Re: GNUstep Live on OSnews

[Xavier Brochard]

Le 31 juillet, 11:04:44 Ivan Vučica a écrit :
> On Mon, Jul 31, 2017 at 11:41 AM Xavier Brochard <xavier@alternatif.org>
> 
> wrote:
> > One problem is that the GNUstep project has nearly nothing to show to end
> > users (except screenshots and descriptions). As a consequence a lot of
> > people
> > doesn't understand the project. They want to do a quick try but they
> > can't.
> > (in France we have the great http://linuxfr.org website where such
> > questions
> > often comes.)
> 
> We discussed whether we want to have "GNUstep OS" or "GNUstep Desktop" at
> the 2015 meetup, and the conclusion was IIRC "no". We vaguely agreed that
> "reference system" would be fine.

I've forgotten that!

> It's slightly unfortunate we don't have one yet, but Live CDs like this are
> a good thing to address this problem. I need to try it out... :)
> 
> Maybe you wonder why the talk about a "reference system" instead of a
> proper "desktop environment"? I think what we generally agreed upon is that
> GNUstep itself is not quite a desktop, but a set of development libraries
> for writing applications. Think Gtk, not Gnome. We need something to show
> off, but as we don't quite want to discourage particular use cases (Sparc
> systems running Solaris with an old GCC, drawing directly with xlib. Or x32
> Windows systems drawing with Cairo built with cygwin) it becomes hard to
> say "this is the true GNUstep environment, you should use this".
> 
> But that we should have a reference system that we can point people to? Yes.

Thanks for the clarification. Building the true GNUstep environment would 
never be my purpose : I want to write recipes that can help to install a light 
and working desktop for peoples that need it. Something that can also help to 
later install a full developper environment or a testing environmemnt, etc. Or 
something that can attract people to write or improve small apps as a starting 
point to development. 


> So in light of above comments, here's answers based on what I would
> consider a 'reference' system:

Thanks!

> (...)
> > - can I take some Etoilé components ?
> 
> I don't know what this question means? Of course, yes, you can take some
> Etoile components. :)

These were real questions some people asked for :-)  It shoulb be translated 
as "which Etoilé components are usable and useful, how to install, etc."

> One of the things you omitted is "which gnustep-gui backend should I use?".
> The answer is almost certainly "cairo". "opal" backend was not ready last
> time I used/wrote it :) while "cairo" is fully functioning.

This is a typical point not easy to understand while browsing GNUstep website.

Thanks again!
Xavier