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His rant sounds like the cry of the luddite. "I don't want to use these fancy schmancy typewriters."

Well even everyone's fav from way back is trying. I've been looking at RIA's from Macromedia's FLEX to Laszlo's PLS and everything inbetween[1]. Things are a changing and Mr Luddite better change with it, or his job will be going to an Indian who isn't afraid of the new fangled technology.

[1] Some of my hardware's a bit behind, but some of the RIA's could be speeded up.

Then this company should have gotten more of a nod then.

They're even getting into the small server market.

> It would be an interesting proof-of-concept though if someone wrote an XUL based desktop environment. Not sure, but does OEOne count?

If you check out OEone's HomeBase Linux distro you'll see what can be done with Mozilla. Everything in it runs with Mozilla as the desktop interface. It's increadably slick and easy to use.

If you check out OEone's HomeBase Linux distro you'll see what can be done with Mozilla. Everything in it runs with Mozilla as the desktop interface. It's increadably slick and easy to use.

Homebase Suite is a XUL-based desktop environment.

In your journal entry you said:

It's time to decide whether Linux wants to be a "hacker's system" where everything is compiled from source, or a "desktop system" where binary compatibility and simple installation is a must.

I don't think "someone" should decide to make Linux one or the other. The beauty of Linux is that it can do both, and more. What it needs, however, is dedicated people to see through the effort to make Linux implementations that work one way or the other.

Look at Gentoo, for instance, it has exploited the "I am a geek who likes to compile from source" niche wonderfully.

And at the other end of the spectrum, the HomeBase Desktop from OEone is IMHO a wonderful example of integrated, functional and easy to use Linux desktop. I wonder how many people have ever heard of HomeBase -- not many apparently if they still say "no Linux for the desktop".

So this brings me to ask "just what the hell do people want?" There ARE 5000 different Linux implementations out there. Some of them DO cover what you want. So what gives? I guess too much choice can hurt after all.

"Give up trying to be a "platform". Not gonna happen."

You nust be use to being ignored.
Oeone and Komodo

do a search for window managers on google, or try xwinman.org a site about window managers. I find that while gnome and KDE look much like what most people would expect, some other window managers put a new twist on how you interact with the computer.
also look at 3dwm.org a 3d window manager that's used at the 3D-CUBE

another good one is the Mozilla based desktop over at OEONE.com

You posted while I was searching for the link... Here it is anyways. Interesting project, though it appears to be stuck back on RH7.3.

But no. It looks like they're just adhering to web standards for their vertical app. Which I appreciate, don't get me wrong, but they might as well have been saying they were embracing Opera.

Actually, I think it's is mostly about On Demand Computing that IBM is trying to promote. If I understood it correctly, it is basicaly a one grid system consisting of all (or nearly all) servers in a corporation, but also of all the workstations that join and leave this big grid as people are coming and going. For that to work IBM is putting a lot of new software bits for automated management (a lot of it at the firmware level), at least on the server line, and I suppose that they need something on the client side as well to complete the system.

My knowledge of grids is very superficial but I think that most of the software running on top of grids is web or java-based. IBM is very strong there with its WebSphere and DB2 and one should expect their Linux Desktop solution to be web-based as well - more like OEone then Gnome/KDE stuff - it is a corporate productivity desktop environment after all!

It seems that everytime Mozilla comes up in the news here at Slashdot, clueless posters come in and start complaining about Mozilla's speed. Mozilla is not just a browser (and other utils like a mailer and so forth). Mozilla is built as an application platform. Yes, it's much more.

Basically, with XUL and JavaScript, Mozilla provides a facility very similar to Java on the client. You can build a complete set of applications with Mozill as the foundation. O'Reilly has a book on the subject that goes into further detail.

If you think back a while ago, Slashdot even ran a story about OEone which has built a complete desktop environment on top of Mozilla.

For what Mozilla actually does under the hood (and considering the application you interact with is itself built on this framework) it's surprisingly fast. And small to boot. You see, Mozilla embodies the original Netscape philosophy of creating an application platform in the browser. This is one of the reasons Microsoft was scared and so eager to kill them off. It would be another Java, but a Java that didn't require developers to create applications.

But I digress. I am sure every Mozilla related story on Slashdot will produce an army of people like you complaining abbout speed. Of course, how old of a computer do you have? I have never understood how anyone can consider Mozilla slow (unless you're dealing with the milestone releases which were full of debug code).

It seems that everytime Mozilla comes up in the news here at Slashdot, clueless posters come in and start complaining about Mozilla's speed. Mozilla is not just a browser (and other utils like a mailer and so forth). Mozilla is built as an application platform. Yes, it's much more.

Basically, with XUL and JavaScript, Mozilla provides a facility very similar to Java on the client. You can build a complete set of applications with Mozill as the foundation. O'Reilly has a book on the subject that goes into further detail.

If you think back a while ago, Slashdot even ran a story about OEone which has built a complete desktop environment on top of Mozilla.

