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It will not surprise me if the hard core of geeks that abandoned Mozilla Suite for Firefox now abandon Firefox for Chrome and Safari.

I don't think it will be the geeks that will abandon Firefox first, I think it'll be the casual users. Here's a browser that 1) is visibly much faster, and 2) is from a well-known brand. And... "adblock"? what's "adblock"?

Plugins will surely follow, nonetheless. Maybe not in Chrome per se, but hey, it's OSS for a reason...

On the Linux front things are interesting, too. Gnome is slowly but steadily moving to WebKit for all its HTML rendering needs, including Epiphany. From what I heard, KDE4 is also going to replace KHTML with WebKit (or did they backtrack on that?). It seems that everyone is converging on WebKit as the cross-platform, OSS Web browser engine. And I don't think that bodes well for Gecko or Firefox.

Actually, I rather think that you are placing the blame on the wrong set of individuals here.

I work for a closed-source software company, which has some extremely large customers using our product. We were implementing minor/major releases and we incorporated functionality changes to minor releases. This was a problem almost every time, because at least one of our customers was using that feature and relying on it to work the way it worked in the previous patch.

Consequently we stopped adding new functionality into the minor releases.

You'll notice, however, that it's not the developers that caused this issue. No. It was the project and product managers for either a. allowing the functionality change, or b. allowing the functionality change but not realising the sheer impact it would have on the client-base and thus not planning accordingly.

That said, the difference between the company I work for and the Gnome project (after reviewing the ) was that when a regression occured for us we scrambled for a fix within a week, while the Gnome guys say things like "The bug is fixed when it's closed as FIXED.", "Paolo, Manu: Whining does not really help in getting things fixed.
"What's the hold up?" Write the code for it and attach it here." and "Yeah. And the codebase for 2.24 has changed a lot, so the 2.22 code has to be
adapted/changed a bit. Just do it, the code is available. *shrug*"

The last comment was the most infuriating to a lot of people I think. The best response I read in relation to Andre Klepper's "*shrug*" comment was:

This is a little bit alarming. These *shrug*s and the like are not giving me
the feeling of urgency that I normally associate with finding a really big
regression in a stable point release.

I'm sympathetic to a degree, because I work on other projects often criticised
for their bugginess. But even I can't quite imagine letting such a big
regression go unnoticed, to the extent that it not only isn't mentioned in the
release notes, but isn't awarded an OH MY GOD DID WE REALLY RELEASE THAT when
the first reports file in.

I would like to think that this happened because an enthusiastic young
developer built up a brilliant new design, got half-way through implementing
it, then saw it released while unready at an unexpected point -- and the
consequent worry is that the more we hound developers on this, the more we put
them off developing at all. That would be a terrible pity, and I think there
is an appreciation here all around that a modern replacement for the XSMP could
be a great thing. The error seems to be a management one, rather than a
development one.

Maybe it's just a question of expectation and taste. Like a previous poster
here, I used to enjoy the fact that session management was one of the few
things Linux did unambiguously better than other operating systems. Now it
doesn't, at least for Gnome users -- and it was a shock to me to find that
other developers never actually saw it as important in the way that I did. My
world is not exactly torn apart, but it may have been slightly tweaked in a
small corner somewhere. Gosh, maybe my view of that corner of the world was
wrong all along.

In the mean time, I'm running gnome-session 2.22 and gnome-panel 2.22 quite
happily with the rest of Gnome 2.24 on several machines.

Chris

As a fan of open-source for a LONG time, I'm beginning to wonder if it will ever cut it in the business world. I suspect with attitudes like the ones highlighted above that the answer is "no". And that makes me feel very, very sad.

Actually, I rather think that you are placing the blame on the wrong set of individuals here.

I work for a closed-source software company, which has some extremely large customers using our product. We were implementing minor/major releases and we incorporated functionality changes to minor releases. This was a problem almost every time, because at least one of our customers was using that feature and relying on it to work the way it worked in the previous patch.

Consequently we stopped adding new functionality into the minor releases.

You'll notice, however, that it's not the developers that caused this issue. No. It was the project and product managers for either a. allowing the functionality change, or b. allowing the functionality change but not realising the sheer impact it would have on the client-base and thus not planning accordingly.

