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Sun Announces It Will Ship Solaris With Eazel
miester writes: "Sun has recently announced that it will take advantage of Eazel's Nautilus software. The article also mentions that Dell has invested in Eazel and will be shipping all Dell Linux workstations with Nautilus as well." The Nautilus previews have been slick and pretty -- you can tell that the Mac folks involved haven't lost their touch. And more hardware vendors installing a nice Open Source file manager can only be good for users.
They made this decision before Nautilis reached 1.0! What was the last 1.0 release you can remeber that went smoothly? Remeber Gnome? KDE had many issues too, IIRC.
:-)
The Nautilis team is talented, yes...but good software survives the test of time...Nautilis is still wearing diapers.
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Every post of yours is just that much more a cry for help. Laughable.
why the hell is this post score 0! Thank you very much.. MOD THIS UP!
How we know is more important than what we know.
Sun Announces It Will Ship Solaris With Eazel
I think you mean 'Eazel with Solaris'.
That would be pretty funny though. 'Hey, I just bought Eazel and it came with this thing called Solaris.'
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Then you obviously didn't buy them from sun.com, where, and I just checked this, they do change $75US plus shipping.
Comments not endorsed by my employer.
Stealing a rhinoceros should not be attempted lightly.
Installation is not a good measure of ease of use, it is just a significant (perhaps insurmoutable) hurdle that Linux has that Windows does not. If Linux came pre-installed on machines you can bet that "difficulty of installation" would be WAY down the list of problems, like it is for Windows.
What's with the requirements:
x86 compatible processor (200 mHz minimum)
Can you compile the source on PPC linux? Is there a deliberate lack of strategy here? Hmm, Mac like interface at the exact moment when PPC linux becomes mature and Apple starts insulting their own userbase. More and more geeks are saying "man, my overpriced Mac really flys when I put a half decent OS on it" whether they are installing PPC linux or installing OS X PB, is really up to us.
On a completely unrelated note, I wonder if I can port this thing to win32. I could put shell=gnome in my windoze ini's and I wouldn't have to see megabytes of memory wasted on integrated dll's (no, I'd have to see it filled up with mozilla libs).
So if you talk about strategy, would it be a viable plan to port a superior GUI to win32 + MacOS and get users loving it? Assumably, after using a better GUI on a crappy kernel (for win32 at least) users would start to wish for stability and speed that can only be provided by a real OS.
How we know is more important than what we know.
*shrug*
It's nice, but you still need an installed version of Solaris to build it. "You must have the original Solaris 8 build environment in order to build the Solaris 8 Foundation Source code."
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
maybe you could better spend your time helping the Mozilla team by running test builds and writing bug reports instead of hanging out on /. and complaining about the speed.
;-)
/., not me. And the last time I checked, that *is* the party line around here.
hehehe...I never complained about the speed...I complained that the Mozilla team is all talk
FYI, I have submitted bug reports, only to be met by the stupidity of the developers - I find a bug for the Linux version, they said they couldn't reproduce it under Windows NT and therefore, my report is invalid. Lovely bunch of people, those Netscape folk.
Reading the rest of your comment, you're completely missing the point. Solaris is NOT a desktop environment - its a server! So why are they forcing a desktop onto it? Didn't they learn from how well WinNT Server does w/ all the GUI stuff on top?
To add to this, they're already promising to use something which isn't finished...yes, I'll agree a replacement for CDE is in order, but why not KDE? Its now got the GPL'd warm-fuzzies all over it. Why not XFCE? Why not some other alternative?
I would arguem most of the *nix users out there don't care that they can play mp3s w/in their browser/file manager/shell/masterabatory device. If you want it, fine. Your choice. But why is it being imposed on a Operating System designed for a SERVER?
And your assumption about everyone who wants a GUI has Win or OSX is *very, very wrong.* I want a great, easy to use GUI yet I don't want to give up the control of my software to a single corporation and become a slave to their desires. That's why I'm using free software. That's why I'm here
Oh god...quit thumping your chest, you look foolish.
Aren't you doing the same thing with Gnome? The Gnome foundation is a collection of companies steering the direction of Gnome. Yes, they can't hijack the project, but they most definately are influencing the project. If you want true "freedom", you wouldn't be using that, either...
Party line?! Sounds like your role my friend. You're the one bashing prominent open source projects on
Do you even read slashdot?
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Why is a file manager with huge shaded icons, that use up loads of colors and make it harder to see the filename, better?
When the web first got going properly there were loads of horrific web sites featuring uber-graphic-design that made it really difficult to actually get at the information. Most of them died a death - nowdays we have things that are a lot cleaner, simpler and easier to use (like slashdot).
As technology becomes a familiar tool - rather than an exciting new thing to play with as well as use, it gets more and more boring. As it should - fading into the background to just do its job, rather than existing up front, to be looked at and impressed by.
I suspect, that, just as people turn off all the anoying sounds associated with a window manager, until there's just a beep for errors (usually), people using a filemanager such as Nautilus, or KFM, will shrink the icons and make them less 'attractive' until they have a minimal, functional tool that doesn't take up more real estate or perceptual space than it needs to.
Actually - this is probably wrong. Most users will just say 'I don't like it, it doesn't feel right', and turn to something else...
