- an easy installation and setup process for GNUstep is essential
in my opinion. It must be easy for the curious "chance customer"
to get an experience of GNUstep.
Most *BSD and Linux distributions come with decent packaging
systems these days. ubuntu isn't that bad in this regard, but
currently comes with base-1.13, and gui-0.11. This is several
versions behind, IIRC. Etoile is missing entirely (just checked).
Ideally, there'd be gubuntu or etoile-ubuntu next to ubuntu,
kubuntu and edubuntu.
I think that's a really excellent primary goal, and a long-term one.
Getting a whole system functional, and being complete enough to feel
good releasing it as a potential primary-use operating system for
people is work of exactly the sort that needs to get done. ubuntu's a
great base for it, too.
As far as marketing, documentation and cohesivity go, I can point out
a frustration -- I've been a member of this mailing list for years
now, done some ObjC coding, maintained packages of the base Gnustep
components for my distribution -- and I had no idea what Etoile is
until just now. I'm not sure what this is pointing out, but it's a
problem. Things are so fractured that keeping up isn't possible.
Making gnustep.org be an incubator for ~all Gnustep projects the way
the Gnome project does, with relatively open CVS access, unofficial
modules in their version control, and just being a central
repository, and have inclusion in the main Gnome distribution being a
goal for a lot of developers does a lot. It's fostering a lot of
community there, and Gnustep seems to be a lot of projects that live
on a single author's personal web page, move between sites with no
warning, and disappear often. Fixing that would help immensely.
Fixing that would also change the nature of the gnustep project in a
similar fashion as creating a Gnustep variant of ubuntu: Full system
usability, in an inclusive rather than a "just a base" sense.
My two cents. Someone please find me a clone so I can devote a copy
of me to making things reality, too, eh?
Aria
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