For what Mozilla actually does under the hood (and considering the application you interact with is itself built on this framework) it's surprisingly fast. And small to boot. You see, Mozilla embodies the original Netscape philosophy of creating an application platform in the browser. This is one of the reasons Microsoft was scared and so eager to kill them off. It would be another Java, but a Java that didn't require developers to create applications.

But I digress. I am sure every Mozilla related story on Slashdot will produce an army of people like you complaining abbout speed. Of course, how old of a computer do you have? I have never understood how anyone can consider Mozilla slow (unless you're dealing with the milestone releases which were full of debug code).

XUL is not a toolkit in the same way that GTK and QT are; it's a set of UI technologies built upon Gecko, the rendering engine.

The combination of Gecko and XUL is being used outside Mozilla - see the OEOne HomeBase Operating Environment for one excellent example.

Gerv

What about OeOne's Homebase Desktop?

I'd love to buy one of these but I need something that works with a genuinely cross platform email/address/calendar client. Evolution is great, Outlook is easy but none of these are on every platform I use. Without that, it's of no use to me.

In any case, you can sync to Mozilla, assuming your export your data to a format suitable for import into Mozilla. The OeOne group are doing just that with their products, and I can do the same thing here with LDIF and other formats.

This is just the same old monopolistic style of thinking. As one post put it "hiding the application layer" is a good thing for most people.

However, the way Microsoft intends on doing it is wrong. Instead of integrating all their programs together, they need to create an interface where anyone can integrate anyone else's programs together. That way, you could integrate say, mozilla's email client with word and say the opera browser.

I saw this done a couple weeks ago with a linux distro called "HomeBase" from OEone, here.

As far as paladium, It makes me sick to my stomach. As good as the security could be, I don't think I can accept giving control of my computer to a 'dumb' hardware chip, or to remote authentication.

You said "Mozilla is furthering the agenda of a very large corporation" which I would agree with. Mozilla furthers the agenda of several other companies as well: OEone, ActiveState, IBM, etc... But Mozilla could not do that alone. If Mozilla has played a part in furthering Netscape's agenda, Netscape has played an even bigger part in furthering Mozilla's agenda. The staff and drivers of mozilla.org try hard to ensure that happens.

This may not be the best example (there are many others that would suit better) but I was reading bug 7 0 7 4 6 at the time, and figured I would post a few comments from it:

------- Additional Comment #13 From Blake Ross 2001-03-20 14:35 -------

By the way, having sat on these changes for over two weeks (and enduring
multiple merge conflicts), I'm not particularly interested in waiting until
someone finds the time to fix the other commercial cases. These changes are
going to break Alphanumerica and MozDev products also, as well as potentially
any other xul-based app out there, and while I'm certainly willing to help,
they're not waiting until every commercial vendor's branch is ready (such is
pre-1.0 development).

------- Additional Comment #17 From David Hyatt 2001-03-20 16:21 -------

Blake, I feel your pain, but I work for Netscape, and therefore can't approve a
patch that will bust up the commercial tree.

Are there any volunteers to convert the rest of commercial (outside of AIM)? I
would do it myself, but this kind of bug just kills my hands.

------- Additional Comment #18 From Mike Shaver 2001-03-20 17:05 -------

Hyatt: acting as module owner, you certainly _can_ permit a change that will
break a closed source base, especially after the developer (Blake) has gone to
such reasonable lengths to get someone to fix said closed source base. There
are lots of other source trees, as Blake points out, that will break because of
this (in the short term), and he's offered to help with the ones whose authors
are not actively preventing them from providing such assistance (as is
Netscape/AOL, in this case). We held off until 0.8.1 to minimize the pain of
this checkin, and the time has come to bear what pain remains.

If you don't feel that your employer will let you fulfill your
Mozilla-module-owner responsibilities, please let us know, because that's the
kind of problem that we have to solve quickly.

------- Additional Comment #19 From Brendan Eich 2001-03-20 17:42 -------

Module owners whose employers pay them to keep commercial add-ons working along
with their Mozilla modules have to wear two hats: one for their employer, one
for Mozilla. If there's a conflict, Mozilla wins, or we need a new module owner
(at least _pro tem_). Life's rough. Let's get these changes landed.

It sounds like all but Mac builds have been tested in any case. True?

/be

OEONE

I think you might want to try OEONE as an
alternate desktop environment

Slightly offtopic, but on the page of OEOne Homebase desktop here, they mention that they use Mozilla and that keeping track of bookmarks is so easy because little screenshots are taken. (?)

Have I missed something in my copy of Mozilla or is this something OEone'ish?

please read the site before posting shit.

i have never tried it but it looks nice and very easy to use. And the desktop is free. they are only charging for their anywhere functionnality.

the source code is even available under the name Penzilla

There are a couple of very interesting examples developed using this technology out already:

• OEOne, a complete desktop environment.
• Kimodo, a python and perl IDE.

