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Isn't Gnome's own, independent, development near being trifled since Ximian took on? And, then, where does Ximian lead us for Free Desktops?

See this:

The suggested retail price is $99 (U.S.)

In addition to the Bitstream fonts bundled with GNOME 2.2, Ximian Desktop 2 includes MS-Windows compatible fonts from AGFA*, so your applications, documents and web pages look their best. AGFA fonts available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

Access virtually all print, media, audio and video web content with the bundled Adobe Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, Macromedia Flash Player 6, and Java 2 Run-time Environment. Available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

In my view there are a lot of "By it now"s, being based on a "free desktop". When did a Windows user pay for Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, or Macromedia Flash Player 6; apart from the fancy versions?

Where is the incentive in opening the gates for Ximian hell here?! Who is duped? Perens?! Aren't Ximian just like any other money drainer?! To me, it sure looks like that. But, as always, I may be wrong again...

Adobe payed for using Qt and they can probably afford it. How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian? 99$ for a desktop(!) with Acrobat Reader, Real Player, and Flash Player?!

How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian, apart from Miguel himself?

Here are some brave words: "Ximian is offering a complete, low-cost productivity solution for Linux." Mike Rogers, VP and General Manager Desktop and Office Productivity Software Sun Microsystems

Hrmmmm... Somehow, my thoughts are in the direction that this LGPL talk is a setup for giving Ximian a get-go start harvesting all the multimillion dollar berries. But, I may be as wrong as many a time before.

Yes, sure: ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/xd2/redhat-9-i386. But, the one who has the copyright on the code does set the agenda to a large extent, and that may be what all this is about.

I have no idea who is pushing the LGPL agenda besides Perens, but Ximian seems to me being a likely candidate. Maybe, I should RTFA... ;)

Isn't Gnome's own, independent, development near being trifled since Ximian took on? And, then, where does Ximian lead us for Free Desktops?

See this:

The suggested retail price is $99 (U.S.)

In addition to the Bitstream fonts bundled with GNOME 2.2, Ximian Desktop 2 includes MS-Windows compatible fonts from AGFA*, so your applications, documents and web pages look their best. AGFA fonts available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

Access virtually all print, media, audio and video web content with the bundled Adobe Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, Macromedia Flash Player 6, and Java 2 Run-time Environment. Available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

In my view there are a lot of "By it now"s, being based on a "free desktop". When did a Windows user pay for Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, or Macromedia Flash Player 6; apart from the fancy versions?

Where is the incentive in opening the gates for Ximian hell here?! Who is duped? Perens?! Aren't Ximian just like any other money drainer?! To me, it sure looks like that. But, as always, I may be wrong again...

Adobe payed for using Qt and they can probably afford it. How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian? 99$ for a desktop(!) with Acrobat Reader, Real Player, and Flash Player?!

How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian, apart from Miguel himself?

Here are some brave words: "Ximian is offering a complete, low-cost productivity solution for Linux." Mike Rogers, VP and General Manager Desktop and Office Productivity Software Sun Microsystems

Hrmmmm... Somehow, my thoughts are in the direction that this LGPL talk is a setup for giving Ximian a get-go start harvesting all the multimillion dollar berries. But, I may be as wrong as many a time before.

Yes, sure: ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/xd2/redhat-9-i386. But, the one who has the copyright on the code does set the agenda to a large extent, and that may be what all this is about.

I have no idea who is pushing the LGPL agenda besides Perens, but Ximian seems to me being a likely candidate. Maybe, I should RTFA... ;)

Isn't Gnome's own, independent, development near being trifled since Ximian took on? And, then, where does Ximian lead us for Free Desktops?

See this:

The suggested retail price is $99 (U.S.)

In addition to the Bitstream fonts bundled with GNOME 2.2, Ximian Desktop 2 includes MS-Windows compatible fonts from AGFA*, so your applications, documents and web pages look their best. AGFA fonts available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

Access virtually all print, media, audio and video web content with the bundled Adobe Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, Macromedia Flash Player 6, and Java 2 Run-time Environment. Available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

In my view there are a lot of "By it now"s, being based on a "free desktop". When did a Windows user pay for Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, or Macromedia Flash Player 6; apart from the fancy versions?

Where is the incentive in opening the gates for Ximian hell here?! Who is duped? Perens?! Aren't Ximian just like any other money drainer?! To me, it sure looks like that. But, as always, I may be wrong again...

Adobe payed for using Qt and they can probably afford it. How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian? 99$ for a desktop(!) with Acrobat Reader, Real Player, and Flash Player?!

How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian, apart from Miguel himself?

Here are some brave words: "Ximian is offering a complete, low-cost productivity solution for Linux." Mike Rogers, VP and General Manager Desktop and Office Productivity Software Sun Microsystems

Hrmmmm... Somehow, my thoughts are in the direction that this LGPL talk is a setup for giving Ximian a get-go start harvesting all the multimillion dollar berries. But, I may be as wrong as many a time before.

Yes, sure: ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/xd2/redhat-9-i386. But, the one who has the copyright on the code does set the agenda to a large extent, and that may be what all this is about.

I have no idea who is pushing the LGPL agenda besides Perens, but Ximian seems to me being a likely candidate. Maybe, I should RTFA... ;)

Isn't Gnome's own, independent, development near being trifled since Ximian took on? And, then, where does Ximian lead us for Free Desktops?

See this:

The suggested retail price is $99 (U.S.)

