easiest way to start messing with gnustep again?

[dan]

I would like to mess around with gnustep again.

When i did it before (several years ago) there were daemons
to start, lots of stuff to build, and so on, but it looks like
now all i need is a debian system i just have to run
apt-get to build everything?  (This from looking at
http://wiki.gnustep.org/index.php/Platform:Linux.)

Is the right approach to run it virtually (vmware or maybe
some free equivalent)?

What would be ideal would be whatever the modern
equivalent of what simply gnustep was supposed to be,
i think.

Thanks in advance for any advice (including pointers
to faqs, or projects --- i've looked around, e.g., at
http://etoileos.com/, but i'm sort of uncertain and
i'd like a common path to tread on first).

My interest is in writing and rescuing some
old, old applications.

dan