Re: NeXT GNU Homage Project Work

[H. Nikolaus Schaller]

Am 17.11.2015 um 18:48 schrieb Liam Proven <lproven@gmail.com>:

> On 17 November 2015 at 18:18, Riccardo Mottola
> <riccardo.mottola@libero.it> wrote:
>> 
>> I dissent this, I have installed various systems and on a standard
>> configuration, especially if you can jsut partition one single disk, I found
>> all three major BSDs easy to install like Linux.
>> 
>> The installer is nicely text based, but it is easy and leaves you a working
>> system. Especially OpenBSD is extremely easy to maintain. It has an
>> excellent way to update your packages every 6 months, seamless upgrades.
>> 
>> Granted,I upgraded my FreeBSD workstation and X now doesn't work.. but on my
>> laptop freezes due to X drivers now and then too, so I'd call that a tie!
> 
> 
> I am not disputing your experiences, but mine are radically different.
> 
> And while it is slightly off the direct topic, I think it is relevant.
> 
> While it is a good thing that there are OSes that have a working
> current version of the GNUstep environment, I submit that,
> increasingly, Linux means the Debian family, and for most people,
> specifically Ubuntu. It is the easiest to install, the easiest to
> update, the most rich and complete and widely-supported free OS that
> exists.
> 
> *That* is what should be the #1 priority to support well with GNUstep.
> 
> The answer to the problem "I can't install GNUstep on Ubuntu or
> Debian" is _not_ "install FreeBSD instead". It's not "install
> $ANY_OTHER_OS".
> 
> It's to have current, working packages for Debian and to get them
> included in the Debian OS so that they are also available to
> downstream projects such as Ubuntu.

Here I would even prioritize:
#1 is have up-to-date and working Debian packages repo (with
cross-compiled arm-linux-armhf and arm-linux-i86) on gnustep.org
so that a simple /etc/apt/sources.list entry suffices.

Then installation instructions could be very simple: set up Debian on
some machine, add a line to /e/a/s.l and apt-get update + apt-get install 
gnustep.
It should also be easy to provide the headers and source file packages to 
natively
compile on some Debian machine.

Getting this upstream into Sid is IMHO easier if that one runs flawless for 1-2 
years.

I am running such a scheme for ~5 years now for QuantumSTEP:

http://download.goldelico.com/quantumstep/debian/dists/

But before you try:
1. QuantumSTEP it is not 100% GNUstep (it shares some code but not all concepts)
2. it is currently *not* compatible to Debian Jessie or later (mismatch of 
library versions)
3. it is not as well documented as GNUstep

> 
> Ubuntu is something like 20x more widely-used than any other distro
> based on accesses to Wikipedia:
> 
> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1970241
> 
> Even tech-geek sites see 3x more traffic from Ubuntu than from any other 
> distro:
> 
> http://redmonk.com/dberkholz/2013/05/20/ranking-linux-distributions-and-the-decline-of-the-traditional-distros/
> 
> I'm not saying Ubuntu is perfect. It's not. But it's the leading
> distro, it offers all the major desktops, it has official remixes with
> Unity, KDE, GNOME 3, Maté, Xfce and LXDE, and it does have (horribly
> outdated) GNUstep packages in its repos.

A very old wish is that similarly to "apt-get install lxde" or  "apt-get 
install xfce4" it
should be as simple as "apt-get install gnustep" to get a fully (pre)configured 
desktop.

> 
> There is also a current Raspberry Pi version.

And there is almost always a Debian/Ubuntu for most other high quantity SBC
boards. E.g. BeagleBone.

> 
> This is what we need to target if we want people to see and try GNUstep.
> 
> And everything that argues for Ubuntu over Fedora/SUSE/Arch/$DISTRO is
> true 10x over for Linux versus any BSD. All the BSDs together have
> orders of magnitude fewer users than Linux, and most of those on
> servers.

100% agree.

And if it comes to ARM based SBC boards, support of *BSD is quite rare.

If we want GNUstep+GAP to become more widely used, we should not start
with or force users into niche configurations.

-- hns