In addition to the Bitstream fonts bundled with GNOME 2.2, Ximian Desktop 2 includes MS-Windows compatible fonts from AGFA*, so your applications, documents and web pages look their best. AGFA fonts available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

Access virtually all print, media, audio and video web content with the bundled Adobe Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, Macromedia Flash Player 6, and Java 2 Run-time Environment. Available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

In my view there are a lot of "By it now"s, being based on a "free desktop". When did a Windows user pay for Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, or Macromedia Flash Player 6; apart from the fancy versions?

Where is the incentive in opening the gates for Ximian hell here?! Who is duped? Perens?! Aren't Ximian just like any other money drainer?! To me, it sure looks like that. But, as always, I may be wrong again...

Adobe payed for using Qt and they can probably afford it. How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian? 99$ for a desktop(!) with Acrobat Reader, Real Player, and Flash Player?!

How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian, apart from Miguel himself?

Here are some brave words: "Ximian is offering a complete, low-cost productivity solution for Linux." Mike Rogers, VP and General Manager Desktop and Office Productivity Software Sun Microsystems

Hrmmmm... Somehow, my thoughts are in the direction that this LGPL talk is a setup for giving Ximian a get-go start harvesting all the multimillion dollar berries. But, I may be as wrong as many a time before.

Yes, sure: ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/xd2/redhat-9-i386. But, the one who has the copyright on the code does set the agenda to a large extent, and that may be what all this is about.

I have no idea who is pushing the LGPL agenda besides Perens, but Ximian seems to me being a likely candidate. Maybe, I should RTFA... ;)

Isn't Gnome's own, independent, development near being trifled since Ximian took on? And, then, where does Ximian lead us for Free Desktops?

See this:

The suggested retail price is $99 (U.S.)

In addition to the Bitstream fonts bundled with GNOME 2.2, Ximian Desktop 2 includes MS-Windows compatible fonts from AGFA*, so your applications, documents and web pages look their best. AGFA fonts available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

Access virtually all print, media, audio and video web content with the bundled Adobe Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, Macromedia Flash Player 6, and Java 2 Run-time Environment. Available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

In my view there are a lot of "By it now"s, being based on a "free desktop". When did a Windows user pay for Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, or Macromedia Flash Player 6; apart from the fancy versions?

Where is the incentive in opening the gates for Ximian hell here?! Who is duped? Perens?! Aren't Ximian just like any other money drainer?! To me, it sure looks like that. But, as always, I may be wrong again...

Adobe payed for using Qt and they can probably afford it. How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian? 99$ for a desktop(!) with Acrobat Reader, Real Player, and Flash Player?!

How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian, apart from Miguel himself?

Here are some brave words: "Ximian is offering a complete, low-cost productivity solution for Linux." Mike Rogers, VP and General Manager Desktop and Office Productivity Software Sun Microsystems

Hrmmmm... Somehow, my thoughts are in the direction that this LGPL talk is a setup for giving Ximian a get-go start harvesting all the multimillion dollar berries. But, I may be as wrong as many a time before.

Yes, sure: ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/xd2/redhat-9-i386. But, the one who has the copyright on the code does set the agenda to a large extent, and that may be what all this is about.

I have no idea who is pushing the LGPL agenda besides Perens, but Ximian seems to me being a likely candidate. Maybe, I should RTFA... ;)

Isn't Gnome's own, independent, development near being trifled since Ximian took on? And, then, where does Ximian lead us for Free Desktops?

See this:

The suggested retail price is $99 (U.S.)

In addition to the Bitstream fonts bundled with GNOME 2.2, Ximian Desktop 2 includes MS-Windows compatible fonts from AGFA*, so your applications, documents and web pages look their best. AGFA fonts available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

Access virtually all print, media, audio and video web content with the bundled Adobe Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, Macromedia Flash Player 6, and Java 2 Run-time Environment. Available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

In my view there are a lot of "By it now"s, being based on a "free desktop". When did a Windows user pay for Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, or Macromedia Flash Player 6; apart from the fancy versions?

Where is the incentive in opening the gates for Ximian hell here?! Who is duped? Perens?! Aren't Ximian just like any other money drainer?! To me, it sure looks like that. But, as always, I may be wrong again...

Adobe payed for using Qt and they can probably afford it. How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian? 99$ for a desktop(!) with Acrobat Reader, Real Player, and Flash Player?!

How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian, apart from Miguel himself?

Here are some brave words:
"Ximian is offering a complete, low-cost productivity solution for Linux."
Mike Rogers, VP and General Manager
Desktop and Office Productivity Software
Sun Microsystems

Hrmmmm... Somehow, my thoughts are in the direction that this LGPL talk is a setup for giving Ximian a get-go start harvesting all the multimillion dollar berries. But, I may be as wrong as many a time before.

Yes, sure: ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/xd2/redhat-9-i386. But, the one who has the copyright on the code does set the agenda to a large extent, and that may be what all this is about.

I have no idea who is pushing the LGPL agenda besides Perens, but Ximian seems to me being a likely candidate. Maybe, I should RTFA... ;)

Isn't Gnome's own, independent, development near being trifled since Ximian took on? And, then, where does Ximian lead us for Free Desktops?

See this:

The suggested retail price is $99 (U.S.)

