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Why wait for MS to catch up when you can have almost everything in those screenshots now?

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However, I use rss all the time. For example, I have around 300 xvid files that I like to access quickly, so I wrote a perl script to create an rss feed so that each title links to (and plays via file type association) the relevant file. No internet even needed there, although I do run Apache so that my windows box can run the same files over the LAN and display them through my projector :->
It's useful for me....

Another useful aspect (in Firefox anyway) is the live bookmark. I have live bookmarks for manybooks.net (shows me recent additions to the download list) and Redhat (shows me the latest articles in the RH magazine).

Also, as I run linux, I have access to something called gDesklets, this being a desktop applet system for Gnome. One of the applets is a News/RSS Grabber. I have 2 of these running on the desktop, one gets its feed from /. the other from BBC News. Have a look. (The clock is an applet too)

I don't think it needs to be part of the OS, but that doesn't mean it's not useful.

For gnome at least: http://gdesklets.gnomedesktop.org/

I agree with a few statements already made this should not be called "desktop" yet. As for the bar itself... him I do believe I've seen this before http://gdesklets.gnomedesktop.org/ or perhaps http://members.dslextreme.com/users/billw/gkrellm/ gkrellm.html When I did run gdesklets it was setup with a lot of the same features, quick notes, email, time, weather, calander and the list goes on. Nothing really new except it has goggle branded to it.

I agree. It looks like an ugly version of gDesklets or Konfabulator except it doesn't have even close to as many useful widgets. It also includes a large ugly Google symbol on the top bar which it seems can't be removed. It's also another Google product that is available only for Windows.

Gimp UI devs need a sharp rap across the knuckles. Otherwise, it would be a CHECK,

You might be interested in this.

In short: they know, they're working on it...

Cheers
Stor

Gnome is getting better and better but KDE is still eye-candier

Only for the uninformed.

.. let alone any more useful than Gdesklets or Gkrellm . For one these seem far more customiseable/extensible/useful in that they converge local system state (top) with social state (email/IM) with world state (news/RSS). I guess win32 users are missing out.

Huh? What's wrong? That it's spatial or that it's been flamed?

Mind you, I'm not saying that the flames were
deserved :)

For those asking the obligatory question: "But does it run on Linux?", the answer is "No, but..".

Linux (and BSD) have gDeskLets which provides the exactly the same/similar functionality with arguably more applications available for it.

It is these two exact projects which spurned the creation of Apple's "Dashboard" product available in Tiger.

I just installed gDesklets and I have to say it's pretty cool. It's not limited
to gnome and runs fine on my KDE desktop.

To answer the question, what is Drupal...

Drupal is the open-source CMS behind:

• KernelTrap
• SpreadFirefox
• Gnome Footnotes
• Linux Journal

and many more sites. Even if you don't know Drupal, you've probably visited a Drupal site before. Drupal is known for its modular architecture, clean code and developer friendlyness.

> Longer term, the browser development shows an increasing tendency for Nokia to include Linux technologies in its thinking...

True.

> ...the open source version of Safari is part of the KDE user interface environment for Linux, which could conceivably be melded with elements of Series 60 to create a mobilized version.

Not true, unfortunately.

Apple took KHTML, and restructured the code into layers, in order to remove the Qt-interface code, and replace it an OS/X Aqua interface layer.

Nokia then took Apple's version of KHTML, now called Webcore, and added a GTK interface layer.

So, while Nokia apparently has no problem with KDE itself, in that they are using KHTML-based code, it looks like Nokia will probably not be using the rest of KDE, due to KDE's dependence on Qt.

As most readers already know, Qt uses a GPL+proprietary licensing strategy, which forces commercial Qt developers to use the proprietary license, thus locking themselves in to a single vendor for Qt, namely, Trolltech. It has been speculated that this is the reason why some other companies, such as Sun, have chosen to go with Gnome instead of KDE.

This is an unfortunate situation, because KDE has a lot of potential, which is being held back by the license of its underlying Qt platform.

I would love to see the KDE developers restructure the rest of the KDE code in a manner similar to what Apple did to KHTML, such that KDE could be easily ported to multiple platforms (GTK, XUL, Windows, etc.), rather than just Qt.

That is unlikely to happen, however, since so many of the KDE developers are funded by Trolltech.

But, I guess there's no reason to worry, because the right things are probably going to happen anyway...

KDE will continue to succeed, supported by KDE-centered distributions, such as Mandriva.

And Trolltech's plan to make Qt the de facto standard for commercial Linux development, is probably going to meet with limited success. They'll make some money, but they won't achieve lock-in, as they and their financial backers are hoping.

