Re: GNUstep store... also, thinking of starting a foundation/503(c) for GNUstep...

[Svetlana Tkachenko]

Hi Riccardo,

Thank you for your thoughtful and elaborate response. A few uneducated 
questions...

Riccardo wrote:
> Hi Svetlana,
> 
> You hijacked a thread :)
> 
> 
> Svetlana wrote:
> > What OS is the bst equipped to run GNUstep on it with minimal confusion to 
> > the novice user?
> >
> > What hardware does this OS run on?
> >
> > Who would do the installs on new hardware and be the base shipping point(s)?
> 
> I think you need to better specify "run". If by run you mean just "get
> the binary stuff that is ready for it" or "compile from source and get
> everything I like and run it" the answers are a bit different. I would
> not advise mixing the two things generally speaking and without knowing
> configuration details (although compiling an app and isntalling it
> should always be easy and possible)

These correspond to customers who
* shops at ebay and just wants a working computer
* wants to create things and maybe knows a bit of C,
  (and also perhaps test their mac apps in GNUstep)
Is this correct?

Perhaps it would be interesting to have devices for both?

Riccardo wrote:
> 1) "run what is ready" : you depend from what is ready in the packages
> of that particular OS - if they miss something - and how they configured
> it. However, as an end-user you don't really care what compiler,
> depenedncy, runtime was used.
> I would advise thus installation which are complete, functional and
> maintained. I would not advice Debian and derivatives (ubuntu,
> raspbian...) because of the way package things. FHS  does not give you
> the best GNUstep experience, but it is passable anyway to play around.
> - FreeBSD has among the best ready packages, is well maintained, runs
> well on i386 and amd64
> - OpenBSD and NetBSD have also excellent packages, but the OS may need a
> little bit more experience to be used (although I find them excellent)
> - Gentoo Linux is also quite nice
> 
> As hardware, everything the aforementioned supports - i386 and amd64
> being the choice though.

What would make such a device attractive for the customer who "shops at ebay 
and just wants a working computer"? 

Also I imagine a million of usability issues with configuring wireless and 
other tasks for which an app is missing.

Riccardo wrote:
> 2) "compile myself" - here the world opens again, you can configure and
> install.
> At this point, Debian-derived distributions are no longer an issue.
> Actually Debian and Raspbian/Raspberry OS (Ubuntu, Fienix...) are very
> easy to work with, maintain and install. Installing dependencies for
> GNUstep is a breeze and configuring with either GCC or Clang/libobjc2
> becomes fast
> At this point, much more hardware opens to you: not just i386 and amd64,
> but also PowerPC works perfectly and arm! So tinkering you your
> Raspberry 1,2,3,4 becomes a wonderful playground for GNUstep.
> NetBSD is also perfect and gets you running on SPARC, HP-PARISC,
> SPARC64... and GNUstep runs on it
> FreeBSD here is a little bit more tricky because of compiler/runtime
> issues and I always get a headache with libobj2 and GCC is not usable
> with objc-2. So a caveat here.

Bit puzzled here. 

If the customer "wants to create things and maybe knows a bit of C" then 
perhaps they will find it cheaper to just buy such a device and install GNUstep 
on it themselves. No? 

There will be economical benefit here only if someone buys 1000 devices in bulk 
for cheap, and gains profit from selling each one of them separately for a 
higher price. Does someone know of such a case?

Regards,
Svetlana