In addition to the Bitstream fonts bundled with GNOME 2.2, Ximian Desktop 2 includes MS-Windows compatible fonts from AGFA*, so your applications, documents and web pages look their best. AGFA fonts available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

Access virtually all print, media, audio and video web content with the bundled Adobe Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, Macromedia Flash Player 6, and Java 2 Run-time Environment. Available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

In my view there are a lot of "By it now"s, being based on a "free desktop". When did a Windows user pay for Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, or Macromedia Flash Player 6; apart from the fancy versions?

Where is the incentive in opening the gates for Ximian hell here?! Who is duped? Perens?! Aren't Ximian just like any other money drainer?! To me, it sure looks like that. But, as always, I may be wrong again...

Adobe payed for using Qt and they can probably afford it. How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian? 99$ for a desktop(!) with Acrobat Reader, Real Player, and Flash Player?!

How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian, apart from Miguel himself?

Here are some brave words:
"Ximian is offering a complete, low-cost productivity solution for Linux."
Mike Rogers, VP and General Manager
Desktop and Office Productivity Software
Sun Microsystems

Hrmmmm... Somehow, my thoughts are in the direction that this LGPL talk is a setup for giving Ximian a get-go start harvesting all the multimillion dollar berries. But, I may be as wrong as many a time before.

Yes, sure: ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/xd2/redhat-9-i386. But, the one who has the copyright on the code does set the agenda to a large extent, and that may be what all this is about.

I have no idea who is pushing the LGPL agenda besides Perens, but Ximian seems to me being a likely candidate. Maybe, I should RTFA... ;)

Isn't Gnome's own, independent, development near being trifled since Ximian took on? And, then, where does Ximian lead us for Free Desktops?

See this:

The suggested retail price is $99 (U.S.)

In addition to the Bitstream fonts bundled with GNOME 2.2, Ximian Desktop 2 includes MS-Windows compatible fonts from AGFA*, so your applications, documents and web pages look their best. AGFA fonts available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

Access virtually all print, media, audio and video web content with the bundled Adobe Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, Macromedia Flash Player 6, and Java 2 Run-time Environment. Available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

In my view there are a lot of "By it now"s, being based on a "free desktop". When did a Windows user pay for Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, or Macromedia Flash Player 6; apart from the fancy versions?

Where is the incentive in opening the gates for Ximian hell here?! Who is duped? Perens?! Aren't Ximian just like any other money drainer?! To me, it sure looks like that. But, as always, I may be wrong again...

Adobe payed for using Qt and they can probably afford it. How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian? 99$ for a desktop(!) with Acrobat Reader, Real Player, and Flash Player?!

How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian, apart from Miguel himself?

Here are some brave words:
"Ximian is offering a complete, low-cost productivity solution for Linux."
Mike Rogers, VP and General Manager
Desktop and Office Productivity Software
Sun Microsystems

Hrmmmm... Somehow, my thoughts are in the direction that this LGPL talk is a setup for giving Ximian a get-go start harvesting all the multimillion dollar berries. But, I may be as wrong as many a time before.

Yes, sure: ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/xd2/redhat-9-i386. But, the one who has the copyright on the code does set the agenda to a large extent, and that may be what all this is about.

I have no idea who is pushing the LGPL agenda besides Perens, but Ximian seems to me being a likely candidate. Maybe, I should RTFA... ;)

Isn't Gnome's own, independent, development near being trifled since Ximian took on? And, then, where does Ximian lead us for Free Desktops?

See this:

The suggested retail price is $99 (U.S.)

In addition to the Bitstream fonts bundled with GNOME 2.2, Ximian Desktop 2 includes MS-Windows compatible fonts from AGFA*, so your applications, documents and web pages look their best. AGFA fonts available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

Access virtually all print, media, audio and video web content with the bundled Adobe Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, Macromedia Flash Player 6, and Java 2 Run-time Environment. Available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

In my view there are a lot of "By it now"s, being based on a "free desktop". When did a Windows user pay for Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, or Macromedia Flash Player 6; apart from the fancy versions?

Where is the incentive in opening the gates for Ximian hell here?! Who is duped? Perens?! Aren't Ximian just like any other money drainer?! To me, it sure looks like that. But, as always, I may be wrong again...

Adobe payed for using Qt and they can probably afford it. How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian? 99$ for a desktop(!) with Acrobat Reader, Real Player, and Flash Player?!

How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian, apart from Miguel himself?

Here are some brave words:
"Ximian is offering a complete, low-cost productivity solution for Linux."
Mike Rogers, VP and General Manager
Desktop and Office Productivity Software
Sun Microsystems

Hrmmmm... Somehow, my thoughts are in the direction that this LGPL talk is a setup for giving Ximian a get-go start harvesting all the multimillion dollar berries. But, I may be as wrong as many a time before.

Yes, sure: ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/xd2/redhat-9-i386. But, the one who has the copyright on the code does set the agenda to a large extent, and that may be what all this is about.

I have no idea who is pushing the LGPL agenda besides Perens, but Ximian seems to me being a likely candidate. Maybe, I should RTFA... ;)

Isn't Gnome's own, independent, development near being trifled since Ximian took on? And, then, where does Ximian lead us for Free Desktops?

See this:

The suggested retail price is $99 (U.S.)

In addition to the Bitstream fonts bundled with GNOME 2.2, Ximian Desktop 2 includes MS-Windows compatible fonts from AGFA*, so your applications, documents and web pages look their best. AGFA fonts available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

Access virtually all print, media, audio and video web content with the bundled Adobe Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, Macromedia Flash Player 6, and Java 2 Run-time Environment. Available only with Ximian Professional Edition - Buy it now!

