Re: GNUstep Live on OSnews

[Liam Proven]

On 31 July 2017 at 21:20, Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola@libero.it> wrote:
> Hi Liam,
>
>
> you actually sum up several of GNUstep's goal, but at the same time, the
> issues  to show it of..

Er, good? :-)

> On 31/07/2017 15:56, Liam Proven wrote:
>>
>> The main concern is if installing a 5MB app sucks in 500MB of
>> dependencies and thrashes the disk for 10sec when you load it.
>
>
> The issue is that GS if "fully configured" with all options (libxmk,
> libxslt, ICU, cairo... where you pull in other dependencies like freetype,
> several X components, all image libraries) and also GWorkspace with its
> options (e.g. PDFKit) you and up with that if not more. I know I couldn't
> fit an OS on a 2GB SD card for Raspberry. Most of that is usually already
> there if you have other GTK apps because it is shared.

OK, well, first, honestly, I am not interested in things like GNUstep on RasPi.

I am interested in the RasPi and its potential, but its main uses are
not as a desktop replacement. It is not very good as one of those, so
as a compilation or app-dev target, I think it's less interesting than
the generic x86 PC.

But as for a 2GB card... I think the only one that small I have is in
my ebook reader! My RasPi has a 32GB card in it, I think.

> However you can configure things "down"... and this is why I fight so much
> about our dependencies. By cutting here and there you cans till get a
> complete workspace with GWorkspace, GAP apps and even Dev apps in a 2GB
> solid-state-disk of the Letux400 :) And you can do even smaller.

I am not sure of exactly what you mean, to be honest, so I can't comment.

I am not a programmer so I do not worry about dependencies and so on.
If the app installs and works, I am happy.

Installing a KDE app on a GNOME machine (or vice versa) will pull in a
_lot_ of libraries to satisfy all the dependencies... but then, that
does not matter so much on modern machines.

>> What GNUstep could provide, it seems to me, boils down to these things:
>>
>> [1] A NEXTstep-like desktop for Linux (and other free Unices)
>>
>> As a clean, attractive, lightweight desktop, and a re-creation of one
>> of the most widely-admire desktops ever, this has clear appeal.
>
>
> It has, to a very small niche. This is something I want to achieve and I
> know and read of people interested from time to time.

I have seen some, yes. But if it were actually out there as an option
-- as a metapackage that users could pick, same as KDE/GNOME
3/Cinnamon/Maté/Xfce/LXDE/KDE etc. -- then I think it would get more
interest.


> This has some
> "Issues":
> - people striving for that are either "minimalist modern" people or
> nostalgic people who want something quite polished, stable... and we aren't
> even if we improved a lot.. lots of work to do, some is

That's an issue, all right. If the code is not stable enough to run
usefully. But then, wouldn't it help if someone published enough
dependency info that the big distros could include the metadata, so
there were 2 options:

[_] Install GNUstep desktop environment
[_] Install GNUstep development tools and sources

Hint -- I'm only interested in #1 personally. :-)

That's the main goal I am talking about. Getting to the point where
Debian or Ubuntu at least, and ideally Fedora and SUSE, include those
2 tick boxes.

And if you tick them in the installer, what boots, first time, has
nothing but GNUstep and Window Maker. A complete desktop -- email,
chat, text editor, terminal emulator, image viewer, etc, as GNUstep
includes all them -- preconfigured and ready to go.

Add in whatever bits GNUstep doesn't include from the distro's
standard components. Firefox and LibreOffice, mainly.

That's it. It's not so much, not so hard. Is it?

Then people can install it, try it, use it, and bug reports and so on
will start to flow in to improve the completeness of the apps.

That's the theory, anyway.

> - the nostalgic people ask and want "original" NeXT or OpenStep apps of
> which we don't have the sources to "port" them (also, porting them could be
> quite a work, especially for NeXT stuff)

I think most FOSS users know not to expect proprietary stuff. I would
not worry about that.

>> [2] A rich, clean set of libraries and programming tools for app
>> development
>>
>> Something that few other desktops can offer and a selling point to
>> FOSS developers.
>
>
> For those who like our programming paradigm, yes. And Objective-C !

Ah. Pardon my ignorance. This I did not know.

GNUstep apps can _only_ be written in Objective-C?

OK, if so... are there any other rival foundation classes for writing
GUI apps in Objective-C on Linux?

If not, then there's the selling point.

If so, then, potential problem.

> Also... This is the thing we should be most proud of, because it means we
> need to be "complete enough" to be useful and not "complete compared to a
> certain version of Cocoa".

But that's a valid benchmark.

"GNUstep is currently 99% functionally equivalent to Mac OS X version
10.whatever."

>> [3] Tools for building cross-desktop and cross-platform apps
>>
>> A clear message that the tools do not limit you to the GNUstep
>> desktop, but will run on other desktops as well as Windows and Mac.

2 different options:

[a] GNUstep as a tool for building Linux (or FOSS UNIX) apps that will
run on any desktop and integrate into it and look like native apps.

[b] GNUstep as a tool for building cross-platform GUI apps, but they
won't integrate into any other environment.


>> [4] Tools for building apps against both native macOS and Linux.
>
>
> I don't fully understand the difference here. You build an application and
> can "build it natively on Mac". Then you can use GNUstep's portability on
> Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Solaris, MinGW on Windows!

I should have described it better. Sorry.

What I mean is that the "selling point" unmodified source code will
build and work on Mac OS X using Apple native libraries, or on Linux
with GNUstep.

Build apps for both Mac OS X and Linux from a single set of sources.

> However...  for such an ambitious library, you might find we have quite some
> "holes" in terms of bugs or missing functionality...

I believe so, but that's not directly relevant to this, so long as
other FOSS apps could fill the gaps in the notional "GNUstep desktop"
metapackage for now.

> With this, I do not want to stop you in your configuration installations and
> tutorials, they are very welcome!

That was someone else, but I am happy to help if I can...

-- 
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