That said, the difference between the company I work for and the Gnome project (after reviewing the ) was that when a regression occured for us we scrambled for a fix within a week, while the Gnome guys say things like "The bug is fixed when it's closed as FIXED.", "Paolo, Manu: Whining does not really help in getting things fixed.
"What's the hold up?" Write the code for it and attach it here." and "Yeah. And the codebase for 2.24 has changed a lot, so the 2.22 code has to be
adapted/changed a bit. Just do it, the code is available. *shrug*"

The last comment was the most infuriating to a lot of people I think. The best response I read in relation to Andre Klepper's "*shrug*" comment was:

This is a little bit alarming. These *shrug*s and the like are not giving me
the feeling of urgency that I normally associate with finding a really big
regression in a stable point release.

I'm sympathetic to a degree, because I work on other projects often criticised
for their bugginess. But even I can't quite imagine letting such a big
regression go unnoticed, to the extent that it not only isn't mentioned in the
release notes, but isn't awarded an OH MY GOD DID WE REALLY RELEASE THAT when
the first reports file in.

I would like to think that this happened because an enthusiastic young
developer built up a brilliant new design, got half-way through implementing
it, then saw it released while unready at an unexpected point -- and the
consequent worry is that the more we hound developers on this, the more we put
them off developing at all. That would be a terrible pity, and I think there
is an appreciation here all around that a modern replacement for the XSMP could
be a great thing. The error seems to be a management one, rather than a
development one.

Maybe it's just a question of expectation and taste. Like a previous poster
here, I used to enjoy the fact that session management was one of the few
things Linux did unambiguously better than other operating systems. Now it
doesn't, at least for Gnome users -- and it was a shock to me to find that
other developers never actually saw it as important in the way that I did. My
world is not exactly torn apart, but it may have been slightly tweaked in a
small corner somewhere. Gosh, maybe my view of that corner of the world was
wrong all along.

In the mean time, I'm running gnome-session 2.22 and gnome-panel 2.22 quite
happily with the rest of Gnome 2.24 on several machines.

Chris

As a fan of open-source for a LONG time, I'm beginning to wonder if it will ever cut it in the business world. I suspect with attitudes like the ones highlighted above that the answer is "no". And that makes me feel very, very sad.

It started when I reformatted my drive and started using Linux exclusively and gave up TV about 10 years ago. Up until then, I used to buy games and had game consoles around. I last remember playing Metal Gear Solid like a man obsessed and getting a sound beating or two playing Starcraft online.

On Linux, there were plenty of games - GNU Chess, Same Gnome and so forth. There was no buying any games for Linux at that time, so I learned to like these games a lot. I imagine people must have had a similar experience with Microsoft's Solitaire.

When I got married, my wife needed a Windows machine to access work applications, so we had a Windows machine and I could purchase games again if I were inclined. But, it just didn't occur to me to buy games anymore. I found free games to be more interesting in some respects because they didn't have money for graphics, so they focused more on other things. This isn't knocking professionally created games. In my experience they're great, I just wasn't looking for them at this point.

I tried playing games that won The Interactive Fiction Competition because I remember playing Zork back when I was young. I couldn't get into text adventures anymore, but I think it is worth exploring.

I had played Civilization before too. So, I tried freeciv, which led to other free turn-based games like Battle for Wesnoth and even returning to older games like Nethack.

I then went on to try independent games that you had to pay a small amount for, like those made by Positech.

I also tried Second Life and similar and found them to be glorified IRC chat rooms.

I'm getting into this history because I think it raises an interesting question. Why would anyone buy Halo III when they have never played the the first one? Particularly, if someone can buy the earlier editions for a fraction of their original cost now, and they would likely enjoy them as much as most people did the first time they played them, why not start there?

You may not be as extreme an example as I am, but I bet there are older games, free games or low-priced independent games that you have never played and would like. So, why are you buying the newest WOW expansion set (and paying the subscription fees) or HALO 3 - as soon as it comes out? Is it that you are so involved in these games? I can understand that because the one game I have purchased was Sid Meyer's Pirates - again, partially because I had played it before and liked it a lot. But, I don't want to assume that is true of everyone.

