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Gnome On Dell's Business PCs
jedipapi writes: "Dell will unveil on Monday that they'll have Gnome preloaded on selected business PCs along with a partnership with Eazel among others. ZDNet has the full story."
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Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
The small detail I usually look first when I try a new GUI toolkit is: how easy is it to write text on inclined lines? One often needs that for visualizing data on multi-dimensional graphs. It's not so hard on MFC, very hard on Motif and Gtk, and trivial in Qt.
I got instantly hooked the first time I tried Qt on KDevelop 1.0. I spent all of 15 minutes studying the tutorial and examples, then 15 minutes more to write my first working Qt program, adapted from one of the examples: an analog clock where the numbers are written in the same orientation as the respective hour marks, the hour and minute hands are black, the seconds hand is red. The seconds hand moves smoothly, not jumping each second as quartz watches do. It keeps working smoothly as the window is moved or resized. All in all, the most productive half-hour I ever spent studying any software documentation.
1. Value You'll pay lots of money for Windows 2000 and MS support and training, increasing the value of your Microsoft stock.
2. Reliability Win2k is almost as reliable as unix now!
3. Mobility Since win2k is completely insecure, anyone can access your computer from anywhere!
4. Manageability Win2k is easier to manage and support, until you find a bug, at which point your completely screwed!
5. Performance Win2k has proven to be faster than Windows 95 (its amazing what you can do in 5 years).
6. Security You'll feel safe knowning that only Microsoft (and some russian maffioso) have ever seen the source code!
7. Internet You can be sure that our software will never comply with any of the internet standards
8. Usability Win2k has provided us with many wizards like that Paper Clip guy to make life so much easier!
9. Data Access By using roaming profiles you can access your data from any workstation, unless its not a win2k box, in which case you'll complelely hose it.
10. Hardware Win2k runs on the same '86 hardware that it always did, forcing the CPU companies to continue that ass backwards compatibility. Also, win2k fixed that NT multi-CPU bug.
Someone you trust is one of us.
those macintosh people were making usable graphical user interfaces. These programmers, along with the rest of the macintosh community, endured cries of 'WIMP' and 'macintoy' and 'idiot box' and lots of other anti-GUI sentiment. And then those hypocrits from old school unix and DOS turned right around and created X and Windows and, in their arrogance and spite for the macintosh, never tried to learn anything from it. They ignored many intelligent, widely appliable usability principles the mac introduced, or did did the exact opposite of those principles, just so they could be different from apple. Tests showed a menubar at the top of the screen can be accessed faster than one on a window, but it didn't matter to Microsoft. Having the cancel button on the left and OK button on the right conforms better to the left-right nature of English than the OK button left/cancel button right we see in windows (and GNOME) dialogs, but that didn't matter to Microsoft, either. And so windows ended up being a legacy to UI stupidity, and GNOME, through their blind emulation of microsoft, ends up being stupid legacy UI. A lot of gnome people (while well meaning) are a bunch of ex-windows people who conveniantly forget about history. Makes you wonder who really deserves to lead to the linux desktop GUI revolution: the people people who led the first GUI revolution, or the people who fought against it.
I always use LAPACK for solving equation systems. It not only is as quick as it can be, but it has been tried and tested for decades, it should be FULLY debugged by now.
But this 95% time running LAPACK is not true for most cases. I recently ran into a program where, according to top, the system was 11% of the time running LAPACK and 39% of the time running the GUI. There's a lot of number crunching in rotate/shear/translate/scale the data for visualization as well.
BTW, the last time I coded in Fortran was in 1985, for a PDP-11/70 running RSX. I will use the old, time-tested Fortran libraries forever, but I'll stick to C/C++ until a better language is invented.
I bought a Dell *HOME* computer in April and it came loaded with *gasp* RedHat 6.0, Enlightenment, Windowmaker, Gnome, and KDE. Sounds like a non-story to me.
There's a lot more information on this deal available on zdnet here: http://www.zdnet.com/eweek/stories/general/0,11011 ,2659657,00.html
While it's a good thing that Dell is taking this step, isn't it a little worrisome how Eazel seems to be hyping itself over GNOME and Free Software?
