Slashdot Mirror
'Gnome Foundation' Takes Aim at MS Office
Spasemunki writes: "The NYTimes has a piece today on an agreement reached among I.B.M., Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems and several other developers to create the Gnome Foundation, a developer consortium that will undertake, among other things, the creation of a standardized desktop interface for Linux, and a suite of productivity programs designed to compete with MS office. As the name might imply, their efforts will center around the Gnome desktop manager, with Sun moving to adopt Gnome as the GUI for Solaris. Looks like some big names are getting interested in putting Linux on the desktop."
I depends a bit on who will be using it. I'll admit that I'm coming for from a user perspective than a programmer's, but I've run into problems in the past.
I used to customize any machine I worked with for an extended period of time to best match my work style. I'm not even talking terribly complex stuff. I was customizing toolbars, adding directory structure, etc. And then, sometimes, someone else had to work on my PC and they were paralyzed (even the ones ostensibly from IT - feh!). I've since learned to do all my cutomiztion in ways that can be easily toggled with the default.
It may be better to have a standardized desktop interface, and then make it optional/toggleble than to ignore the need for one altogether.
-- I'm not evil, I'm
That is very annoying and it's also not possible to run the spreadsheet, for example, without opening the whole thing. Hopefully SO6.0 will be in smaller pieces so you don't have to do this any more. Let's wait and see.
GUI's are a transitional fad
servers are the fabric of the future!
In the server market it's definitely competitive with Windows. On the desktop market there is a long way to go, but this effort, if done right, could go a long way to bridge that gap.
Wouldn't it be nice to also have a GUI offering that featured stability, performance, reliability, flexibility, scalability, cost and freedom?
As this announcement conclusively demonstrates, Linux has acheived critical mass. There are going to be a lot of Slashdotters who rail against the companies and consortia who came late to the party, but that's too bad because there are going to be an awful lot of them pretty soon.
Which, by the way, is a Good Thing.
-
-
Give me liberty or give me something of equal or lesser value from your glossy 32-page catalog.
For example, I work for a major futures and options exchange, and a increasing amount of our back-end stuff is running on UNIX (in our case, Solaris). All the new applications we write are UNIX-only on the backend.
The only major thing we use the mainframe for is for Clearing. The next version of our Clearing software is planned to be running on a UNIX cluster.
We use a Tandem for matching all the trades that come into the exchange. That system can be (and is planned to be) ported to UNIX!
Even though its been around longer than I have been alive, UNIX is the future. :-)
In an unrelated sidenote, I told my coworkers 2 months ago that within 2-3 years Sun would dump CDE in favor of GNOME as its desktop environment. You should have heard me shout in excitement when I saw this on /. this morning ;-)
siri
Actually DCE-RPC is used in ... Windows. Its the basis for DCOM, and Windows-NT's bizarre internal LPC doohickey. They use DCE IDL as well.
Simon
AOL Keyword - moron
Well Gnome just friggin rocks on my PII 266... I'd say you must have a very early version (which did suck hard) or you have Gnome with E and E is sucking hard but you are too dull to know the difference between the two... or you are just yet another lame troll...
If you are serious about Gnome sucking on your PII 400 then you need to get the latest version and run it with Sawfish and you will be very very surprised. It's very stable and very responsive.
Ever hear of the OSF? They were a "standards body", sponsored by several companies, and they produced some of the greatest dain-bramages UNIX has ever known (Motif, CDE, etc.).
I'll agree that "there's nothing wrong with standards" (I like them myself), but design by committee can prove really problematic, especially when the committee consists of a bunch of big, competing companies who've only known how to do business with proprietary "standards".
~wog
People that are against GUI standardization just don't know what the job of a GUI is. Don't think of it a standardization, think of it as consistency enforcement.
ENDUT! HOCH HECH!
Because we -will- have a standardized interface (and very likely standardized API's) for GNOME that will be supported by all the important players, it'll save a -huge- amount of time in IT departments, since troubleshooting and system configuration will be much easier.
The nice thing about GNOME nowadays is the fact that Andy Hertzfeld is working on the Nautilus project, a way to give GNOME a truly consistent and easy-to-use interface. I applaud this effort because Hertzfeld is one of the few people out there that -does- have a clue about GUI interface design; after all, he helped develop much of the "look" of the original Macintosh interface back in the early 1980's. From what I've seen so far, Nautilus looks potentially like a major leap forward for GUI environments on Linux.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Actually, you could just show it as a spindle with several labeled sheets stacked on it...moving the mouse over a sheet could display details, and the top and bottom sheets scroll up and down through the three hundred things you've tossed on there. Probably showing the spindle from above at a 45% angle would let the sheets be shown as stacked windows.
Would it be impolite to have Eiffel Tower and Washington Monument images for spindles? Or if you use it a lot, a four-masted schooner spindle.
Until one can guarantee 100% bug-for-bug compatibility with MS Office - including templates, macro functionality, and UI, and keep up with Microsoft's gratuitous changes every few years, it's dommed to fail.
I dunno about that. Even Microsoft doesn't rise to the standard of 100% compatibility with itself -- I find that office routinely alters the rendering of rather complex documents, which basically serves me right for confusing content with presentation. At least for word processing, competing suites need to do what MS itself does -- maintain the text and render the majority of documents reasonably consistently, without sweating too much about pathological cases.
I sincerely hope the Gnome office effort gets lots of dough to play with, but I don't think this is exactly earth shattering news. One way or another pretty soon we'll have quite a choice of Office suites which will probably have good enough MS Office import. I tend to view this development as some rather belated bandwagon hopping. If they had done this a year ago they'd have been visionaries.
I think that fonts and font rendering are much bigger stumbling blocks. Star Office has every feature 99% of people need and good enough import for most MS documents, but after installing, it by default produces documents that look hideous on screen because of font scaling issues. That is ridiculous in this day and age.
I'd be much more excited to see the money spent (if there is any money) on Berlin, or on producing a really great set of free typefaces, or on improving X. If there were Aqua quality graphics on Linux, then we'd really be ready for a fight.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
While I don't entirely agree with you (I use Gnome, but honestly don't like either solution much), it should be pointed out that these are the giants of commercial Unix here. The people who bought you POSIX, OSF/1, X-Windows, Motif, and CDE. They've never agreed with one another to do anything that made the slightest bit of sense. Indeed they seem to regard standardisation as an opportunity to bog their rivals down in dross while they go and reinvent a new, different, incompatible kind of square wheel just for themselves.
I'm honestly glad to see that so many OEMs are putting Linux in so many places -- Compaq with Linux on the iPAQ, Sun making Gnome standard on Solaris, and so forth, but the question of licensing still remains.
Nowhere in the article, it seems, do they talk about the license for the code. Will this stuff all be GPL, or BSD? Or some other license?
I'm one of the "they" that you speak of: a java programmer in corporate america. I did not choose to aquire that skill because it is "owned", nor would I advocate it on such grounds. Rather, I chose that route because it offered me the freedom to use a non-windows platform while retaining the ability to deliver product on that platform. The result is that I am far more employable than I was prior to learning java (in the middle of Nebraska, no less!) But, more importantly, I am free to live in my debian environment whilst doing so, where I program in C, TOM, Haskell, Python, and Scheme for fun. (Not very well yet, but that's besides the point.) Corporate ownership of Java was, in fact, a source of irritation because Sun managed to drag their feet on blessing blackdown's releases for 6 months each iteration (until recently, where things got much better). I don't pretend that I am representitive of the motivations of other java programmers, but I wanted you to know that your assertion is far from universal.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Yeah, and openwindows was great!
(please note the sarcasm...)
The gnu world has some cool tools, but they're often not so user-friendly (I have better use for those brain cells than memorizing emacs ctrl-meta-alt-shift codes), while the "Office" type apps often (usually? almost always?) put style and presentation before substance.
The gnumeric engine behind the Office spreadsheet - maybe, for once, we can have both.
I love vegetarians - some of my favorite foods are vegetarians.
"I read a piece 3-4 years ago that predicted that in 5-6 years (from the date of the article) there would be 2 main OS's in the market: Microsoft's offerings (Windows and derrived), and Linux."
Even with IBMs support for Linux this is simply not going to happen. There simply isn't an operating system about that can handle the workload that OS/390 can. Look at the major financial companies, handling millions of accounts using 25 year old software - all of it on mainframes. These are not going to go away in a hurry.
As for MS, it will survive as a media and investment company. I can't see it surviving as a software company.
Is this really about trying to bring support to Star Office or a genuine colaborative effort from Sun?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
I don't know about the rest, but anything in Gnome proper seems to be (L)GPLed.
--
Ben Kosse
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
ohh great yet another STANDARDISED linux UI, with any luck we will have a whole plethora od STANDARDISED UI's
Anyone see a major problem here? I, for one (a KDE user), am a little downheartened. I'm going to have to get used to the "standard GUI", because mine will go the way of the dinosaurs.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Gnome and KDE could really complement each other if they would work together a little more.
This is true and I'd like to see it happen, but there are some huge technical problems that would need solving (KParts and bonobo have little in common except for serving the same purpose) and they're all but simple.
KDE seems more bent on keeping everything dependent on qt while most of the gnome stuff is trying to be completely [...] tk independent
That's partially because of the internals - gtk+ is plain C, so it doesn't support inheritance and things. (And in the limited way it supports inheritance, gnome is as dependent on gtk+ as kde is on qt; gnome_entry_new makes use of gtk_entry_new).
Qt/KDE is C++, so you just use inheritance and automatically depend on the widgets you've used (code reuse).
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
I'm no Apple cheerleader but...Apple has most certainly done their UI homework. I don't care for the outcome (much) but it IS much better than the Doze GUI.
I am OK with the UIs of linux (presently KDE's) but I would appreciate a more directed, less scattershot approach to UIs in both the Gnome and KDE (and ALL other UIs) camps. READ what makes a good human-usable UI and DO THAT and ONLY THAT! There should still be room for maneuvering within the bounds of what makes a UI a good UI, so there is the room for differences between projects.
Standards NEED to occur. Standards do NOT automatically mean loss of user configurability. You merely have a default install, which follows the basic UI rules. You also allow for someone to totally dick up that UI as is their desire. Big deal. The DEFAULT install should be the same, using proper rules for a human UI. What is sooooo problematic about that? You don't like that default for some good reason or just because you are contrary, then so what? Change the interface to the whatever you want. There. Standards with all the power of configurability that many demand.
There needs to be standards for certain APIs as well. It would be helpful if there were an API layer between most, if not all, system calls, graphic libs, etc. The SAME API so people can concentrate on the actual app rather than the intricacies of how the app talks to the kernel or X server, etc. This doesn't eliminate user/coder freedom either. Make good code but accept the ease and comfort gained by knowing that THIS is the API, regardless of library/widget set.
Sounds to me like everyone is finally getting together to beat Microsoft down from it's monopoly status. Will this spell the end of the DOJ's case ?
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
There's already two GPLed Office Suites around: StarOffice (soon GPL but already functional) and KOffice (already GPL but not fully functional - yet, but it'll be soon)
Couldn't they concentrate effords?
Maori
Ever see MS-XML formatted documents? Sure, they are conformant XML, but good luck figuring out what to do with their tags:
R E</SOMETAG>
.XML format only solves 10% of the problem, anyway.
.DOC format is well documented. But MS Word's behavior when interpreting .DOC files is NOT documented, and that's the problem. You have to be bug for bug compatible with their implementation of a complex, and somewhat loose, file specification.
<SOMETAG>LOTSOFINCOMPREHENSIBLEMICROSOFTSTUFFHE
Decoding the
As previous topic posters have noted, the
On top of that, you have to implement Visual Basic macros and all the other fun stuff that makes MS Office so "wonderful."
Be grateful for the support that companies are giving us. Because we really need it. I know, I know, it's not in fashion to have the assistance of companies; but really, we can use the help. The IBM Linux commercial even admits it: Linux has found an ally from an unexpected source.
A lot of people will debate the question of whether we really need it or not, based on the previous attempts to jump on the bandwagon without joining the team properly. We've come this far mostly without "their kind" of commercial support.
Where are the figures behind claims that GNOME is bloated? Are you talking about when you used Enlightenment as your window manager? What?
OK, looking at my system right now, I have a panel running charpick, a clock, the pager, and cpumemusage. Each is consuming well over 1 Meg of RAM, and the pager is consuming over 2. Come on! Thats a CLOCK for christ sake!!! I used to have an Amiga with 512k of RAM, and I could fill the screen with about 30 clocks, and all would run in perfect sync and I'd have ram left to play with.
GTK+ code is beautiful
I'm not going to touch that one with a 6 foot barge pole. Try using a real nice GUI framework some time.
Matt. Want XML + Apache + Stylesheets? Get AxKit.
I work for a rather large computer company that has spent mega$$ standardizing our "desktops" on Windows. Because I have to be able to communcicate/share files with people in Europe, Asia and the Americas. Standardization allows me to create a document and KNOW that others can read it. It allows us to email each other. We need standard "office" apps.
We allow room in our desktop for individual deviations. We allow dual boot with Linux.
Very well:
This means that there is a single cannonical version of the software- the one released by TrollTech- and anything else is only allowed to exist as patches. That is not an absolute prevention of forking, but it puts up a sufficiently big obstacle to a fork that it is for all intents and purposes not possible.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
How does a snippet of gdk code prove anything about gtk? If you don't like gdk's low-level interface, use gtk, don't write your own widgets.
Sure, I don't like everything about gtk's interface, but this comment is just pure FUD.
-W.W.
"Well it should be obvious to even the most dim-witted individual who holds an advanced degree in hyperbolic topology...
A couple points- most of what you've said is valid, but only for SQL 6.5. MS Raided oracle and Sybase for developers for 7.0 and made it almost a complete rewrite, and finished the job in 2000. And varchars in 7.0+ can be at least 2000 bytes long- not bad considering that oracle only gives you 4000. Plus the fact that you can have more than one text field in a table, and have indexes on all of them pretty much eliminate that problem anyway.
