best-of-class software including LibreOffice, FireFox, Gimp and Acrobat.  The 
> systems boot in 15 seconds and each of those rather large programs starts in 
> 2 seconds or less.  I have a wide selection of Gnome and GTK applications to 
> choose from that are actually USABLE.  
> 
> GNUstep is not an OS, it is not even a desktop!  GNUstep is a nearly useless 
> framework that NO-ONE uses for productive work on a day-to-day basis.  The 
> developers dedicate their time to developing new back-ends (what is it now 5 
> or 6, none of which actually work well), and chasing esoteric OS X 
> capabilities which invariably break the few, very few, GNUstep applications 
> that almost work.  Look through the archives; time and again the "developers" 
> admit that they DO NOT use GNUstep for anything except possibly developing 
> GNUstep.  
> 
> A new look for the website is NOT going to make any difference!  GNUstep is 
> dead and has been for a very long time.  Who is going to load a massive set 
> of libraries that do not even conform to modern filesystem standards, try to 
> figure out how to source an environment, locate some applications  pretending 
> to be folders in /opt/GNUstep/system/applications (or wherever they are 
> located)  just to play with a couple of programs that halfway work.
> 
> Riccardo, Phillipe you guys have worked hard to make GNUstep actually usable! 
>  You both should find a project where your talents and hard work can be 
> appreciated, a project that has a user base bigger than ZERO.
> 
> GNUstep could have been THE Linux desktop and should be the alternative to OS 
> X for people who actually have a brain but it has been chasing its own tail 
> for so long (nearly 20 years now) there is no hope that it will ever amount 
> to anything.  Users have GOT to drive application development and application 
> development has GOT to drive core development.  That does not work for 
> GNUstep because there are no users and core developers have always tried to 
> force application developers to adjust to their whims resulting in all of the 
> good application developers giving up and moving on.
> 
> Goodbye GNUstep, you could have been great.
> 
> J. Jordan
> Long time hopeful that GNUstep would amount to something.
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