Dvorak's on to something when he said people who prefer aesthetics could now buy a Mac to run Windows on it (though the reverse will most likely not be true, i.e. you can't run OS X on non-Mac hardware) - left unsaid is, of course, that some people will buyh these machines to run Linux instead.

Targeting a Mac will be easier, sure - some developers will probably buy a Mac and dual-boot (or virtualize) Windows or Linux on it, so there will be more Mac developers.

Thing is, most free software types won't consider OS X free enough - I'm switching back to Linux, personally; and a lot of OSS running on OS X share code with their Linux/Unix/X11 counterparts. Adium uses Gaim as its engine. Dashboard is based on WebCore, which is forked from KHTML - porting it back to KDE would not be too hard, and guess what, there is a GTK port. If efforts like gDesklets flounder, we can possibly port Dashboard wholesale to Linux.

Firefox and Thunderbird runs better on Linux (seriously. Try them on both platforms), and if Dvorak thinks OpenOffice is not user-friendly, he has not tried running it on a Mac yet. Oh, John, OO.o looks much better on Linux than on Windows too - if you're running the 1.1.x series, the Windows version does not have all the UI improvements that GNOME and KDE developers from Novell, Red Hat and others throw into it.

Lots of fun things are happening in the OSS world, especially on the desktop front - Sun and Novell are doing usability testing, Gtk# is making waves, in fact, F-Spot is the best photo-library tool I've seen, certainly looks faster than iPhoto and has cool things like Flickr integration built-in. Don't count us out yet.

For the uninitiated, what exactly is the Swedish Conspiracy? I did a quick Google and found this post on a Passepartout release notice. There's also this Newsforge post on the Swedish influences in Open Source Software.

When I first saw Dashboard, I thought "great, finally something that Does Right(tm) the windowmaker dock apps..."

Linux has had Dashboard-like functionality for LONG time, if you also include swallowed applications to this equation - for all eternity you have been able to stick small applications to your desktop launch bars or whatever. There's also now applications that replicate desktop integration - though I presume Apple wouldn't release something as buggy as gdesklets seem right now =)

Your logic is bogus as well. Mono c# is totally self-hosting. The mono C# compiller compiled itself Jan 2002, and by Mar 2002 it was able to compile it's own runtime.

not to mention OS cores

Not on an OS core I worked on. It ran directly on this chip that ran JVM byte codes natively. Not only was C not required, it would have been nearly impossible to write a C compiler for it (since the core itself didn't have the concept of pointers).

Do they mean something like Dockapps ,GDesklets, or Superkaramba? Or perhaps gKrellm?Yeah, that is new. :)

Dunno about you but seems like more and more these two companies are copying more from OSS, although thats not necessarily a bad thing.gDesklets are nearly the exact same thing that you're talking about with dashboard but the difference is that these have been around since August 2003, and I believe SuperKaramba was around even longer then that for KDE. As far as the other stuff goes, the OSS world has Beagle for searching (thanks Nat), alot of our lives involve scripting and recently its been integrated into desktop envrionments too instead of just cli. Equivalents for everything else too, and my god how long has full 64-bit support been avaible? Both microsoft and apple should be ashamed of themselves. They have paid developers working on this stuff all day long and still can't readily outpace OSS.
Regards,
Steve

There's also an RSS aggregator in gDesklets and it's been around for a while.

So Apple's integrating others' features it into the OS. Doesn't mean they came up with these ideas either. IMO it's Apple who's doing the copying too.

There's also an RSS aggregator in gDesklets and it's been around for a while.

So Apple's integrating others' features it into the OS. Doesn't mean they came up with these ideas either. IMO it's Apple who's doing the copying too.

and some of the FF specific plugins.

Completely agree. Epiphany has a really intergrated feel, but I miss the FF plugins (specifically Scrapbook, Dictionary Search, Plain Text Links... actually there are a lot of them).

The latest epiphany-extensions package contains a dictionary lookup extension that integrates with gnome-dictionary. For the other functionality you mention, we welcome more extensions. They can even be written in Python now!

Many people hate the new splash screen. No offense to him, but it's my opinion that the selector of the splash has particularly bad taste. There were several better ones.

Calm down, its just one of the few Linux/FOSS-related radio shows. If you want to know what he talked about: reading Nat Friedman's blog basically gives you the very same information! In the interview he spoke about: Evolution, Hula, SUSE / KDE and XGL. However, the interview is from 14 february which means its more than a week old. Comapre this to his blog which has a post from 22 february with interesting Hula news!