In my view there are a lot of "By it now"s, being based on a "free desktop". When did a Windows user pay for Acrobat Reader, Real Audio Real Player, or Macromedia Flash Player 6; apart from the fancy versions?

Where is the incentive in opening the gates for Ximian hell here?! Who is duped? Perens?! Aren't Ximian just like any other money drainer?! To me, it sure looks like that. But, as always, I may be wrong again...

Adobe payed for using Qt and they can probably afford it. How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian? 99$ for a desktop(!) with Acrobat Reader, Real Player, and Flash Player?!

How many Mexicans can afford Miguel de Icaza's Ximian, apart from Miguel himself?

Here are some brave words:
"Ximian is offering a complete, low-cost productivity solution for Linux."
Mike Rogers, VP and General Manager
Desktop and Office Productivity Software
Sun Microsystems

Hrmmmm... Somehow, my thoughts are in the direction that this LGPL talk is a setup for giving Ximian a get-go start harvesting all the multimillion dollar berries. But, I may be as wrong as many a time before.

Yes, sure: ftp://ftp.ximian.com/pub/xd2/redhat-9-i386. But, the one who has the copyright on the code does set the agenda to a large extent, and that may be what all this is about.

I have no idea who is pushing the LGPL agenda besides Perens, but Ximian seems to me being a likely candidate. Maybe, I should RTFA... ;)

Evo 0.x had half-working newsgroup support, but that code became unmaintained and isn't built by default.

Recently, an outside developer has taken over and gotten it mostly functional again, so maybe NNTP will be in future versions of Evo. Search the evolution-hackers archives for Meilof or see here for the latest patch.

Evo 0.x had half-working newsgroup support, but that code became unmaintained and isn't built by default.

Recently, an outside developer has taken over and gotten it mostly functional again, so maybe NNTP will be in future versions of Evo. Search the evolution-hackers archives for Meilof or see here for the latest patch.

S/MIME is new to this release, AFAIK. A place to start looking is here. The Evo developers post some of their latest work and sometimes have screenshots for those who like that sort of thing. :)

Wouldn't Connector fit your needs?

I think the resources would be a tradeoff. Certainly it would be more of a strain on the core developmental resources, but if Evolution were available on Windows it would enable a more mature and well-known set of plugins. I think projects like MozillaFirebird have benefited greatly from Plugin developers that work on non-Linux platform, which helps make it a better product for Linux people too.

For example: I want to sync my bluetooth phone with a contact manager on my laptop. The phone manual suggests that it only works with Microsoft Outlook, ignoring the great work that the MultiSync project has done for providing that same functionality for Linux. If the same functionality was present on Windows there would be a much higher chance that the phone manual writers would include it as a potential option for synching contacts, gaining more exposure to the Evolution project and helping make it a better program.

There are other reasons for Evolution to support Windows, especially now that it is owned by Novell. If corporations could adopt Evolution cross-platform it would be a great advertising boon for their Linux offerings and reduce the costs of switching platforms which again benefits Novell. As well, a Windows client would generate revenue via the Exchange connector because Windows is a much larger installed base and they have a product should be interesting to any corporation trying to maintain outlook compatibility without shelling out hundreds of dollars for MSOffice if they only need the Email functionality for some of their employees.

Cough Ximian Connector cough.

The shell--the overall interface that allows you to navigate between components and folders and whatnot--has been rewritten for 1.5/2.0 to allow the components to be used as standalone applications, and to simplify the code. That said, the shell's UI is under intense change. It is hardly being ignored:

* The component buttons mockup
* Addressbook UI thoughts

Those are discussions from this month alone.

~ac

P.S. The 'Component' button is a stand-in, and the use of 'Local' instead of 'On This Computer' was probably in an old build. I believe current builds, including 1.5 use 'On This Computer' everywhere. This is a development release after all.

The shell--the overall interface that allows you to navigate between components and folders and whatnot--has been rewritten for 1.5/2.0 to allow the components to be used as standalone applications, and to simplify the code. That said, the shell's UI is under intense change. It is hardly being ignored:

* The component buttons mockup
* Addressbook UI thoughts

Those are discussions from this month alone.

~ac

P.S. The 'Component' button is a stand-in, and the use of 'Local' instead of 'On This Computer' was probably in an old build. I believe current builds, including 1.5 use 'On This Computer' everywhere. This is a development release after all.

It's targetted for version 1.5.2.

it lacks the same kind of integration that Outlook/Exchange offer medium and large corporations wanting to standardize on an e-mail, calendar and messaging suite can.

dear reader the gnome armageddon has started,

first of all i want to clarify that this text was meant to be a source of information otherwise i wouldn't have spent so much time into writing it. belive me it took me a couple of days writing this text in a foreign language. even if you don't care at all for gnome, you may find some interesting information within this text that you like to read. please try to understand my points even if it's hard sometimes, otherwise you wake up one day and feel the need to switch to a different operating system.

on the following lines i'm trying to give you a little insight of the gnome community. the things that are going on in the back, the information that could be worth talking and thinking about.

many of us like the gnome desktop and some of us were following it since the beginning. gnome is a promising project because it's mostly written in C, easy to use, configurable and therefore fits perfectly into the philosophy of u*nix. only to name some of its advantages.