For one thing, it is (of course) theme-able, so if you don't like the green, change it. Already an improvement over MS-explorer. And then, the file icons aren't just improved, there's also varying levels of detail about each file based on how far you "zoom" in or out. So, you can go from just the plane-jane name up to "this file has X items and was last modified at 4:30." I'm not sure, but I'm hoping this level of detail is configurable and maybe you can even get full details in a floating tooltip or something.
Granted, this isn't exactly revolutionizing the way you interact with your computer, but it is some slick stuff and I dare say better than what we've currently got. Speaking of which:
Most people don't use this mode, though, because the typical browser is a bad interface choice for system & file operations.Okay, now I must be missing something: if most people don't use this mode, what DO they use? Almost everyone I know (all the windows users anyway) uses an interface exactly like this to navigate their filesystems. Why? If nothing else, then because it's the default setup on win98 and ME. Unless you're talking about something totally different, then this Eazel interface should be super intuitive to windows users, as well as having some added benefits like the ones I mentioned above.
Ofcause a hardware manufacturer likes a OS that costs nothing, it increases their profit.
Sun is the OS in Massive Loss.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
well the interface may compete in certain areas, but macos/osx has many things which will allow apple to retain its 10% market share. as a designer color control, font and output control, video production, multimedia authoring are incredibly important and difficult to implement through windows. but with osx we can (hopefully) play nice with the networks, which has become incredibly important also. nautilus and network computers will eat into the low end and the developer market, which is more problematic for microsoft.
The Nautilus previews have been slick and pretty -- you can tell that the Mac folks involved haven't lost their touch.
I must be missing something, because all I see in the screenshots are pictures of a green-themed Internet Explorer with improved file icons being used to navigate the directory structure.
This has been available on PCs since Win95.
Most people don't use this mode, though, because the typical browser is a bad interface choice for system & file operations.
I'm guessing that the Nautilus team is composed solely of ex-Apple graphic designers and doesn't include any user-interface experts.
Maybe I'm just being cranky, but these screenshots are singularly uninspiring. I dare say if the MS folks announced this as the foundation of their next-gen GUI, they'd be laughed off the stage.
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D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
Yes... ship fashionable free-software with a proprietary operating-system, apply all the license stuff so you can... earn money! I think all Linux makers should do that as well to earn more money.
A GUI is more than a file manager it's more than a desktop. It's a way work can be done. It's more than drag n drop. It's more than scripting. It's more than application communication services. Look at Windows. Each feature by itself is not problemmatic. How they interact with each other is the problem. I have a Windows. I'm write this on it. It's internet service is provide via PPP shared by natd on MacOS X PB. I can tell you this. MacOS X may not have an Apple menu (which most users don't ever use anyways), or an Application menu, but all the elements of a good GUI are there. Everything flows. I have yet to see a SINGLE error message. It's been on for 65 days. Daily use. Everything behaves EXACTLY like it did in MacOS 9 (with the exception that in the PB Bluebox isn't so transparent with copy/paste drag/drop). From what I've seen of what Eazel is doing, it's better than Gnome, but it isn't a MacOS yet. Mac users aren't going to switch to Linux when MacOS X PB is more usefull than RedHat7 and still much easier to use than Windows, and most likely Nautilus 1.0.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Getting stuff here from the States ...
:p
...
a) takes a year and a half
b) costs a hell of a lot in tariffs
As an American living in Quebec, I am allowed to complain.
enslaving the quebecois, one cranky wino at a time
Thanks to the GNOME foundation, I think that it's fair to say that GNOME is approaching "critical mass" on the *u*x* desktop front. I myself use and prefer to use KDE2, but GNOME looks like it will just have the numbers.
If this is the case, we can expect to see a steady marginalisation, RedHat-style, of non-GNOME desktop systems. Eventually GNOME will be the target platform for commercial systems relying on object frameworks (bonobo, named for promiscuous monkeys) versus KDE (KParts/DCOP).
KDE's ace-in-the-hole is Kylix, which may yet keep it breathing in the face of a growing GNOME juggernaut. I still think that it is a tragic shame that neither Red Hat or VA Linux bought up TrollTech and GPL'd Qt when they had the cash to do so. It would have resolved the license issue much sooner.
We'll see.
--
"Don't declare a revolution unless you are prepared to be guillotined." - Anon.
Classical Liberalism: All your base are belong to you.
Is it possible to run both evolution and nautilus yet? I had heard there were problems
Thanks you.
I was looking at the screen shots going "Hmm that looks familiar". I thought I was loosing my mind.
Personlly I think its a screen real estate nightmare.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
1st Law Of Networking: Loose ends are bad, termination is good.
WWJD? JWRTFM!!!
Eazel has been hyped quite a bit on Slashdot, so I've been surprised and intensely disappointed with the screenshots I've seen.
Graphic design-wise it is a shambles. What's the deal with those mammoth icons ? Dammit, all the icons are skewed and halfbaked. The type isn't even properly vertically centered on the toolbars.
It looks like a bad mix of Windows 95 and Lotus Notes. Eazel seriously needs a makeover.
I see two good trends in interface design as of now:
1) The clean, 'small-iconed' applications that become de-facto standards because they are so cool and usable. Winamp is one example. Compare it with the messy, quirky, too large 'Microsoft Media Player'.