What about a new game? It's one thing to get the new Grand Theft Auto. It's another to get a totally new game. How do you decide to go with something just released - rather than buy something older that you haven't played before? Is it about having the newest and greatest in graphical features? What's the appeal?

Maybe you are such a hard core gamer that you've played most new games. But given the amount of time they require - is this really so? Maybe it is playing with friends, a la Quake. Maybe it's checking the review on Gamespot or Slashdot. Since I don't play them, I don't know. So was wondering if someone can offer a clue.

I guess part of my question is that I am looking at new things to try. I know there are a lot of good games out there that I haven't played. So, why would I be interested in these new models of game production or even new games? What do you suggest? What games do you think everyone should know? Is there a great game out there that you think most gamers have missed?

For example, I remember reading about one game in Slashdot where you are a pencil or something and you role around and things stick to you - something from Japan. I've also heard someone that taught fo

http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/

Do you know is there alternative for MS Visio?

Choices include Dia, Kivio and Umbrello. See the other answers, too.

There are hundreds of comments here and I'm not going to read them all so I apologise if I'm repeating something somebody else has said, but the Gnome tools for locking down a desktop are Sabayon (as I said above, not the distro) and Pessulus.

Sabayon is a desktop user profile manager and Pessulus is a Gnome lockdown tool. Sadly neither seems to have been updated in the last 3 years, maybe they did the job they were designed for, but I know people were using them.

Sabayon

Pessulus

And you might want to add Sabayon for full effectiveness.

Check this Lockdown and User Profile Editor called Sabayon. It comes included with Gnome. For desktop usage it seems to be what you are looking for.

For serveer side, LDAP works on Linux as well as Windows.

I think the point of the G...GP post was that you can't easily push this out remotely, and on Linux you have to write it, support it and debug it yourself, including all the niggly corner cases.

That's a good point, but the kind of huge organization you mention will have in-house IT people who can that anyway, and I still think the advantage of a FOSS platform outweighs the relatively lack of ready-to-go deployment facilities.

WSUS. Centrally administer the set of updates permitted to clients and servers. Linux version: Maybe set up a repository for your corp distro - but how to sync and manage the updates is what I don't know here.

Any of the major repository systems can be set up in a custom configuration with client machines automatically sucking packages up from a central company repository. Redhat's up2date and satellite systems are especially geared toward this kind of deployment.

SCCM / Zenworks / Others. Roll out an application to user desktops whether they're on-net or not. I can push Office to a machine 500mi from one of my offices

If I'm understanding this correctly, you get application installation automation for free with your centralized repository, perhaps automated with cfengine, puppet, or even ssh-in-a-loop.

Group Policy...

This is hard, and I'll admit Windows has an edge here, though personally, I feel like that's a little bit about North Korea having an edge in oppression compared to the US; it's not necessarily something desirable.

That said, if you must do something like this, there are ways. Other comments for this article address this point better than I do. For starters, there's kiosk mode "KDE's Kiosk Mode, allows a system administrator to configure all aspects of the desktop for an end user and optionally prevent the end user from making modifications to the provided setup."

Gnome also supports a lockdown system.

And as a last resort, you can always patch the software and distribute the patched version to all your machines.

Pessulus is a lockdown editor for GNOME. It is included is the admin suite since 2.14.

What's wrong with that?

The extra "bloat" needed to deal with, say, UTF-8 is minimal.

You should probably research a bit more about things... (1) Essentially most of the world uses what you call regional encodings, for example. (2) Those 241KiB you got are influences by lots of things. For example, with about three times the size gedit is quite more functional than your friggin text box (and absolutely no effort was taken to minimize its size that I am aware) (3) etc.

Also, who else thought it was this yelp

The Gnome 2 move was inspired from Sun's usability study on Gnome 1. The HIG gives quite a few references: http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/id2671625.html.en and there are others: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1146301 who agree.

The Gnome 2 move was inspired from Sun's usability study on Gnome 1. The HIG gives quite a few references: http://library.gnome.org/devel/hig-book/stable/id2671625.html.en and there are others: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1146301 who agree.

And (don't shoot me) I was given an iPod for my birthday a few years ago, and I actually like it - and dual-boot to Windows to maintain it.

Psst, that's mostly unnecessary, unless you're purchasing music off of iTunes. AFAIK, Amarok can sync with iPods just fine, and I believe Rhythmbox and various other Linux-native players can too.

