Relevant -- there are 2 other desktop environments built on GNUstep that are in more active maintainance.
NEXTSPACE:
https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace
<- Ukrainian so not much development in a while; mainly targets CentOS
GSDE:
https://onflapp.github.io/gs-desktop/index.html
<- More recent, native to Debian but runs on other things.
Thanks for this. So, if I were to run GNUStep as my desktop, what would I be missing from KDE, GNOME, XFCE, etc?
Hmmm. Interesting question.
Obviously enough there are not a great many native GNUstep apps. It's Linux, though, so there are a million alternatives, but they won't share GNUstep's look, feel, keystrokes, etc.
It comes with a file manager, both plain text and rich text editors, image viewers, a chat client, a pretty good email app, a terminal emulator (possibly a choice of them too), and GSDE also provides a web browser, although it's a wrapper around Chromium. It works pretty well.
There are lots of programming tools available too, including Gorm, which broadly replicates NeXT's Interface Builder.
Pic from one of my own machines here:
https://regmedia.co.uk/2023/07/05/deb_11_gsde.jpg
I wrote about it (and Lomiri):
https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/06/two_new_debian_deskto...
I think it's beautiful, myself, but then I consider NeXTstep to be the high-water mark in desktop GUI design thus far.
I find GNUstep's choice of accelerator keys weird and frustrating, though.
I do not run it as my daily driver, but I am thinking about it.
The installation takes a while but it's a `git clone` followed by a few scripts. It's not actually difficult. It took me a few hours but that's because my VM kept crashing.
I forgot to mention... GNUstep's recommended window manager is Window Maker, which is still alive and in active maintenance with new versions coming out.
There are lots of little Window Maker applets out there to choose from, so you can accessorize your GSDE (or NEXTSPACE) setup with wm-applets and docklets for volume, sound output, mic control, power management, and all those little fripperies that other desktops come with or can do.
A slight limitation is that GNUstep has its own dock and suggests disabling the Window Maker dock, but you can go the other way round and disable the dock provided by GNUstep Workspace and use the WM dock instead.
Also, it is worth mentioning that there is a new entrant in the "GNUstep based desktop environment" race: Gershwin.
https://github.com/gershwin-desktop
Currently only available in GhostBSD though.