Re: GNUstep on Hackernews

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

> Am 14.12.2021 um 16:29 schrieb Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola@libero.it>:
> 
> 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.

A different approach is not a GSUbuntu but providing GS as an alternative
to Gnome, KDE, Mate, Xfce4, LXDE and numerous others.

Quantumstep does it that way. It has a dedicated and maintained package
repository where it is enough on PC side to add a one-liner entry to 
/etc/apt/sources.list.d,
do an apt-get update && apt-get install quantumstep. Proper dependencies
and some installation/configuration packages make it work.

This is very similar to installing e.g. xfce4 or lxde on some minimal
Debian with initially no gui user-interface.

Important applications like Firefox can easily be wrapped to make it useable
by a double-click. They will not fit into style and have rough edges in 
operation
of course  but are accessible.

Just my 2cts,
Nikolaus