      --- Mr. DOS

And glick, which I thought uses a nice method.

What would be more likely to fly would be a feature complete client to exchange.

That would be Evolution.

Inkscape is a vector editor, and doesn't support automatic layout when you move items around. At least that I know of, if you can tell me how, you'll make me very happy. That said, I use Inkscape for making presentation graphics in Linux, but it's not really a Visio replacement.

Reddit had a thread on this topic a few months ago, which you can find here: AskReddit: What is the best Visio replacement?

Some of the better suggestions were:

• OmniGraffle - Great, but Apple only
• Gliffy
• Project Draw
• yEd
• OpenOffice.org Draw
• Dia

http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell

What's annoying is that they used to have separate settings, or at least a setting specific to the terminal and then the global setting. Then, in 2.24 (I think it was 2.24), they replaced it with a single setting. I wasn't the only one who was pissed. In fact, here are some links to blogs and bug reports:

http://www.chrishowie.com/2008/03/28/gnome-terminal-cursor/
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=342921
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/hardy/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/188732

they didn't contribute GNOME. In fact, one might say they so far as to try to steal it, passing it off as the "Sun Java Desktop", when it wasn't Sun's and isn't Java based.

True, Sun didn't contribute GNOME, but they did a very nice usability study that GNOME found very useful, and helped move GNOME forward a great deal.

Makes one ponder, why has no one thought of this before now?

Seriously though, GTK's base libraries are written in C because of GObject. GObject is a C library which, while making programming a bit more annoying, makes it incredibly easy to use your library/software with other languages. You write it once in C (using GObject), then it can very easily be ported to C++, Python, Ruby, Vala, etc. Going the other direction isn't so easy. The idea is, you write libraries other people will use in C, then people write front-ends (which aren't typically reused by other software) in something like Python.

I like javascript and I would use it to write Gtk apps. The problem I have is that Tamarin, SquirrelFish and V8 are written in C++ when there's plenty of alternative embeddable VM's (lua, nekovm... parrot) in C that would be a better match for Gtk / Gnome.

The better solution would be a javascript compiler with a small runtime, something like Genie. ECMAScript 4 would have made that easier but even now it's a possible and perhaps preferable solution. A register based VM and tracing JIT, written in Vala/C wouldn't be beyond the bounds of reason either.

PyBank is similar. It also uses GObject-Introspection to automatically bind GObject libraries.

In fact, the Javascript side of this article is completely overlooking the technology that is GObject introspection; adding run-time dynamic introspection to C applications (and soon, reflection too).

Lotus Notes has a feature called mail delegation. It's commonly used by secretaries managing mail for their boss. Lotus Notes might be too big a change, but seemingly this feature exists in other groupware products too.

Here's the first article I could find discussing this feature in Evolution. http://library.gnome.org/users/evolution/stable/exchange-settings.html.en

GNOME isn't uglier than Windows XP or Vista in the "classic" mode...

Yeah, you're right. The textflow and font-handling arent't ugly at all. </sarcasm>

GNOME has a LOOOOOOOOOONG way to go before it's as professional as System 7.x, let alone a "modern" UI.

Gnome apps are preferred to be in Vala now, which is a high-level, C#-like language which translates code into straight C before compilation.

This post is TOTALLY offtopic. Really you need to split these up and file them as bug reports over on launchpad. I'll post a couple of comments answers but I'm not going to follow up on any of this (even if you answer any questions I ask).

- switching from dual display to presentation (clone) and back totally messes up x config, I have to uninstall and reinstall nvidea drivers

Talk to NVIDIA (Linux web forum) about this. It's their code you're running and they are probably the only ones who are willing to fix it.

- in dual screen mode, nautilus opens on the first display. I have to open terminal and run nautilus& to lunch it on the second display

You can't drag it? I don't quite understand...

- in dual screen mode, keyboard keeps focus in the previous screen. I have to minimize/maximize a windows on the "new" screen to move keyboard focus

Are you using desktop effects? (Do windows fade and slide etc?) If so this sounds like a bug in compiz...