If you think that's absurd, look at what Philip Greenspun has to say about RDBMS pricing. M$ $QL $erver is actually one of your cheapest options, and one of only two commercial RDBMSes that actually publishes prices. (SOLID is the other one.) M$ $QL $erver, for what it is, actually isn't that bad (they stole most of it from Sybase), although it bites big for most web stuff because it supports a laughable 256 character VARCHAR and because all of the JDBC drivers are closed-source and expensive (you can use the ODBC-JDBC bridge, but it's slow).
Of course, I'd recommend PostgreSQL if you don't want to pay for a database, or MySQL if you don't want to pay for a filesystem. :-)
~wog
With the cost of desktop machines dropping through $750, and many cheap pocket computers becoming available now, too, there is a tremendous market coming -- computers for kids to carry to school, computers for everyone, everywhere.
Microsoft can't swim in this pond. The cost of Win2k plus MSOffice is way above the cost of the hardware. Cheap computer plus StarOffice is less than half as costly as cheap computer plus MSOffice. MS will maximize its revenue in the short run by taking the higher price from those willing to pay. In the long run, they are dead if alternatives are any good at all.
KDE has looked at technologies like Corba (which is the basis for bonobo) and used it for some time. They have created a structure that not only surpasses corba but is also much slimmer and more stable.
Check your facts before posting!
We can only hope, but! isn't this roughly the same lineup of vendors that created the whole sorry CDE mess in the first place??
No, you did not get it. The major corporate players don't want to go to a CTO and sell them on Linux, GNOME and StarOffice. They want to sell them on their machines. That they are offering and developing stuff running under GNOME and Linux means that they are angling for those CTOs that *are* already sold on Linux. Or they have a mixed strategy: they believe they could be made to be sold on Linux and its ilk, and find that a better starting position than having them sold on Windows.
The sales pitch is the following: "What are you running? Linux? Solaris runs just the same, and we have those hot fast boxens you'll like. And we really know how to make StarOffice fly on our machines", "What are you running? Solaris? Well that's pretty Linuxlike, like our AIX. You'll get hotter performance and stability with the same stuff you are used to.", "What are you running? Linux? You'll love to hear that we have all of your basic apps on our platform, with extras."
Most players prefer that to "What are you running? Windows? Nothing you know will work on our computers, but at least they won't crash."
In short, those outlets are hungering for competition. They are sick of losing to an OS market leader pushing its incredibly mediocre stuff through application monopolies.
If this strategy means making people drool all over Linux, so be it. Marketing can deal better with the "How is your Unix variant better for us than Linux" than with "How is it better than Windows".
KDE was written despite Sun, IBM and HP supporting CDE. I'd rather fear this is the kiss of death to Gnome ;)
That's what the GPL is for.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
well said
But, won't StarOffice's spreadsheet replace
gnumeric?
Stephen Molitor steve_molitor@yahoo.com
Not to worry.
GNOME has the very promising Nautilus project from Eazel that Andy Hertzfeld is working on, and from what I've seen of screenshots so far, it appears to be the easy-to-use and consistent interface for Linux everyone is waiting for. It also doesn't hurt that Hertzfeld is one of the acknowledged experts on interface design; he did much of the design work on the original Macintosh interface back in the early 1980's.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Plus the cost of an OS, plus technician-time for reinstalling it with monotonous regularity. Oh, and we must remember to charge for a non-OEM Windows if it's installed over the top of an OEM Windows. And $Oz2500 PER CPU for an "Internet Connector" licence if we want our SQL database to be web-enabled. Greedy scumbags.
After the IPO frenzy - real funds! Dollars for PostGreSQL, DebIan, Apache, SaMBa, now Gnome - where will it end? (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
(This should be moderated up to at least 1, maybe 2. "Insightful", definitely.)
--
Time is Nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once... the bitch.
What is wrong with the interface provided by xclipboard ? If I understand your request it does exactly this by giving you prev next buttons that change what gets returned when an application asks for the contents of the clipboard and doesn't need any application modifications and it is part of the standard MIT X11 distribution.
I have been using KDE on Sun Solaris for the past year. Last week I had to finally log out and log back in after 5 MONTHS because suddenly I could not launch apps from the toolbar. It has remained rock solid, even though I filled the swap numerous times (512MB just isn't enough) among other things. I run 1.2.2 on Solaris 7 on an Ultra 5 and have been quite happy. Installation was relatively simple and straight forward, although I had to hack the sound support to make it work with Sun. By comparison, I have tried on numerous occasions to install Gnome. Each time I had to give up. There are so many libraries and packages from different locations required that makes it a mess, and I was never able to get them all to install properly.
KDE only required qt and the various KDE packages and some simple dt scripts for login purposes.
I am very surprised Sun is supporting Gnome and not KDE. KDE looks much cleaner (in terms of the code) than Gnome, and I have found it to be more stable on Linux and less resource intensive.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
Not to spark a big religious war, but I think that this points out a potential advantage of the GPL over BSD as a license. The vendors in the first case were able to make their own proprietary, incompatible extensions because the BSD license allows such behavior. The GPL places much sharper limits on the extent to which you can do so; you can develop proprietary programs that run under a GPL environment, but you can't make the environment itself proprietary.
I also think that this will have advantages for encouraging cooperation. With a license like BSD that allows proprietary development, there's a strong disincentive for commercial vendors to continue to release their hard work as Open Source, since it allows freeloaders to make their proprietary systems stronger. With the GPL, though, your competitors can't "steal" your hard work to the same extent; if they want to expand on it, you still have the opportunity to take advantage of their work.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
You can't "center around" anything. You either "center on" or "revolve around" so please learn how to freaking write. It won't kill you to do so!
Ever heard of shared memory? Each of those applets may be using 1 MB, but 80% - 90% of that 1 MB is shared. I really think we need a new version of "top" that makes this properly obvious to people who are a little slow to get it.
------------------
Loban Amaan Rahman ==> Anagram of ==> Aha! An Abnormal Man!
and now for some journalistic humor:
The Tuesday meeting itself will feature a keynote address by Michael S. Dell, chairman of Dell Computer, and will include an announcement from I.B.M. that it will make a Gnome version of Linux available on its Thinkpad portable computers as a user option.
Several things need to be said (and then moderated up), because no one else is saying them.
- from gtk import *
- win = GtkWindow()
- win.set_title( "Hello, World" )
- win.show()
- win.connect( "destroy", mainquit )
- mainloop()
Go ahead, try it right now. Oh yes, another thing; the GTK+ library is LGPL'ed. As in Unambiguously Free Software.Would it not be be cool if adobe would hop onto one of the X gui bandwagons! Good font support is crucial.
Of those to whom much is given, much is required.
Keep your older versions of gnumeric. As for StarOffice's spreadsheet...try this with gnumeric. Add data to your gnumeric spreadsheet. Now try to creat/insert a chart of some kind (pie chart, histogram, 3d histogram, linear plot, etc). What? You can't? Well, THERE is the reason to use StarOffice's spreadsheet. A spreadsheet app should be more than JUST a holding cell for numbers and characters. It should be able to present the otherwise useless information in some graphical format. When gnumeric can do this, THEN it can actually stand up and compete with the functionality of StarOffice's spreadsheet.
I can't publish a spreadsheet, I CAN publish histograms, etc.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
I had a longer reply...but today's Mozilla died on a cut & paste operation. Here's the summary;
That we've put up with this hostage situation for so long is a real shame. What we need is a standard format -- probably based on a DTD (XML/SGML/...) -- and apps that can read/write those formats if they follow the open specs.
If the Gnome Foundation helps bring this about, I'm all for it. If it makes another format that changes constantly, is not forward compatable, and does not work with other non-Gnome tools, then they don't have my support. I hope that I'm not alone!
A firewall can not protect you from yourself. Turn off what you do not need. Do not use the firewall to do your work.
Qt licensing. Although Kde's use of Qt has been generally accepted as license compatible with GPL and LGPL (the naysayers have clearly been over-ruled here) Qt remains the property of TrollTech. It can't be forked. This is simply not acceptable to commercial backers of a linux desktop standard, because THEY may want to work on the underlying gui code as well, independently of Qt. Why is Java not more widely used on the Linux desktop? Because of Sun's "ownership" of the standard. Nobody "owns" gtk and gnome, and this philosophy is agreeable to all commercial parties involved because they are all competing on a level playing field with Gnome/Gtk. While in my opinion, at least, Gtk is a vastly inferior toolkit it is far more maleable because there are no such restrictions on redesign and extension. No commercial entity has veto power as TrollTech has over Qt. TrollTech has made the decision not to GPL Qt, and it was a bad decision. Therefore, TrollTech has lost. It's over, folks, unless TrollTech GPL's Qt and does it VERY quickly.
Kde is not a superior desktop to Gnome any longer. Sure, it was superior a year ago or even 6 months ago. What many people fail to realize is that the new Kde 2 is far from stable. It's shaping up, but the underlying architecture will continue to be changed right up to the date of the final release. There are many problems with the current implementation. Read the Kde developer lists.
Gnome, on the other hand, has its architecutre pretty much in place for the 1.x series which is very competetive with Kde 2. Notice that Gnome updates (at Helix) are incremental. A few packages are updated every week or so, instead of a major new release every 6 months. The continuity for developers is much smoother. New Kde apps are NOT being ported from Kde 1.x to Kde 2 in great numbers because the architecture is so different and Kde 2 is a moving target and an unstable one at that. Frequent crashes of the core components are very discouraging to developers (outside the core Kde team) who are considering porting their old Kde 1 apps or developing new apps for Kde 2. Gnome, on the other hand, is rock solid in my opinon. Sure the clunky gtk+ objects using C are less than sexy for C++ programmers and others, but they work with the current Gnome quite nicely and developers are developing for Gnome in far greater numbers than for Kde.
Regarding esthetics, that is a matter of opinion. Kde and Gnome have very different looks, although with the ability to import some themes from Gtk Kde can overcome the difference somewhat. I think the Kde 2 desktop is beautiful, but the new Gnome using Sawfish as the "standard" window manager may be more 'commercial' looking. The new Kde has a sort of a classic Egyptian look but the Tigert artwork has its own kind of appeal as well. Both Gnome and Kde are far more visually appealing and customizable than Windows. It's a tossup in the artistic area.
In summary, TrollTech has blown it by refusing to GPL Qt. Nothing else is really relevant here. TrollTech could have had it all, but instead chose short term profits from exhorbitant licensing for its "professional" edition over having its toolkit adopted as the standard for linix and unix as it should have been. Troll Tech still has a small window of opportunity in which to rectify its mistake and give Kde a fighting chance. Let's hope they do.
I would assume it is actually for legal reasons. The Qt libraries are not GPLed and this has caused ample problems in the past when there are legal conflicts. Using GNOME is the obvious way around this. Besides GNOME is currently looking to become more powerful with "new" ideas like Bonobo, where as KDE is basically doing more of the same. Are they adding an office suite and such? Yes, but this is really just a natural evolutionary path. GNOME, on the other hand, seems committed to following a more revolutionary path and revolutionary paths usually produce startling results much faster.
So far I've gotten all my Karma from telling people they are wrong... :)
Login: free-news Password: slashdot
Doesn't this seem like it'll trigger one or more anti-racketeering lawsuits?
Think about it. A bunch of companies joining together to specifically target the a product of another company...
Of course, IANAL and other disclaimers apply.
-
bukra fil mish mish
-
Monitor the Web, or Track your site!
Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani?
www.fogbound.net
I still love the 'noone is supporting KDE'. Nope,
nobody supports it at all, that's why it's got the
largest install base and is the default desktop on
Mandrake and ships with Suse, Redhat, and pretty
much every other linux distribution except for
Debian...
.technomancer
My main focus of development recently has been adding charting support. The next release will support a subset of MS excel chart types via a guppi component. Thanks to the anti-aliased canvas they already look better than XL.
Relative to other offerings available in the windows environment at the same time, Java was free, open, and easy. Also it made it easy to design dialogs (v. important!). The license isn't very restrictive to an applications programmer. Etc.
In sum, Java is as popular as it is in part because it is so open. This in contrast to MS Visual * which is also popular, but certainly not because it is open. OTOH, compiled binaries of developed programs are freely distributable, as opposed to some other choices (e.g., Omnis Studio) which have runtime licensing.
When we look at things from an OS perspective, however, we notice that Java is much less than truely free. We notice that the development direction is in the hands of one company, etc. So the environment segments into those who see Java as free, and those who see it as bound to the decisions of one company.
What we have here is a spectrum, ranging from the most bound (limitations for distribution of runtime compiled code) to the least bound (public domain). Where you pick as ideal along this spectrum depends on your goals and your resources.
Independent developers generally have little in the way of financial resources, so anything that costs will meet with disapproval. OTOH, as coding may be their recreation, necessity for time investment is not that great a deterrent. Companies tend to measure things exactly the other way around. But if a company wants to get the independent coders interested, it needs to be aware of their point of view. E.g., Sun was trying for this with their community license. This was acceptable to some of the community, and sent others up in flames.
ETC.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This is only a good thing if all the Groups still using CDE with Unix (or VMS with Compaq) switch to GNOME. I admit that CDE is not the most functional window manager but it is standardized across all major Unix vendor platforms (Linux and BSD excluded). And standardized is so much nicer than pretty when it comes to end users using several different Unices.
This is the same group of companies that have attempted to standardize the UNIX UI before.
There will be a cost to accepting money from this consortium. Probably in the form of agreeing to abide by the decisions of a committee of Co. employees who will form the standards body.
You'd be better off experimenting with what works instead of trying to standardize something that doesn't exist (unless MS is the definition).
Doomed ... have a look at the track record with X11 and the various desktops and UIs. All
bad and with no real acceptance.