unfortunately these advantages changed with the recently new released version of gnome. the core development team somehow got the idea of targeting gnome to a complete different direction of users. the so called corporate desktop user. in other words they're targeting people that aren't familiar or experienced with desktop environments. usually business oriented people who are willing to pay money for getting gnome on their computers.

having this new target in mind, the core development team mostly under contract by companies like redhat, ximian and sun decided to simplify the desktop as much as even possible by removing all its flexibility in favor of an easy clean simple interface to not confuse their new possible customers. so far the idea of a clean easy to use desktop is honourable.

some of the new ideas, features and implementations such as gconf, an evil windows registry like system, new ordering of buttons and dialogs, the removal of 90%-95% of all visible preferences from the control center and applications, the new direction that gnome leads and the attitude of the core development team made a lot of users really unhappy. these are only a couple of examples and the list can easily be expanded but for now this is enough. now let me try to get deeper into these aspects.

you may imagine that users got really frustrated because their beloved gnome desktop matured into something they didn't want. during the time, the frustration of a not less amount of people increased. more, more and more emails arrived on the gnome mailinglists where users tried to explain their concerns, frustrations and the leading target of GNOME.

but the core development team of gnome don't give a damn about what their users are thinking or wanting and most of the time they come up with their standard purl. the reply they give is mostly the same. users should either go and 'file a bug' at bugzilla or the user mails are being turned so far that at the end they sound like being trolls or the user feedback is simply not wanted. whatever happens the answers aren't really satisfying for the user. even constructive feedback isn't appreciated.

if you gonna think about this for a minute then things gonna harden that they are directing into the commercial area. the core development team actually don't care fo

Ximian Connector: $69 personal use license.

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

Of course, I'll sell you one for $100 and pocket the $31 if it makes you feel better.

The new file selector for GNOME 2.6 is already being worked on by Federico and others.

I went and dug out the link, so... I might as well post it.

Probably too late to get read by anyone, but here goes anyways.

It is no coincidence they bought Suse and not another distro and here is why.

First they bought Ximian. What is Ximian good at? Right, Evolution, the Outlook clone.
Then they buy Suse. What are they good at? Server software? Yes that too ... but more importantly OpenExchange, the Exchange clone.

If I was in the position of the Novell executives, I would do the same thing.
The reason why most businesses use Microsoft products is because executives like the Outlook Calendar and they "need" Word/Excell.

Novell now has everything inhouse to provide a viable alternative to Microsoft. Suse Servers with OpenExchange, Suse workstations with Evolution and OpenOffice. They will also port their Novell management tools so Active Directory can be replaced.
Another good thing for Novell is that OpenExchange is compatible with Outlook, and Evolution with Exchange. This way they can guarantee an easy migration.

This will be a good thing for a more rapid Linux adoption, but this is not a good thing for free software (free as beer and Free as speech). I'm not sure, but I believe OpenExchange is not Free. You have to pay for the software, but I can't seem to find a license to check if the software is Free.
The Management tools will be proprietary. So they have an edge over other distributions. Let's just hope they keep Evolution Free. They own the majority of the IP of Evolution now so they are able to change the license for the parts written by Ximian.

Good for Novell, good for faster Linux adoption by companies. Bad for Free Software and Microsoft.

Candyban

Ximian Evolution is the Outlook killer... I just hope Novell will be able to exploit it correctly to let people know about it ..

Since Novell purchased us 3 months ago, we have increased our investment in all of our products, using Novell's resources. And we've been aggressive about driving open source and Linux throughout the company.

Here's a little evidence, all postdating the acquisition by Novell:

- My notes on our new desktop development center in Bangalore
- An article from the Times of India about our new developers there
- The freshly-published (today!) Mono Roadmap showing where we're going with the development platform
- The first entry in our new Evolution blog, describing the plans for Evolution 2.0, to be released early next year
- The announcement and wiki for the Brooklyn GNOME developer's summit we are sponsoring this month
- The announcement that our Exchange connector now supports Exchange 2003

And this is really just the beginning. As you can imagine, most of the super exciting stuff we are doing is behind the scenes.

From time to time since we were acquired three months ago I've heard people say things like "Novell bought Ximian just for XYZ," where XYZ has been either: Mono, our Exchange 2000 connector, GNOME, Evolution, Red Carpet, "the name," ...

I think it should be clear that this is ridiculous.

Yes, we will still support KDE on SuSE. However, we hope to use this opportunity to provide Linux developers and ISVs with a single stable platform for desktop application development.

Yes, we will keep the desktop distro free. We will even make things more free than they have been.

We're only just getting started. Stay tuned.

Since Novell purchased us 3 months ago, we have increased our investment in all of our products, using Novell's resources. And we've been aggressive about driving open source and Linux throughout the company.

Here's a little evidence, all postdating the acquisition by Novell:

- My notes on our new desktop development center in Bangalore
- An article from the Times of India about our new developers there
- The freshly-published (today!) Mono Roadmap showing where we're going with the development platform
- The first entry in our new Evolution blog, describing the plans for Evolution 2.0, to be released early next year
- The announcement and wiki for the Brooklyn GNOME developer's summit we are sponsoring this month
- The announcement that our Exchange connector now supports Exchange 2003

And this is really just the beginning. As you can imagine, most of the super exciting stuff we are doing is behind the scenes.

From time to time since we were acquired three months ago I've heard people say things like "Novell bought Ximian just for XYZ," where XYZ has been either: Mono, our Exchange 2000 connector, GNOME, Evolution, Red Carpet, "the name," ...