- RDP client crashes X windows in some cases (it does not close the drop down list of used servers... and bang)

Hmm. I'm really curious now as to whether you are using compiz. Regardless your best bet with this one would be to be to see if you can capture a backtrace of the crash with debug symbols and to file a bug report against the RDP client (I'm guessing you're using tsclient) in launchpad.

- oh and NO it's not AN ERROR if I close the RDP window. If I want to reconnect, I will, don't hide under my active windows and bring RDP windows back in 30 seconds. That's just plain stupid.

I guess file an enhancement request on tsclient in launchpad.

- java and window decorations don't play well together (popups without buttons etc.)

I really would like to know whether you are using compiz. If you are I have a feeling this was a known "bug" in the Java bug database for a long time but the fix is not yet in Ubuntu.

- How about opening a connection to a new server in a new tab, not in a new nautilus window?

Hmm probably best to file an enhancement request over on the GNOME bugzilla.

- Flash stops working. I just see a gray square where flash is supposed to be.

64 bit Firefox using 32 bit Flash via nspluginwrapper I'm guessing. There is a 64bit Linux Flash plugin that is in very early beta that MAY work better for you (I've heard mixed things mind). Also make sure you're using Flash 10 whatever route you are taking.

- Firefox is not very stable.

Might be because of extensions or plugins or you may have found a problem page or your memory might be faulty or Firefox might be buggy or... You are going to have to sit down and capture the issue in Firefox this then file a bug report in launchpad.

- Windows would become gray and unresponsive when there's a lot of disk activity.

You're using compiz aren't you? The greying is compiz telling you that the window HAS become unresponsive! As to why this is happening on I/O it probably varies from program to program. Too little information to many possibilities to say more.

- I've seen ubuntu crash on my much more times than I've seen BSOD on the same HW.

Quite possible. I've seen Linux stable on some computers and fla

Dunno why that would be the case in SuSE, but here in Debian Sid, Evolution 2.22 has no Mono dependency.

Looking into it a bit more it is a simple bug:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=549025

Evo can support Mono plugins (but no default plugin is Mono) and this bug (now fixed) forced the main Evolution package to require Mono when built with Mono plugin support.

So Evo is not, in fact, dependent on Mono.

I've posted it elsewhere, you removing Mono from an openSUSE 11.1 install removes:

banshee-1-backend-platform-gnome, banshee-1-extensions-default, banshee-1, banshee-1-backend-engine-gstreamer, banshee-1-backend-platform-unix, beagle-evolution, beagle-gui, beagle, avahi-mono, boo, evolution, dice, f-spot, ggreeter, gnome-do, gnome-desktop-sharp2, gnome-keyring-sharp, gsf-sharp, gtkhtml314-sharp, podsleuth, taglib-sharp, tasque, evolution-sharp, tomboy, gnome-panel-sharp, gmime-sharp, mono-addins, mono-zeroconf-provider-avahi, mono-zeroconf, monsoon, mono-web, mono-winforms, mono-data-sqlite, mono-data, gconf-sharp2, glade-sharp2, gnome-sharp2, art-sharp2, gnome-vfs-sharp2, notify-sharp, ndesk-dbus-glib, ndesk-dbus, gtk-sharp2
and glib-sharp2.

That is just what is installed by default with the distro. There are Mono hooks for apps like Nautilus as well. How much longer will those Mono hooks be optional?

Also, these sure seem to be official Gnome apps:

http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/
http://projects.gnome.org/beagle/
http://projects.gnome.org/f-spot/
http://projects.gnome.org/tomboy/

I've also yet to see a distro that doesn't include these apps as part of their Gnome desktop.

I've posted it elsewhere, you removing Mono from an openSUSE 11.1 install removes:

banshee-1-backend-platform-gnome, banshee-1-extensions-default, banshee-1, banshee-1-backend-engine-gstreamer, banshee-1-backend-platform-unix, beagle-evolution, beagle-gui, beagle, avahi-mono, boo, evolution, dice, f-spot, ggreeter, gnome-do, gnome-desktop-sharp2, gnome-keyring-sharp, gsf-sharp, gtkhtml314-sharp, podsleuth, taglib-sharp, tasque, evolution-sharp, tomboy, gnome-panel-sharp, gmime-sharp, mono-addins, mono-zeroconf-provider-avahi, mono-zeroconf, monsoon, mono-web, mono-winforms, mono-data-sqlite, mono-data, gconf-sharp2, glade-sharp2, gnome-sharp2, art-sharp2, gnome-vfs-sharp2, notify-sharp, ndesk-dbus-glib, ndesk-dbus, gtk-sharp2
and glib-sharp2.