2) Seriously talented design getting thrown into UIs. Apple may have gone a bit too far down the bubble-gum road with the graphic look of OS X, but there's no denying it: They lead the industry. One Redmond company has been seen all through the 90s to do its best to rip every single innovation off.
Just because the 'Eazel'designers have worked at Apple doesn't mean they have the touch.
Just because the icons are huge doesn't mean the graphic design kicks butt.
-Sune Watts
...I was talking about GNOME & Eazel. ;>
Besides, you still can't just "download Solaris"
No, no your not. I think we should start a club.
We could call it: "People Against Screen Real Estate Nightmares".
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I find it very interesting how seriously Dell appears to be taking the Linux crowd as of late. I think that slower sales are part of the motivation, but also the thought of having to deal with the likes of IBM taking away some of their market share is also a concern. At any rate, whether it is purely by choice or by shove, I am glad to see a good hardware vendor move on over to help out the Linux community.
Russian Russian Russian RussianDollSig DollSig DollSig DollSig
Umm, well we are doing that.
i think the best part about this new sig is all the idiots who completely miss the point.
- j
Well, a few things come to mind. The first one is that the Eazel folks are trying to design in the idea of expertise in the interface. So most of the screenshots I've seen, some of which are really silly, are from the novice view. I haven't seen much of the so-called Intermediate and Advanced views, but I suspect that they use available screen real estate much differently.
It's also clear that Eazel is way easier to customize than current desktoppy environments; I've never seen a screen shot that didn't let you view as things other than icons.
They're also claiming, and this will be the interesting part, that they can also give you easy access to content and attribute-based views of your file system. OK, so I've got 166 pdf files, 496 postscript files, and 75 other EPS files in my personal account alone. The problem is, of course, that they're scattered all over the directory hierarchy, and it can be tricky to find (or remember) exactly where any one document is. It would be great to have a view of my files that would bring together all the "postscripty" files, or just the non-graphical postscripty files, or all postscripty files that belong with research projects, or what have you. Now, you can do that with a standard unix file system through clever, deliberate, and pre-planned thinking about your directory structure (and maybe the use of symbolic links), but almost nobody does this. And, if they do, they then find the nth plus one way they *really* want to look at stuff, but which is difficult with their pre-calculated layout and the available tools.
And there really are situations where a standard hierarchical view of my files just gets in the way. Now that most of us have thousands of little twisty files hanging around, there has to be an answer somewhere. One idea is to change our filesystems to something more flexible (based perhaps on a relational model). Another idea, which I take to be similar to Eazel's, is to layer (and in some cases, infer) an additional attribute database over the file system so that you can see what you've got in the way most relevant to you at the moment. Now, it's possible that they forgot to make this part sufficiently scriptable for the common geek, but I severely doubt it.
So I'm not sure whether Eazel's stuff will be the bee's knees, but I'm encouraged that they've figured out that different views for different purposes and users is the key concept to implement, rather than (merely) nicer looking icons or pin-striped menubars.
Babar
Does anyone think that Nautilus might be taking away from the MacOS crowd when it goes mainstream (eventually)? After all, you have a pretty nice GUI, plus Apple is really confusing people w/ the interface for OS X to the point that even the beta testers are modifying it. Perhaps Mac is putting itself into a very uncomfortable place. (What, like the backseat of a Volkswagon?)
-Mr. Fusion
I am glad that Sun is taking on such an effort to become part of the free world... This and Helix Gnome... They are taking into account that people want the best of both worlds... The robustness of Sun Hardware, the security, and the look and feel of a good GUI...
Sarcasm is the recourse of a weak mind...
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Why would you want to do this? OSX is more than BSD+Aqua. You'd be missing all kinds of neat stuff (like Cocoa, WebObjects, and Quartz) that is not available (nor will ever be available for that matter) in Darwin.
well it was actually more of a joke than anything. but after using Nautilus i've realized that i'd love to see some of the components make it into a Finder replacement for OS X, but not as a replacement for the Quartz engine.
- j
Considering that Villanova is right next door to Ardmore, I'd think one of the developers either attends school a VU, or lives in the area :)
I'm an AIX Systems administrator, and yes I do cry myself to sleep at night....
man, i hope somebody eventually makes Easel available for MacOS X. now that would be an operating system environment worth using!
- j
"Since Win95" is a bad choice of words...the default IE installed by the earlier releases of Win95 was absolutely depressingly pitiful, and didn't have all the all-in-one features you're talking about. That didn't really happen till IE 4.0.
Ahh, those wonderful days when it was actually better to use Netscape instead of IE...
"That's Tron. He fights for the Users."
anyway, you now have my trivial opinion. Enjoy!
One Can Never Own Enough Musical Instruments...
Main Entry: easel
:-)
Pronunciation: 'E-z&l
Function: noun
Etymology: Dutch ezel, literally, ass, from Middle Dutch esel; akin to Old English esol ass; both from a prehistoric East Germanic-West Germanic word borrowed from Latin asinus ass
Date: 1596
: a frame for supporting something (as an artist's canvas)
It's good to know it's not just a play on "easy", don't you think
I use SPARC/Solaris as my primary development setup. While I prefer the setup in Linux, thye development tools are still much better under Solaris (though Linux is gaining ground); for example, dbx under Solaris runs circles around gdb. There are also some commercial/legacy things that come with it that aren't as simple to set up under an open source environment (e.g., Display Postscript, Motif, etc.). Lots of the APIs and the like are also better documented (see the Linker and Libraries guide). New Java VMs are also released more quickly. And, best of all, it is close enough to Linux, etc. that porting is trivial.