I think it should be clear that this is ridiculous.

Yes, we will still support KDE on SuSE. However, we hope to use this opportunity to provide Linux developers and ISVs with a single stable platform for desktop application development.

Yes, we will keep the desktop distro free. We will even make things more free than they have been.

We're only just getting started. Stay tuned.

Since Novell purchased us 3 months ago, we have increased our investment in all of our products, using Novell's resources. And we've been aggressive about driving open source and Linux throughout the company.

Here's a little evidence, all postdating the acquisition by Novell:

- My notes on our new desktop development center in Bangalore
- An article from the Times of India about our new developers there
- The freshly-published (today!) Mono Roadmap showing where we're going with the development platform
- The first entry in our new Evolution blog, describing the plans for Evolution 2.0, to be released early next year
- The announcement and wiki for the Brooklyn GNOME developer's summit we are sponsoring this month
- The announcement that our Exchange connector now supports Exchange 2003

And this is really just the beginning. As you can imagine, most of the super exciting stuff we are doing is behind the scenes.

From time to time since we were acquired three months ago I've heard people say things like "Novell bought Ximian just for XYZ," where XYZ has been either: Mono, our Exchange 2000 connector, GNOME, Evolution, Red Carpet, "the name," ...

I think it should be clear that this is ridiculous.

Yes, we will still support KDE on SuSE. However, we hope to use this opportunity to provide Linux developers and ISVs with a single stable platform for desktop application development.

Yes, we will keep the desktop distro free. We will even make things more free than they have been.

We're only just getting started. Stay tuned.

Sounds kinda like "Unix bootleg Linux". I am not trolling here - just setting the record straight. Ximian's website lists Ximian Desktop, Ximian Evolution, Ximian Connector, Ximian Red Carpet Enterprise as the products offered by the company. Ximian offers a polished custimization of the Gnome desktop, with its own version of openoffice, (probably one of the better efforts for Linux-on-desktop), An automated software delivery / update (redcarpet), an exchange client (connector) *and* an outlook like PIM software - Evolution. Based on the planned enhancements to Evolution, some would argue that Evolution not "just another outlook clone". Calling Ximian an "outlook clone" is a bit of a stretch.

Or other great user oriented distros out there.

I competely agree - a Windows port of Ximian Evolution would go a long, long way towards solving this problem... I need to go do some research as to why this hasn't happened (or maybe why it can't?) but regardless, for Linux, it's a great mail client/PIM that's a breeze to pick up for an Outlook user.

2) Ever heard of Mono? Didn't think so ...

http://primates.ximian.com/~federico/news-photos/2 003-10-07-gtkfilechooser.png

Frobnicate?

I prefer not to have to consult a dictionary to use my operating systems, thanks...

Apple's patents are defensive. They never, ever use them.

Oh really?

• Apple sues Unova

Apple hasn't always licensed its patents to free software projects:

• No blanket TrueType license granted to the FreeType project, though admittedly no threat of suit
• Fear of an Apple patent suit kept spring-loaded folders out of Nautilus, but the record doesn't show any refusal

You need to run Ximian Evolution, and purchase the Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange. With Ximian Connector installed, Ximian Evolution functions as an Exchange 2000 client, enabling users to become full participants in company-wide group scheduling and other collaborative tasks, including accessing public folders and Global Address Lists, personal email, calendar, and task lists, and group scheduling information. It's great!! We experimented with it where I work while evaluating different calendaring/messaging systems. Interestingly, Ximian + Connector worked a lot better than software to do the same on Mac OSX.

-jh

You need to run Ximian Evolution, and purchase the Ximian Connector for Microsoft Exchange. With Ximian Connector installed, Ximian Evolution functions as an Exchange 2000 client, enabling users to become full participants in company-wide group scheduling and other collaborative tasks, including accessing public folders and Global Address Lists, personal email, calendar, and task lists, and group scheduling information. It's great!! We experimented with it where I work while evaluating different calendaring/messaging systems. Interestingly, Ximian + Connector worked a lot better than software to do the same on Mac OSX.

-jh

• Myth: KDE is more integrated than GNOME
  Reality: 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's nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared to any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" really means.
• Myth: KDE is easier to use
  Reality: 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 (indeed, 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 [gnome.org], 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 [ximian.com] by Ximian [ximian.com], 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 very 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: KDE is more popular
  Reality: In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE - but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots claim 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. Indeed, 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 the adoption in commercial use - and here, GNOME is far ahead, with both Hewlett-Packard [hp.com] and Sun Microsystems [sun.com] 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: Konq

• Myth: KDE is more integrated than GNOME
  Reality: 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's nonsense of course. Neither desktop is particularly "integrated" compared to Windows XP, and certainly not compared to any version of the Apple Mac. Whatever "integrated" really means.
• Myth: KDE is easier to use
  Reality: 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 (indeed, 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 [gnome.org], 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 [ximian.com] by Ximian [ximian.com], 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 very 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: KDE is more popular
  Reality: In what sense? Arguably more people use KDE - but it is a close run thing. Most KDE zealots claim 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. Indeed, 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 the adoption in commercial use - and here, GNOME is far ahead, with both Hewlett-Packard [hp.com] and Sun Microsystems [sun.com] 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: Konq

These are some of the free (speech or beer) software I'd install on a family, non-gaming machine:

