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for all those faulty IBM hard disk drives, perhaps.

Built like a huge tilted record player, it can spin at up to 30 km/h. Any takers?

Couldn't we somehow merge all those screwed-up IBM Death^H^H^HskStar drives into a pseudo Beowulf cluster that would spin that fast?

Of course, I wouldn't want to be skiing on it when a few drives totally die :-/

EricKrout.com officially endorses Ximian GNOME

Confronting the KDE propaganda machine.

The KDE project is famous for its funded and organised trolling of weblogs and message board associated with Linux and Free software/open source. Outrageous newbie impressing claims are made for the software and huge quanities of FUD are spread to destroy competitors. If this sounds familiar, then you are correct, most of these tactics were lifted straight from Microsoft's arsenal of dirty tricks. The Windows look and feel is not the only thing the KDE project has copied! In this short article I will address some of the lies and FUD spread by the KDE trolling teams. It is my hope that this, in some small way, will redress the balance and re-introduce two things almost eradicated by the KDE project: Honesty and facts.

• Myth #1 - KDE is more integrated than GNOME
  
  The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given, the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It is nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" actually means.
  
  
• Myth #2 - KDE is easier to use
  
  Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (all systems do), but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. KDE has never been subjected to detailed user testing, unlike GNOME, and the claims of user-friendliness are from crazed supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful rarely look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets in the correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about application installation and removal? GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet by Ximian, which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations. KDE offers none of this, only a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.
  
  
• Myth #3 - KDE is more popular
  
  In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE, but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots use the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post alerting the faithful on a zealot-ridden site can skew the result so much it makes American presidential elections look fair and well organised. Popularity is also difficult to measure when *both* GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system. The systems can co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability, not realising that by doing so they are barely running KDE at all.
  
  One of the few solid measures of popularity is commercial use of a desktop, and here, GNOME is far ahead with both Hewlett Packard and Sun committing to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This also ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use. Sun's major contribution to the GNOME project is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the basic computer/user issues.
  
  
• Myth #4 - Konqueror is the best Linux browser
  
  Oh for a penny every time this lie is told in any KDE story! Konqueror not a bad piece of software. It's authors deserve praise for the work done on it. However, the sheer amount of orgasmic gushing by the KDE faithful is completely out of proportion to its actual quality. It is quite unreliable and even simple standards compliant pages can crash it quite comprehensively. It is also lax in its support of basic web standards compared to either Mozilla or Opera. It is also extremely slow - much slower than the latest incarnations of the GNOME Nautilus filemanager/browser (a target of much KDE FUD during its development).
  
  
• Myth #5 - KDE applications are better/more advanced than GNOME ones due to the ease of developing in C++ using the Qt toolkit
  
  See also: Qt/TrollTech. This is the most common wail heard by KDE developers, and yet it is easily disproved by looking at the actual applications for GNOME/GTK and KDE/Qt. KDE applications often have larger version numbers than GNOME ones... an old trick played by commerical software developers. Most KDE apps seem to jump for 1.x releases long before they are ready - KOffice being the best example. None of the components in Koffice are worthy of a 1.0 release, let alone 1.1 or 1.2.
  
  GNOME applications get much more testing in their 0.x stages and despite shorter development phases they mature and reach stable featureful release states much more quickly. Some examples of this are: the superb Evolution (groupware/email), Gnumeric (spreadsheet), Pan (newsreader), The GIMP (image manipulation), Abiword (word processing), RedCarpet, X-Chat (IRC client), XMMS (media player), Galeon (web browser), and for developers: Glade and Anjuta. All of these packages ooze quality, and far outclass their KDE counterparts. It is no understatement to say that GNOME is at least 18 months ahead of KDE in applications, and pulling still further ahead.
  
  It's not only in the area of user applications that GNOME is vastly more advanced. With the forthcoming 2.x release, a number of impressive behind the scenes technologies will finally mature: component technology (bonobo), media (Gstreamer), internationalisation (pango). As a developement platform, GNOME 2.x is, conservatively, 2-3 years ahead of KDE. And what is more, because it is not tied to a lowest common denominator cross-platform bloat-fest like the Qt toolkit, the lead (as with applications) can only increase further.
  
  It is also worth noting that GNOME also develops code for use outside the project (see the XML libraries as one example) - the KDE project rarely (if ever) engages in this kind of work. KDE developers ensure that all software must link with Qt, and hence tie it closely with the Qt toolkit preventing re-use and enhancing the value of TrollTech intellectual property.
  