- AndrewN
I have a few problems with gnome libraries in general and as a standard:
1) It is LGPL'd. I dislike the GPL and LGPL licenses. I understand other people like them. To each their own. I do recall that Stallman has stated that the 2-clause BSD and MIT licenses were good when it came to standards.
2) If I do not use them, why should I be dependent on them. My window manager should not be dependent on them. I would not mind if the window manager took advantage of the Gnome libraries if they were there. That would be fine with me.
3) Different distributions are behind different standards. VA Linux, for example, is basically paying the way for Enlightenment, but I am not sure. Some distribution is probably more behind KDE than Gnome.
The author needs to learn some logic. GNOME != Linux.
"As the name might imply, their efforts will center around the Gnome desktop manager, with Sun moving to adopt Gnome as the GUI for Solaris. Looks like some big names are getting interested in putting Linux on the desktop."
Just because GNOME is on the desktop means squat to Linux. Linux is only one of several platforms that supports/uses GNOME. This is simply an announcement that several vendors are ditching CDE in favor of something that works across a multitude of platforms. Step out of the bubble once in a while, people, there's a whole Unix world out there.
Thanks for the vote of confidence. We do not intend to toss gnumeric and start coding on starcalc. When the SO code becomes available we'll evaluate it and start adding its capabilites to gnumeric. There are two goals.
1) Produce the best possible spreadsheet.
2) Embrace and extend MS excel so that existing sheets can migrate smoothly
Until we get access to code there is no way of knowing which code base will get there faster.
They were going to produce a whole stack of software standardised across all their hardware platforms. This included
- A kernel (OSF/1): only partially delivered and implemented only on DEC.
- A complete distributed computing environment (DCE): the RPC was delivered and a few services, largely ignored by the industry and essentially dead.
- A common user interface (CDE, based on Motif): unfortunately delivered, and implemented on all proprietary UNIX systems, including Sun. However, completely stagnant, not to say ugly.
- A common binary format (ANDF): never delivered, even though the technology already existed.
Given the success of the OSF I can't see this initiative going anywhere. If the aim was to improve the computing environment then it might, but a short term alliance to kill a competitor has little chance of success.Motif and Windows 3 were both based on a common UI standard that IBM developed.
It's incorrect to say that Motif was designed to mimic Windows 3. Both were designed to a common IBM standard. Not the same thing at all.
I don't think that this is a death kneel for KDE. Will it mean that more and more standard installations will have Gnome as the primary desktop? Maybe. Just because several major companies have said that they are adopting Gnome as their standard does not necessarly mean that it will happen. First, we have to see Gnome distributed as a standard. Second, see Gnome actually implemented on those distributions. If those two things actually occur, then there is a higher chance for Gnome to take a more high profile existance in the different Linux distros. But just because the major UNICES are using it doesn't not necessarly imply that the other Linux distros will.
Are the big corps trying to 'Bogard' the Linux marketplace? I'd say no. All of the companies listed above realize that UNIX is not ready for the home user. They also seem to understand that they have a worse chance of taking on MS in the low-mid size server market that Linux now has 24% in. By supporting a common user interface between the different UNICES and Linux they stand to gain in many ways, all of which include keeping Linux.
Linux is starting to eat away at MS's marketshare. By supporting a common GUI between Linux and UNIX, there becomes more incentive for a corperation to use Linux on their workstations and have their huge UNIX box in the background with seamless connectivity, no more WinFrame. As people get used to Linux, it will gain more market share in the home market, people don't like to learn more than one system. By making MS not the standard they can sell more of their product.
Are these companies after Linux's marketshare? Not really. The big corps listed in the article know that their product is not a good product for home use. In some of cases it is TOO powerful for workstation use, which is where Linux comes in. Linux can scale downwards very easily, which is something the brand name UNICES cannot do. At the same time the big corps are not worried about Linux taking their market share either, they know that Linux does not scale upwards at the level any of the brand name UNICES can (we all know that it is true, deal with it). Anyway, companies like Sun are more conserned with selling hardware and services anyway, why do you think they released Solaris 8 for free (8 processors or less). In the case of Sun, if pushing Linux means selling more hardware then they are all for it.
This is good for the open-source movement. The support of those big corps will only give more good press to Linux, which can only serve to increase the user base. A large user base means more testers and more programmers. It means that more programs will be written for Linux. This is a good thing for Linux.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
People who would rather support a UNIX-like environment in their company as opposed to a Windows environment, that's who.
....give them a "standard" interface that is relatively intuitive and consistent. Windows actually does well here for such people, and the aim of the Gnome Foundation is appropriate and well-suited for that user penetration.
You're ability to work your own way wouldn't be hampered by this at all. Certainly not any more than it is now. You would still be able to have an Uber-cool Enlightenment desktop at home, you'd just have another standard desktop at work with good GUI *and* a stable, cost-efficient platform.
Be certain: We won't get Linux/UNIX/etc. in the door at a corporate desktop level en masse if there's no standard interface.
Seriously, how can we not win? I can imagine sinister behavior from anyone, but I hardly think a standard interface could really do *any* damage to our current situation.
But your point is good: the diversity of work should be a formative part of how we think about and implement user interfaces. Unfortunately, what do you do with the 95% of people who know *squat* about anything, whose work is relatively non-creative and task-oriented, and who need something that behaves predictably across applications?
"Man has always been his own most vexing problem." --Reinhold Niebuhr, "The Nature and Destiny of Man"
While I'm not sure if I agree with the
above post, and hope that it's not true (I love KDE), it's a very thoughtful and informative
post.
Stephen Molitor steve_molitor@yahoo.com
Mozilla is more bloated than IE, slower, and less credible to the suits than even Netscape.
We need a stable web browser
How do you know I'm 10 foot!
That's uncanny.
-----------------------
Moderator's essentials
Not popular. Widely used, or common. "Popular" implies that people like it, and IMHO the average person doesn't like Windows any more than fish like water--to them, it's just there.
I am disappointed that so few people seem to have read anything more than "Microsoft Antitrust Lawsuit" and then assume the whole lawsuit is about monopoly power. It is, as you have pointed out, about "anti-competitive things." For example, MS had contracts with hardward manufacturers who used the MS OS stating that MS would be paid based on the number of units shipped from the factory--and NOT the number of units on which an MS OS was actually installed. This effectively blocked any other OS from being installed on machines, as then the manufacturers would have to pay twice (once to MS as per the contract, based on units shipped, and once to the other company).
It is arguable that this particular example probably points out the manufacturers' attorneys, but then again, it is not the manufacturers who had anything to lose. The big losers were the other OS guys and the consumer--neither of which had any leverage to change the situation.
xclipboard is quite a good start. Although as far as I can tell from 20 seconds of playing with it, it only handles text, and it isn't integrated into applications the way a clipboard is. Need a key combo to automatically copy to clipboard without destroying exisiting contents.
The GNOME foundation is far more exciting than "yet another body of big companies trying to ride the wave". The foundation is being formed for and by GNOME hackers and other GNOME active parties (artists, etc) to steer and represent the needs of GNOME. Part of the descision to incorporate a foundation (think the Apache people, or the FSF) *is* to provide a way to interface with big companies, many of whom, such as Sun, are now betting some things on GNOME. However the foundation is not being formed by Sun, Compaq, etc - we're forming the foundation. There will be a corporate advisory committee with fees based the company size for companies interested in GNOME, but its not like they're going to be voting or anything...they just provide (much desired) input.
:-))
Any somewhat active GNOME contributor can join the foundation and vote...
Just wanted to correct a poorly worded artictle (which seems to be being misunderstood here).
-Seth (seth@eazel.com - I don't *necessarily* represent the views of eazel
I once read a piece where some kid turned to RMS and talked to him about this. RMS replied that it was something he sacrified in the license.
In fact I don't think that he cares. And I also couldn't imagine why Troll Tech would care. So what if someone makes an in-house app based on your software? As long as they don't redistribute it. I can't see how it would harm Troll Tech if I used Qt for my virtual company's administration system.
Something that RMS also said (more or less), was that if you act on this point, you actually sacrify the freedom to USE the software in any way you want (because in-house dev. is a form of using, not redistributing). I am very glad I don't have to give anyone any changes I make to my Linux box - heck, it could be a cheap encryption system, or any other lame security code that I see fit to use myself, but that would be totally unsecure when people can demand to see it.
So if you start asking for people's in-house code, I think you're actually on the edge of privacy.
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
But the problem is there is *no* standard baseline right now at all. If I wanted to train the 35 customer service reps on a Linux system, I have to pick wich window manager, which desktop manager, configure its basic setup, and then design the ground-zero level training for that specific interface myself.
With a standard in terms of 1) how you write aps for a GUI, and 2)a baseline look and feel and interaction that I can expect to be available, if not default, on any system I sit down at, I solve two very gnarly problems: that of getting developers to write aps that run properly with my system (wouldn't you rather write to one standard and be able to easily run it anywhere instead of writing to 4?), and that of getting a basic and universal interfacing system that is suitable for training newbies with skills that can be used in multiple locations. Power users can still go above and beyond (and even around) the baseline interface, but I have something consistant to introduce people to, that they can take with them to multiple computers/departments/companies.
All in all, I think (or hope) what the Foundation is aiming at is not locking down a single appearance or setup that cannot be altered, but instead providing a baseline that you can expect to be present on multiple systems, as well as simplifying the process of writing aps for the desktop.
Instead of thinking of it as a straightjacket that can't be modified, think of a desktop standard as being like the QWERTY standard for keyboard layout. Qwerty isn't best for everyone. So if you want, you can put in a split-key board, a dvorak board, a chording system, or remap your keys to your heart's content. But if someone else sits down at your machine and needs to use it, they can always plug a generic QWERTY in, read in the default keybinds, and start cooking. And you yourself might like your Dvorak board a lot, but if you changed jobs and suddenly discovered that your only option was to learn chording on a ten-key board of some sort, it would lengthen your learning curve significantly. But you could always put in the standard QWERTY board you learned in high school to get some work donw while you tried to find the manual for the chorder.
Making a standard isn't about limiting your control, or eliminating features that some users like or need. It's about making a lowest common denominator that you always have the option of falling back to when the above-and-beyond solution isn't the one you need.
"Sweet creeping zombie Jesus!"
- You make a good point. But bear in mind that the GPL is designed to prevent this kind of fragmentation. How do you add extensions to the system? Eg. extra syscalls - you modify the source. It is GPL'ed, you have to GPL and release your source. Now any of your competitors have your extensions, and the right to include them in their version of the software. The GPL virus spreads. Yey! It certainly makes life more difficult. I could also argue that the big UNIX vendors may have learnt from their mistakes, and should realize that they make their money from hardware, and more software == more sales. But that is too utopian a vision.
- However, if you are right, I would like to suggest that foo may be Symbian.
cheers,G
Oh, I'm not criticizing all Java programmers!
I'm one myself! I just meant that the people
making decisions on what to buy/use like
Java because it's proprietary. Us poor
slobs making a living programming just
go with whatever is marketable at work,
and do our own thing at home, like you said.
Stephen Molitor steve_molitor@yahoo.com
Q: What are these same companies contributing to these "core values" of Linux? A: With the partial exception of IBM, nothing.
... it speaks for itself I think.
Just some examples to show that these companies make valuable code contributions to the free software comunity:
HP
Mauve
A free (GPL) test suite for the Java[tm].
Compaq
iPAQ port
Compaq Ports Linux to iPAQ Handheld Computer.
They should also be mentioned for their Linux work regarding 64bit processor architectures (Alpha, Intel).
SUN
StarOffice
Under the motto: Lets use the best of breed components (read filters) in our GNOME office suite. And let us not forget their donations to the Debian developers for the UltraSparc port.
SGI
SGI OSS Projects
Look at this long project list
- Just my Euro 0.02c
Sun had GPL'ed Star Office and is working with Helix to make it a part of GNOME Office in the form of Bonobo components. IBM has a lot of articles on it's "Developer Works" web site about how to program for GNOME.
But the most significant thing is that these companies have chosen GNOME over everything else as the next generation desktop environment for UNIX/Linux. This backing does a lot of good for Free software.
I tried Helix a few days ago.. and I am just not impressed. Eye candy is great, but for stable work environment.. come on.
--------------------
I'm a gnome supporter, and I'm happy, but I can just smell KDE getting pissy very soon.
Mike Roberto
- GAIM: MicroBerto
Berto
How will sun sell hardware? This question demonstrates that the poster has no understanding of the difference between server hardware and PC hardware.
This is not a choice between a Ultra 2 processor and a Celeron, and IDE or a SCSI, but a different raison d'etre for the hardware. The closest thing that Intel has is the Xeon which does not scale well, has too little cache, and is still prohibitively expensive. Alpha's are nice, but good Alpha systems cost just about as much as good Sun stations.
I work on a 10 year old Sparc Station, and it runs better than my 3 year old PC. I have an old dinosaur that runs Sun OS 3.5 on a Motorolla chip that powered the Mac IIfx and IIci. (Where are those Mac's now? Doorstops for the server room.) The Dinosaur acts as an application server for 10 graphic artists in advertising production. It's probably 15-20 years old and has 8 MB of RAM. Whay haven't we replaced it?? We haven't found anything better.
Sun may be expensive, but for the 3-5K you'll spend for their workstations, you really cant do better. (Well, there's the SGI O2 servers... Dear Santa,)
Sun has it's troubles as do all hardware vendors nowadays, but to think that Intel would pose a threat to their high end server business just because of OS is ludicrous.
~Hammy
Maybe Gnumeric will replace StarOffice's spreadsheet...
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
...with Sun moving to adopt Gnome as the GUI for Solaris. Looks like some big names are getting interested in putting Linux on the desktop.
Last I checked, Solaris was not Linux. Digging even deeper, I made the startling discovery that neither is Gnome!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I don't set much store in these kinds of cross vendor "strategic alliances". Having been in this industry nigh on twenty years, I'd say 90% percent of these things disappear without a trace; 9% of them flail about due to corporate attention deficit disorder; 0.9% struggle on but but are not terribly significant (of course Gnome itself is very important, but I'm talking here of the corporate imprimatur). I supose this could be the one in a thousand though, in which case this could be big news.