• Web Browser: Mozilla or Mozilla Firebird
• E-mail: Mozilla (cross-platform), Mozilla Thunderbird (cross-platform), Evolution (Gnome), or KMail (KDE)
• Office Suite: OpenOffice.org
• Media Player: QuickTime (Windows), Zinf (cross-platform), RealPlayer (cross-platform), WinAmp (Windows), MPlayer (Windows), XMMS (Linux)
• Image Viewer: IrfanView (Windows)
• Instant Messaging: Gaim (cross-platform)
• Personal Information Management: Palm Desktop Software (great PIM suite even if you don't own a Palm)
• Other: Acrobat Reader (although I'm weary of their DRM), Java 2 Runtime Environment, Macromedia Flash and Shockwave players, Ad-Aware (spyware remover for Windows), ZoneAlarm, Sygate Personal Firewall (firewall, alternative to ZoneAlarm), Grisoft AVG Anti-Virus, FileZilla, WinRAR (not free, shareware with nag window), Ofoto desktop software (basic photo album and touch-ups, even if you don't use Ofoto's online services)

Some other software I'd install on my own desktop (dev), in decreasing order of importance:

• Cygwin, bascially all packages
• UltraEdit32 (45-day trial shareware)
• TightVNC
• Ghostscript and GSView
• Java 2 SDK
• Eclipse
• Borland JBuilder Personal
• ActiveState Perl, Python, Tcl/Tk (yes, even though they are in Cygwin), Jython
• GIMP
• POV-Ray
• At least one of Apache, Tomcat, or Plone (Zope)
• HTTrack (a website copier)

For the Linux side anyway, my apologies if you already know about some of these, just throwing them out there. Also some of these have windows versions (Mozilla, Open Office, GAIM, Thunderbird, Firebird, etc).

Email - Evolution, Mozilla Mail, or Thunderbird

If you want something that looks like Outlook (and even acts like it in most places) use Evolution. Mozilla Mail is included in Mozilla and Thunderbird is like Firebird, but for mail.

WWW - Mozilla or Firebird

These 2 you can't really go wrong with. Also for good measure make sure lynx is installed for console web browsing

IM - GAIM
THere's also Everybuddy, but I perfer GAIM

Office - Open Office or KOffice
Open Office is slightly more well rounded but KOffice is pretty slick IMHO.

Media - XMMS, mPlayer, Winamp
Everyone knows Winamp for MP3s on Windows. XMMS is a Winamp like program for Linux. mPlayer is for movies (and also audio) that plays MOST formats.

Use the following links to research
Mozilla, Firebird, and Thunderbird
GAIM
XMMS
mPlayer
Open Office
Evolution and other Ximian products

Hope this was helpful.

Some free, Free and not so free applications:

Webbrowser Mozilla Firebird (Win / linux)
Email Eudora (win) Evolution (linux)
Office suite OpenOffice.org 1.1 (win / linux)
SSH client putty (win) openssh (linux)
Videoplayer VLC (win / linux) or BSPlayer (win) and Xine (linux)
Editor Textpad (windows) Kate (linux)
Chat Jabber PSI (win / linux)
Firewall Kerio (win)
Anti virus F-Secure (not free) (win)

- Ost

Warning: Even though evolutions is great, Ximian's Desktop is terrible!

Mono seems to be written with threading that only works on Linux and Windows. If you see their release pages, they only have Linux packages.

Several days ago I posted a thread on mono-devel about FreeBSD 4.8 not working and only got two replies - both confirming the problems. OSX seems to have the same basic problems.

This is even for console (text) applications - they just won't run.

Has anyone been able to get a working mono on FreeBSD 4.8 or 5.1? Can you tell us how?

• Takes photos with inbuilt camera, which I can then transfer to my laptop.
  
• Syncronizes its contacts, Todo list and Calendar with Evolution.
  
• Allows me to read Slashdot via WAP on the tram into work.
  
• Add and edit entries in my Movabletype blog.
  
• Gets net access for my laptop wherever I am via GPRS (only about modem speed, and kinda expensive, but good enough for email on the road).
  
• Recieves wallpaper, ringtones, themes and java apps from my computer. Uses JPG, GIF, MIDI and Tar (yes, that tar).
  
• Looks very shiny.
  

Be under a BSD-ish license, so it could be linked in to commercial and non-commercial products. Be a LIBRARY, not a stand-alone executable, so it can be linked into anything at all.

Those GNU folks are just evil; that's why they would never agree with something like the Vorbis BSD license.

Or it could be that most people don't really understand the need for encryption, are hopelessly confused by key management, and won't use it until it is bundled with their computer and employed by default in their email program.

Calling this the Sun Java Desktop makes only a little less sense than calling a box of ex-iPlanet server products, mostly C daemons, the Sun Java Enterprise System. Maybe there's some stuff written in Java in there but that's not the point. The Java brand is well known and closely linked in the public mind with Sun.

I would agree that it seems hard at first glance to understand what Sun is doing pushing an open source desktop thing like Gnome. CDE, however, did not exactly take the world by storm. People coming from Windows probably find CDE weird but not Gnome (until they become experienced Solaris users and never have, aside from the occasional browser window, anything but a bunch of terminals open on their desktop, at which point they start thinking of Windows as weird). So Sun had to go somewhere. They probably concluded their world's second-most-used desktop is Gnome, which Sun can redistribute almost for free. Maybe they can even save money by putting CDE in maintenance mode like OpenWindows. Why not go with Gnome?

