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Comment by inDigiNeous | Hacker News Reader

Yeah this was a really interesting project when it got started, like in the late 90s ? Now, realistically, even though I like the idea, who is going to use this ?

Maybe like a compatibility setup for old NeXTStep applications ? Or porting some old macOS applications to Linux environments ?

Working on top of the X11 implementation also doesn't really provoke trust to look into the project.

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I co-host a GNUstep developer stream at https://twitch.tv/objcretain (replays at https://replay.objc-retain.com). The motivation my co-host and I have for using GNUstep in 2021 and beyond is to provide a familiar environment for macOS developers and users who are not happy with Apple’s direction and would benefit from a free software alternative. To that end we mostly work on the basic desktop tools like calendar, mail, and addresses, and fix framework/dev tools bugs and missing parts as we find them.

Sounds like a cool hobby. But solving basic desktop tools, sounds like bikeshedding to me :) Not to disrespect the project, I find Objective-C and the Cocoa model nice, but realistically looking at it almost nobody uses GNUStep, so why write apps for it ?

That is precisely why... it's new ground. It's fun. It's interesting. Why write applications (or, in your words "bikeshedding" -- an interesting term, I had to look it up. :))... because it's a chance to create something totally new. The mission is two fold:

1) Bring the elegance of easy development to every other operating system... and 2) Give Apple developers someplace else to deploy their applications.

GNUstep is meant to be a drop in replacement for Cocoa. By Cocoa I mean Foundation and AppKit, not all of the Core this and Core that libraries. We have those, but they are less mature than Foundation and AppKit. GNUstep is also themable, as I have pointed out in other responses.

Well, that is a noble goal. Hope you can manage even portion of it. Would be nice to have a way to deploy macOS applications on other platforms, but seeing it is already difficult enough to make sure macOS applications even work on different versions of macOS, that is a difficult task to achieve.

But godspeed to your project, Objective-C, Cocoa and the whole NeXTSTep visual identity is a nice combo.

> Working on top of the X11 implementation also doesn't really provoke trust to look into the project.

Vs Wayland? I'd have way more doubts about anything that ran exclusively on Wayland than on X11.

Wayland isn't ready, I have serious doubts it's ever going to be ready.

X11 is old, but so is vim, emacs, grep, everything I want to actually rely on.

> Wayland isn't ready, I have serious doubts it's ever going to be ready.

I don't know enough to have opinion about Wayland - could you share more details about why you do not think it is ready?

Yeah well Wayland doesn't provoke trust either..

> Working on top of the X11 implementation also doesn't really provoke trust to look into the project.

Well, back when this project started X was really the only game in town. If they had started out rewriting the low level display server and graphics drivers they would never have gotten anywhere (to the extent the current state of the project can be considered "anywhere").

There is a wayland backend for GNUstep.

> Now, realistically, even though I like the idea, who is going to use this ?

Someone who thinks that OpenStep is a good way to build end-user applications, I imagine. I've never used it myself, but I know that it had an excellent reputation once upon a time. I wouldn't be surprised if it's better than Qt or gtk+.

> Working on top of the X11 implementation also doesn't really provoke trust to look into the project.

X11 is the standard display technology for Unix and Unix-like systems. Not working atop X11 would provoke distrust. I imagine that you are actually advocating for Wayland. Wayland may actually be the future, although I am still unconvinced that its design is sound (I worry that it throws out the baby with the bathwater).

edit: I did not realise that there is a Wayland backend for GNUStep.

> Someone who thinks that OpenStep is a good way to build end-user applications, > I imagine. I've never used it myself, but I know that it had an excellent > reputation once upon a time. I wouldn't be surprised if it's better than Qt > or gtk+.

GNUstep is Cocoa now and, apparently, a lot of people thought building apps this way was a good way to build end-user apps... macOS and iOS. ;) -- Gregory Casamento GNUstep Lead Maintainer

I'm generally speaking about the state of X11 vs macOS or Windows. Like configuring multiple monitors, getting your mouse working just right or other tasks that sometimes can just be freaking difficult with X11. But not wanting to go into that flamewar now.

I would be surprised if it's better than Qt, in fact I know it's not. GTK+ also has had a lot of work during the years, but they have dropped the balls many times over major revisions, so in that sense it might be a better framework than GTK.

But then again, it all comes down to who uses these. Qt is widely used beyond Linux in application development, and modern QT is actually a very nice development environment.

Wayland is also in a state of not-complete. What I'm trying to say here is that the display technologies behind most Linux environments are not in a good state. They work, yes, but some things just don't work or are impossible to setup compared to eg. macOS or Windows.

This is mostly due to open source fragmentation and legacy code in my view, and the fact that everybody and their brother would rather fork out their own desktop environments than decide to make couple of good ones, but hey that's Open Source. Also missing commercial support of course.

Linux desperately needs a good DE. We might as well dumpster dive for something reusable from the past.

NeXTStep actually really reminds me of Windows 7 and other things. I wouldn't mind trialling it for a week as long as I could get my usual tasks done.

Once you switch to Fluxbox/Rox/Urxvt and custom keys, you won't need anything else. BT? Blueman. Network? NetworkManager/Connman plus the applet. Done.

The Unix philosophy doesn't work as well when it's mandatory to enable building a GUI. I specified that we need a good DE because we don't have a good story for integrating all of those things you mentioned within a UI that I consider usable (and GNOME isn't it, and KDE is not quite it either).

Yeah, I explicitly mentioned Objective-C v-latest, because not only the users have to figure out the whole runtime support in GCC vs clang in regards to Objective-C 2.0 and GNUStep, to further improve interoperability with Swift, many aren't aware that Objective-C still has a life and gets updates even if in tiny portions.

Finally the whole way how makefiles work (classical NeXTSTEP style) isn't any longer like that.

You can use either clang or gcc. ObjC v2 is supported. There is currently no interoperability with swift, but that is coming and you can just build using your .xcodeproj file if you build and install buildtool+libs-xcode. How's that?

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