  
  Yet despite all this, we are still regularly fed the lie that Qt and C++ makes application and desktop development easier. Judge for yourself.
  
  
• Myth #6 - KDE is faster and takes less memory than GNOME
  
  KDE is written in C++. While this is not necessarily a problem, it can be when Visual Basic reject programmers (which the KDE project is overrun with) do not know enough to avoid important pitfalls that plague C++ software projects. Stupid use of autoincrementing operators and iteration with C++ objects; and masses of unnecessary allocations and deallocations of memory are two of the most common. KDE suffers badly from both problems.
  
  Perhaps the most cretinous of all problems is blaming the extremely slow startup times of KDE apps on GCC. The GNOME 1.x releases were hardly svelt (2.x fixes many of these issues), but GNOME is a fashion cat-walk superwaif when compared to KDE's 500lb fat-momma cheese-burger scoffing trailer trash. One need only look at the recent fuss over ugly KDE hacks (such as prelinking) used to bandage up the design and coding flaws in the decrepit KDE architecture to see the truth.
  
  
• Myth #7 - GNOME development is slower. KDE releases faster.
  
  Fundamental misunderstanding. The KDE project releases as one big lump of code due to its use of C++ and the many problems this causes with libraries. The project bumps the version number of the entire KDE system for the smallest modifications. GNOME, on the other hand is componentized and each component releases on a (almost) separate schedule, bumping it's own version number but not the main GNOME version (1.4, for example). Occasional releases of the entire GNOME system happen, and that's when the GNOME version number is bumped (currently it is at 1.4). To see this in action, use RedCarpet and you will regular updates to GNOME components. GNOME development is not slower, it is in fact faster and more advanced. Lamers and newbies, however, fail to understand the advantages of this method and just see KDE 1.1.1 followed a few weeks later by KDE 1.1.2. Wow! KDE roolz.
  
  
• Myth #8 - The Qt toolkit is cross-platform and yet takes advantage of each individual platform
  
  The Qt toolkit (the software at the heart of KDE) is supposedly a cross-platform toolkit allowing the lucky developer the opportunity to write Windows/Linux/Mac software all at once. And yet, among the magical mythical claims made, the most nonsensical is that it makes applications which take advantage of the distinct features of the different platforms. This is of course, nonsense. Qt is a bloated, slow layer that is slapped over a native system's APIs in an attempt to make all the systems look alike. It no more takes advantage of Linux/Windows/Mac than Java does - in fact it offers many of the disadvantages of Java with few of the advantages. If you have ever wondered why the KDE desktop looks so much like Windows... you need look no further than Qt. Qt is a lowest common denominator toolkit, and that LCD is Windows - Trolltech's, the creator of Qt, real market.
• Myth #9 - TrollTech is a friend of Free software
  
  To Be Written. Ideas: Qt started out as non-Free. KDE developers knew this violated the GPL, didn't care, stole others' GPL code by porting it to link (in violation of the license) with Qt and are therefore untrustworthy. KDE core developers work for TrollTech. Expensive per developer licensing for writing closed-source with Qt, and hence KDE. Trolltech only moved towards the GPL because of the success of GNOME. Labyrinthine licensing nightmare (3 licenses to deal with). Gradual migration of features belonging in KDE into Qt (and so into TrollTech's IP portfolio), allowing easy porting of apps to the revenue generating Windows world (see TheKompany for a perfect example), thereby making KDE an irrelevant launcher of Qt applications. Claims made that Qt is GPL, while true, hide the real truth. There cannot be a real fork of Qt for the KDE project: Core developers work for Trolltech; any fork would need to be full GPL and hence ban any closed-source apps from KDE altogether (all KDE apps must link with Qt); Any commerical licensees of Qt (non-GPL) would and could only follow TrollTech. KDE is stitched up good and proper.
  
  
• Myth #10 - KDE is more than attractive, but GNOME/GTK is ugly
  
  

  To be Written. Ideas: Mosfet liquid theme is an ugly and unstable hack. GNOME GTk icons are better thought-out and of a far higher quality than the poorly drawn and cartoonish and confusing KDE ones. Qt is basically a Windows-look on a Unix platform.
  
