Gershwin-desktop: OS X-like Desktop Environment based on GNUStep

[vintagedave]

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

[probonopd]

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]

Looks like the Finder layout is inherited and may change: https://github.com/orgs/gershwin-desktop/discussions/8

This is pretty exciting!

[linguae]

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!

[pavlov]

> “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.

[ctas]

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).

[pjmlp]

Sadly, GNUStep is hardly moving, plus last time I remember there were still issues regarding the adoption of modern Objective-C, given that it is only supported on clang, and they were focused on using only what was available in GCC.

[Iridiumkoivu]

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.

[mepian]

At least one of the lead developers of Étoilé moved on to CHERI.

[dustbunny]

It's called Haiku now I think

[lproven]

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/

[12_throw_away]

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

[wink]

Using my first mac for work, cmd instead of ctrl is actually the only thing I could get used to because I admit it's kinda nicer.

[probonopd]

Gershwin is using the key next to the spacebar (whatever is written on it) as the Command key.

[yjftsjthsd-h]

> 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]

It's a reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Switch_(advertising_campaign)

[compiler-devel]

Nice name, I suppose it recalls Apple’s Rhapsody project.

[linguae]

Additionally, Gershwin is the name of the intended follow-up to the cancelled Copland project.

[amusings]

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 :)

[rcarmo]

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]

> 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.

[GaryBluto]

As vintagedave points out, there is a strange inconsistency of UI elements, but I look forward to seeing how this ends up.

[fithisux]

I like it!

My only reservation is that Objective-C is not very well maintained by gcc.

[dustbunny]

Why not use elementary OS which looks far better?

[lproven]

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.

[cosmic_cheese]

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.

[malco_2001]

I used elementary the past and appreciated the visual design. It just never went far enough for me by not having global menus, application bundles, etc. I think given a little more time here this year Gershwin will catch up so to speak. Then we will have not only how it looks, how it is designed, how it operates, how it runs on nearly anything, cross platform support, etc.

I recently began porting Ladybird from QT to GNUstep and the results are a 20 minute build on low powered raspberry pi vs 3 hours using most of the same APIs from AppKit. I believe I can take the same code, and make it build on Windows. I suppose this is my elevator pitch as to why.