[HN Gopher] Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment base...
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Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep
Author : rguiscard
Score : 106 points
Date : 2026-01-04 03:44 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| compiler-devel wrote:
| Nice name, I suppose it recalls Apple's Rhapsody project.
| linguae wrote:
| Additionally, Gershwin is the name of the intended follow-up to
| the cancelled Copland project.
| malco_2001 wrote:
| That was not intentional but just a coincidence actually. I
| came up with Gershwin as something to be comparable to
| "Darwin" as a core OS. I originally wanted to combine the
| Linux kernel with a Userland "familiar to switchers" more
| like a BSD and build on that. I also decided early on it was
| best to focus on being a DE that could run on anything and
| make the underlying OS not matter as much. Everyone involved
| really liked the name, so I went with it.
| amusings wrote:
| Screenshots look like OS X 1.0 and nothing like Rhapsody. I've
| found the OS X aesthetics unpleasant compared to how Rhapsody
| looked like so it was the final straw pushing me to Windows :)
| probonopd wrote:
| Should be doable to put a Rhapsody theme on it... GNUstep is
| very flexible in this regard. Thanks to Method Swizzling,
| themes can change things pretty substantially.
| malco_2001 wrote:
| The GTK theme engine from GNUstep can also be used to set a
| "Rhapsody" theme. It just allows using GTK themes. Here is an
| example of what that looks like https://github.com/pkgdemon/s
| creenshots/blob/main/yellowbox-... I'd also like to make a
| native theme for that layout at some point.
| malco_2001 wrote:
| I currently have the WindowManager.app I am fixing up that
| draws native decorations with GSTheme on to X11 windows.
| The screenshot in the gershwin desktop repo shows the
| result with chromium. I am also working on a Ladybird
| native GNUstep port where I need to fix the toolbar,
| rendering issues, and get the codebase in shape for a
| proper PR. Then I want to start working on fixing up an
| existing SwiftUI bridge implementation. This would also be
| a welcome contribution if someone can offer to contribute
| before I can eventually get to it. If that doesn't happen I
| would like to create a a native theme for this at some
| point.
| linguae wrote:
| 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 Etoile 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!
| ctas wrote:
| I'm working on something similar for Linux. Would love to chat
| if this is interesting to you.
|
| The idea is to bring the UX of OSX Snow Leopard back, adjusted
| for today's possibilities (better developer experience, AI,
| etc.). I'm developing a DE, SwiftUI/AppKit-equivalent, and a
| bunch of reference apps I'm personally missing in terms of
| quality (e.g. Raycast/Spotlight, Mail).
| ludamn wrote:
| Is there a link for this project? It sounds exciting!
| lproven wrote:
| https://github.com/gershwin-desktop
| probonopd wrote:
| Definitely let's talk. You'll find us on GitHub Discussions
| and Libera Chat.
| pavlov wrote:
| _> "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"_
|
| Sadly this barely exists anymore.
|
| Cross-platform Electron apps have replaced native AppKit.
| Cloud-based apps like Linear, Slack and Figma cater to the
| lowest common denominator of desktops by shipping their web
| client in a wrapper.
|
| The last real native Mac app that was truly successful was
| probably Sketch ten years ago, and Figma ate their lunch.
|
| Meanwhile Apple themselves have given up on the HIG. In the
| Alan Dye era, it's been form over function across all the Apple
| operating systems. Their own apps don't follow any guidelines
| and the latest macOS 26 is a UI disaster - probably the most
| inconsistent Mac release since OS X early betas.
| linguae wrote:
| I wholeheartedly and sadly agree with you. Seems like the
| idea of native apps on both macOS and Windows has been losing
| ground in favor of Electron apps. I understand the challenge
| of writing applications tailored to each platform and why
| Electron is so appealing to many companies, but I'd feel
| better about Electron if it were more conformant to platform
| HIGs and if it were less resource-intensive, especially now
| with RAM prices skyrocketing.
|
| I hate how mainstream desktop computing has gone to crap in
| recent years. Thank goodness for free, open-source software.
| probonopd wrote:
| This is why we think something inspired by the HIG needs to
| be reborn as open source.
| vintagedave wrote:
| 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
| vintagedave wrote:
| Looks like the Finder layout is inherited and may change:
| https://github.com/orgs/gershwin-desktop/discussions/8
|
| This is pretty exciting!
| probonopd wrote:
| We are on it. The whole UI is going to be overhauled a lot.
| Would you like to help us get things in shape?
| AppearanceMetrics.h in gershwin-eau-theme is a start.
| vintagedave wrote:
| You know, I would, and I had already started looking into how
| to get a dev VM :)
|
| Thankyou for the comment and polite interest, btw -- IMO an
| excellent way to encourage involvement in an open source
| project!
| Iridiumkoivu wrote:
| Interesting. I wonder what happened to Etoile 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.
| dustbunny wrote:
| It's called Haiku now I think
| mepian wrote:
| Haiku is not related to Etoile.
| E39M5S62 wrote:
| Haiku is an open source recreation of BeOS.