  

As for installing and removing software, it would be good to have a more-or-less universal software management system. The two current contenders are RPM and Debian's apt-get, of course. Both have advantages and disadvantages -- for example, it's more common to find fresh builds of programs in .rpm format; but apt-get handles dependencies more gracefully. Perhaps what we need is a synthesis of the two, which would use the .rpm file format and apt-get's syntax. Instead of having a centralized package depot like apt, or many randomly distributed files like rpm, you strike a balance: maintain a server that lists current URLs for packages, which would be hosted on the project's page instead of centrally. Typing "rpm-get install Snicklefritz1.3" would check the central database for current URLs of the RPM and its dependency BruberMIPS0.9.5, download them from two different sites and install them. (Note: the "spell" system in Sorcery GNU/Linux [wox.org] works kind of like this, only it downloads source and auto-compiles instead of downloading pre-built packages.)

Too late, someone already did it. Ximian Red Carpet handles installation of system packages and apps, divided into several channels. Go to one of your channels (one for your distro, loki demos, code weavers, opera, star office) and upgrade, install, or remove packages to your heart's content. Nice pretty GUI too.

Ximian rules! everything you need for a desktop
and self installing. easy to update with the provided
red-carpet tool go to
www.ximian.com

to install run as root
lynx -source go-gnome.com | sh

Ximian rules! everything you need for a desktop
and self installing. easy to update with the provided
red-carpet tool go to
www.ximian.com

to install run as root
lynx -source go-gnome.com | sh

I've never used KDE (I don't like the look of it - icons have too many colors...looks kind of gaudy but maybe that's configurable)

I'm a big fan of Ximian Gnome. Its much less clunky and more attractive than vanilla Gnome IMHO. I recommend it.

I also liked Windowmaker and Blackbox when I used them, they're much more lightweight than running a whole Gnome or KDE environment.

Confronting the KDE propaganda machine.

The KDE project is famous for its funded and organised trolling of weblogs and message board associated with Linux and Free software/open source. Outrageous newbie impressing claims are made for the software and huge quanities of FUD are spread to destroy competitors. If this sounds familiar, then you are correct, most of these tactics were lifted straight from Microsoft's arsenal of dirty tricks. The Windows look and feel is not the only thing the KDE project has copied! In this short article I will address some of the lies and FUD spread by the KDE trolling teams. It is my hope that this, in some small way, will redress the balance and re-introduce two things almost eradicated by the KDE project: Honesty and facts.

• Myth #1 - KDE is more integrated than GNOME
  
  The oft-heard cry of the noisiest KDE advocates. No explanation is given, the reader is expected to simply grok the wholesomeness of KDE and the lack of this mystical quality in GNOME. It is nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" actually means.
  
  
• Myth #2 - KDE is easier to use
  
  Again, such nebulous arguments are never explained, and the reader is expected to simply understand the truth of the zealots statement. Both KDE and GNOME have user-interface irritations (all systems do), but "ease of use" is not a simple thing to measure. KDE has never been subjected to detailed user testing, unlike GNOME, and the claims of user-friendliness are from crazed supporters and not average users. Furthermore, the KDE faithful rarely look beyond simple-minded copying of Windows, and forget that administering a desktop system is just as important as having widgets in the correct place on the toolbar. For example: What about application installation and removal? GNOME has the excellent RedCarpet by Ximian, which makes the installation, removal and updating of applications trivial. KDE users are expected to fend for themselves with brutal command line driven systems. GNOME also has the excellent Ximian setup tools to handle various tricky cross-platform and potentially risky system configuration operations. KDE offers none of this, only a few small half-assed Linux-only tools, which make no attempt at check-pointing to return to known working configurations.
  
  
• Myth #3 - KDE is more popular
  
  In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE, but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots use the results of online polls as proof of their superior userbase - which is, quite frankly, complete and utter nonsense. Online polls are the joke of the century; it doesn't even require a motivated script kiddie to render then worthless. A single post alerting the faithful on a zealot-ridden site can skew the result so much it makes American presidential elections look fair and well organised. Popularity is also difficult to measure when *both* GNOME and KDE are frequently installed on the same system. The systems can co-exist and even run at the same time, except for certain applications such as panels. Many KDE users actually run GNOME applications for their superior features and stability, not realising that by doing so they are barely running KDE at all.
  
  One of the few solid measures of popularity is commercial use of a desktop, and here, GNOME is far ahead with both Hewlett Packard and Sun committing to using GNOME as the desktop for their Unix systems. This also ties in with the previously mentioned ease of use. Sun's major contribution to the GNOME project is in the areas of user/developer documentation, testing, accessiblity and user-testing. Three of the less glamourous parts of desktop development. The arrival of the GNOME 2.x series will see these contributions reach fruitition and allow GNOME to make a quantum leap ahead of KDE in most of the basic computer/user issues.
  