After repeatedly waiting with baited breath for the promised miracles to arrive, I've come to the conclusion that as often as not these things are corporate misinformation, meant to throw a competitor off its game or to appease the stockholders by burnishing the dowdy old corporate image with the buzz-du-jour. In the corporate world, real competitive cards are held close to the vest.
In any case, the charm of free/open software is that we are no longer beholden to the nanosecond scale length attention of corporations who seem more interested in poking each other in the eye than taking care of customers.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
All GNOME seems to have is the support of trolls!
:)
From your post I see that KDE doesn't lack support of trolls too.
And given you gave no single fact in your post, I can change KDE to GNOME and GNOME to KDE in it, and get perfect (trollish) GNOME advocacy. It will have the same (zero) value. Niether KDE nor GNOME needs trolling advocates that do nothing but bash competing product and cry their beloved brandname on every occasion.
And seems that you did take that joke seriously. Maybe you should download some life.
-- Si hoc legere scis nimium eruditionis habes.
I agree with dudeman2 that companies would be smarter if the advertised and strive to give a suite on Linux that would offer rock solid compatibility with dominant file formats. Simply because this suite and desktop is standardized doesn't mean that all the other formats will disappear into a blue hole, never to be seen again. I would like to think that IBM, SUN et al can see far enough past their revenge cloud to see that it would be terribly naive not to offer that file format compatibility.
It would also be shortsighted to think that standardization would inhibit users getting the desktop they want (whether it be fast, or customizable or simple). My understanding is that if standardized then the thing is instead of a John, sitting in the john, with a great idea for an application worrying about what libraries his potential users will have to hack to get it working, he knows if he uses the {ahem} FIL (Foundation Interface Libraries) everyone in every distribution will download and install with a smile on her face...
With that in mind my other point is, although I have been bawling for the last eight months that the industry should turn its attention (if they want Linux to compete in the desktop at all) is some how standardizing, I would think that at the moment the move they are making now should be done in the Server market first. Some ISVs would be less apprehensive of the task of creating an application because at that point it would be able to run on any distro, and lets face it, when ISVs are happy, they push your product, they make you king. Isn't that what they want? To prove Linux can be king?
Nuff Respec'
DeICQLady
7D3 CPE
Compaq is also planning to announce that it will make a version of its hand-held iPaq computer available with the Gnome Linux operating system on Tuesday.
wow, this is a bit funny isnt' it.
Recently I read about Gnome's object model stuff, based on Corba, and I have to say, having used neither Gnome or KDE extensively (I still stick with TWM, although I have occasionally run Gnome and KDE for a few minutes to see what all the fuss was about), I HEAVILY lean towrds Gnome, because of the object model.
"Pretty" is not what's important at this point. What is important is addressing the issues that Miguel talks about in his "why unix sucks" article (on Slashdot the other day). The object model that is built into Gnome will be a *great* improvement on Linux program interoperability. The architecture is a good solution to a real problem. What can KDE offer? Do we really need to endorse a dekstop environment that doesn't solve the fundamental problems well, but can paint pretty pictures?
I think that the major reason that Unix/Linux is very shaky when it comes to user experience, is the lack of things like the Gnome object model. Program interoperability on Unix (aside from command line utilities that can be piped together) is horrid. We need a solution. Pretty or not, Gnome is it. Looks and efficiency can be improved upon incrementally. Fundamental architecture cannot. We need a thorough, well architected object model. We need Gnome.
The ususal "fundamentalists" in this case not only control the wording of the GPL (which at the end-users preference can be retro-active), but they are itching for a case that will provide legal precedence for enforcement of the GPL.
If I were part of the KDE team, which I am not, I would put some serious thought into rectifying their problems between the QPL and the GPL as outlined by the fundamentalists in the FSF. Like it or not, when it comes to the GPL the FSF calls the shots.
The KDE/QT folk might be clever folk when it comes to writing code, but when it comes to writing software licenses they have been incredibly dense, and it is coming back to bite them.
This particular announcement is a perfect example. KDE/QT should have become the standard desktop, but their licensing "issues" have cost them the support of some of the biggest powerhouses in the business. Sun, for example, is basically donating the entire StarOffice Suite, and all future modifications to the Gnome effort. That will no doubt include the services of a whole pile of full-time engineers working on Gnome. Those engineers could have been working on KDE, but they won't be.
Aside from all of that, there is a good chance that Sun, HP, IBM et al. chose Gnome for technical reasons. Yes, I realize that KDE 2.0 has KParts, but bonobo is already here, and it works now. The KDE-ers that talk about the instability of Gnome are almost certainly running RedHat's ancient version of Gnome combined with Enlightenment. HelixCode's version of Gnome combined with Sawfish is an entirely different kettle of fish, and it already has Bonobo.
The most important consideration, however, is almost certainly licensing related. Gnome's LGPL is not only unambiguous, but it is also Commercial Software friendly. KDE, on the other hand is neither as clearly legal, nor as commercially friendly.
I think it looks all fine and dandy, but will these efforts be a duplicatio of what companies like Eazel or HelixCode is trying to do? Or are people going to go for a close co-operation in the trafidition of free software? Oh, and by the way, it's going to be free software isn't it? Whatever it is, I'm pleased to see IBM in these efforts, they've released some really nice free software and they seem to be well committed to overthrow the MS desktop empire.
--exa--
Quite a few posts claim that this is a victory for Linux. I beg to differ.
I have used both Kde and Gnome on my Linux box at home, and at work I have a Solaris workstation on which I use Kde. I believe that as far as the desktop market is concerned, the UI is more important than the underlying OS. So when I have Kde on a Unix machine, I don't bother much about what's under the hood. Both Solaris and Linux will work fine for basic internet, email and office apps. So if at all this is a victory, it's a victory for Gnome not Linux.
B1ood
Note to self: pasty-skinned programmers ought not stand in the Mojave desert for multiple hours. -- John Carmack
Someone vapourize this guy...
-----------------------
Moderator's essentials
Star office is sad. I did install it on my Linux workstation just to see what the fuss was about. It took me less time to get fed up with it and un-install it than it did to install it in the first place. For a start it takes (on my nice old Pentium 200) about minute before I see anything. And then, I get a crappy start button and a whole new interface. It hogged all of my RAM, slowed down my machine to a halt when all I wanted to do was write a quick letter.
Unforunatly it has been designed with that awful attitude of One product to do everything attitude.
I think it is fine if commercial companies want to work on a free Office Suite. I just hope that they don't make the same mistakes that are currently abundant in Star Office.
First, we don't need the whole new UI stuff. Gnome and KDE are both cool for that. Separate applications for word processor, spread sheet, calander etc. so that loading one doesn't load all.
It would be nice if a project team could be set up where community members could do their normal volunteer work along side the paid commercial programmers from Sun, HP etc. Then we can get good feedback into the project and ensure that the project goes in a direction that will please the community. Not in a direction that will make the fat cats fatter.
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
How did these companies arrive at their decision to promote GTK and Gnome? Did they do a technical evaluation? Was it the fact that the licencing of GTK is different to QT? Or was it the fact that Gnome/GTK development is mainly done in the States, while KDE/QT is mainly developed in Europe.
This is not a troll, I really would be interested in the reasons.
"Why is Java not more widely used on the Linux desktop? Because of Sun's "ownership" of the standard."
Yes, but Java is *very* popular in corporate
America. They like the fact that Java is
owned, and are suspicious of free stuff.
Also, will Sun use it's influence (money,
developers possibly) on the Gnome Foundation
to insinuate Java into Gnome?
Stephen Molitor steve_molitor@yahoo.com
https://sourceforge.net/projects/dri/
I don't mean to bash the project, I love Linux as much as the next guy. But it seems that there's been so many of these "projects" and they never produce anything that even closely compares to MS office. MS Office is a great office suite, but it's bloated. Star Office works well, but it's also bloated, and a complete bitch for a Novice user to install, maybe the latest version is better, I haven't tried it recently.
Hopefully this time, something that's truly a competition for MS Office will be produced. I don't like having to switch back to windows everytime I need to write something up that needs to be sent to a fellow employee.
Wasn't there some sort of project awhile back to produce a standard document format based on XML which would be a kind of Universal document format? Whatever this consortium produces, it must include that document format and hopefully make it the default format if it wants to get ahead of MS Office.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
I know one has to pay through the nose for QT on Windows. I would assume that the same is true for non-free *nix?
If this is the case, then Gnome is a no-brainer...
I am fully aware of what the site says, but the question is what does the license say. Companies are legally considered to be a single entity and can freely distribute modified GPL programs, or programs written using GPL libraries internally. The only restriction is if they are able to let anyone else see it. What is needed is to add an explicit restriction about internal distribution (ie. to another person within the same organisation). This is different from simple play or personal customisation, and allows people to develop custom applications for internal use without releasing the code.
I'm not really disagreeing with you, but...
It still begs the question of why Gnome.
While Gnome has been closely associated with
Linux (and to a lesser extent *BSD), KDE
has been built and tested on Solaris since
day one. You can go to KDE's web site and
dowload Solaris binaries right now.
I suspect that Sun doesn't like the fact that
another company (Troll Tech) controls Qt.
Which is pretty hypocritical, considering that
Sun tells everyone that they shouldn't worry
about them controlling Java.
Stephen Molitor steve_molitor@yahoo.com
Does anyone else find it disturbing that some little company writing code behind closed doors managed to create an office application far more advanced and mature than any of the open source projects attempting to do the same? Sure, it's GPL'd now... on version 5. What does that say about open source? It's more likely that CTO you mentioned will say "open source is still unproven."
----
"Oh, bother," said Pooh, as he hid Piglet's mangled corpse.
The article doesn't say? Can anyone join, do you need to be a huge computer vendor? What is you want to add an insanely great feature,can you? Or will ordinary levle user ideas whither on the vine? Color me worried.
If you had been following this at all, then you would know that KDE 2.0 introduces a powerful object model called KParts. This is used in Koffice, and throughout KDE. You can find a detailed tutorial (a chapter from a forthcoming OPL book on KDE) at http://developer.kde.org/d ocumentation/tutorials/kparts/
4. You may distribute machine-executable forms of the Software or machine-executable forms of modified versions of the Software, provided that you meet these restrictions:
a. You must include this license document in the distribution.
b. You must ensure that all recipients of the machine-executable forms are also able to receive the complete machine-readable source code to the distributed Software, including all modifications, without any charge beyond the costs of data transfer, and place prominent notices in the distribution explaining this.
c. You must ensure that all modifications included in the machine-executable forms are available under the terms of this license.
Left that out because it doesn't support your petty little crusade, eh? A lie by omission is still a lie.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
Does this mean that I will be able to work on a document for more than 3 hours without the application taking acception to the fact that I don't have 256MB of RAM for it to eat. If anything I would like to see an office suite which doesn't insist on creating vastly over sized files even when they contain only plain text. Good Luck to gnome
Yes, the GPL does permit companies to develop customer applications for internal use without releasing the source to the general public.
In fact, the GPL never requires releasing the source to the general public. It only requires releasing the source to anybody to whom you give a binary. Of course, that person is free to distribute the code further if they choose. But they are not required to do so.
A group of people, or companies, could exchange modified GPL programs without ever releasing the source code to the general public.
This is not a bug. Free software permits source distribution, but it does not require it. Privacy is the other side of the coin of freedom.
We've got plenty of them already. StarOffice. Lotus SmartSuite. Corel Office. KOffice. Each has its backers.
.doc, .xls, .ppt formats are so strong that most people would rather pay for guaranteed compatibility (and upgrade every 2 years), than use an alternate free product.
But the network effect of standardization on the
Until one can guarantee 100% bug-for-bug compatibility with MS Office - including templates, macro functionality, and UI, and keep up with Microsoft's gratuitous changes every few years, it's dommed to fail.
In my mind a better option would be to improve WINE - it can already run Microsoft Office applications well, and is not far from running them "perfectly." When that happens you will see a lot of folks moving to MS Office on the Linux desktop.
Actually, if Microsoft was not a monopoly it would not be taken to court. Thus, even though I've addressed it as a sufficient cause and openly acknowledge that it is only a necessary one, I still stick to my original statement.
So long and thanks for all the fish . . . !!!
Who's going to run Linux on an expensive workstation when they can run exactly the same software on a cheap PC? At the moment Sun can charge a premium for Solaris workstations because they're interoperable with its big servers. If it releases a version of Linux which is equally interoperable, who's going to run it on SPARC hardware? Of course Sun can still lock people in by refusing to support Linux on any platform except SPARC, but will customers stand for that?
Font rendering on Linux should really be modeled after MacOS rather than Windows. They're better off than Windows' WYSINWYG.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Looks like Sun are about to kill CDE.
About time to never really like Motif
it's Intrinsic toolkit was brain-dead.
It has a UI that follows a spec that
even M$ never use anymore. Good riddence
is all I can say.
-- / The whole history of this invention has been a struggle
They could also release the X11-NeWS merge which was the official product, but that was really mess. I would prefer seeing pure NeWS underlying it with an emulation library for X11 that talks to NeWS. The fact that modern programs no longer assumme colormaps should get rid of the worst problems with X11 emulation (the emulator will just claim that a true-color visual is the only one available).
Merging in the FreeType font renderer and some anti-aliasing code from libart and it would kick MicroSoft's (and Java's) ass.
Simple. C++ is (currently) so compiler-dependant, it's an inappropriate choice for multiple-platform development. You can't link C++ libraries built with one compiler with code written using another compiler, since they mangle names differently. The standard is so recent that there isn't, to the best of my knowledge, a single compiler that is known to be fully conformant. Et cetera, et cetera.
C++ (the language) is a good choice, but C++ (the reality) isn't there yet. Unless we force everyone to use the same compiler. Forcing everyone to use the same compiler is bad.