Unfortunately, Sun has really flubbed the default interface. There is an odd melange of CDE-style tools and ugly Openlook stuff that makes lots of assuptions about how you have your window manager set up and whose mouse controls and menus work differently than every other UI package in the world. To make it usable, you have to strip it of all that stuff and build the various programs that your typical Linux distro sets up (fvwm2, etc.) If Sun has come to its senses and has realized that rather than making embarassing attempts at UI, it should just outsource the job to someone who cares, the difference will become even more transparent.
That depends on what one wants to do with the GPL'd software in question. If the idea is to try to make money directly from GPL'd software, then one may have a problem. If however, one is trying to create a standard software infrastructure on which to build that everyone holds in common, then GPL'd and LGPL'd software is a good way to go. The latter seems to be Sun is going.
The Media is thoroughly confused, but this isn't news to anyone. I'm tired, too, of hearing about the "Eazel" desktop environment. Don't get me wrong. I love what Eazel, and other companies are doing for open source projects such as Gnome. I just dislike the Media's gross misunderstanding of the relationship between the Community and the Corporation. One wonders of the Media will ever really grasp the beast known as the Open Source/Free Software Community and how it integrates with the business models of companies such as Red Hat, Eazel, and Helix Code. "They" don't seem to fully grasp the idea that the Community (project, source, forums) is an entity separate from the Corporation, yet a part of it with a powerful relationship. The Corporation may enhance the Community, providing resources that the Community might not be able to provide on it's own, yet if the Corporation were to die, the Community would live on. And the Corporation very much feeds on the Community.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
(While the reasons that BeOS as a whole won't be open-sourced have been hashed out here recently, it makes perfect sense for them to open-source the app server - for one thing, there's themeability locked in there somewhere. OSS hackers could unlock it and then some. And, of course, I'm talking about BeOS code that would have to be ported. But hey.)
If you don't pretend to be anyone, are you?
Wrong. Solaris is used for both desktop computing and serving--at my employer, just in my particular division, we have 300 workstations in constant use by engineers as desktop machines. Based on the fact that you don't even know how Solaris can be used and think freedom can only be had through an individually run project, it's not worth my time to continue this discussion.
And what a crappy desktop it makes, no? Right tool for the right job, chief :-P
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And the reason why I turn off this behaviour in windoze (it's becoming harder though with subsequent windoze 'upgrades') is that it takes ages just to open and list the folders and files in a directory.
Of course, that could just be M$'s brute force approach to computing at work.
:wq
For one thing, it is (of course) theme-able, so if you don't like the green, change it. Already an improvement over MS-explorer.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Sorry, no dice. There are a bunch of themers for Windows.
And then, the file icons aren't just improved,
there's also varying levels of detail about each file based on how far you "zoom" in or out. So, you can go from just the plane-jane name up to "this file has X items and was last
modified at 4:30."
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Tracker, Explorer, and just about every file manager ever written allows you to set the attributes you want to show.
I dare say better than what we've currently got
>>>>>>>>>>
That's because most of what you currently have is pretty bad.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Thats odd. I live in Europe, also ordered Solaris 8 and it took them only 3 days to deliver. Considering the fact that I had to pay more for shipping & handling I think you're exagurating big time here.
That's a lot of money for a free OS on 2 CDs plus 6 CDs worth of junk that I don't want.
Read the site and that license again. Its not free software (yet?); "There are no fees for the right to use the software on computers with a capacity of eight or fewer processors", so it isn't free.
You "only need to register for your Solaris 8 Free 1-8 way license for Intel here and Sparc here ". I would not be surprised if you didn't even read the site properly and are now "illigally" using the software. I think you're coming close to trolling; you had all the options to see what you were buying, you could have read the FAQ to see that you are not getting a free OS so basicly I see no reason to start whining afterwards.
Besides; 2 CD's & 6 worth of junk? It somehow figures; I'd expect a reaction such as yours from someone who would call CD's filled with buttloads of documentation (docserver2), Staroffice, Oracle 8i SQL server (trial), JAVA tools and much utilities (GNU extras) junk.
IMHO you got no one to kick but yourself if you are unsatisfied.
Or as Stewart Brand says (in How Buildings Learn : What Happens After They're Built ) "Function melts form". Real users will bend any "grand" design forced upon them when it intefers with simply getting their work done. If Eazel's UI proves too cumbersome, power users will create themes to detour around annoying Eazel "features".
cpeterso
GNOME is approaching critical mass? Sure they're getting lots of backing recently, but KDE is still way in the lead as far as who is using what. KDE is the default on just about every distribution except for RedHat.
GNOME has quite a few things going for it: Nautilis, StarOffice, etc, but then so does KDE: Konqueror, KOffice. KOffice isn't quite finished, but then neither is Nautilis. I wouldn't be choosing any sides just yet.