It's named OEOne

I think OEone's HomeBase Desktop could do the job.

You might want to have a look at oeone. It's not a distro, but a user environment specifically designed to be simple and foolproof, with a limited set of functionality. Couple it with some kind of LiveCD such as Gentoo's and you're set.

How about OEone's HomeBase DESKTOP

Screenshots

How about OEone's HomeBase DESKTOP

Screenshots

You might want to consider takign a look at the HomeBase Desktop from OEone. It is a slimmed down, easy to use desktop for just the features you are looking for. Web browsing, Mail, and Wordprocessing are just one click away through icons on the bottom of the screen. It comes with other software such as media player. But these can most likely be removed if you don't need them.

Get your freaking facts straight. OEone is most certainly available as a distribution.

I hate repeating myself on Slashdot, but please check OEone's open source release page:
http://www.oeone.com/developers/

Source code is available via anonymous CVS. OEone also has an IRC channel (#penzilla on irc.openprojects.net) and a developers mailing list:
https://mail.oeone.com/mailman/listinfo/developers

Cheers,
Vic

I hate repeating myself on Slashdot, but please check OEone's open source release page:
http://www.oeone.com/developers/

Source code is available via anonymous CVS. OEone also has an IRC channel (#penzilla on irc.openprojects.net) and a developers mailing list:
https://mail.oeone.com/mailman/listinfo/developers

Cheers,
Vic

Do you want this guy running your servers?

I don't know about this company. A lot of ex. Corel engineers I know hate this man for what he did at Corel. In fact, they used to called him Eid Amin behind his back (relates to Idi Amin Dada). I hope this isn't another Loki in the making.

Major portions are already open-sourced. See:
http://www.oeone.com/developers/

Also, you can visit the #penzilla IRC channel on irc.openprojects.net to speak directly to developers.

And, you can join the development mailing list here:
https://mail.oeone.com/mailman/listinfo/developers

Cheers,
Vic

Major portions are already open-sourced. See:
http://www.oeone.com/developers/

Also, you can visit the #penzilla IRC channel on irc.openprojects.net to speak directly to developers.

And, you can join the development mailing list here:
https://mail.oeone.com/mailman/listinfo/developers

Cheers,
Vic

installer-rpm-glibc2.2-i386.gz

Aha! But it's not on this page. As I said, they seem to say that they have a version for Mandrake, but on the download page it only mentions RedHat...Anyoned tried it on Mandrake yet?

oh man.. look at this bastardization of Tux, the pengiun we all know and love and hate
pic here

Are you sure? OEone main page Look again. Bold red letters... ring a bell?

-B

-B

There was a story posted about OEOne, who built an operating environment "homebase desktop" using mozilla on top of RedHat. Thought some /.ers might be interested if they missed that one.

There was a story posted about OEOne, who built an operating environment "homebase desktop" using mozilla on top of RedHat. Thought some /.ers might be interested if they missed that one.

Mozilla is a single application suite; it is small compared to either KDE or Gnome.

This is a joke, right?

I mean, there's even a company that is using Mozilla to create a nice interface for Linux machines. How exactly is this different from KDE/Gnome?

It's every bit a platform as KDE or Gnome: It provides a user interface via xml, scripting language support (javascript), the ability to write add-ons for it, and it includes an html rendering engine, a complete email program, an WYSIWYG html editor, an address book, and (soon) a calendar/scheduling program. And anything it gives up in size to KDE/Gnome, it makes back due to the cross-platform complexities.

OEone and Mozilla are working on an Open Source calendar server. Support it!

Actually, the OEone download page states clearly that its OEone HomeBase Desktop product requires Red Hat Linux 7.1 or 7.2, and will only install on those versions. I tried to run the install script on a Red Hat 7.3 box and was told my operating system was currently unsupported. The FAQ confirms same.

Actually, the OEone download page states clearly that its OEone HomeBase Desktop product requires Red Hat Linux 7.1 or 7.2, and will only install on those versions. I tried to run the install script on a Red Hat 7.3 box and was told my operating system was currently unsupported. The FAQ confirms same.

More fragmentation of the userbase is not what the linux desktop needs. I really don't have much else to say here, the screenshots leave me speechless -- but not in the good way, more like in a stupified way. I just ask, why??

Do you get the feeling that people missed the point of why Rasterman and others (such as myself) say the Linux desktop has no future?

I am very confident that Linux will enjoy success on the desktop, enough perhaps to eliminate the Microsoft monopoly. But the question is not if the Linux desktop is dead - it's whether the desktop itself is dead.

I have posted about this once before. Embedded devices will integrate computing into the house. Average people don't like computers, they just use them. When they can do all computer related tasks through devices that integrate seamlessly into their life, the computer and the desktop will die.

Consider also a project like the OEone desktop - the beginning of blurring the line between oS. These are all signs of a new future of computing. Embedded devices are the future, not the desktop. So winning the desktop is like winning a battle, but not the war.