Teach your kids: "C++ made baby Jesus cry."
You're almost right on there, but remember, the bigger target is not X/ Motif, but Windows/ MFC. They want something ugly so us people who write for Windows will feel comfortable learning it. Once it looks like MFC, you know you've got a winner!
If you are modding me down because you disagree with me, use the "Flamebait" category, not the "Troll" one.
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
Even the samurai
have teddy bears,
and even the teddy bears
get drunk
Sure, and tie linux to x86 forever
Not forever neccesarally. If businesses (read: anyone who pays for office) started running Microsoft Office on Linux then all the (powerpc && sparc && alpha) based production houses out there would Just install whatever office application that gets them the least complaints when they email off presentations exported to powerpoint to clients. There are plenty of linux/bsd hackers out there that stay away from the x86 and they would gladly prove that you don't need Intel or Microsoft even if you use computers to do auctual work.
Let the flames begin!!!
--- Justin Dearing http://www.justaprogrammer.net/ We're just programmers.
Qt remains the property of TrollTech. It can't be forked.
Chapter and verse of the QPL that forbids forking, please? Troll.
I've finally had it: until slashdot gets article moderation, I am not coming back.
1. TrollTech has already said it would GPL Qt, if the GPL v3 prevented proprietary development. Currently it does not, in this respect a lot of the trouble is caused because the FSFs PR engine refuses to admit this. See Eric's piece on FreshMeat a few months back (And Matthias E's comments expanding on it).
2. It is true that KDE 1.x is no longer better than Gnome 1.2, but KDE 2.0 blows Gnome 1.2 away. You are wrong that the underlying framework for KDE 2.0 will keep changing - it won't. There aren't 'many problems' with it as you claim, there are some bugs sure, but they are getting fixed extremely rapidly.
3. You are so wrong about the difficulty of porting from KDE 1.x to KDE 2.0. Most simple apps can be ported in the most minimal sense of the word in less than half an hour. More complex apps might take a week or so. If you actually look around you'll see that the process of moving over to KDE 2.0 has already begun with many of the non-CVS apps starting to develop 2.0 branches. This will become more and more common as we approach closer to the release.
I also doubt your comment that more people are developing for Gnome than for KDE. For one thing a big question is what are they writing? In many cases they are still playing catch up for apps KDE had a year ago.
It is really not an issue if Sun and Gnome try to do this - for one thing the effort involved will be huge, and I seriously doubt if the results will justify it. Star Office has some good points, but there's no getting away from the fact that it is a pretty hairy piece of software. By the time such a port becomes usable we will already have KDE 2.1, and maybe even 2.2.
One thing a lot of people has missed is that the plan for KDE 2 is to have a much more rapid release cycle than that between 1.1 and 2.0. We have spent a lot of time making sure that not only will 2.0 be good in itself, but also that it is an API that is well documented and will remain usable for a long time. KDE 2.1 and 2.2 at the least will remain source and binary compatible.
Gnome ported to Windows.
Office ported to Gnome (hey, they have to keep up the installed base SOMEHOW)
Gnome running on OSX on mac's.
Or the most frightening thought of all..
A Unix/Linux Common office suite would by all rights and measure naturally, eventually lead to..
AN ANIMATED PAPERCLIP ON *IX!!!!!
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
GPL'd web-based tradewars themed space game
But when one distributes the modified forms, the source must still be distributed under the terms in section 3. That means that it still must exist as cannonical TT form + patches, rather than as a complete integrated source package. The need to maintain all changes as separate patches against a cannonical source presents a formidable challenge to any attempt to fork the code. It is still theoretically possible to do so, but it would be difficult enough to be practically impossible.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Why spending money on apple doing that. At todays stage of the desktop, everybody can choose a theme he likes best. I agree that CDE is awful, though.
When have any of the above had any success with gui? Is linux going to look like StarOffice? WPS? (that wouldn't be bad, although nobody outside of IBM could write anything for it. All the best parts were 'undocumented')
This will please the people who don't know that linux is already running a good part of their network infrastructure.
The people who want a standardized gui/api are those who would like to package closed source applications.
Some marketing puke wants to get 'control' of something. 'We can't sell linux unless it has a consistent interface'. We have to get some userinterfaceexperts to make it easy for the masses. These linux wonks don't understand interface.
If these large monoliths were capable of actually producing something worthwhile out of this, I would worry. But since they aren't, and this more than likely is a shallow marketing ploy, we will continue to see improvements in the gui of linux. How so? The same way the rest of the system has improved. Individuals with good ideas writing something, then getting other like minded people to build on it.
With the two desktop systems maturing, the grunt work is almost done. Now, anybody who has an idea on how to improve the way (s)he get work done can write something. Then show it off, gather support and help to finish it. We will see new ways of interfacing our machines. And not have to wait for some committee to decide. Some ideas will die and be forgotten, others will become common currency. Soon MS will be implementing some of the ideas from linux user interfaces.
Derek
If I were King, I would kill all the lawyers. Then all the salesmen.
Here is another story about this over at The Register. My question through this whole thing (since the announced GPLing of StarOffice) is, what is going to happen to the Gnome Office? I personally like Gnumeric much better than the Star Office Spreadsheet.....is there space for two office suites in the world of Gnome?
To me one of the most interesting parts of using linux was the ability to choose your window manager that fit your needs and have it be fully fuctional. I personally do not like gnome or kde. It seems like we're getting less and less of a choice when more things are being built around them. Is a whole generation of linux users going to miss out in our search for a user friendly desktop? I'm afraid we're going to loose diversity in linux applications with homoginization of linux.
::matt:: Computers let you make more mistakes faster than any other invention, with the possible exception of tequila.
besides... we *do* have the source :)
BTW, they have a good slogan: "It sucks less!"
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
This might help microsoft in their appeal. So they would not be considered a monopoly but I do not think microsoft is going to like this either way
Who cares why Sun switches to Gnome? Anything is better than the eyesore known as CDE.
I'm personally quite neutral in the imaginary 'desktop war' but I think it's possible that all this weight from corporate backers might be what it takes to finally put it to rest.
--
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
then let the power users customize their systems
But, please, let the power users customize their systems! That is one thing I like about Linux after using Windows for so long. Windows has one tool (TweakUI), that isn't even supported, to allow interface customization. Linux has I-don't-know-how-many. One per window manager, at the very least.
-RickHunter
We need a real alternative. There are countless areas in which Office could be improved upon -- speed, stability, portability, etc. The heavy-hitters (IBM, Sun, et. al.) can provide the core codebase, and we open-sourcers can provide the trimming and debugging. The only thing I fear is a repeat of the Communicator 5 -> Mozilla process, where the maintainers and contributors realize a few months into the project that the old code is basically junk, and have to scrap it and start over. I have no idea what the internals of StarOffice look like now, but I'm afraid they may be less than pretty.
Is it just me, or does anyone else feel that standardization of the the linux UI will simply transform linux into an open source version of windows? Personally, one reason why I enjoy linux is the complete customization of one's desktop and entire working environment. And I do agree that a standardized Linux UI would be better than Windows, but I'd rather keep the variety that is present today.
If this standardization takes place, KDE will simply be a thing of the past. I was a long time KDE user until recently, due to Gnome 2.0's superiority over KDE. Hopefully KDE 2.0 will put up a fight, so that we will once again have two great window managers to choose from, and two great window managers to develop for.
-=MeMpHiStO=-This is addressed to the people at KDE who are completely inept at marketing their excellent product. How did GNOME garner or appear to garner all this support from big companies? The answer is here, my friends:
/
http://mail.gnome.org/pipermail/foundation-list
Read, weep and learn. With special emphasis on the learn. Note how this was all carefully crafted from the start by marketing geniuses.
Be quick, because Miguel will delete the archives soon. I have made copies but the foundation also has secret and confidential channels.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
"KDE is much closer to the current CDE in the look and feel area."
That's only true for KDE 1.x, not KDE 2, and even then KDE 1.x and CDE don't look *that* much alike.
The politics of open source licensing also may have something to do with it. GNOME, whatever its faults, is definitely free software, no question about it. KDE has been dogged by licensing controversies in one form or another since day one, and Sun probably just does not want to get drawn into that mess.
Gnome Foundation: a Foundation is set up at the edge of the galaxy to combat the years of anarchy predicted to rise as a result of the collapse of the Microsoft Empire
Gnome Foundation & Empire: the Foundation battles the dying remnants of the once-great Microsoft Empire
Second Gnome Foundation: in the Gnome Foundation's hour of need, a second Gnome Foundation is revealed, at the other end of the galaxy.
~ Give me 101 plastic soldiers, and I will conquer the world.
What the heck is the FSF's PR engine? RMS?
I don't know what you mean by proprietary development. I doubt any version of the GPL will prohibit keeping private changes private. I quote from the FSF web site:
Looks like Big Business is going to mess up linux. Oh, well. It was nice while it lasted. The nice thing about linux is- there IS no 'standard' 'desktop', and I have a healthy choice over what I may use.
-- "Perceptions create reality. By changing your perceptions you change your reality."
Finally, there is going to be a standard DE for Linux.
No more dealing with commercial software using Motif
instead of one of the DEs. Now what as Migual saying
about creating a standard Linux desktop environment?
I would have prefered KDE, but hey, you take what you can get, no?
(Excuse the formatting, I'm posting from Lynx.)
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Is soon to become Open Office that will not be a gated application environment any more. It will be fully Open Source (GPL) with separate processes for each application and XML format for the files. This should form a very nice basis for Linux Office tools going forward.
> Does anyone else find it disturbing that some little company writing code behind closed doors managed to create an office application far more advanced and mature than any of the open source projects attempting to do the same? ... What does that say about open source?
I don't suppose it says anything at all, without knowing how much actual work has gone into the various projects.
If in fact SO was {faster, better, cheaper}, then maybe the cathedral is better after all. But without knowing the person-hours that went in, money or other resources expended, or relative quality of the end result, you simply can't make any comparisons.
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Full circle couldn't be more accurate, because we can predict the future:
Then:BSD (as in the real Berkeley thing) is good.
Now:Hardware vendors jump on the BSD bandwagon
Everyone touts open source compatability
Everyone develops their own extensions, incompatable with others
The market fractures and is unable to compete with MS
Linux/Gnome is good
What's next?Vendors beaten by Microsoft jump on the bandwagon
Everyone touts open source compatability
Everyone adds their own extensions
The market fractures and can't compete against foo
I wonder if foo will be microsoft?
"This means that there is a single cannonical version of the software- the one released by TrollTech- and anything else is only allowed to exist as patches."
This is a Good Thing(tm). If I am to believe the the collective wisdom of slashdot, Linux cannot fork because it is under the GPL. So if the GPL prevents forking, what is so wrong about the QPL restricting forking? Or to put it another way, if the forking is good, where are all the GTK forks?
As a developer, I want Open Source software that is *canonical*. I get enough grief with users complaining that they don't know how to type configure; make; make install, without having to hold their hands when their distro uses a non-standard version of a library. I would rather say "you need Qt to compile my program" than having to say "you need Sun's version of GTK to compile my program, because IBM's GTK will not work."
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
So it sounds like the big hardware companies are tired of getting the double shuffle from Uncle Billy. Good. The more desktops the merrier. As long as the apps run, who cares what IBM, Sun et al consider to be standard. Them that like it will run it and the rest of us will use the desktop of our choice. That's what it's about, isn't it? Multiple desktops. Everybody who writes them does it as a labour of love and love is winning. This isn't about beating Microscruff, they're already a dead man walking... this is about choice and joy. The time is long past when we Linuxphiles have to feel threatened every time some one leaps onto the bandwagon. Relax folks. Enjoy.
Here's my DeCSS mirror. Where's yours?
Here's my DeCSS mirror, where's yours?
I read a piece 3-4 years ago that predicted that in 5-6 years (from the date of the article) there would be 2 main OS's in the market: Microsoft's offerings (Windows and derrived), and Linux. We are progressing rapidly in that direction. Not to belittle Solaris, Apple, BSD, etc., but Linux is gaining ground rapidly at the expense of everyone else.
With the opening of StarOffice, the use of Linux everywhere (embedded, desktop, server, super computer), high-powered desktops like Gnome and KDE, Linux is coming of age!
AC because I have to be.... Pls. moderate up!
Okay, okay. Gtk+/Gnome doesn't have the prettiest coding interface. This is actually an architectural advantage in the long run, for two reasons.
1) Portability: C has been around a long time. The tools for working with it are stable and mature. The desktop can reach more platforms, and that means applications can be written once. That's a powerful incentive for standardization.
2) Wrappers: the disadvantage of working with C (nasty, unsafe interfaces) can be corrected with wrappers for C++/ObjectiveC/Java/Python/Perl and so on. No, these are not mature at the moment, but over the next few years they are likely to improve enough to make the difference unimportant.
Now don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that having a standard interface is bad, it probably isn't, but I for one see this as a bit of a no-brainer.
A Standard Interface is all well and good, but don't we all need different things from our desktops? This windows machine I'm using here is barely tolerable because the desktop is so dissimilar to the way I want to work, although the addition of Xmouse to get sloppy focus has improved things a little. If I look at each of my friends, we all have different ideas over what our ideal desktop should do. Myself, it's simplicity with Window Maker. Others go for speed with things like Fvwm2 or customisability with KDE. If we all used the same desktop, then it'd be one that was not quite right for any of us, because it does things that each of us find annoying in different places.
People, think! Standardisation isn't necessarily good for all of us- some of us like to work our own way.
--
Said it couldn't last, said it wouldn't last... This is the last stand against tomorrow's world.
errmmm... it's being released under GPL and LGPL. So tell me: what's to stop people from creating ksoffice?
the opening of Soffice benefits KDE too.
I use Friend/Foe + mod-point modifiers as a karma/reputation system.