-Justin
Here are their latest (Dec 7) screenshots: http://www.eazel.com/screenshots/dec-07-2000
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Tonight on Fox: Deadliest Executions Part XVII
It's a sad thing, really, that so many people equate look with feel. It leads to bad interface design.
Lots of people claim that if the interface of a window manager, toolkit, desktop environment, &c is deficient, well, that's ok because they're themable.
The fact is that themability doesn't do much at all. A different theme can change the look of an application, but I've yet to come across a themable application where a theme can change the feel.
Each toolkit (or window manager) has a certain feel to it: the mousing threshhold is generally different. Themes do not change this. Consequently, gtk's radio buttons will feel like gtk's radio buttons no matter what theme you're using.
Similarly, the various Xaw hacks (Xaw-3d, Xaw-xpm) are not very useful since nearly all Xaw applications have the same (user-unfriendly) feel to them. Changing a few colours doesn't buy much.
Whether this is good or bad is certainly debatable, but claiming that a theme can modify look and feel is very misleading and ultimately damaging.
--
You're a suburbanite.
They aren't shipping Gnome (and consequently Nautilus) until version 2.0. Gnome 1.4, which we're hoping to release some time around early March (really whenever Nautilus is ready), will be the first release of Gnome to include Nautilus. There will be plenty of time during the lifecycle of Gnome 1.4 (which I expect will be at least 6 months) to iron out issues with Nautilus. Nautilus is quite usable now. I've been running it in place of gmc for a few weeks now. Granted it still needs some work, but to say that Sun is making a decision on a product that is vapor is absurd. What Sun is committing to is Gnome, really, not Eazel's nautilus in particular, since Nautilus is the future file manager (and so much more) for Gnome. If anything you should blame Gnome for commiting to using Nautilus before 1.0, which of course is absurd, since Nautilus is part of the Gnome project. It takes a certain level of commitment in order to begin development at all.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
Not quite. As quoted below, he was talking about usability.
Just don't confuse 'pretty' with 'usable'. Those stupid radio button widgets that GTK uses are ridiculously unusable compared to those of Windows... that's NOT 'usable', though they do look nice.
Feel is nothing if not a usability issue. Was the original poster's problem a look one or a feel one? I'm still not entirely sure. However, I feel that my points on look and feel, and how they're not the same thing, stand well enough in their own right. Everyone that I've discussed the issue with agrees with me that themes buy very little, for what that's worth.
--
You're a suburbanite.
I bet you alot of money that they were not using those E10K's the way they should have been... Remember that E10K's have the ability for a 14gigabit backplane... 14 device paths, each at 1 gigabit... They hold what? 16 system boards, each with 4 processors... And with Sun coming out with the 512mb simms (the ablility to have a max memory of 16 x 4gig (64gig total), and when Solaris 8/Ultra 3 processors (gighertz speed) become Enterprise stable, I bet that Network Solutions will wish they hadnt switched...
Go SUN!!!
Sarcasm is the recourse of a weak mind...
--
Every commercial UNIX I go to, I always have to compile bash and tar and grep and all those other goodies because the old UNIX equivalents of those programs invariably have fewer features and more bugs. Dump everything but the Solaris kernel and possibly the compiler and you'll have a great UNIX. Of course, the FSF will make you change the name to Gnu/Solaris, but it's a small price to pay.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
file managers are indeed old technology. nautilus, while not yet perfect, is by far the best i have used. it includes networking enhancements, groovy document handling via component programs, and impressive customization. we try to make it useful for both beginners and experts, and do not intend to replace the command line.
the company includes top-flight graphic designers, UI experts, and GNOME hackers. my admittedly biased view is that the ratio is appropriate and the synthesis useful.
playing with nautilus is a much better evaluation than looking at screenshots. :-)
aaron.
Jesus H Christ, am I the only one that doesn't give two monkey turds about seeing big, huge massive, eye-candied, screen realestate hogging icons representing all of my files? I mean come on, some of those screen shots show all of 4 files in a window that is presumedly running in at least 800x600 resolution. This is user friendly? I just want to find and launch my files.
These bozo's think that somehow showing a text file's contents in the icon is going to help me find what I want? Yes, maybe if there are two files in a directory, but come on, what if I have a directory with 1000 documents? They are on crack.
I understand the desire to do something different, to strike out in new directions and not create yet another windows explorer or Mac Finder clone, but what they have done instead is create a gross parody of existing user interfaces, ala Aqua.
I think that Eazel will perhaps be marginally more successful that Microsoft's Bob, it looks just about as usable.
-josh
All the other serious Linux players deliver working code, watch the userbase grow and then maybe say yes when big vendors come knocking. These guys have got the order a little mixed up.
Nautilus isn't as good as Konquorer yet but the promoters talk up it's future features impressively. It isn't stable enough for regular work yet but alas, it's still alpha. So why is Sun committing to use this particular solution now?
It's called marketing. Basically if two companies can get together and announce something which sounds positive for both with only minimal long term risks, they will. That's why some of these guys are in both the KDE League and the Gnome Foundation. That's why the Gnome Foundation is not nearly as dangerous as most people make out. I.e. It will likely end up doing the same marketing job as the KDE League ( just more efficiently
Remember that it was 5 years between committing to CDE and actually shipping it for SUN. Even assuming a speedup for the open source arena we still won't see Gnome on your shiny new ultra 10 anytime soon. Unless you install it. By then Sun will likely ship 4 desktop environments. CDE, Open Windows, Gnome & KDE and that's the barest minimum.
