GNU Smalltalk has been around a very, very long time. It was also just about the gimpiest Smalltalk environment out there. Most of the people on the commercial environments just wished it would go away, because so many people downloaded it to try it and got the wrong impression of what Smalltalk is about.

In the mid to late 90's, Smalltalk was still going strong. (It still is by some accounts.) I used GNU Smalltalk back then and it was pitifully gimpy in comparison to the commercial environments.

If you want to check out Smalltalk, check out Squeak or Pharo. You can also download VisualWorks noncommercial.

Also, to be fair, GNU Smalltalk has come a long way since then.

> If you want to check out Smalltalk, check out Squeak or Pharo. You can also download VisualWorks noncommercial.

If you're running a windows machine, I found Dolphin pretty enjoyable (if the noncommercial edition is still available, i believe they're working on their next generation but x6 was pretty nice)