1.1 - What is GNUstep?

GNUstep is a free, no-cost, open-source implementation of the Cocoa and OpenStep APIs. The APIs are very powerful and intuitive. All native Mac applications are made with the same APIs that GNUstep implements – in a way, it’s kind of like Winelib, but implementing an intuitive API (Cocoa) instead of one with a lot of historical cruft (Win32).

Why GNUstep instead of another toolkit?

GNUstep is:

• powerful

  • Uses the Objective-C programming language, so you can call any C library the same way you would if it was a C program

• intuitive

  • Its APIs were designed from scratch, and were the first cross-platform development toolkit

• flexible

• portable

  • GNUstep supports almost all computers running GNU/Linux, no matter whether they use Intel, AMD, SPARC, POWER, IBM Z, or something even more obscure!

  • GNUstep also supports both 32-bit and 64-bit Windows computers, running Windows 2000 or later.

    • The support is not very good right now.

  • You can compile GNUstep apps to run on Mac using only the Mac system libraries – you don’t need to bundle GNUstep with your apps or have your users install GNUstep.