You see these big old vendors are not stupid. At least no stupider than Mandrake and RedHat. Both of whom openly and loudly promote one desktop environment over all others yet ship all the popular free ones.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Wasn't Gnome 1.4 supposed to be out a while ago?
;-)
Honestly, the Gnome team has proved they can't hold to a schedule at all. That's fine in the Open Source world where its done when its done, but Sun is a buisness. Shipping betaware sounds like...like...Microsoft
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How hard would it be to port Nautilus on Darwin, since Darwin is just a strange BSD variant? I noticed on Eazel's web site that it only runs on intel platforms, so it's not trivial...
Apple says that they're porting Darwin to intel, but who know how long that'll take...
that would be ironic. like the snake eating its own tail.
:::
:::
Vaginux.
"eat me".
I just checked out the December screenshots of Eazel, and continue to be amazed at how slick it looks. This is good software written by people who understand how to cater to the end user. No one can accuse Nautilus of having a "built by programmers" look.
... it looks like we're going to see Linux sail past Windows in terms of plain old usability very soon.
Truly intuitive user interface, combined with intergration with StarOffice and Mozilla
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hate to be pessimistic, but with all the failures, layoffs, share prices plummeting...i hope Sun has a big war chest.
Here's the plan : Sun makes their OS look like Linux, and sells all the hardware they can make, even though you pay roughly 5x the cost of a Lintel solution. Granted, some of the Sun clustering and services are mind-blowing, but they won't be selling many 1s/2s this way. Although I'm sure the entrenched solaris shops will welcome the changes.
But will it be "in time"? 3dfx? Gone. Aetna? Thousands laid off. GM? Thousands laid off, oldsmobile line ended.Sun, MS? share prices plummet. Son of a Bush (SOB) is not even in the oval office yet, and the economy is already cratering. Has the republican feeding frenzy begun, after 6 years of incredible prosperity?
At least IBM has pledged 1B. to Linux endeavours. With the loss of the dot com money, a lot of people might not be able to do free software work anymore.
Or perhaps they will be doing a lot more?
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Frankly, I'm glad Andy and a bunch of former Apple and Be engineers are bringing their expertise to Linux and GNOME. It says a lot about the direction we're headed.
I know Sun is an active member of the Gnome foundation, but they, along with many others are assuming that Eazel will be the best thing since sliced bread. Had it been released prior to KDE 2, I'd have probably agreed, but now it seems they're just putting all their eggs in one basket.
I think you are slightly off. Most successful Open Source projects benefit in one way or the other from corporate sponsorship either from developers being hired to hack the kernel full-time (like RedHat does with Alan Cox and a bunch of other Linux kernel hackers or like Netscape does for Mozilla) or contibuting code and/or advice (like IBM and Sun have done for the Apache project or Sun does with GNOME). Once most projects get large enough, there is usually positive corporate involvement.
I have never taken a particular interest in the GIMP project so I'm not sure if it bucks the trend or not.
Grabel's Law
blah blah blah..."its one of the best open source"...blah blah blah..."make a big difference"....blah blah blah..."the only real drawback is ... sluggishness, but I'm sure they'll fix [that]"
;-)
How many times has this been said? Mozilla has been saying this for 2 years, and IE is still running strong
Like I said before, the Nautilis team is talented...but once Linux actually has a stronghold on the DESKTOP market, Nautilis is still someone's dream...Both Windows and MacOS X will be far ahead Nautilis by the time Nautilis comes out the door.
What Nautilis needs to do find a market, and meet it...everyone who really wants a GUI has Windows or MacOS (X). Isn't there something new and creative Nautlilis can be doing instead of writing an open source version of Windows Explorer?
Oh, and to any moderators out there. His comment isn't insightful - its the party line. Mine aren't "overrated"...they're my opinion.
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And if you want to get technical... NSI is the "." after ".com." - the root zone (or ".") comes after the TLD. NSI servers are just the bitches of an outdated infrastructure that everyone unfortunately depends on. Time for something better to come along... (perhaps why sun didn't care as much about hanging onto the account - their Verisign relationship should continue to hang strong though)
If by "clout" you mean "bloat", then yes, MS Office will definitely have serious competition. ;)
Uhh. Have you looked at Konqueror by KDE? It includes 'networking enhancements' and 'groovy' document handling via component programs and 'impressive' customization. Check out the links in the above page and please explain how 'Eazel does it better'? Only reading about Eazel, it does not appear that it does more than Konqueror. Except that Konqueror has been shipping for 3 months and Eazel is still in development.
"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life."
"You're gonna need a bigger boat." - Chief Brody
http://www.njit.edu/Library/archlib/pub-domain/sul livan-1896-tall-bldg.html
The Bauhaus was founded in Germany in 1919, so Sullivan should probably get credit for having the idea first.
(Frank Lloyd Wright was to later say of his teacher: "Form follows function-that has been misunderstood. Form and function should be one, joined in a spiritual union." This quote has been shortened over time, by various paraphrasers, as "Form and function are one.")