Not quite. Linux can fork all it wants. What most folks claim is that it is not in many people's interest to fork it. But it still may fork, and if it does it may not be such a bad thing. If for some reason Linus decides not to include something that the vast majority of users want.. bingo... fork! And chances are that that particular fork will become the dominant version.
If you don't have anything nice to say, say it often.
- Ed the Sock
Amen to that. And just about every other X app. I love Linux, but for crying out loud, it can't be that hard to implement antialiased fonts, can it?
It wouldn't be that much of a hack (for 24-bit displays at least) to have 16 or 256 Greyscale levels in the bitmap to indicate opacity for each pixel in the font.
I know there's some guys who are working on support for TTF in X, and there's already scalable font support, but that font server needs some kind of beefin' up.
Average users think the current fonts look ubercrappy, and they are right. There's no good reason to settle for less than what's possible. Is X just such a convoluted pile of junk that making antialiasing of fonts a default setting is nigh on impossible? Even the kernel hackers amongst us could benefit from more readable screens (well, when they are bothering to use X).
The point is, X is the face of Linux for a lot of users. The font problem makes that face "not pretty enough" for them. 'Specially managerial types. The face just confirms their suspicions that Linux was haphazardly thrown together from bits of old junk by a bunch of anarchist teenage hackers, and they wouldn't want such a thing compromising their beige little world.
--
NO TOUCH MONKEY!
Look at Windows NT and 98 -- they start off with the easier, consumer-grade stuff, and move on to NT relatively painlessly. Yes, the underlying system is completely different, (and no, I'm not really trying to compare Linux to Windows 98 -- it's just for the purpose of illustrating this admittedly limited point) but because the widgets and desktop layout are similar, you could sit any relatively competent Windows user in front of any Windows machine, and they could run Office, surf the web, or copy some files.
IBM, HP, and Compaq get similar benefits -- their in-house UNIXes can have a familiar interface, and they can train an entire generation of UNIX users by cloning a dominant Linux UI. Personally, I think it could be great to be able to sit down at basically any decent UNIX box running a current OS, log in, and have the option of dropping into a familiar, high-quality GUI. No one will be locked into it -- hell, even if you're stuck with GNOME, you still have a lot of options for window managers, desktop customization, application choice, etc.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
This is a shadow of what Gnome's corba-based object model offers.
Gnome's object model means that any object, written in any language, can bind to and use Gnome objects. KParts looks like an API for KDE for "plug-in" widgets.
These are hardly equivalent. Gnome's is much more powerful, much more pervasive, and language independent.
I sure hope this isn't the beginning of another "standarding" effort on looks or perfromance. I thought I'd escaped that awful puke colored aqua desktop, at least at home. If Gnome's attempt is to create a standard platform format from which ANY interface can plug into that's good, but I don't want it to become the M$ equivalent of GUIs. I prefer to use something less resource intensive. I don't need a chirping animated icon to open an xterm window or to start xcalc. Linux attracted me because of the range of choices (competition). There needs to be competition to keep quality and inovation alive and well. We all know what happens when there isn't, look at M$. I hope Gnome doesn't forget it's roots.
Those who think statically link. For user panic, link dynamic.
However, in this case Gnome is my standard of choice (and I pushed it at IBM whenever possible while I was there) so this isn't a problem for me.
I do wish they'd choose something less bloated and awful than StarOffice. Perhaps in the process of their development they'll make it less bloated and awful. I wouldn't even really complain about it if it didn't make me start up every damn thing just to get at the word processor.
Ideally they'll rewrite it as a bunch of bonobo components. This would have a profound impact on gnome, and all those IBM OS/2 programmers who got used to programming in SOM won't have a major conceptual hurtle to get over to get started in Gnome programming.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Microsoft's biggest competitor in this particular arena is not Lotus, Corel, or IBM, and it certainly isn't StarOffice or any of the other Linux office suites. Microsoft's biggest competitor is older versions of their own software. In the past Microsoft has been able to change document formats (and other fun stuff) to force people to upgrade, but with a freely available alternative (with decent import filters) Microsoft has to be careful of such tactics.
After all, if you are being forced to switch Office suites, which would you rather switch to, the freely available office suite (with free upgrades), or the office suite that is guaranteed to cost you $400/seat + upgrade costs every two years forever.
As Gnome Office continues to get better and better Microsoft is going to have a harder and harder time justifying their outrageous prices.
Huh? When did anyone mention Windows? AFAIK, people were just talking about anti-aliasing and more general alpha channel support.
There has been a lot of performance work that has been conducted on the Linux builds lately so we're going to see an exciting future for Mozilla on the Linux platform. We just need a few more companies driving forward and making sure that we have a very fast and stable Linux mozilla (or mozilla based browser), and that it blows the Windows performance out of the window.
I dont have a
Sun is a member. Sun owns StarOffice. Sun might have some qualified staff that can make use of the public StarOffice code for this project...
The screen takeover bid is only a feature of the Win32 version, or at least, it doesn't really have the same potency under Gnome, KDE or CDE (it appears as a fulscreen sized window). I remember being confused when someone reported that to me about the Win-version. It can be turned off by some menu option, not that easy to find though.
StarOffice is great, in terms of relegating VMware to occasional use, and in some feature areas it is superior to MS-Office - the areas in which it needs work are its primary real-world feature, MS-Office compatibility:
1. Better and better Office 97/2k file format compatibility
2. Remove the annoying "Do you want to save this as an sdw/sdc file?" feature - make the MS-Office file formats selectable as the default
3. Better font/charset compatibility with Windows
Here I am posting from Konqueror. I'm on a laptop with FreeBSD 4.1, and KDE 1.92(BETA). I just switched from GNOME 1.2 on FreeBSD because it was slow. I hate it when it takes too long for the graphics to draw. KDE2 and GNOME 1.2 both have their goods and bads. This KDE is buggy as hell, but there were quite a few features unimplemented by GNOME 1.2 on FreeBSD so I figured it was a fair trade; KDE2 claims to build well on FreeBSD and it did. Plus KOffice will be a really well implemented as a professional set of tools well before a GNOME office ever is. The FrameMaker like functionality is really needed in my job.
<pThe bottom line GNOME will win because it's leaders have a much larger American presence, particularly the Silicon Valley. KDE is a big deal in Europe, and lesser so here in the US.
<p>However, who cares? I started disliking GNOME when it went from a freesoftware project to a HelixCode company. KDE is built by enthusiasts and not by MS hunters. It has a better browser, a better mail client, and that is a really big deal. GNOME is still way behind. The only thing I liked better on GNOME was the ps viewer ggv and the cool panel applets. The pretty icons display too slowly on my laptop, so I got frustrated with the eye candy and now choose raw number of features--- KDE2.
<p>NOTE: I am an end-user of the quasi-typical kind. I don't code, just play around with new software. KDE is easier and makes more sense to everyone I introduce to UNIX. GNOME is always prettier, but in the end, KDE gets chosen.
FYI:
www.gnome-foundation.org is running Apache/1.3.9 (Unix) PHP/3.0.12 on Linux
Anyone ever play the Red Storm game 'ruthless.com', released about a year ago? Ruthless represents the software market as a grid of squares, where a company may establish its presence via research, marketing, shady tactics, etc.. Whoever had the most 'market share' in a niche, gained profit from it.
/damn/, does it ruin the enemy's plans. Anyone see parallels between Sun and Microsoft, here? ;)
Anyway.. There was a dirty scorched earth tactic called 'Open Source', where you made a produce open source, and increased the quality of the product 10x, damn near killing the competition's share competing with the product.
Only problem? You don't make any money from it either.. But
Weapons of Mass Analysis
Q: Why are these companies focusing on Linux as a "Windows killer"?
A: Because it is already a Windows killer. They want to ride the wave.
Q: And, up to this point, have any of the "Windows killer" features been GUI related?
A: No.
Q: What have they been related to?
A: Stability, performance, reliability, flexibility, scalability, cost and of course freedom.
Q: What are these same companies contributing to these "core values" of Linux?
A: With the partial exception of IBM, nothing.
Blah. I've seen a lot of "consortiums" and "joint ventures"--few (if any) of them produce anything of real value. Instead of hyping up how much "contributing to the community" they are going to do (jam tomorrow) why not just produce some code and release it (jam today)?
--
Linux MAPI Server!
http://www.openone.com/software/MailOne/
(Exchange Migration HOWTO coming soon)
what? Solaris has a GUI?
This is my sig, show me yours
I can't believe they chose GNOME when KDE is superior is every way.
Gnome is a bloated, memory hungry moster, while KDE actually has a negative memory footprint. That's right, when I run KDE, it magically *reduces* my memory load!
Gnome is also coded horribly. Miguel "buffer overflow" de Icaza realizes this - this is why he's getting all these other big companies (I.B.M., Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems , even Eazel) to come in and fix it for him. If coders were U.S. presidents, the KDE programmers would be Abraham Lincoln, and the Gnome coders would be Warren G. Harding.
Gnome is ugly. Especially the one's by Tigert (or "mspaint.exe", his alter-identity on IRC.) KDE is, on the other hand, so beautiful that everytime I log in, I collase to the floor in a state of blissful shock for the sheer beauty of my desktop.
So please, people, stop the madness - drop Gnome and start using KDE instead!
(P.S. I wonder how many people will take this seriously...?)
There are actually two significant GPL'd Java implementations, so whatever "ownership" Sun has should be less of a concern. GCJ is one, on track to be in GCC 3.0 or maybe even GCC 2.95.next; and Kaffe is very well established.
But AWT support is mostly lacking, there. Having Gnome accessible from Java is a big deal, and is likely going to be the site of future major fights. I mean, nobody implemented a cleanroom Swing (over a cleanroom AWT); and who would want to? Do a good API to Gnome instead. Swing has major virtues, but from the perspective of Free Software it's a major downer -- too much code, too much history, too much corporate control.
It'll be really interesting to see how supportive Sun is of GPL'd Java working in the Gnome environment. I suspect that if the community develops, it'll either be using GPL'd Swing (from Sun) or Gnome-from-Java.
Someone mentioned TrueType fonts, which I believe were originaly developed by Apple & Microsoft, however, I think Apple has moved on, or at least implemented TTF support correctly on the video rendering side unlike Microsoft.
Refrag
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Helix Gnome crashed all over the place for me. Applets crashed, gmc crashed whenever I dragged some icon to the desktop, gtop crashed as soon as I started it, panel crashed when adding new applets and such, it just wasn't that good, even when I got the package updates.
Solution: rm -rf ~/.gnome*
I deleted all of my old gnome configuration files, (which were from 1.0 releases), and everything is fine.
> It will be very difficult to communicate with
;-)
> StarOffice from programs outside of StarOffice.
> Do you think that you are going to be able to
> write your own application, and then embed a
> StarOffice doc within it?
In that point you're completely wrong! I'm certainly one of the people who know the programming capabilities of StarOffice most and I can tell you, using StarOffice components within external applications is all but impossible as you think. It's not using Bonobo currently, but something very similar. And ever heard about bridges for component models? Beware the butterfly!
Michael
Whoohoo! This is what Linux needs to get on the desktop bigtime, some big players with some dollars to get some of the nastier pieces of code written. Perhaps they can work to write a standardized multimedia system for GNOME (Yes, I know there are standards and everything works from a technical level, I'm talking DirectX-write-games-for-me level). Stuff like putting a little joystick/HID icon in the gnome settings menu and having a little API so I can use that input in anything. :)
Linux rocks hard where it's (at least tried) to follow POSIX, Berkeley Sockets, and other standard APIs. (And gnome, with corba!) Carrying this through to the multimedia side will be a huge step. Then I can remove that nasty fat32 partition once and for all :).
I'd really like to see some of the big heavies come down and set up some sort of board to work with companies to a) show them the market and b) release drives and/or API information to allow drivers to be developed. It'd be sweet to walk into Future Shop / Fry's whatever and be able to buy (insert nifty gadget here) and know that there's linux drivers in the box. :)
Definately great news though!
..don't panic
Don't be silly. You can tell them apart by their hair.
not so long ago
.. Apple
in the vacuum of a recently departed reality distortion field
the SUN rose and many where happy then an evil spirit banished it and the big blue
the SUN went and joined the big blue and the zeros and ones numbering scheme to use the shed's desktop
many @ the SUN wanted the nice desktop of APPLE
the GNOME wandered about and came upon some apples that had plated and where now sunflowers of their own the sunflowers helped them look @ what was great about the apple and use it
{
plain text ( straight )
{
what I am trying to say is SUN was going to buy apple a long time ago
they liked the desktop but not the price
Apple being Apple turned their noses up and walked off and tried it on with IBM
IBM deal fell through because Apple is well
Sun now get eazel desktop for free
Gnome gets proper support and SUNs internationalization
}
}
regards
john jones
(a deltic so please dont moan about spelling but the content)
Not quite true from what I understand. The MS RPC is a re-implementation of the DCE RPC, something about MS not being prepared to pay licence fees to OSF.
It sort of interworks with the DCE RPC, in the same way as MS Kerberos interworks with the MIT Kerberos.
Well, Apple is not in the Unix business as apparently as IBM, etc. So, this news doesn't look important to Apple, but.. I don't think so.
Do Apple executive officers remember when the X was born? Unix society needed GUI for their Unix.
As far as I remember, Unix society requested one to Apple, and Apple denied it. Apple could have not had strategy on GUI on other platform than Mac. What they have now is that GUI is available for not only Mac and but also other platforms.
And Apple lost any leadership in that area.
I've heard that pre-Apple-employee started Eazel project. Apple doesn't seem to fund it.
Now, big players including IBM support GNOME on Linux. Again, Apple is not one of them.
What if Apple's UI is available on other platforms? People will get more familiar to Mac.
I think it will be good.
Do Apple executive officers read slashdot article?
I hope that Mr. Jobs read my article.
Why don't he think differently?
Do he think only different?