Also of interest is the last LugRadio had an interview with Miguel de Icaza. To you, i say: just read Miguel or Nat's blog. You really won't miss much from there. The added value of it to me, is that its both informative and fun to hear. The informative part is, for me, mostly a repeat while the fun part is used instead of background music.

Hula is just another mail/groupware server from Novell (The others are Open Xchange and GroupWise). And CalDev is just another format, to mix up things, when most open source groupware and mail servers and clients were converging to use GroupDav. But why is GNOME promoting this server and not the other open source servers?

Check out Planet GNOME and Footnotes and see for yourself how GNOME is being used as a tool to market software that has no direct relationship with GNOME, and does not use GNOME technology. So using GNOME to promote Mono and Evolution is one thing, but as a marketing plataform for unrelated software is another. Where does it end?

It's something like GDesklets for Gnome.

I believe the kicker bar is a gdesklet applet. You can find it here

Its called gdesklets. http://gdesklets.gnomedesktop.org/

Check out Expocity if you're a Gnome user and Kompose if you're a KDE user. Granted, it'd be nicer to see this built into X but for the time being they're not so bad.

Sorry, I forgot about the formatting requirements with Slashdot.

Some of you guys may not suggest Fedora for a linux beginner, but wait, I have seen quite a few users hop on to linux, completely abandoning Windows right with Fedora Core 1, and they are actuallly happy with it!
Installing applications are not that hard unlike the earlier days. I recommend rpm.pbone.net to find your applications packaging for Fedora, I have been 99.99% successfull! And with the brand new Yum, staying upto date is always a breeze.
I also recommend adding Dag Wieers repository in your yum configuration and this particular one releases very useful applications/updates. Needless to stay, once you load fancy themes and eye-candy like gDesklets you really can grab the eyes of people around you while giving you a pleasurable user experience.

There is also a gDesklet ...

Looks like things are (hopefully) getting better with GNOME 2.8. Just released GNOME 2.7.4 seems to have first implementation of the new MIME system which was proposed and described here.

KDE is as sweet as osx once you tweak it a little. My XFce screenshots have been often acknowledged by hardcore mac users. You just need to spend some time on it. Like 3-4 hours. I personally dont prefer windowmaker, maybe you need to try something else.
Try visiting KDE-look and check out some of the screenshots there. The ones that are highest rated. Or the ones featured at GnomeDesktop One of the things linux has improved a lot, is eye candy. If you dont mind all the translucant, super karamba bloat, your desktop might even rival with the sweetest looking osx.

I haven't used a Mac much but some of the new features that they have been announcing are really interesting. I'm glad to see them continuing to be innovative. I really like the look of Dashboard as I am a big fan of gdesklets and from what I can see it looks very similar. I prefer Linux on my desktop but because of Apples great integration with Java and all these new features the next laptop I buy is definitely shaping up to be a Powerbook.

Mono definately has legal issues that need to be cleared up before it should be used. Microsoft can currently kill Mono anytime they wish.

• Microsoft HAS NOT put anything under a royalty-free licence by submitting the standard to the EMCA. The EMCA stipulates that the C# standard has to be released RAND (Reasonable & Non-Discriminatory) Licence. Microsoft can start charging fees at any time for implimenting a C# VM.
• Even if they never start charging money, they have pantented the Hell out of the standard and can sue Mono for infringment.

On the simulated Dashboard you can have all sorts of nifty mini-programs called Widgets. One of Apple's sample programs is a stock price table, and they're up 7.36 percent.

Sounds just like what I have on my desktop know with gdesklets/gnome. I'm not gonna become one of these stupid "This idea was stolen from xyz." But, I'm sure in a year I'm going to hear Apple fanboys claiming yet another Apple innovation when gdesklets runs right now very stable, fast, and super customizable.

1. The Menus should be much more customizable; treated like folders that you can click and drag into (I hate to say this, but "Like Windows").

2. Better Video control properties; take advantage of XFree's extended features and have options like TV switching and such.

3. Better preferences; the control panels are quite lacking.

4. Other aesthetic enhancements that will make gnome pretty enough to compete with other window environments (like win XP's or OSX's). Smooth scrolling, the zoom-on-hover icons in OSX are sweet, and _drop shadows on windows_ would be real nice.

5. Some kind of Linux-version-of-Active-Desktop would be real nice, so I could have an IRC session running as part of my wallpaper,anchor the weather channel radar map to the background, etcetera.

1. The Menus should be much more customizable; treated like folders that you can click and drag into (I hate to say this, but "Like Windows").

2. Better Video control properties; take advantage of XFree's extended features and have options like TV switching and such.