Sun already did that, or haven't you installed Solaris 8 before? It includes all gnu stuff now, from tar and bash to other stuff like apache, etc. Lac
Vidi Vici Veni
Thanks for the sig
He was complaining about the look, not the feel, so changing themes is the correct solution here.
I often wonder who ever thought it was a good idea to ever use a selection button with an ambiguous up/down state. Theme-makers, please note.
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Have you got your LWN subscription yet?
But then, the form follows function doctrine led to a lot of sheer ugliness as well. Your brand of design creates soulless concrete shells that demoralize the people who use them - viz public housing projects.
They'll probably get the brilliant idea to become the 'e' in 'e-Business'.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
thus schprawked anniethustra. back up that mountain, bucko!
I will put my best foot forward and recommend you get out some more, perhaps engaging in some community events, joining a fan club or maybe enrolling in an adult course at the local trade school. whatever suits you, your happiness is the goal after all. Maybe you can join our softball league me 'n the girls from the Xena fan club Bowling team are playing in. I know we'd love to have you!
WAIT- even better yet, visit your local bohemian enclave and just groove, baby! ->8=)~!!!!
'cause I don't recommend believing your own opinions. thx.
:::
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Vaginux.
"eat me".
Sun announced a while back it's support of GNOME via Helix. How come Sun doesn't offer binaries in native Solaris package format yet? Are they waiting for 2.0? Also, why is the Helixcode distribution for Solaris so rarely updated?
I'm not dissin' anyone here, and truth be told, I use Helixcode's distribution on Solaris every day and am very thankful for it! :)
>And the Corporation very much feeds on the Community.
Hehe. That's the critical point. The Media is aimed at people who pay money and _buy_ things. The idea that a more up-to-date and better supported version is available for free download doesn't really fit in with their world view. If it's not bungled too badly, everybody gains. It is very much to the advantage of the Corporation that the Community does well, very well. Someone better at writing than I may be able to explain the relationships, subtle and plural, but do not expect them to come from the Media.
on the page: http://www.eazel.com/screenshots/dec-07-2000
Just curious, I happen to live in that general area now... I guess one of the developers is from here or something?
Are there any truly free desktop environments? (I mean under the BSD license.)
Whatever happens business-wise, I think Sun is making a good choice. Let's hope it's also a business decision.
Sun is waiting until Nautilus reaches 1.0. Sun isn't shipping Gnome with Solaris until version 2.0. Gnome 1.4 hasn't even been released and won't be until Nautilus has matured enough. Nautilus isn't vapor. They still have issues to iron out and bugs to fix, but it's there and you can test it out.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
I wouldn't call something you can download and use vaporware. Even if it's not at version 1.0, it's there and you can use it today.
OK, first the price. I should have been clear that that $175 was in local currency (Canadian dollars). $75 + shipping + GST + duty comes out to very very close to $175. (I think it was $172 and change)
And you must have a different meaning of free than I do. The right to use it on up to eight processor machines is free. There is no licensing fee for those computers. Sun throws the word "FREE!!!" around their site like popcorn, and yet you can't actually install it unless _you_ own the media. Can't borrow it from a friend, don't forget--that's a violation of the license agreement.
Believe me, I've read the FAQ.
For the record, I'm not running it on my own machines, legally or illegally. Once I get the console wired up, I'll be installing NetBSD until I acquire a legal copy of Solaris 8.
As for the six CDs of junk, they're junk. Why would I want to pay for a CD containing an OLD VERSION of a (crappy!) office suite? Besides, everything on those CDs is available for free and unrestricted download from one site or another. I've got the docs I need, I don't need a demo of Oracle 8i, and I will suffer through thumbscrews before using StarOffice 5.x (especially 5.1!) again.
My point is that it's a lot more expensive to get Solaris now that the license is free than it was when companies had to pay big bucks ($500--not that big!) for the license. Furthermore, claiming that the cost of the media is $75 is absurd. If they'd just be honest and say, "for a moderate fee" or the like, then I'd be happier.
Also, they've been promising a download option RSN, for about three months.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Open Source Software is released (or should be) when it's ready. Sun is a business, yes, but it hasn't committed to a ship date for Gnome 2.0. They've wisely given only hazey estimates as to when it would be ready. Truth be known they don't know any more than anyone else does. It will be released when it's ready. Gnome 1.4 will end up being released later than the original estimates, but that does not indicate a failure of the project. It simply means the estimates were off. The Linux kernel is another example of such a situation. No one (with any authority) has ever promised Gnome 1.4 or Linux 2.4 by a certain date, they've only given estimates that proved to be off. Any person who has worked on a large scale software project will tell you how very difficult it is to estimate times for product development. You really don't know how much work will need to be done until you get in there and start doing it, often.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
But Mozilla has yet to ship 1.0 and IE 5.5 is out...maybe you could better spend your time helping the Mozilla team by running test builds and writing bug reports instead of hanging out on /. and complaining about the speed.
Nautilus does have a market--the Linux/Unix desktop. Since Eazel doesn't see a stronghold there, the only way to help build one is to find out what pieces are lacking and work on those. In this case we're getting a graphical shell from some of the guys that built one for the Macintosh. What's wrong with that? Nothing that I can see. I welcome Eazel into the Linux fold.