  
• Myth #4 - Konqueror is the best Linux browser
  
  Oh for a penny every time this lie is told in any KDE story! Konqueror not a bad piece of software. It's authors deserve praise for the work done on it. However, the sheer amount of orgasmic gushing by the KDE faithful is completely out of proportion to its actual quality. It is quite unreliable and even simple standards compliant pages can crash it quite comprehensively. It is also lax in its support of basic web standards compared to either Mozilla or Opera. It is also extremely slow - much slower than the latest incarnations of the GNOME Nautilus filemanager/browser (a target of much KDE FUD during its development).
  
  
• Myth #5 - KDE applications are better/more advanced than GNOME ones due to the ease of developing in C++ using the Qt toolkit
  
  See also: Qt/TrollTech. This is the most common wail heard by KDE developers, and yet it is easily disproved by looking at the actual applications for GNOME/GTK and KDE/Qt. KDE applications often have larger version numbers than GNOME ones... an old trick played by commerical software developers. Most KDE apps seem to jump for 1.x releases long before they are ready - KOffice being the best example. None of the components in Koffice are worthy of a 1.0 release, let alone 1.1 or 1.2.
  
  GNOME applications get much more testing in their 0.x stages and despite shorter development phases they mature and reach stable featureful release states much more quickly. Some examples of this are: the superb Evolution (groupware/email), Gnumeric (spreadsheet), Pan (newsreader), The GIMP (image manipulation), Abiword (word processing), RedCarpet, X-Chat (IRC client), XMMS (media player), Galeon (web browser), and for developers: Glade and Anjuta. All of these packages ooze quality, and far outclass their KDE counterparts. It is no understatement to say that GNOME is at least 18 months ahead of KDE in applications, and pulling still further ahead.
  
  It's not only in the area of user applications that GNOME is vastly more advanced. With the forthcoming 2.x release, a number of impressive behind the scenes technologies will finally mature: component technology (bonobo), media (Gstreamer), internationalisation (pango). As a developement platform, GNOME 2.x is, conservatively, 2-3 years ahead of KDE. And what is more, because it is not tied to a lowest common denominator cross-platform bloat-fest like the Qt toolkit, the lead (as with applications) can only increase further.
  
  It is also worth noting that GNOME also develops code for use outside the project (see the XML libraries as one example) - the KDE project rarely (if ever) engages in this kind of work. KDE developers ensure that all software must link with Qt, and hence tie it closely with the Qt toolkit preventing re-use and enhancing the value of TrollTech intellectual property.
  
  
  Yet despite all this, we are still regularly fed the lie that Qt and C++ makes application and desktop development easier. Judge for yourself.
  
  
• Myth #6 - KDE is faster and takes less memory than GNOME
  
  KDE is written in C++. While this is not necessarily a problem, it can be when Visual Basic reject programmers (which the KDE project is overrun with) do not know enough to avoid important pitfalls that plague C++ software projects. Stupid use of autoincrementing operators and iteration with C++ objects; and masses of unnecessary allocations and deallocations of memory are two of the most common. KDE suffers badly from both problems.
  
  Perhaps the most cretinous of all problems is blaming the extremely slow startup times of KDE apps on GCC. The GNOME 1.x releases were hardly svelt (2.x fixes many of these issues), but GNOME is a fashion cat-walk superwaif when compared to KDE's 500lb fat-momma cheese-burger scoffing trailer trash. One need only look at the recent fuss over ugly KDE hacks (such as prelinking) used to bandage up the design and coding flaws in the decrepit KDE architecture to see the truth.
  
  
• Myth #7 - GNOME development is slower. KDE releases faster.
  
  Fundamental misunderstanding. The KDE project releases as one big lump of code due to its use of C++ and the many problems this causes with libraries. The project bumps the version number of the entire KDE system for the smallest modifications. GNOME, on the other hand is componentized and each component releases on a (almost) separate schedule, bumping it's own version number but not the main GNOME version (1.4, for example). Occasional releases of the entire GNOME system happen, and that's when the GNOME version number is bumped (currently it is at 1.4). To see this in action, use RedCarpet and you will regular updates to GNOME components. GNOME development is not slower, it is in fact faster and more advanced. Lamers and newbies, however, fail to understand the advantages of this method and just see KDE 1.1.1 followed a few weeks later by KDE 1.1.2. Wow! KDE roolz.
  