That is just what is installed by default with the distro. There are Mono hooks for apps like Nautilus as well. How much longer will those Mono hooks be optional?

Also, these sure seem to be official Gnome apps:

http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/
http://projects.gnome.org/beagle/
http://projects.gnome.org/f-spot/
http://projects.gnome.org/tomboy/

I've also yet to see a distro that doesn't include these apps as part of their Gnome desktop.

I've posted it elsewhere, you removing Mono from an openSUSE 11.1 install removes:

banshee-1-backend-platform-gnome, banshee-1-extensions-default, banshee-1, banshee-1-backend-engine-gstreamer, banshee-1-backend-platform-unix, beagle-evolution, beagle-gui, beagle, avahi-mono, boo, evolution, dice, f-spot, ggreeter, gnome-do, gnome-desktop-sharp2, gnome-keyring-sharp, gsf-sharp, gtkhtml314-sharp, podsleuth, taglib-sharp, tasque, evolution-sharp, tomboy, gnome-panel-sharp, gmime-sharp, mono-addins, mono-zeroconf-provider-avahi, mono-zeroconf, monsoon, mono-web, mono-winforms, mono-data-sqlite, mono-data, gconf-sharp2, glade-sharp2, gnome-sharp2, art-sharp2, gnome-vfs-sharp2, notify-sharp, ndesk-dbus-glib, ndesk-dbus, gtk-sharp2
and glib-sharp2.

That is just what is installed by default with the distro. There are Mono hooks for apps like Nautilus as well. How much longer will those Mono hooks be optional?

Also, these sure seem to be official Gnome apps:

http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/
http://projects.gnome.org/beagle/
http://projects.gnome.org/f-spot/
http://projects.gnome.org/tomboy/

I've also yet to see a distro that doesn't include these apps as part of their Gnome desktop.

I've posted it elsewhere, you removing Mono from an openSUSE 11.1 install removes:

banshee-1-backend-platform-gnome, banshee-1-extensions-default, banshee-1, banshee-1-backend-engine-gstreamer, banshee-1-backend-platform-unix, beagle-evolution, beagle-gui, beagle, avahi-mono, boo, evolution, dice, f-spot, ggreeter, gnome-do, gnome-desktop-sharp2, gnome-keyring-sharp, gsf-sharp, gtkhtml314-sharp, podsleuth, taglib-sharp, tasque, evolution-sharp, tomboy, gnome-panel-sharp, gmime-sharp, mono-addins, mono-zeroconf-provider-avahi, mono-zeroconf, monsoon, mono-web, mono-winforms, mono-data-sqlite, mono-data, gconf-sharp2, glade-sharp2, gnome-sharp2, art-sharp2, gnome-vfs-sharp2, notify-sharp, ndesk-dbus-glib, ndesk-dbus, gtk-sharp2
and glib-sharp2.

That is just what is installed by default with the distro. There are Mono hooks for apps like Nautilus as well. How much longer will those Mono hooks be optional?

Also, these sure seem to be official Gnome apps:

http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/
http://projects.gnome.org/beagle/
http://projects.gnome.org/f-spot/
http://projects.gnome.org/tomboy/

I've also yet to see a distro that doesn't include these apps as part of their Gnome desktop.

>Gnome is now firmly entrenched with Mono.

No, it isn't. Gnome-the-platform has no dependency on Mono, and the only apps at http://projects.gnome.org/ that use mono are tomboy (a note taking app, there are others), f-spot (photo management, non-gnome alternatives are digikam and picasa, otherwise you could use beagle/tracker and an image viewer) and hipo (ipod management, many music player can do this).

And a connection with Mono wouldn't make Gnome less free anyway, because Mono is free, even if it is *potentially* in danger from MS.

Eh, I like Komodo all right, but I wind up writing the majority of my code in plain old gedit. Actually, almost any editor with syntax highlighting is "good enough" for me. Several of my active projects number in the many thousands of lines of code, too.