Some quotes from this longer article that are interesting are:
"Dell will also start shipping Eazel's network user environment with all its Linux-based desktop and notebook products starting early next year."
Umm, Eazel's network user environment? GNOME?
"Eazel Services include its Software Catalog, which allows one-click installation of certified applications from a comprehensive Linux software library..."
I tried the Nautilus preview, and their installer was pretty bad. It definitely wasn't one click. HelixCode has been installing and upgrading GNOME for a lot longer.
"But customer needs are always paramount, so while Eazel will be the default desktop..."
Once again, is it the Eazel Desktop(TM) now?
I'd rather see a company of Free Software people (Helix GNOME) do this than a company of ex-Macintosh people who seem to forget about the rest of us conveniently enough in press releases.
As a daily user of Debian's Gnu/Linux with the Gnome desktop on a Dell OptiPlex GX110, I can tell you how happy this news makes me.
It took two full weeks to get X configured properly for my desktop; having Dell's support for this hardware would have made things so much easier.
I hope that Dell begins full support for their laptop models soon, also. That would be sweet.
MacOS, Windows, BeOS, GNOME, KDE: they're all just Xerox copies
Linux is really well suited for businesses. At home, there's the installation and configuration problems to cope with. The typical home user is either too computer ignorant and unwilling to solve many of the small problems that arise, or always wanting to run the latest hardware for which there's no Linux support yet.
In the enterprise, on the other hand, they run standardized systems; solve the installation problems for one box and the others will follow. There are professionals to take care of that. Once the standard Linux system is running, there will be no more time wasted on the M$ cycle of crash, reboot, crash, reboot, crash, reboot...
Now that they have gnome computers maybe they'll put elves and dwarves on some too.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
There is at least some chance that AOL will eventually switch to Mozilla as their AOL client browser. That single action would almost certainly turn the browser war back into a horse race.
because if Dell sells it my boss will buy it for me and I'll be able to strip whatever they put on it put Debian on it he won't know the diff and I won't have winders anymore. Thank you Dell.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
(Unfortunately, Netcraft doesn't have uptime graphs for Mandrake). If the Microsoft webmasters themselves can't get anything better than that, how could I expect to do better myself?
BTW, my personal record is 8 months for a Slackware system running on a 486-DX80 box. It was turned off to be moved to a different room. If I wasn't away at vacations at the time, I would have insisted on moving it plugged to the UPS, just for the pleasure of seeing the uptime rolling over to 0 at the 497th day! :)
Linux-based computers take up 5% of the computer population in the U.S. right now. With Dell starting to sell linux computers, this number will undoughtedly rise dramatically. The percentege could reach double didgets. This would mean that Billy's operating systems would only be in the 80s. Isn't a monopoly a company that prevents other companies from competing?
Someone ever tries to kill you, you try to kill them right back!
I'm starting to realize that linux is in real danger in the desktop arena before its even a real contender. What concerns me is web browsers. Netscape looks like it will not keep pace with IE and I'm sure MS realizes this. Mozilla looks like its going to remain a "hobby" for a while now, and konqueror is wasting its time with desktop integration eventhough desktop integration was just a way for MS to try to avoid anti-trust arguments. Maybe opera will help, but could they be moving any slower? MS knows that linux is screwed because of browser-envy, that is probably the main reason why they stopped their porting of IE at solaris and OSX. The linux office apps will be good enough very soon, people will realize they dont need talking paperclips, but when they cant see the webpages or the plugin media they want to they arent going to be happy
Sneakemail is to spam filters what an ounce of prevention is to a pound of cure.
I couldn't disagree more. I believe it shows that each and every board of directors for every corporation in the world should be replace by efficient, highly advanced computers. Preferably, by just one computer, which will lead us all into the age of the machine. Long live our digital masters!
I was looking for a place to rant about GNOME, and then this was posted, which gives me my opportunity.
First let me say I am an avid GNOME user, use it all the time, love it, etc, etc, etc... I wish I had the programming skill/desire to help out.