  
• Myth #8 - The Qt toolkit is cross-platform and yet takes advantage of each individual platform
  
  The Qt toolkit (the software at the heart of KDE) is supposedly a cross-platform toolkit allowing the lucky developer the opportunity to write Windows/Linux/Mac software all at once. And yet, among the magical mythical claims made, the most nonsensical is that it makes applications which take advantage of the distinct features of the different platforms. This is of course, nonsense. Qt is a bloated, slow layer that is slapped over a native system's APIs in an attempt to make all the systems look alike. It no more takes advantage of Linux/Windows/Mac than Java does - in fact it offers many of the disadvantages of Java with few of the advantages. If you have ever wondered why the KDE desktop looks so much like Windows... you need look no further than Qt. Qt is a lowest common denominator toolkit, and that LCD is Windows - Trolltech's, the creator of Qt, real market.
• Myth #9 - TrollTech is a friend of Free software
  
  To Be Written. Ideas: Qt started out as non-Free. KDE developers knew this violated the GPL, didn't care, stole others' GPL code by porting it to link (in violation of the license) with Qt and are therefore untrustworthy. KDE core developers work for TrollTech. Expensive per developer licensing for writing closed-source with Qt, and hence KDE. Trolltech only moved towards the GPL because of the success of GNOME. Labyrinthine licensing nightmare (3 licenses to deal with). Gradual migration of features belonging in KDE into Qt (and so into TrollTech's IP portfolio), allowing easy porting of apps to the revenue generating Windows world (see TheKompany for a perfect example), thereby making KDE an irrelevant launcher of Qt applications. Claims made that Qt is GPL, while true, hide the real truth. There cannot be a real fork of Qt for the KDE project: Core developers work for Trolltech; any fork would need to be full GPL and hence ban any closed-source apps from KDE altogether (all KDE apps must link with Qt); Any commerical licensees of Qt (non-GPL) would and could only follow TrollTech. KDE is stitched up good and proper.
  
  
• Myth #10 - KDE is more than attractive, but GNOME/GTK is ugly
  
  

  To be Written. Ideas: Mosfet liquid theme is an ugly and unstable hack. GNOME GTk icons are better thought-out and of a far higher quality than the poorly drawn and cartoonish and confusing KDE ones. Qt is basically a Windows-look on a Unix platform.
  
  

How is this situation any different from free software projects using Sun's Java technologies? Isn't this just two sides of the same coin?

On one side you have Gnome intending to use Mono, a cross-platform language and runtime environment based on open standards,
and on the other you have projects such as Apache's Jakarta using Java, a cross-platform language and runtime envionment based on almost open standards.

I don't recall seeing RMS bitching too heavily about Sun's absolute control of the Java language and runtime.what it was that RMS didn't like about it. I wouldn't be surprised if he's just being reactionary for the sake of it.

Yesterday, I was sitting at a Microsoft Windows workstation researching something on physics, when I came accross a Webpage with an embedded Java applet. I was dumbstruck; what a fabulous idea! From what I can gather, Java applets are quite prevalent in education circles and other applications where user input can be taken to produce a visual representation of the result.
.NET and C# are basically a reimplementation of Java. Sure, they add new features like cross-language support, and finer grained security context. These mean respectively that I could call a perl function from a python script inline. The latter means I could create software that has extensible input and output filters for program data, where the filters are trusted to convert data but never write it to disk.
So, why then do I think .NET is the best thing for GNOME? It's really very simple: The Java runtime environment is non-free. Certainly, Free Software Java interpreters like Kaffee came a long way when they were actively under development, but what was really missing was a complete set of class libraries.
Ximian Mono is writing a complete cross platform development and code exceution platform which includes a complete set of class libraries, and a JIT (Just in Time) interpeter for .NET bytecode that allows the code, once compiled, to be run at almost native speeds.
Finally, .NET is an open standard; Java is not. It's been submitted to the ECMA which means that you, I and Miguel are free to make an open implementation of it, explicitly. Sure, some may worry that Microsoft have subversive motives in doing so, but the fact remains that they've released a technology that's at least as good as, if not better than Java.
I don't know about you, but I want to see the day when I'm doing research and I hit a page with an interactive demonstration written in .NET and I can view it in Mozilla, or in Konqueror, without having to install Sun or IBM's proprietary Java runtime. It's all about the technology, only in this case it makes sense not only to pragmatists but Free Software enthusiasts too. In fact I bet that most of the anti-Mono trolls are the very ones that have those proprietary Java runtimes installed on their systems.