The only reason Pidgin can't do it is that they haven't supported it yet (and probably won't, because the devs are very stuck up).

Ever heard of libjingle? It's the "video and voice" component of Google Talk, which is basically an extension to XMPP.

Any client that supports libjingle (I use Empathy, see screenshot) can do voice calls to Google Talk users.

Lots to talk about here!

The complexity of git robs it of quite a bit of the value of it's features. For God only knows what reason, a 5-6 person project that i'm working on is using git instead of subversion, and only the person who setup the project actually has any idea how to use git.

It sounds like the first person set up the project, and now expects everyone else to just "make it work", even if they're not programmers and have a good understanding of Git. Fair 'nuff.

Now I don't know your situation, but if you're actually in a work situation, the lead programmer (or user, if you're not storing code in this repository) should be giving you guys some kind of help or crash course in using Git. The Git model is quite a bit different than SVN, and it has taken me some time to wrap my head around it -- kind of like learning a functional programming language after working with imperative languages for several years.

It's awesome to have the whole thing where it merges all the changes in a same file together, fairly intelligently, but even the GUI version for Windows has no functional interface for how to deal with conflicts (which should be easily done as a "which bit of code is the proper piece to use here?" instead of jamming diffs into a file.

Which Windows GUI tool(s) are you using? Right now I can think of several -- gitk, git-gui, qgit, git extensions, CheetahGit, TortoiseGit, ...

I think that part of the problem right now is that there is no definitive Git GUI for Windows. Even if the TortoiseGit project gets more mature, users of TortoiseSVN or TortoiseCVS will have to learn a new version-control paradigm and understand some new terms before they'll be able to successfully use TortoiseGit.

Also, the Windows and Linux versions of GIT have several problems interoperating with each other.

Are you referring to line-ending problems? If so, take a look at the "core.autocrlf" attribute. If you're not talking about line endings, and you can't find any help online, I'd just go ahead and file a bug report or hop on the git mailing list.

In short, Git appears to have been designed entirely with features in mind, and not one bit of usability for anyone other than Linus himself.

Oh, I think most people would agree with that -- especially Linus. Of course, I think that this is partially a Plumbing vs. Porcelain issue: a number of geeks love to use a command-line shell, but most ordinary users feel much more comfortable with a GUI windowing environment. Many programmers really like the power they get from using Git on the command line, but some people want something a bit more user-friendly like Easy Git or a Git GUI.

It is a nightmare for people who only have the need for version control and a handful of people working together. It reminds me very, very much of early Linux, before anyone else besides Linus had been hacking on it.

Yes -- I can see that. The Git workflow is pretty different from that of a tool like SVN. Unless the team leader is willing to sit down with the group and work through examples -- and then also be ready to answer questions anytime during the workday for the first few weeks -- then it's going to be a really rough, potentially unproductive month. Even if they grumble about it, it's probably worth their time to train everyone up front.

You've probably seen this before, but for anyone who's moving from SVN to Git, there's a really good Intro to Git for SVN users.

Good luck!

Q: Can you connect to the server with other browsers or other clients? A: No

As of Exchange 2007, you can. I can access the web interface from Safari (Mac), Safari (iPhone, I also use ActiveSync), Firefox and Chrome. Only Internet Explorer will give you the full AJAX/ActiveX feature set but the Basic version of OWA is just as powerful albeit less elegant.

As for desktop clients, any that support IMAP will be able to integrate with Exchange. Any desktop clients that support ActiveSync will be able to integrate with the Exchange server a little more closely, or anything built on libmapi.

As I said before, I'm curious as to what size organisation you have experienced this with.

I've been using git personally for about a year now and have finally reached the point where I am ready to get the rest of my group to adopt it for our work. The tool I am recommending to help with the early git learning curve is Easy Git, http://www.gnome.org/~newren/eg/. Easy Git (eg) is a very thin wrapper around git. It provides clear and suggestions for git usage. Unlike other porcelains, you can trivially switch between eg and git at any time. I think Easy Git can improve the initial git experience for many potential git users.

So an even bigger project (at least in term of code size) will switch from SVN to git in the near future.

A survey was run among Gnome contributors and Git won the most support in almost all categories:
http://blogs.gnome.org/newren/2009/01/03/gnome-dvcs-survey-results/

Actually old bugs is pretty common, almost as common as bugs that noone besides a small minority cares about.