Anyways, here is the rant: I HATE CROSS PLATFORM APPS!!!!!!!!! AGH!!! I have been reading mailing list archives lately, trying to find a good place to be able to contribute. In my opinion the things holding GNOME back are lack of a couple of key apps: Word Processor, Presenter, and Web Browser. Every GNOME company(who have the best programmers) seems content to accept XP apps for these. OpenOffice is not gonna be the GNOME Office I want, it's way too bloated and XP centered. Follow Gnumeric's lead! Make very good totally GNOME based apps! AbiWord, OpenOffice and Mozilla are not what I want! They all sacrifice what could be, and can't make the best use of what is available in the GNOME platform. I have been looking at Codefactory's gtkhtml2, which could be the webbrowser base needed, but Achtung has been abandoned... and where oh where is a good word processor! Okay, I think that's the end of it... I need to learn GUI programming better so I can make it happen, I know... I'm working on it...
Alright...
Peace out...
Dan
Actually, it did. Dell has been shipping RedHat pre-loaded on workstations and servers for quite some time now. I'm not sure exactly, but it's probably been at least a year - so I don't see how exactly this is news.
I don't get it. I've already made two purchase orders for Dell machines here at work in the past, and they came pre-installed with Redhat, and Gnome as the default environment. How is this anything new? They already do this. I don't understand how there is any difference between their "business", "education", and "home" deals. Why not just offer all the models with sets of pre-installed software and not bother calling them "business" or "home" models. There really isn't any important difference - you can take a "home" model and add and subtract options to make it just like a "business" model, and visa versa. I don't understand their categories.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
I was stunned when Dell started preloading Red Hat on Dimensions. At first I was surprised when it charged the same for Red Hat as for Windows. I shouldn't have been.
Two things make this a story. The ZDNet link says Dell is now loading on "business PCs"; i.e., OptiPlex, Dimension, and possibly Latitude notebooks. Second, the eWeek article says that Dell "has taken a significant stake in Linux software developer Eazel."
Gateway introduced the AMD-based Select line in response to Intel supply problems, then dropped it, then reintroduced it as the Athlon surpassed the Pentium III in clock speed. Now, even as everyone else has introduced Athlon systems, Dell has stuck with Intel. Likewise, it has been a big Microsoft partner in bundling Windows and Office. Dell is a PC powerhouse because its deals with Intel and Microsoft cut expenses. Now, in the wake of the anti-trust trial, Dell preloads Linux. The investment in Eazel is a vote of confidence on the potential of Linux on the desktop.
BTW, Red Hat isn't the sales leader anymore, Mandrake seems to have overtaken them. Myself, I use Conectiva, the best for me.
(PS: when I say me I mean myself, not the later version of a half-witted so-called "operating system")
Most of the documentation about KDE development seems to focus on the "soft" matter of "What are the UI guidelines?", with a distinct dearth of technical architectural material.
After all:
GNOME, by being agnostic about what language you are expected to use, does not force you into
The notion that GNOME is necessarily terribly awful and that to use it means denying any notion of "passion for excellence" seems to me to be a ludicrously unfair way of characterizing it.
At one time, GNOME wasn't much more than a counterreaction to KDE's adoption of the then-rather-more-proprietary Qt toolkit; that is certainly no longer true.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
But there's still hope. I've read that SuSE 7 has built-in support for this chip. Maybe we'll get the same support on other distros yet.
It's called the invisible hand. It has two failings: Monopolies, and Externalities. The first is the only one relevant here.
Wow, we've identified a system created by humans that doesn't perfectly accomplish its design goals all the time, even when working within the design specifications. This is not a problem unique to capitalism. The Invisible Hand does work, provided that the government takes action to prevent the formation of monopolies and to internalize externalities. In other words, laissez-faire sucks just as much as pure communism. That's why it greatly pleases me to hear many of the world's more powerful countries referred to as modern socialist rather than democratic. Balance between ideals gives to the people the power that would otherwise be concentrated in either the left-wing or the right-wing elites.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Ok, i'll bite.