Then there was that whole stir-up with RMS running for a position on the Gnome board and loosing. I think I recall he made some vague references about being distrubed about the direction Gnome was going, and the need to keep it focused on Freedom.

But RMS seemed concilatory when the non-GPL license was announced.

Can someone with more connections into the Cambridge circle of FSF people comment on what the heck is going on ? Personally I feel disturbed by this .NET focus and the proprietary software from Ximian, enough to start focusing on finding non-de Icaza replacements for tools I depend on (switching from gnucash to SQLledger will be the biggest).

Has de Icaza just lost it and sold out ? Does RMS see .NET as a very big threat, way bigger than everyone else is seeing it, and thus it is worth any strategy at all to open it up ? Can someone fill in with information on the views of the key players ?

I think TigerT is a great graphics designer, and doing great work with the new gnome icons. Take a look at his stock icons page to see the icons. The linux desktop is just like any other desktop, it can be made to look really great, or you can put an ugly background and use an ugly window manager and make it look like shite. It basically comes down to each user's preference. I did notice that the screenshot's on Libranet's site were quite ugly, but don't let that make you think that all linux desktop's look that way.

This leaves DotGNU Portable.NET as the only true Free Software project tackling the implementation of the CLR, C# compiler, C# class library, etc.

http://www.southern-storm.com.au/portable_net.html .

We are looking for developers to help us build our system into a truly-Free implementation. Portable.NET has been around longer than Mono, and remains true to the principles of Free Software.

Ximian Evolution is an Outlook replacement. To use it with Exchange 2000, you may need the Exchange connector.

Ximian Evolution is an Outlook replacement. To use it with Exchange 2000, you may need the Exchange connector.

What is more, there is a new file-select dialog coming thanks to Chris at Ximian (at some point) - Michael Meeks has the screenshot

Look, Ximian's stated goal is to provide "simple, intuitive set-up tools for first time users". Failure to anticipate such a conflict on a widely-used Linux distro is pretty serious. Yeah, we all make mistakes, but this was a biggie.

Miguel's Mono Roadmap

Red Hat already offers a more compelling product - they'll update your entire OS, not just the UI.

Uh... so does Red Carpet. The system updates a lot more than the Ximian UI... it'll patch your OS, with packages from your distribution vendor, and also install stuff like StarOffice (although only 5.2... I use SO6b and it's not in Red Carpet yet...), Loki demos, CodeWeavers Wine and even a trial version of VMware.

I won't be paying the fee for faster service (as someone pointed out, just run the updates overnight and you haven't really lost out on anything), but I will continue using Red Carpet. At least until something better comes along.

The best advice I could give them at this point is to develop some truly useful and unique linux apps and sell them.

Ever heard of Evolution? ... Though I certainly hope it doesn't come to that...

KDE X (pun: OS X) and GNOME XP (pun: Windows XP)

That's an interesting pair of comparisons you make. I've always thought that KDE was striving to be the Windows of Linux, and the last Ximian Gnome I tried reminded me strongly of the MacOS interface.

The "fix" in 1.0 is to just pop up an error dialog rather than crash the entire program. Yeah, that's nice, but I would consider sending email a critical feature.

Am I the only one with this problem?

Evolution looks cool, and it has several features I want, but if I can't perform simple tasks like clicking "New Message" without a crash, I shudder to think what else is wrong with it.

In the interim, I'm using Mozilla Mail (yeah, I know, I know) -- at least it has a (halfway) decent address book, decent UI, multi-account, multi-identity support, and the ability to read HTML mail. I dislike it, but when my boss sends me a message full of crazy M$ Word/Outlook HTML tags, I need to be able to at least read it. I'll switch to Evolution the first chance I get.

It looks, though, that I won't get that chance for some time yet...

How do they suppose that mutt/pine/elm users are going to migrate to evolution if they regard basic stuff like these as 'feature bloat' (while displaying HTML spam in all its glory isn't) ?

Very true. I used to use Gnome exclusively, in preference to KDE (probably due to RedHat favoring Gnome to some extent). Then a few months ago I bought and installed the Ximian desktop. Sure it looks really nice, but runs about as well as OS-X on my old iMac (really, really bad). So I decided to take another look at KDE and unless the KDE team do something unbelievably stupid in V3, I'll be staying with it! Even with all the bells and whistles enabled, and the Acqua theme in use, it's a joy to use on both my Vaio and Athlon desktops.

