Re: Why is GNUstep less successful than GTK and Qt??

[Riccardo Mottola]

on 6/12/03 7:18 AM, Sungjin Chun at chunsj@embian.com wrote:

> I have somewhat different idea. The main problem is accessibility.
> If someone wants to use GNUstep, (I mean environment like GNOME or
> KDE) how he/she can get it currently? Current status of GNUstep is
> for developers not ordinary users. Integration between WindowMaker
> is not perfect and no total packages like GNOME or KDE. I think we
> need more time to make libraries and some basic applications robust,
> then create an easy to install package. Then we can make people to
> try GNUstep as a computing environment.
> Personally current UI design(or NeXT's design) is very good to me, and
> from my experience with other people in my company, the beauty of
> UI is not important. UI Consistency is more important to them.

I think it is not only UI. I like the NeXT look and it is one reasons for
which I am trying to get GNUstep to my platforms. Also the Programming model
is interesting. But many "users" which make the numbers and the hype don't
care about this.
Installing gnustep is a pain, not only on solaris with the broken thoing
about libwraster or on OpenBSD where I can't even compile it.

And remember: many people just choose to use packets. Which is resonable: it
is easy for end-users, but also for admins that jsut need some functionality
and want an easy way to administer it.

I think about the maybe two most widespread unices I know: Linux and NetBSD.
(Never used FreeBSD...)
I have a mac with debian and I wanted to use the packages for gnustep. It
jsut doesn't work. I track debian-unstable but currently I just get blank
menues, blank dialog boxes: no fonts anywhere. On an x86 I had to wait
months before I have something half-usuable. the packages in the "stable"
version don't work enough.

NetBSD stable had working but very old packets (which were also way slow
besides being broken). I updated the packets and now nothing works and I
don't know why, they don't even compile anymore.

I think this is a current limit for gnustep: I speak because I see how other
people use LInux/NetBSD grab a distribution, install, if something doesn't
work, just uninstall it.

Also, both QT and GTK have applications with "their own look" (TM), you get
browsers for both, mailers for both, file-managers for both...

Currently GNUstep has mainly two applications: a file manager and a mailer,
both are becoming better and better, but that's about it.

And both KDE and Gnome haw their well-integrated window manager, but GTK
works fine with every wm (this is useful in many circumstances, including
display exporting).

gnustep doesn't have a well-integrated wm (for stupid things which maybe
many people would appreciate: change icons and colors togehter with the wm
for example).

also those "mini" windows gnustep creates for every application work fine
with wmaker but can be unusable on TWM, FVWM, OLWM and such.

I know this is a free effort that some people here contribute more than
others, blah blah, I didn' want to criticize, just communicate what I see
looking around


-ric

PS: my RPN-Calculator is almost ready and will be my first contribution to
the *step community, RPN users appreciated ;)