It has nothing to do with commitment to the Open Source model. Listen to Sun executives when they talk about open systems. They mean by open systems that the APIs are all published, and everyone competes on implementation, which means doesn't share the source. They probably want you to use the servers|services in the Java Enterprise System, not Mono.

While it's true that you won't find many Java desktop apps, a lot of what people are using desktops to access -- through browsers -- can be handled using Java. Mono's about replacing .NET, right? Not about moving from one way of managing widgets to another.

Going with Gnome instead of CDE is no big deal. Nobody investing in SUNW ever heard of CDE. Going with Mono ("including a C# compiler", according to http://www.ximian.com/about_us/press_center/press_ releases/index.html?pr=oreillymono) would look like an outright attack on Java by Sun, which seems like it would be pretty hard for management to explain away.

The MS Office pricing you were looking for is here. It's interesting to do a quick comparison (prices are per 1 copy):

• MS Office Professional ($499 new / $329 upgrade) gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Publisher, Access.
• MS Office Small Business ($449 new / $279 upgrade) gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Publisher.
• MS Office Standard ($399 new / $239 upgrade) gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook.
• MS Office Student/Teacher ($149) also gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook. But you have to be Edu to get it.

And for comparison:

• StarOffice ($80 new/upgr ; $0+media Edu) gives you Word processing (MS Word), Spreadsheet (MS Excel), Presentation (MS Powerpoint), Graphics, Database.

I haven't used AdabasD, so I don't know if it is MS Access compatible.

Basically, StarOffice gives you functionality equivalent to MS Office Standard at 20% the cost. Also equivalent to MS Office Student/Teacher at 0% the cost. Considering that you can run StarOffice on Windows or Linux (or Solaris), you can have a very capable office suite on your favorite PC platform for very little cash.

What about Outlook? If you purchase MS Office, you get a bundled copy of Outlook, but StarOffice doesn't provide an equivalent to Outlook. But, do you really need it? Windows (or is it IE?) gives you Outlook Express, which is good for doing email using POP servers .. not sure if it talks to MS Exchange servers. On Linux, the closest equivalent is Ximian Evolution. The free version of Evolution looks and acts a lot like Outlook. If you need to talk to MS Exchange servers, you can purchase the Ximian Exchange Connector .. we are using this at work, and it works great!!

The MS Office pricing you were looking for is here. It's interesting to do a quick comparison (prices are per 1 copy):

• MS Office Professional ($499 new / $329 upgrade) gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Publisher, Access.
• MS Office Small Business ($449 new / $279 upgrade) gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Publisher.
• MS Office Standard ($399 new / $239 upgrade) gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook.
• MS Office Student/Teacher ($149) also gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook. But you have to be Edu to get it.

And for comparison:

• StarOffice ($80 new/upgr ; $0+media Edu) gives you Word processing (MS Word), Spreadsheet (MS Excel), Presentation (MS Powerpoint), Graphics, Database.

I haven't used AdabasD, so I don't know if it is MS Access compatible.

Basically, StarOffice gives you functionality equivalent to MS Office Standard at 20% the cost. Also equivalent to MS Office Student/Teacher at 0% the cost. Considering that you can run StarOffice on Windows or Linux (or Solaris), you can have a very capable office suite on your favorite PC platform for very little cash.

What about Outlook? If you purchase MS Office, you get a bundled copy of Outlook, but StarOffice doesn't provide an equivalent to Outlook. But, do you really need it? Windows (or is it IE?) gives you Outlook Express, which is good for doing email using POP servers .. not sure if it talks to MS Exchange servers. On Linux, the closest equivalent is Ximian Evolution. The free version of Evolution looks and acts a lot like Outlook. If you need to talk to MS Exchange servers, you can purchase the Ximian Exchange Connector .. we are using this at work, and it works great!!

The MS Office pricing you were looking for is here. It's interesting to do a quick comparison (prices are per 1 copy):

• MS Office Professional ($499 new / $329 upgrade) gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Publisher, Access.
• MS Office Small Business ($449 new / $279 upgrade) gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook, Outlook with Business Contact Manager, Publisher.
• MS Office Standard ($399 new / $239 upgrade) gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook.
• MS Office Student/Teacher ($149) also gives you Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Outlook. But you have to be Edu to get it.

And for comparison:

• StarOffice ($80 new/upgr ; $0+media Edu) gives you Word processing (MS Word), Spreadsheet (MS Excel), Presentation (MS Powerpoint), Graphics, Database.

I haven't used AdabasD, so I don't know if it is MS Access compatible.

Basically, StarOffice gives you functionality equivalent to MS Office Standard at 20% the cost. Also equivalent to MS Office Student/Teacher at 0% the cost. Considering that you can run StarOffice on Windows or Linux (or Solaris), you can have a very capable office suite on your favorite PC platform for very little cash.

What about Outlook? If you purchase MS Office, you get a bundled copy of Outlook, but StarOffice doesn't provide an equivalent to Outlook. But, do you really need it? Windows (or is it IE?) gives you Outlook Express, which is good for doing email using POP servers .. not sure if it talks to MS Exchange servers. On Linux, the closest equivalent is Ximian Evolution. The free version of Evolution looks and acts a lot like Outlook. If you need to talk to MS Exchange servers, you can purchase the Ximian Exchange Connector .. we are using this at work, and it works great!!