I'll keep checking out Gnome's development, but for the moment, it can't touch KDE in terms of speed or usability, in my view...

S/Mime is slated for 1.1 or 1.2 release. See http://bugzilla.ximian.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1350 for details.

Full compatability with MS Exchange Is coming

See press release at Ximian's site. Available early next at $69 a pop.

Otherwise, download the binaries or source code.

Otherwise, download the binaries or source code.

And remain ignorant... From it's inception .NET by its definition is an open architecture... it is designed to be cross platform on the server and client side

Have we forgotten Mono by Ximian ?

ASP.NET is designed to function within any browser from Netscape 3.0 upwards... The core artchitecture of .NET is based on XML... which is about as open a standard as you will ever find.

So.... please tell me how is it someone developing on .NET may find themselves locked into a Gatesian world ?

As for waiting for a standards body.... the core architecture .NET platform is based on open standards much of which is administered by the W3C organisation.

As for the the moderator scoring these comments.... I guess your scoring method is based on 99% anti-MS sentiment, 0.5% for its intelligence and another 0.5% for how informed it is.

Jetspeed has iCalendar support, but apparently nobody's currently working on it.

Apparently Ximian thinks it's enough to make clients open-source and leave servers to the proprietary folks.

Troll.

I'll never trust a company that wants to use "Community Good" for its own personal gain (same as GNOME) ..also known as fuck thy neighbor.

I guess that's the beauty of Open Source(TM). I can take a big shit on you, and so what right? Go back to working long hours now so I can exploit your hard work for my gain.

Evolution supports IMAP for the email side of things very well, and LDAP for shared address books, but if your wife makes use of Outlook's calendar system then it won't be so simple to switch.

It is also possible that your Exchange administrator has turned off the IMAP support on the Exchange server, in which case you have no chance at all im afraid.

Check out http://lists.ximian.com/archives/public/evolution- hackers/2000-August/000360.html for some more information, though while that thread seems quite positive, I have not heard of any movement since then.

Ewan

-PhilMills

Ximian has an answer for that: Red Carpet (usually) works great. Lately they've had some signature deficiencies, and there have been some dependencies that got missed WRT GIMP modules last night.

Beyond that Linux has much more comprehensive on-line documentation than Windows, in my estimation.

Case in point: I bought a Mitsume IDE CD-RW drive for my wife's school. I couldn't make any of the Windows software recognize it as a writer. I swapped it out for an older Mitsumi drive in my Linux box, and it worked just fine! Go figure. (I took the older drive to school, and *it* worked!)

I think a previous poster was right: Windows is thought to be easy because it's ubiquitous. People mistake familiarity for ease. Bruce Tognazzini talks about this idea.

Why do people insist on posting bug reports to slashdot? If you want your issue to be addressed, there's a proper forum for that.

http://www.ximian.com/products/ximian_evolution/

http://www.ximian.com/products/ximian_evolution/

Full annoucement here

They may not have a billion dollars, but they have a billion stuffed monkeys! Their cuteness will eradicate all!

Touch the monkey...

It's too bad no one is developing a set of cross-platform configuration utilities for Linux and other Unix systems.

-Erik

One tool which I have found making process in this area is Ximian Setup Tools.

You can get it with Ximian Desktop but you may have to hunt for them in Red Carpet. Best thing to try Ximian in is probably Red Hat.

One tool which I have found making process in this area is Ximian Setup Tools.

You can get it with Ximian Desktop but you may have to hunt for them in Red Carpet. Best thing to try Ximian in is probably Red Hat.

One tool which I have found making process in this area is Ximian Setup Tools.

You can get it with Ximian Desktop but you may have to hunt for them in Red Carpet. Best thing to try Ximian in is probably Red Hat.

• 
  
  
• Where do I partition disks ?
• Where do I mount and unmount things ?
• Where do I set the colour depth and resolution of my display
• Where do I share things ?
• Where do I reconfigure my network settings ?

These are all dealt with (and many more: how do you manage users?) in Ximian Setup Tools, a collection of programs (generally perl scripts) that provide an abstraction from the underlying system and allow one to configure the above via command-line or point-and-drool GUI tools. Incidentally, they are working with KDE on the backend to prevent duplication, so all that one needs to do is slap a pretty face on it. On the GNOME side, this is being integrated into the new control center (check out Red-Carpet Ximian Preview). Many of these tools need work/polish, but they're coming along very nicely. This is a known problem, and is being addressed. Note that the solution is much more integrated/elegant than Window's ``Where do I go to change that?'' (oh, it's easy: open an explorer window, then go to View->File types... and try to navigate that, er or was it in the control panel?)

