GNUstep Desktop attempts to build fully functional desktop by bringing various GNUstep apps together and making sure everything works as expected.
- filters and services to enhance functionality - Helpers
- scriptability - StepTalk
- intergration with command line utilities / scripts Tools
It should work on any Debian-based system (I personally use Raspberry PI4 as my main development and user platform) and possibly any modern Linux distribution with a bit tweaking.
The desktop relies on many other libraries and binaries to work as intended. This step is more important than you might realize at first. As many build systems use autoconfig to find dependencies, a missing dependency will not necessarily result in failed build but it might cause all kind of weird runtime problems or desktop now working as intended.
There is a script you can use to help you install all that is needed.
cd dependencies
./install-dependencies-debian.sh debian11.txt
My favorite way to get GSDE working is to install minimal Debian distribution (no X or any desktop environment) and then do something like this:
apt-get install git
git clone https://github.com/onflapp/gs-desktop
cd gs-desktop/dependencies
sudo ./install-dependencies-debian.sh debian11.txt
GSDE come from different places. Some are official github repos, others are my forks. Many apps have been patched and/or configured in a way to "play nice with others". Hopefully most of those changes will be merged back to the original source tree one day.
./fetch_world.sh
The script will build and install everything that is required. It needs to be run as root!
sudo -E ./build_world.sh
The whole desktop is going to be installed in /Application, /System and /Library directories. Although this doesn't follow GNUstep/Linux conventions, it simplifies system scripts etc. as everything is in predictable place.
If you use modern login manager, you will see two new xsessions (normal startup and safe mode) for you to choose to log in.
Otherwise, use /System/bin/startgsde to start the desktop within your existing X session or add to your ~/.xsessionrc or ~/.xinitrc.