I think the StarOffice plans are bold and probably on the order of Mozilla in terms of ambition. I don't know how many developers Sun plans to put on it. Breaking it up in to small components and bonobo enabling it will be awesome if they can make it work in a timely fashion. It is still the most functional and probably one of the easiest to use productivity apps on Linux, if they can make it smaller, quicker and interoperate with other Linux apps then it could be a real killer app.
Second, as a veteran of the OS wars of the early 1990's. I have to say that the GNOME vision sounds remarkably close to what I invisioned IBM delivering with Workplace OS or OS/2 with WPS and OpenDoc. Part of me that I thought was dead has come back to life and is happy by this. I think there is a huge lesson to be learned here since IBM failed and GNOME is steadily moving forward and gaining. I think that if you're going to do full desktop integration with component based applications and consistency you have two choices, you either do it like MS and do everything or you do it in the open and you out the source. I think it's too difficult to engineer a framework and API that is complete enough and keep it all secret unless you write both the framework and the apps intended to run on it.
ESR has said things to the extent that putting out 1.0 is much faster with a closed model but once you've got a product maintaining it and evolving it is far more easy with free software. I believe that, I've had experience with it. If they can avoid the pitfalls Mozilla had in trying to do way too much for the first release then if the theory holds out in a year or two the most sophisticated productivity environment around might not be Office200x but it could be the GNOME/Star Office. There are some big ifs there. I guess only time will tell. Of course since it's all in the open, this time around I feel like I get get in to the fray an join the fight to make my platform win and not wait and patiently rely on an IBM or somebody to do it for me. I don't know about most of you but I'm still young and stupid and fell pretty much invincable; between KDE, the kernel, GNOME, GNU and mozilla I don't think we can be stopped.
Lastly, and perhaps most interesting of all to me is the fact that these big companies have chosen GNOME and not KDE. I don't want to rekindle the war or come across the wrong way but this essentially says that there is something more important than the quality of a GUI kit, being all C++ based, eleged stability (I only say that because I've not compared the stabilty of KDE and GNOME, they are both very stable on my systems) or how far along the project is. KDE is clearly further along, QT is fully documented and easy to use, it's in C++ and not C (and GNOME is having C++ conflict right now with GTK-- and Inti and developers leaving) and arguably KDE is easier to use and more stable but they chose GNOME instead. Say what you will about those companies, they know how to make a product, they know how to make a product succeed and they know a crap load about making money. This could be a new chapter in the CatB. The only thing I see GNOME having over KDE is freedom; freedom that is secured by one of the more anti-corporate licenses around, the GPL. Is there anything else? Because if there isn't then I think that it is significant. With the GPL, GNOME and Linux you'll never lose your investment anything you put in to it will be in the public domain forever. Your competitors can't take your contributions behind their closed doors, change them and then beat you with them. I remember the OSF/Opengroup and this seems like what that was supposed to to 15 years ago but never became because everyone was worried about their investments and their technologies.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
Yes, I realize that KDE 2.0 has KParts, but bonobo is already here, and it works now. :-)
And so is DCOP.
KParts is also already here, it also works now
I am so tired of CDE it hurts... I've been using KDE and Gnnome on Solaris for over a year now. Xinerama makes the difference though. I have two monitors and until Xinerama there wasn't a palatable choice for a window manager.
_damnit_
_damnit_
It's my job to freeze you. -- Logan's Run
I think that if SUN choose GNOME as the new destop environment for Solaris then a lot of sysadmins will not be happy.
KDE is much closer to the current CDE in the look and feel area. I would have thought it would be the next generation desktop environment of choice for a traditional Unix.
Is SUN trying to push into the desktop market (via network computing, I guess)? Or is there some other factor at work in this selection?
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.
Sure, and tie linux to x86 forever
This issue has indeed been the single largest obstacle for KDE adoption there has been.
Of course, even if Troll Tech satisfies the FSF crowd and goes GPL compliant, that wont exactly improve the situation from commercial software standpoint. GNOME/GTK is almost entirely LGPL and thus very friendly for commercial development, while a GPL equivalent Qt would require payment for commercial proprietary development. Exchanging Motif/CDE for another proprietary royalty encumbered toolkit might not be as palatable as exchanging it for a free one.
It has quite a bit of analysis and history.
On interesting thing about Sun's involvement to date with help Linux and the "open source community" is that it's beeen more about helping with software, rather than Sun trying to sell Linux boxes. (Sun aren't likely to sell SPARC, or other, boxes with Linux pre-installed for some time - they're certainly not planning to at the moment)
My plain old text documents are compatible with every word processor. And my HTML slides are pretty much compatible with every browser.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Of course, even if Troll Tech satisfies the FSF crowd and goes GPL compliant, that wont exactly improve the situation from commercial software standpoint. GNOME/GTK is almost entirely LGPL and thus very friendly for commercial development, while a GPL equivalent Qt would require payment for commercial proprietary development. Exchanging Motif/CDE for another proprietary royalty encumbered toolkit might not be as palatable as exchanging it for a free one.
That is as succinctly put as possible. Although I would point out that if QT was GPLed at least the free software critics would be mollified. As it stands now QT's licensing makes Gnome a better platform for both commercial and free software development. The free software advocates appreciate Gnome's well understood license (and the fact that Gnome is bundled with Debian GNU/Linux), and the commercial folk appreciate the fact that they can use and modify Gnome without having to worry about licensing fees.
This is especially true now that Gnome has reach a point where it is essentially stable, mature, and full-featured. The Gnome folks took the time to nail the infrastructure first, and so they don't have to worry about things like KDE's switch from DCOP to KParts. The fact that Gnome is Corba based is also a plus in the eyes of companies like Sun, HP, or IBM.
The most important factor, in this particular case however, was almost certainly the license.
What ever happened with that potential alliance? If anything that would be the best thing that could happen to the Linux GUI desktop IMO. It will be successful not because Gnome and KDE would look the same (I hope it won't come to that, and if an OEM decides to do so, a user should still have the option to customize the desktop), but because the result would be an object framework that would enable Gnome and KDE apps to work with each other.
Sanity.html - Error 404 not found
And some of us like pastels! :)
--Calum
What about the X consortium? Sure, they don't necessarily hack mad code for your use, but that's not their purpose.
It's not illegal (or wrong) to control 100% of the market because you have a good (or popular) product. It is illegal (and wrong) to use your large market share to kill companies you don't like.
-- Erich
Slashdot reader since 1997
A: With the partial exception of IBM, nothing.
That's not completely true. The future of Compaq's Alpha processor is tied to Linux, to which they've contributed substantial code (don't know if they've done anything for Linux/x86 though).
Sun however is likely more interested in Gnome on Solaris than Linux.
lack of talent.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
At first glance I read: invent the wheel mice
But those already are invented! it'd be like inventing the wheel twice... oh nevermind
I have heard a rumor that in a companion freeware CD, that Sun will release during Solaris 8 update in the fall, KDE and Gnome will both be on it. Just because when you first start up Solaris and it only gives you choices between CDE and Gnome doesn't mean that you cannot use something else.
I personally use Gnome. Why? Because I use debian and try to keep my sources.list file to sites that debian has listed as official debian distributer sites. If debian breaks the non-free away then I will stop this practice, but right now I can get a fully functional and powerful system from official debian sites.
That and I have grown to really appreciate the expanded desktops and the gnome pager. One of my complaints about CDE, and from what I can tell KDE has the same problem, is that although you can have multiple desktops, they are still just 1x1. I use all of my 2x3x3 desktops and the gnome pager has a very clean way of displaying them in a way that I find visually pleasing.
Disclamer - Opinion of Person
its took its time but finally Linux is getting the support it needs to really hit the desktop market, hopefuly now these big named companies will put some big funding into GNOME to see more come out for the project. What about KDE though?
Will KDE start to drop behind the GNOME development?
If GNOME (or KDE for that matter) can make the desktop standard even higher with more internationalization and and a great MS Compatible, competative office suite all thats left to do is for the big desktop orientated linux companies like RedHat, Mandrake and SuSE to clean up the Installation, Program Instalaltion/uninstallation process and then do we have a really threatening OS on our hands?
Even though i hate to say it, Im not bothered about the techie side to Linux, but 90% of windows are. Im just happy to see the desktop finally moving the in right direction.
>Looks like some big names are getting interested in putting Linux on the desktop.
And all this time, I thought GNOME was about Open Source, able to run on any platform one wants to port it to.
If it was said on slashdot, it MUST be true!
the problem with Linux is that is fragmented and is too decentralized. don't get me wrong, i LIKE that. but too many dunces who actually use computers for games and Word don't. they like everything to be under the one mantle of a single provider. it's not really functionality, it's the whole perception and presentation. most folks are confused by the array of Linux distributions, and that's just one "flavor" of Unix!
the general PC using public is used to one monolithic OS, be it Microsoft or Apple. the idea of a non-copyrighted OS with myriads of options and configurations (hell, even the UI isn't consistent!) confuses them.
this development just underlines the suspicion i have - that Sun is trying to move to the desktop with a Solaris/GNOME combo. Solaris already runs on Intel procs, and they're giving it away!(except for that $70 media charge)
the advantage is that Solaris is copyrighted - no one could get the Solaris source and sell it as a different brand. there would Sun Solaris, and that's it. real simple for the simple people.
Make a simple Word Processor, don't add in features that the average user might not need. Keep the code tight and compact, so the programs will run fast even on slower systems.
What we need is something like this, also have them develop new user interfaces to enhance GNOME that don't look like Windows or the Mac interface. We need fresh ideas.
Also a X-Window replacement program would be great if it can get beyond the many X limitations and bugs.
Im sure this will get the usual share of cliched responses, but lets' forget that for the moment. The interesting thing here is what the 'big boys' consider is needed for a commercially viable desktop-oriented Linux, why they're doing it, and what they're prepared to do about it.
You might not think you need a fancy GUI, especially if it looks like Windows, but there are an awful lot of consumers out there who just wantr to click on buttons, not memorise a new and unique argument set for every action they want to undertake. Hence an elegant GUI is a Good Thing for a certain group of users. A unified GUI is a Good Thing for developers, and thus commercial interests. A unified GUI with the features that simplify cross-porting of established software (ie drag and drop, unified colour printing, clipboarding, all that sorta stuff) that's a Good Thing for those developers tired of doing it all again from scratch. Whether KDE or Gnome is better is moot. For the desktop, those features can be incredibly useful, even if you can get along without them
Very little of Linux, per se, is desktop oriented. That means whatever solutions are developed, are probably pretty much cross-platform. For the other Unix vendors, even those competing against Linux for share, that makes assisting in the development of the solution also a Good Thing. If you're paranoid that Sun might hijack it, thats dumb. Gnome is still GPL'd, so they can't. But if they use it as a stepping stone toeards features they want, then that benefits us in the long term, if only to spur KDE to compete.
Whatever happens, this is a Good Thing. Don't let the zealots and bigots persuade you otherwise. Any expansion or improvement of the available feature set is a good thing, because Open Source is a Darwinian process. If its cruft, it'll fall by the wayside. And it doesnt matter if Sun et.c have selfish motives; the process is one they can only partake in; they can't, ultimately, control it.
Do we need another office suite? Maybe not, but is it a problem if we get one? At the end of the day, its all down to choice, and more available choices is never a bad thing. At least we do get the choice.
Pax,
White Rabbit +++ Divide by Cucumber Error ++
free experimental electronic music netlabel at www.viablehybrid.com
http://browser.gnomefoundation.org, a site dedicated to the best GPL'ed browser around, hosts development news and how the browser will be integrated into the desktop environment/file manager.
Also, http://office.gnomefoundation.org details news on the great open-source and maturing office suite. This is without a doubt the maturest currently open office suite.
And you might want to see http://apps.gnomefoundation.org for news about the hundreds of applications available, and http://developer.gnomefoundation.org to help improve the best, fastest, most feature rich, and most mature desktop environment available.
Linux is the future. The software at http://www.gnomefoundation.org will, and already is, putting Linux onto the desktop, and is easily the best desktop environment available.
[There are no lies in this post. Just don't make assumptions from a URL ;) ]
However, the nature of UNIX, even with well natured efforts like CDE, just doesn't lend itself politically to one standard, the point of UNIX's community is to embrace as many systems as possible with so many vendors, developer groups etc. Technically speaking, the system has always been made flexible enough to support many. Let me point out there aren't even standards in UNIX for how commandline toggles and options work for common commands like ps.
I unfortunately must agree this is doomed to fail.
--Calum
So all Microshaft have to do in order to not be worried is implement an import and export feature.
Then suits who sign cheques will therefore still buy M$.
I also agree with all the other "oh no - not another" comments.
FatPhil
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
gtk is the obvious choice for anyone coming from a motif background. Nothing else is sufficiently awkward to program with - it just wouldn't feel natural.
I mean code like this:
attributes.y = widget->allocation.y;
attributes.width = widget->allocation.width;
attributes.height = widget->allocation.height;
attributes.wclass = GDK_INPUT_OUTPUT;
attributes.window_type = GDK_WINDOW_CHILD;
attributes.event_mask = gtk_widget_get_events (widget) |
GDK_EXPOSURE_MASK | GDK_BUTTON_PRESS_MASK |
GDK_BUTTON_RELEASE_MASK | GDK_POINTER_MOTION_MASK |
GDK_POINTER_MOTION_HINT_MASK;
attributes.visual = gtk_widget_get_visual (widget);
attributes.colormap = gtk_widget_get_colormap (widget);
attributes_mask = GDK_WA_X | GDK_WA_Y | GDK_WA_VISUAL | GDK_WA_COLORMAP;
widget->window = gdk_window_new (widget->parent->window, &attributes, attributes_mask);
is almost ugly and verbose enough to make a motif or X programmer feel comfortable. Plus GTK has got it's own home-grown C based OO model, just like X, so you can get all the complication and grief of OO techniques without having to deal with any of the syntactic sugar like operator overloading or templates which can (but normally doesn't) make C++ readable. Instead you can have a C++ wrapper that never quite works right stuffed on top of a subtly incompatable object model. It really is the perfect choice for motif converts.
http://rareformnewmedia.com/
This is really it. The major corporate players are now USING open source to achieve that which their business models could not.