• Where do I load and unload kernel modules ?

? These are dynamically loaded and unloaded as needed or not on Linux, so this prolly doesn't get as much attention.

• Where can I reconfigure my kernel, compile it, isntall it and reboot all by checking a few boxes and hitting a button ?

You can't do this at all on non-free systems, and vendors generally ship with a kernel that is fine for most purposes/people. That said, with the new Linux kernel configuration system (curtesy ESR), one could do this, but the sentiment seems to be that if you're recompiling a kernel, you probably should know enough about computers to not be afraid of `make menuconfig', so this has not received much attention, afaik.

Oh, and with some finesse, you don't need to reboot to load a new kernel -- this would be kinda nice to have a GUI tool for ;-)

Ximian has problems figuring dependencies under Slack. See their explanation.

KOrganizer for KDE
Evolution for Gnome

While I realize I may get flamed to a small charcoal briquette for this, what about importing into this (or any other Open Source product, for that matter) your calendar (or messages) from Outlook?

In my office, we use both Win products and Linux/Unix. Windows basically owns most of the desktops in here, while *nix is on many of our servers. I use Linux for my workstation, and many of my coworkers are interested in trying it as well. The big stumbling block? Getting their mail into Evolution/Kmail/Nutscrape/Mozilla as well as all their calendar items.

Outlook Express can export into a format that Evolution will read, but not if it's working from a .pst file. Has anyone found a way to happilly export mail, contacts, calendar, etc. reliably? So far I've tried all the options Outlook 2000 offers into Evolution, Kmail and Mozilla without success. You can send contacts as V-Cards into Evolution, but that's a long and tiresome task if you have over 300 contacts since Outlook has a nasty habit of only letting send about 10 at a time (at least, I've run into problems sending more... is it possible to do?).

Projects like OEone or KOrganizer are great, but it's more difficult to get anyone to try them if it means losing all their old/current data.

People seem not to have noticed Ximian's rival project called Mono. It's a Good Thing they're doing there, imho - even if it is miles away from being a .net rival at the moment...

Mong.

Mono is a development platform, .NET My Services are web services provided by Microsoft. What exactly makes you thing there is any relationship at all?

From the About Us page on the Ximian website, "...announced Mono Project, a community initiative to develop an open source, Linux-based version of the Microsoft.NET development platform."

It's little statements like that that make stupid people like me think Mono might just have something to do with .NET.

The FAQ you point at claims that Mono has nothing to do with Passport-- although I think my questions still stand. Would users have to pay if they use Mono to hook into passport? (Presumably yes.) Would Mono developers have to pay if Mono had the capacity to hook into Passport? (No clue).

That FAQ doesn't say a damn thing about "My Services", whatever that is. The article says something about creating applications which can hook into "My Services." Is this going to include anything that uses the .NET API (that thing which Mono is emulating)? Again, I don't know. Saying "Mono has nothing to do with .NET My Services" doesn't even come close to addressing any of the questions I ask. Indeed since Mono trumpets itself as a replacement of some of the things in .NET, it's only natural to ask how Mono is affected when there is an article about licensing fees of some portion of .NET (particularly if the vocabulary is not the same as what's in the Mono FAQ).

-Rob

>Interesting that they broke red carpet (shades of Microsoft!), I guess it competes too much with their rhnetwork thing.

Way to jump to conclusions there, cowboy.

Redhat didn't do anything to break Red Carpet. It was broken because it was linked to an old version of rpm. This is fixed in the new version of Red Carpet, which should run flawlessly on Redhat 7.2. You can read about it on Ximian's Red Carpet mailing list.

In fact, I'm going to do the full Ximian install on my new Redhat 7.2 system as soon as I get home.

From the Red Carpetmailing list:
On Tue, 2001-10-23 at 09:52, eichen@raleigh.ibm.com wrote:
> Do you have an estimate as to when red-carpet will support
> redhat 7.2?

We shipped support for Red Hat 7.2 yesterday, so Red Carpet 1.1.3 should
be included, which supports RH 7.2 and RPM 4.0.3.

Thanks,
Joe

The team at Ximian has been busy fixing every bug you guys have reported (feature requests will have to wait until 1.0 ships, we are in feature freeze now) and we are closing bugs faster that you can report them.

I've been hoping to get this bug fixed for a while now. What are you going to do about that? Huh? Huh?