I think Sun's move to phase out CDE in favor of GNOME was intelligent from both a business and strategic angle. They know the development in the CDE arena severely lags that of the GNOME project and it's better for them to join the GNOME team and contribute to a standard desktop than to swim upstream and continue working on CDE. Since Eazel is building the new file manager for GNOME it's only natural that Nautilus gets shipped with Solaris as well. Plus running GNOME on SOlaris provides a unified GUI across many versions of Unix, which helps users when they have access to many machines running different OSes.
And your assumption about everyone who wants a GUI has Win or OSX is *very, very wrong.* I want a great, easy to use GUI yet I don't want to give up the control of my software to a single corporation and become a slave to their desires. That's why I'm using free software. That's why I'm here.
Oh, and to any moderators out there. His comment isn't insightful - its the party line. Mine aren't "overrated"...they're my opinion.
Party line?! Sounds like your role my friend. You're the one bashing prominent open source projects on /., not me. And the last time I checked, that *is* the party line around here. I've been running test builds of Nautilus for a while now and I've watched the project go from something cool sounding to something cool to use.
Damn, I can't believe I got dragged into another silly flame fest. My fellow lurkers, please forgive me.
Sun will also be integrating Star Office into Nautilus. Wicked cool! The combination of Mozilla and Star Office will give GNOME some serious clout against MS Orifice.
The name, I mean. Could we be any more juvenile here? You don't see RedHat calling their distro "Fundme" or RMS calling the next version of the GPL "Gippy". So why for eazel? It's not like they took it from their roots with Apple. Apple has always had respectable names for projects, names that convey their meaning like Sherlock for their search program. That conveys a sense of mastery, of pinazz, everything marketers dream of. "Eazel" just sounds like a child's art device.
-- Anne Marie
When is Sun going to get off their asses and allow Solaris to be downloaded, as they've been promising for months now?
Is now soon enough for you?
http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/source/
- Old Man of the Mountain ---- "I want to disturb my neighbor"
is this the same OS X bp that I have? :)
:) Methinks it's a Carbon problem..
iCab crashes, Fizzilla crashes, Thoth crashes, etc. You get the idea...
Can I ask what you're doing with it? I'm mostly just mucking around, getting used to working in a *NIX box. The system seems pretty robust, AFAICT, but the apps are a whole nother matter!
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Over a remote X session Nautilus is totally worthless and I'd say a large chuck of Solaris desktop users are doing remote sessions a la eXceed. Can you downgrade that thing to 256 colors? I hope so because over X it takes a LONG time for that thing to paint all those pretty icons. Doesn't it use Mozilla libs for crips sake!
I wish someone would focus on the fundamentals rather than making it look great. Someone should make a file manager that works as well as WINFILE.EXE the old Windows file manager!
???
Okay, since when was Solaris 7.0 or 8.0 $75USD? I purchased my copy(ies) each for only $12 for the CD media and about $4 for shipping. Did they raise their prices that much or are you just blowing smoke out of your ass?
True, but one common name for the bonobo is the "pygmy chimp".
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Looking at what's happening to tech stocks, I predict that Sun will have a new slogan very soon...
"Watch these suckers jump when I get root." - l33t j03
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
KTB:Lover, Poet, Artiste, Aesthete, Programmer.
There is no
Call me an old curmudgeon if you will, and I won't necessarily deny it. However...
When is Sun going to get off their asses and allow Solaris to be downloaded, as they've been promising for months now? I know all about the 'free binary license' as long as you buy the media for $75USD plus shipping and handling. Up north of the US border, that amounts to about $175 by the time it gets to my door. That's a lot of money for a free OS on 2 CDs plus 6 CDs worth of junk that I don't want. Not bad for work, admittedly, but for my Sparc at home it's just silly, and a long ways from "FREE!!!"
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
So I gather they are actually shipping a full Gnome 2.0. Why refer to it as just Eazel, there is a lot more to Gnome than just the file manager.
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enterfornone - logging in for a change
I wasn't quoting... I agree that Sullivan said it first.... But, it is also quite clear that the phrase 'Form Follows function' is a defining one for the whole Bauhaus Movement. Form follows function came into general use as a phrase in the 30's in the States and the 40's in Europe. Gropius and his friends moved to the US around that time to get away from Nazi germany.
a i.html
However, some people have argued that the general concepts can be traced back much further - to the Italian jesuit monk Carlo Lodoli. The cornerstone of Lodoli's teaching was the maxim that nothing should be put on show (in rapresentazione) that was not in function (in funzione), that is, a working part of the structure.
(Good OO design/ Abstract Data Types ?)....
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/2360/jm-eng.fff-h
So, arguably Lodoli said it first, in Italian, in 1750..
These ideas, plus the idea of organic architecture were all kicking around in the mid 18th century with people like Horatio Greenough writing about them. Mix in the purity of Asian and Japanese art that was getting seen in the west for the first time and it's not surprising that the same ideas were sprouting in different places at the same time (e.g. Charles Rennie Macintosh in Glasgow as he rejected the decoration of Art Nouveau for a more elegant simplicity).
Sun buys cobalt so that the company could have a low end server, cobalt runs on linux, cobalt has a web interface, why not just add a gnome interface too? Sun has repeatedly stated that it promotes linux, I dont see why this is a big deal. Its obvious that Sun would do this. Chris Lee Mediawaveonline.com