They are using it to break the Office monopoly. They want to be able, in a year's time, to go to a CTO and sell them on linux, GNOME, and StarOffice. With players like Sun, HP, and Dell, and the bottom line (the price), this strategy will work.
Once StarOffice makes inroads in Office Suites against MS Office, Microsoft will be forced to compete on quality and service with a free adversary that already kicks Microsoft's butt in service. Make no mistake about it. IF StarOffice meets corporate expectations, it will rapidly grow in its user base. As will linux as a desktop OS.
The open source model will have broken a very strong monopoly being maintained by anticompetitive tactics.
Expect lots and lots of FUD coming out of Redmond. This threatens their living more than the antitrust suit.
I totally forgot about NeWS until this article brought it up... This was wonderful!! A lot like NEXTSTEP's display system. Completely device independant PostScript. Since Sun is moving away from CDE in favor of GNOME, why not move away from the bloated hack that is X at the same time! Throw in some X11 compatibility libraries and open-source it and the world would be a better place.
Why install some crap? You could visit the NT FAQ and get a registry hack for this one. The day I can run AutoCAD on Linux and there's consistency across the entire application range is the day windoze disappears from 500 desktops in our company....
In no particular order:
1) Is this the death knell of KDE?
2) Is this a move by the big corporate tech companies to 'Bogart' the Linux marketplace?
3) Is this really good for the open-source movement?
Granted, KDE can always exist, but this would probably make GNOME the 'de facto' standard linux desktop. I can't help but think that these major players won't undermine the open-source philosophy by usurping the responsibilty of the direction that GNOME takes. This could lead to the companies directing the development of GNOME not in the best interests of the community, but in there own fiscal interests. Remember, these companies don't give a rat's ass about open-source, but rather how can they make a buck from it. I guarantee this is just a business move to try and topple Microsoft. These companies would be Microsoft if they could. Does anyone want this to become the NEW Microsoft?
These companies might not contribute any code, but their support is worth a lot more than code!!!
If the Linux community will write code, and these companies will support and stand behind it, that is great news and good enough for me!!!
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
Aesthetics.
KDE is too crowded with icons, menu bars and goofy looking file managers -- perhaps it's just the way it came bundled with Mandrake.
Gnome... I only had to kill that silly bar across the top of the screen.
Taking the path of least resistance, I choose Gnome. Apparently some people have managed to make KDE look unlike Mimi from the Drew Carey show, but why invest the time when the two desktops are practically the same thing...
Particulary, I've been growing fond of GNOME running on top of WindowMaker. I need more memory though.
I thought it was stupid of them to kill XView/OPEN LOOK. The OPEN LOOK GUI looked far better than Motif (it was obvious that the visual design was done by professionals, unlike Motif, which had that make-it-look-like-Windows-2.0-only-more-kickass look), and XView's programming model was more elegant than any other attempt I've seen to do OO in vanilla C.
Still, GNOME should be much better, as it actually has some life behind it (rather than committees and bookshelves full of standards). The problem with commercial UNIX GUIs was that they were sterile. They used lots of resources, but featurewise were pale shadows of Windows and Mac GUIs.
Currently in the office I administer, we use Office 2K. Not because we like it, or because it's stable, but because it can do the job and it's (relatively) easy to use. If there was a cheaper alternative that allowed us to read/write micosoft DOC and XLS, we would probably use that instead. At $800 (Canadian) per license of Office, it's far too expensive for what you get.
I think now is the time for big groups like these to start marketing their wares. I mean, a little while ago, the world "suddenly" found out that Micosoft is evil... now people are starting to look for alternatives. Linux has begun to reach a certain point of user-friendlyness that makes the OS itself usable in buisness. All that now remains is a solid set of apps for "productivity".
In my opinion, this project has a much better chance of success than any of the others thus far. When the new products become available, I for one will show them to the people I support in hope of having them switch over. The cost difference alone might be enought to convince them.
ttyl
tpb
The same old story as always, of course. QPL isnt GPL compatible, KDE cannot use GPL code written by others in KDE. Unless the QPL has the recently suggested clauses changed or any third party code is explicitly relicensed with permission to link to Qt.
I really miss a different approach for integrated office applications: there is no need for some more free MS Office pendents (and there are already a lot ...). What we really need is an intelligent and usable groupware concept!
You may have to pay for Applixware 5.0, BUT, I think it was worth it. It's faster than Star Office, (and the printing components work a bit better too.), highly compatible with MS Office (and Corel and others), and it uses GTK!
Applixware Office includes just an e-mail client (sigh, avoid it.) word processor, spreadsheet, presentation package, graphics, an sql thingy (only works with mySQL right now), html editor, macro support (Applixware macros), Applixware builder (uses SHELF), and it uses GTK!
Another good thing is a documented, sgml-like ASCII file format.
It's box says it's fast, native, and compatible. It is. I'd highly recomend it.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." - Albert Einstein
There's already two GPLed Office Suites around: StarOffice (soon GPL but already functional) and KOffice (already GPL but not fully functional - yet, but it'll be soon)
Have you tried SAIG Office? Do so and be pleasantly surprised. The wheel has been reinvented at least three times, and three wheels means stability. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing
It was a JOKE, (wo)man! Sheesh!
Even in light of recent developments, I think there's *plenty* of room for KDE and all the other desktop environments out there. Not that some of the more partisan KDE'ers won't get riled up about this...
Will this make applications dependent on Gnome? Maybe not now, but it could happen in the future. Since I don't care for Gnome, I certainly hope not. I am quite satisfied with running Enlightenment by itself. I am sure there are users of FVWM2, FVWM95, WindowMaker, etc. who feel the same way.
Tune in tomorrow, I suppose....
Honk if you've killfiled JonKatz!
So, does this mean that KDE is dead? If the major vendors have chosen gnome, where's KDE? I myself think that KDE is better, but I know that many many people like it. I don't see how they are going to make it super simple. U still have window managers to deal with, and learning the linux file system. That's a lot different than microsoft. ALSO, in the article it said that IBM is going to have pre-installed linux on it's thinkpads!!!!! awesome.. but he said gnome, does that mean they are going to get rid of tty1, tty2, tty3, tty4, tty5, tty6? AND compaq is going to announce that they will sel the Ipaq with linux preinstalled!!! That's pretty cool... It's intresting, windows cannot be put onto a smaller device, that's why microsoft has had to develop Pocket PC. But linux can. That makes a whole new market for linux and gnome.. Servers, Desktops, Internet Appliences, and HANDHELDS. Beat that MS! -everything I said relates to the article in the NYTimes-
Comments like yours scare me.
When Linux was fresh, people said.
Alternate OS (Linux is doomed to fail)
We've got plenty of them already. 386/BSD. BSDI. IRIX. HPUX. AIX. SunOS. Each has its backers.
But blah blah blah blah, more people would rather pay for blah blah (and upgrade every 2 years), than use an alternate free product.
Look where Linux is today, look how wrong those people are, give chance to new things, we have to keep trying till we get it right, just because the others failed doesn't mean the next will succeed.
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
I've come to think that I was misguided. What we need are not compatibility, but rather users of alternative systems that demand compatibility. If I, as a Abiwrite (or whatever) user, get a document that I can't read, I need to go back to the author and ask for a version that I can read. If he can't provide that, then it's his WP that's broken.
It doesn't matter what brand car you drive, they all use the same gasoline. Their radios all pick up the same stations. Tires are interchangeble (within reason).
It doesn't matter what brand of VCR you buy, they (nowadays) all use the same tapes (poor Betamax). Drill bits are interchangeable between drills. As long as it's the right diameter, I can buy whatever brand line I want for my line trimmer (Weedeater is a brand name). For that matter, nothing on my computer at home matches-- I've got an Asus system board in a Superpower case, with a Creative audio card and a video card I got from my father-in-law. The monitor is a Princeton Graphics EO70, and the network card is from Encore. The keyboard is NEC and the mouse is Anubis (ick... Lesson learned: don't get a $2 mouse). Floppy disk is Fujitsu; I don't remember the brand CD player I put in, but the hard disk is Wester Digital. They all work together just fine. (Operating system: Red Hat Linux 6.2)
Furthermore, I could replace just about any part of my computer with a similar product by a competing vendor and have NO problems with operability.
To expect any less from software is wrong. Microsoft has that little box in the "Save As..." dialog for selecting the document storage format. You know: MS-Word, RTF, MS-DOS Text, HTML. Perhaps there needs to be other options added to that menu.
DXF isn't perfect, but it's a great way to get data into and out of different CAD programs. I can write a DXF file in Agilent ADS that the mechanical guys can import into Pro/Engineer for their own needs. Word processors need the same.
If "failure" means the office suite is not going to be adopted by a majority of the computer-using public, then you are probably right.
First, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that most people with computers do not know diddle about how to use them. Most law offices, for example, spend beaucoup bucks on shiny machines, and hire some geeks-r-us type company to come in and install software. Most of the senior partners making the decisions still have their secretaries print out all of their email so they can read it, and use dictation equipment to compose letters. They are slow to change, and don't see why anything should change at all, for the most part. They are certainly not going to bother to learn a new piece of software of any variety, office suite or not, unless it is absolutely necessary. (From a somewhat practical standpoint, hours spent on learning new software are not billable.) To get them to use a linux-based OS and office suite, you are going to have to provide a damn good reason to do so, not to mention some pretty brochures and some exceedingly competent support.
Second, if your entire business runs on an MS Office program, it would be incredibly disruptive to jump into using something that cannot guarantee 100% compatibility. Using the law office example again, it would be tres bad if you suddenly can't access any of your forms or client files.
Third, most businesses use other pieces of software that are compatible with the MS Office suite. Until you get any proposed alternate office suite to mesh with those programs, or get those programs to mesh with the OS, you are pretty much screwed. Again using the law office example, there is billing software, legal research software, cite-checking software, and software that makes neat indices for briefs and motions. It will be difficult to convince an office that uses these programs to give up the ability to use them so that they can switch to another OS.
Finally, people in general are freaked out by change, and are used to the way windows looks and runs. Folks will be reluctant to change no matter what.
If you define "failure" as "failure to be accepted and used by a majority of computer users" then yes, it is probably true that any alternate office suite will fail--Microsoft basically engineered it that way.
Whether you like KDE (I do) or not (I still prefer Gnome :), you have to acknowledge that QT causes problems, especially for Sun and other commercial vendors. They cannot be expected to limit themselves to the whims of a third party of which they have zero control over.
--
Ben Kosse
--
Ben Kosse
Remember Ed Curry!
You got a half point. People don't like the standard interfaces, and like tuning the look and feel of the system to fit their needs.
But, People want all apps to behave the same say! Do you like ctrl-v, middle-click, ctrl-y, or perhaps dd/p? Whatever fits your taste, you want all apps to respons to it. The sad situation today is, that every app will decide itself, to what keybindings and events it responds to and how. Some can be customized, some cant.
We need global look and feel themes, that every application respects. If I want a marble texture, I want it everywhere. Including mozilla, gkrellm, xmms, gtk, and QT apps. Currently, only QT is humble enough to take the hint from someone else.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
I guess a lot of people who would prefer to program using a different toolkit other than gtk (or one of its bindings) could do it more easily and have stuff more integrated...
David
Actually, MS is XMLizing their documents as far as I know. (Haven't touched that platform for more than a few hours in a long time). If they XMLize, somebody should be able to make a ms office compatible xml parser. Macros and UI is worse - and maybe undesirable.
Stop the brainwash
If KDE is Abraham Lincoln, Gnome is president Taft, he was fat as hell.
And by that analogy, Afterstep is FDR.
Guess who I like best?
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
I hope that what they really mean about a "standardized" UI, is maybe that they provide a means of a standard in drag & drop, clipboard, and copy & paste. I think this is one of the main draw backs with linux and it's apps, there's how many different ways to do this? I just hope that maybe KDE and Gnome will stick together and atleast standardize this between the 2 projects. Also, i'm hoping Sun doesn't try to combine all the different apps of StarOffice into one window again. A separate app for each (word processor, spreadsheet, etc), That would be a big advancement for StarOffice. The one thing I hated about StarOffice is that everything was packed into this nasty looking interface that was totally unorganized.
Logik
Q: And, up to this point, have any of the "Windows killer" features been GUI related?
A: No.
Q: Is Linux hindered in killing Windows in mainstream markets by its lack of simple, high-quality GUI features?
A: Yes.
Q: Are companies used to producing commercial software likely to be able to help Linux develop such features?
A: Yes.
Q: Then why complain?
- Michael Cohn
-----
Go ahead, blame me... I voted for Nader!
However sarcastic the above comment is, I pose the same question.
KDE is more stable (in my experience), it _is_ more beautiful (in my opinion), it is more sleek, more intuitive, and more featureful than any other desktop I have ever seen, forget GNOME I mean Windows, I mean MacOS, I mean a small army of window managers.
I have been beta testing KDE2 for a few months now, and I have been so excited with the prospect that this modular, fast, mega-customizable desktop will one day touch down on a user's desktop after a default installation of their distro, and all they'll be able to say is "WOW!" in their first few hours using it.
KDE has everything, or has been developed with such elegance that what it doesn't have will be a snap to add. Everything that Miguel said sucked about UNIX and GNOME will solve, KDE is already solving, (code reuse, etc), as far as free office suites, KOffice appears professional and in all ways but some filters very complete (well maybe it doesn't have a paperclip, but whatever).
All GNOME seems to have is the support of trolls! (I cite a great percentage of the posts to this article, where almost every "Yay GNOME" post was also a "Boo KDE" post; I've just seen it as a bunch of aggitators who like more to flamebait and politic, than to cooperate and code for the common good!
So despite Mr. planet_hoth's obvious sarcasm, I really am baffled, why not KDE?
the_1000th_Monkey
where'd my typewriter go?