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Comment by eadmund | Hacker News Reader

> Now, realistically, even though I like the idea, who is going to use this ?

Someone who thinks that OpenStep is a good way to build end-user applications, I imagine. I've never used it myself, but I know that it had an excellent reputation once upon a time. I wouldn't be surprised if it's better than Qt or gtk+.

> Working on top of the X11 implementation also doesn't really provoke trust to look into the project.

X11 is the standard display technology for Unix and Unix-like systems. Not working atop X11 would provoke distrust. I imagine that you are actually advocating for Wayland. Wayland may actually be the future, although I am still unconvinced that its design is sound (I worry that it throws out the baby with the bathwater).

edit: I did not realise that there is a Wayland backend for GNUStep.

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I'm generally speaking about the state of X11 vs macOS or Windows. Like configuring multiple monitors, getting your mouse working just right or other tasks that sometimes can just be freaking difficult with X11. But not wanting to go into that flamewar now.

I would be surprised if it's better than Qt, in fact I know it's not. GTK+ also has had a lot of work during the years, but they have dropped the balls many times over major revisions, so in that sense it might be a better framework than GTK.

But then again, it all comes down to who uses these. Qt is widely used beyond Linux in application development, and modern QT is actually a very nice development environment.

Wayland is also in a state of not-complete. What I'm trying to say here is that the display technologies behind most Linux environments are not in a good state. They work, yes, but some things just don't work or are impossible to setup compared to eg. macOS or Windows.

This is mostly due to open source fragmentation and legacy code in my view, and the fact that everybody and their brother would rather fork out their own desktop environments than decide to make couple of good ones, but hey that's Open Source. Also missing commercial support of course.

> Someone who thinks that OpenStep is a good way to build end-user applications, > I imagine. I've never used it myself, but I know that it had an excellent > reputation once upon a time. I wouldn't be surprised if it's better than Qt > or gtk+.

GNUstep is Cocoa now and, apparently, a lot of people thought building apps this way was a good way to build end-user apps... macOS and iOS. ;) -- Gregory Casamento GNUstep Lead Maintainer

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