3. Better preferences; the control panels are quite lacking.

4. Other aesthetic enhancements that will make gnome pretty enough to compete with other window environments (like win XP's or OSX's). Smooth scrolling, the zoom-on-hover icons in OSX are sweet, and _drop shadows on windows_ would be real nice.

5. Some kind of Linux-version-of-Active-Desktop would be real nice, so I could have an IRC session running as part of my wallpaper,anchor the weather channel radar map to the background, etcetera.

#5 is easily possible with GDesklets

gDesklets are the closest thing I've seen to the kind of achitecture microsoft are trying to achieve.

It is really odd that Gnome opted for Epiphany as a default browser in 2.x, when Galeon is a better and more featureful choice.

"better" is subjective.

"more featureful"... if any features are really valuable, they can be added to Epiphany. Features were not the reason Epiphany was given the nod.

I've read that the reasons were that Galeon did not follow some UI guidelines (this could surely be worked out?), and that Epiphany is simpler to use.

The GNOME guys chose Epiphany because Epiphany was better aligned with GNOME, and Epiphany's developer was more interested in being aligned with GNOME.

You say "this could surely be worked out" but the Galeon guys were not at all interested; they liked what they were doing with Galeon and didn't want to change to fit into GNOME better. The whole reason Epiphany exists is because Marco wanted to do something different than the rest of the Galeon guys, and they weren't interested in following him, so he had to fork. (Around the time this happened, one of the Galeon developers publicly blasted the GNOME 2.x HIG, saying it was stupid to take so many features out, and saying he didn't think Galeon should follow it.)

The Galeon guys were upset that Epiphany, not Galeon, was chosen as the official web browser in GNOME. But it shouldn't have been a surprise! GNOME had to pick one, and Epiphany was not only better aligned with GNOME but is developed by a developer who is more interested in being aligned with GNOME (and who didn't make public statements about the GNOME HIG being stupid).

In any event, only one browser can be the offical web browser of GNOME, and they chose one. That doesn't mean GNOME users can't use Galeon. It doesn't even mean that Linux distributers cannot put Galeon on GNOME desktops in their distros. GNOME has not, in any way, sabotaged Galeon. They simply did not choose Galeon over Epiphany.

Here's a web page with the history of Epiphany being chosen for GNOME:

http://www.gnomedesktop.org/comments.php?sid=1221& tid=14185

There is one other thing about Galeon: I have personally found it to be less stable than Epiphany. (I haven't tested Galeon recently; perhaps it's stable again. I hope so.) I want my web browser to just work, and for me, Epiphany just works. There are a couple of little things about Epiphany I don't like, but if they were fixed I would call it the perfect web browser. (For me, anyway.)

steveha

And now we're starting the years of clueless people who have never heard of XRandR. I think this post was from last year.

There's also no quick way to alter the sorting order, rip or burn CDs, or switch or create playlists in Muine.

There is a good discussion of Griffeth's article on Footnotes. One of the comments I particularly agree with is that many related tasks don't necessarily have to be combined into one monolithic app. A simple way to support rip/burn in Muine without explicitly adding it would be to implement drag-n-drop between Muine and a ripping/burning app.

Also, keep in mind that Muine is not finished yet. There are many parts of Gnome that are not finished yet. But the polish is getting better day by day.

As mentioned in this Footnotes article, the new Mozilla supports smb:// browsing through gnome-vfs, and the integration with your GTK2 theme has improved.

The GNOME guys don't have their own "Quality" project like KDE has now, but they arrange "Love days". And actually, it's today! So if you want to become a GNOME hacker, head on over to #gnome-love on irc.gnome.org.

http://gdesklets.gnomedesktop.org/

The i missed a way to klick on those headlines and open a browser -- karamba does not support stuff like that.

<shameless-plug>
Then you should be using gdesklets, and the rss-grab aggregator - get it here
</shameless-plug>

~Dave

What version of Mandrake didi he use? What are the exact models of the hardware it didn't detect? USB mice have been supported for ages for example. If you havnet tried Mandrake 9.2 or 10.0 then try again. Windows 95 would probably wouldnt work either, but does that mean that Windows 95 IS TOO HARD?

You may like to also try another distribution. Such as Knoppix. Knoppix has top class hardware support and doesnt need installing.

Windows XP dosent support my hardware, it BSODs when I plug my AGFA easypix camera into my computer, Mandrake pops up a disk on my desktop, and so does all the other Linux distros. My 52 year old mother can't figure out Windows XP, but she loves linux, and she uses it to play her games and online banking!

You may also like to report the non-detected hardware to Mandrake QA.

Here are some more links to back up my claim!

So try and get your Neighbour to try Linux again, tell him that its improving all the time!