E.g. the GTK button bug was reported 2001 and fixed 2008, and that was a pretty trivial fix.

But as a word processor and a spreadsheet I find them irritating and clunky to use. I vastly prefer to use Abiword for anything where I don't care whether or not I can work with MS Office format files. And I prefer gnumeric for a spreadsheet.

I don't like Office. I don't like how it's all one big gigantic tool. I want separate tools that I can pull out and replace if something better comes along.

OpenDocument plus things like Abiword and gnumeric are what I want.

That's started to change in recent years, actually. A number of seasoned designers are now in leadership positions at GNOME. They've put together their own set of human interface guidelines, and firms like Novell have been funding usability testing.

So, although the artwork and skinning might not be up to par just yet, we now have a default desktop environment on Linux that has a remarkably simple and clean structure, even compared to OS X.

Of course, this only applies to the core desktop components. Outside of that, you get mountains of half-written apps with horrible UIs. But that's no different to contrasting third-party apps with core OS X and Windows stuff.

I call it being able to hear the "sound shadows" of objects, because that's really what they are - an object blocks sound, and that blockage is projected to the ear. With a good cane, I can navigate around tables, columns, and even position myself relative to peoples' voices to keep myself from running into them. It's quite amazing what you can tell with a good hallway, and a constant sound source (soda/vending machines are good). For example, an open, echoy space usually means a stairwell.

Also, randomness ... the first time I went to post, my screen reader was very sluggish and crashed. I guess Slashdot hates blind Linux users.

Personally I wonder why they want to abandon Windows XP support at all, Windows XP looks like a perfect cash cow for me, no need for further investments, most of the bugs are fixed and you can even skin it to look like Vista.

I don't understand why they want to abandon XP. I other word, they want to leave the Netbook market to Linux. Fine with me as long it is not Xandros. If you take LXDE instead of GNOME and KDE it still provides you with all you need. The Desktop is mature. It doesn't matter which operating system you run as long as it is fast and saves your battery.

Microsoft does not get it. The Desktop is mature. You don't need to provide Vista to your users. No one likes Vista. Instead they come up with Windows 7, in other words Vista++. Be sure Windows7 will eat even more memory. And users will again say: get us XP or we switch to Linux or we switch to Mac.

The real debacle for Microsoft is the merging business of software reselling. In other words, if Microsoft does not get you a Windows license, your used software vendor will, and you also have all the old machines and their licenses you can sell for cheap. Because Microsoft is going to get "cheap XP" and zero-cost Linux as competitors of "Windows Azurecloud".

If you run XP and your computer gets damaged then why do you have to get a new XP license with your new notebook? Bundling is a total ripoff! Time to complain. In some nations the courts made bundling illegal!

The day the bundling business dies we kiss Microsoft goodbye.

They pretty much fucked their own limitation over by releasing this under GPL (which they had to do, starting out with a GPL typeface to begin with).

Actually, Bitstream Vera isn't GPL and has no copy-left clauses.

The clause that you pointed out in Spranq's license is rather questionable, though. It makes it sound like they own a design patent on the font. That would also allow them to control derivative works, even if Bistream Vera was released under the GPL (v.2 or earlier).

I couldn't find anything that supported the patent theory, though. If it's true, that would certainly sour their slashvertisement. If it's false, then I'm pretty sure their patent is unenforceable, since you don't actually need to use the font to emulate its design.

I used to do my { on the same line when I programmed in Java. Now that I have been programming in C using gtk for a while, I have been looking for any way possible to shorten lines. The function names are just too long in gtk when using C because it's essentially laying attributes of an object oriented language on top of a non-object oriented language. It's just not possible to keep function declarations like gtk_text_buffer_insert_with_tags_by_name in one line a lot of times.

*sigh* I liked my coding style. But I have to find something that is readable with this strange mix. Unfortunately, changing my style means I also have to update the other styles eventually. I have also had to acclimate myself to using much shorter and less descriptive variable names.

Exactly why would we need a GNU/Linux version of Chrome? GNU/Linux already has very good browsers such as Epiphany, developed by dedicated free software communities.

Ever tried Planner? http://live.gnome.org/Planner There's also a Windows version.