by vintagedave
2 subcomments
- I love this. I deeply miss the productive, well-built UX era of OSX.
The screenshot shows a mix of styles. Some of it looks very old (eg the Finder analogue). Scrollbars are flat, traffic light window buttons are gel. Semi-puzzling so far in terms of UI design target.
I found this: 10.2-era, pre-Brushed Metal, seems to be the target: https://github.com/orgs/gershwin-desktop/discussions/1
- I will have to try this out when I get the free time! I’ve been periodically checking on the GNUstep ecosystem since 2004, and this is the most exciting development I’ve seen since Étoilé from the late 2000s. Judging by the screenshots, the desktop appears to be Mac-like while also not being an exact clone.
If this desktop takes off, maybe we’ll finally see an ecosystem of applications that use GNUstep instead of GTK or Qt. In my opinion, the traditional charm of the Mac isn’t just the desktop; it’s the entire ecosystem of applications that conform to the Macintosh Human Interface Guidelines. It would be cool to finally see this happen with a GNUstep/Gershwin ecosystem!
by Iridiumkoivu
2 subcomments
- Interesting. I wonder what happened to Étoilé which was supposed to fill this niche and was chucking along fine until about 2015 or so. It got pretty far too with the underlying components.
- This was back in August, and at the time, I tried it and wrote about it:
https://www.theregister.com/2025/08/27/ghostbsd_2502/
by 12_throw_away
2 subcomments
- Love this. Both my reason for wanting to replace macos and my biggest blocker to doing so is needing a desktop GUI with some HIG consistency, which is apparently a very old-fashioned idea these days.
Really, anything that can adhere to the old-school HIG well enough to offer A) consistent keyboard shortcuts across the apps that B) use a dedicated, thumb-actuated command key, I'm sold. (The `control` key, and thereby your pinkie finger, should both only be used for sending terminal escape sequences, as god intended [1].)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_key#History
by yjftsjthsd-h
1 subcomments
- > Gershwin is a desktop environment based on GNUstep welcoming to switchers.
Might be just me, but that feels like an odd description. Assuming I'm understanding the intent correctly, perhaps something like
> Gershwin is a desktop environment based on GNUstep but made more intuitive for users coming from other desktops
might be easier to understand?
- I like it!
My only reservation is that Objective-C is not very well maintained by gcc.
- I LOVE this. There were a few other similar projects a few years back but they all seem to have stalled - hopefully this one will keep going
by compiler-devel
2 subcomments
- Nice name, I suppose it recalls Apple’s Rhapsody project.
- As vintagedave points out, there is a strange inconsistency of UI elements, but I look forward to seeing how this ends up.
by dustbunny
3 subcomments
- Why not use elementary OS which looks far better?
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