| mepian wrote:
| At least one of the lead developers of Etoile moved on to
| CHERI.
| GranPC wrote:
| For those wondering what CHERI is:
| https://cheriot.org/cheri/philosophy/isa/2025/11/19/cheri-
| or...
| GaryBluto wrote:
| As vintagedave points out, there is a strange inconsistency of UI
| elements, but I look forward to seeing how this ends up.
| rcarmo wrote:
| 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
| lproven wrote:
| > There were a few other similar projects a few years back
|
| Notably the Hello System, by Simon Peter, AKA probonopd.
|
| I looked at that, too.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/31/hellosystem_08/
|
| Probonopd is now involved with Gershwin and was quite active in
| its Github when I looked.
| malco_2001 wrote:
| I am absolutely blown away to have the author of AppImage
| (Probono) partnering with me on a project I started that to
| be honest I didn't know if it would ever go anywhere. There
| is no better validation, and this is exactly what the spirit
| of creating open source solutions is all about for me. I wish
| I had known now years ago about GNUstep earlier. I took a
| path of learning FreeBSD deeper instead in 2004 when I
| started my career. I contributed to PCBSD as I learned
| programming in 2013 which eventually brought me to making
| FuryBSD for a short time.
|
| When I started FuryBSD which was a livecd creator for FreeBSD
| that made it easy for others to spin up projects Probono
| noticed and started reaching out, helping me making some
| great contributions. It became the basis for the current
| GhostBSD LiveCD, HelloSystem, I believe RavynOS, and FyneDesk
| used it or at least were also using it in the past.
|
| Probono blew me away with his work on LiveSTEP, and it just
| kind of stuck with me. I ended up silently carrying it
| forward, and getting back in touch after I realized what we
| could do with it. I recently gave Probono ownership for the
| GitHub org, and full creative control so I could focus on
| harder functional parts like a truly integrated
| WindowManager. It's all just been somewhat a miracle, and a
| matter of timing lining up I suppose. I am very much looking
| forward to seeing the cool things we can do together in 2026!
| lproven wrote:
| > I am absolutely blown away to have the author of AppImage
| (Probono) partnering with me
|
| :-)
|
| > which eventually brought me to making FuryBSD for a short
| time.
|
| Ahaaaa. I did not realise that. Perhaps you should mention
| that in a FAQ or something? I think tying the different
| projects together like that would make it clear there is a
| quite considerable bit of history in here.
|
| > I am very much looking forward to seeing the cool things
| we can do together in 2026!
|
| Kudos for the positivity.
|
| I left the GNUstep community a year or so back, after the
| admins got angry with me for daring to have opinions about
| the project that differ from theirs.
|
| I think that as well as (1) a set of development libraries,
| it's _also_ (2) a quite impressive set of apps, (3) an app
| packaging format, _and_ perhaps most importantly (4) a
| quite complete desktop environment. They only seem to care
| about #1 and regard points 2-4 as annoying distractions.
|
| For what it's worth, I know of two other active, current
| GNUstep-based desktop environments, which have slightly
| different focuses.
|
| 1. Ondrej Florian's GSDE: https://onflapp.github.io/gs-
| desktop/index.html
|
| I've written a bit about this:
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/06/two_new_debian_deskt
| o...
|
| I had great difficulty getting it to build on Debian 13,
| but I should try again at some point.
|
| 2. Sergii Stoian's NEXTSPACE:
| https://github.com/trunkmaster/nextspace
|
| Slightly more mature but Stoian's been distracted recently
| by Russia invading his country, so it's not seen much work
| of late.
| lproven wrote:
| 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/
| dustbunny wrote:
| Why not use elementary OS which looks far better?
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Elementary/Pantheon resembles macOS only aesthetically.
| Functionally it's similar to GNOME, which itself is closer to
| iPadOS than it is macOS.
|
| Mac users looking to switch want the whole package: the
| aesthetics, the functionality, the design philosophy, and the
| holistic approach.
| lproven wrote:
| Elementary OS does look superficially Apple-like, but on closer
| inspection, there's no menu bar, which is a core element of the
| macOS UI. So actually it's more like iPadOS on the desktop:
| apps generally only have hamburger menus, which personally I do
| not like at all, and it's limited by its insistence on Flatpak
| apps for everything. You can of course open a console and use
| `apt` to install whatever you want, but then the desktop
| quickly becomes less coherent and harmonious.
|
| It's a good distro and I like it. It's easy, it has good
| accessibility, and as you say, it looks great. But I tried
| daily-driving it for a short time and found it too limiting for
| me. Once I'd manually installed Firefox, Thunderbird, Chrome,
| VLC, LibreOffice, Ferdium, Panwriter, VirtualBox and my other
| everyday tools, I wasn't using a lot of the distro's own tools
| any more, and suddenly the ones I was (settings, file manager,
| app launcher) became limiting.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > 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?
| Lammy wrote:
| It's a reference to
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch_(advertising_campaign)
| 12_throw_away wrote:
| 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
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