"Gnome has a lot of positive points, but I like KDE better. It's a bit faster, for one thing. And it has better development tools for generating applications."
Ahh, there's nothing I like better than anecdotal arguments for one over the other. Exactly how is KDE faster? The window manager? The file manager? The application libraries? There's so many variables here I don't know how anyone could say one is faster than the other. Perhaps you meant "Qt is faster than Gtk+" (which is probably true)?.
And how does it have better development tools? Both are pretty developer friendly in my opinion (though I'm pretty biased towards Gnome development). Gnome had glade/libglade a long time before Qt designer came along. KDevelop is a moot point since many prefer not to use it, and KDevelop supports Gnome anyways (or so it says, I haven't verified this myself unfortunately).
For what it's worth, I'd say that Gnome is more popular with developers than KDE.
<useless statistics>
Freshmeat software map:
KDE projects: 359
Gnome projects: 398
Sourceforge software map:
KDE projects: 80
Gnome projects: 129
</useless statistics>
What does this mean? Not much, except that you probably can't say KDE is more developer friendly than Gnome (unless the developer is strongly C++ or C biased).
BTW, what "small details" are you referring to with Gtk+ programming? Gtk+ may look intimidating at first, but once you get the glib/gtk+ philosophy it makes sense and you'll find yourself predicting the APIs.
No. I may be prejudiced, but I view Perl as a "better bash", which makes writing Perl programs "housekeeping", not "development" for me.
Yes, I use KDevelop mostly. The reason I like Qt and KDevelop is because I write a lot of numeric analysis, digital signal processing, and real-time process control software. I really need the high number-crunching performance only C or C++ can give me, but I don't want to waste a lot of time coding the user interface. I have found KDevelop and Qt are the ideal combination for that.
You mention several languages that are popular for quickly written one-of-a-kind programs, but when one writes commercial software, one has to watch simultaneously for two factors: the software must not be late for the market and it must be a fast performer. Under these conditions, one's pretty much bound to C/C++ anyway.
It wouldn't take much porting to get the GNOME desktop and GNOME applications to work on the Windows 2000 system, seeing as how the Cygwin POSIX layer, the XFree86 server, and GDK/GTK+/Glib are already ported.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Unfortunately Microsoft licensing deals with the major OEMs are on a per-CPU basis, so even if you buy a Linux workstation, there is the price of a Win9x license factored into the total cost.
A lot of people haven't had Windows training either, all that's required is a Linux+GNOME for Dummies book just like the ones people buy for Windows. On a corporate desktop as well, the relative obscurity of Linux is an advantage, as the users will have to do more than download some crap and double click on it to install. Selling it to the PHBs like that would probably be more successful than the 'more stable than WNT' line as evil hackers writing executable viruses get given more attention than the BSOD.
My mind works like lightning. One brilliant flash and it is gone.
...but I couldn't find where to click to find a stock quote for GNOME or LINUX. What the hell kind of news story is that?
--
-- SIGFPE
Hrm.
>IT'S THE LAPTOP'S STUPID!!
The laptop's stupid *what*? Pathetic battery? Keyboard? Expensive screen? You've implied that there's something stupid about the laptop, but haven't told us what it is.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
Am i missing something or isnt GNU/Linux required to run GNOME? And as such, what distro is Dell going to shill?
Lets not put the applecart before the ox as they say...
I like the Pentium III SpeedStep chip in my notebook just fine, thank you.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Part of the reason that the big commercial companies were attracted to the GNOME Foundation was the Freedom provided by GNOME's underlying widget set, GTK+. A Freedom which wasn't available from QT at the time
If you want to talk about Open Source for a second then QT is incompatible with the majority of Open Source licences as it is GPL, rather than LGPL.
If the FSF acknowledged the need for the LGPL and created it then why don't Trolltech use it for their QT libraries? The reason is simple, Trolltech's goal was to silence the most vocal (and extreme) Open Source type (ie Free Software proponents) while maintaing the same degree of usage control over their libraries. Any company planning on releasing non-GPL (ie proprietary or an alternative Open Source licence) would be insane to tie themselves to the future licencing whims of Trolltech.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park