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Eazel Tells All
Ur@eus writes: "We have just put up an interview at Linuxpower with some of the people at Eazel. This is the first interview they've done after the release of Nautilus 1.0 and their recent restructuring. So if you want to know more about Eazel and how they plan to move forward I think you will find this interview interesting."
I don't believe that someone working in Linux for so long should remain in ignorance.
FVWM, Saig Office, Midnight Commander and GNU-utilities like tar, ls, gcc, ftp and many more lightweight X and console tools are terrific for the lightweight lean mean user and are all actively maintained. NCurses is better than ever with bindings in Ada, C++ and other languages. Tex is still going strong.
They are great! They are cool, and they can impress women, and better than everything else they free your dependance on Nautilus. Go try them today!
~^~~^~^^~~^
...not in the hope of ever getting a return, but in order to make sure the default Solaris 9+ desktop (Gnome) continue to evolve. And to make Solaris support a priority among the developers.
All the various Unix and/or hardware companies switching from CDE to Gnome have some interest in seing it continue to evolve.
Well if they are relying on venture capital funds until their business model does turn a profit, then they do have a point. Not every business is profitable from the start. To make matters worse, where some of these dot coms are located makes basic expenses such as office space very high. In many cases the internet allows them to be located just about anywhere, but they are in the high priced tech areas to attract talent (why not have the basic business staff & headquarters located someplace cheap, and if need by have the techs telecommute?) So not only are they not bringing in much revenue, they are bleeding red ink like a stuck pig due to high expenses. Unless you have a very patient VC, this won't last for long. Given the slide that we've been in for the past year, the VCs aren't being patient.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
The only problems that I had compiling it was due to not having the appropriate gnome libraries. The configure script barfed a couple times, so I went to a Gnome mirror, pulled down the latest versions of the packages it wanted, and continued. Other than that, their compile instructions were easy to follow. It took a while to compile, but that wasn't a big issue for me.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
Well, we all know that PHBs' perceptions often do not match with reality. A dot com may start up in the Bay Area because they _think_ they will be able to attract talent (and pretend to be hip & trendy at the same time) worth paying the high rent. In reality, they may be getting the same as what they could get in another city, but still have the higher rent. A dot com moved her last year because they needed to turn down their 'burn rate'. They recently annouced that they are going out of business, but they delayed it a year.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
> I don't know about these guys, but "1.0" means
> that the product is ready for the masses. That
> means tested and working, most features are
> in place and there are binaries for the major
> Linux platforms.
Take it in context. 1.0 of any product is rarely stable and full of all the features that 3.0 has. They got 1.0 out there so that people could play with it. They did it for the exact reasons they state. So why are you trying to villify them?
Methinks you are trying to play the karma-whore by quoting a lot of redundant text from the article and then proceed to call them idiots for doing exactly what they said they'd do!
Grab the rpm src file and you can install it on any RPM based distro: rpm --rebuild blah.src.rpm
Minneapolis, MN has some good people in it too, and some of them even like the weather. :-)
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
The Gnome project itself releases the packages in source format. The best way to get binaries currently is from Ximian; they'll be releasing binaries for Gnome 1.4 sometime soon after the final release. They currently support about 9 different platforms, one of which is Solaris. Both Sun and HP are doing internal testing of the Gnome 1.4 platform also.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
And after you put your troll-filters on and read the useful posts from the Gnotices thread, be sure to actually read the interview this /. article is about to see how the issues are being addressed.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
Cut/Copy/Paste has been working in the Nautilus hourlies for about a week now, FYI, not that it's something you should necessarily expect from a file manager. There are many different paradigms. Windows Explorer is the only file manager (or at least the first--others have copied it) that uses it. There's also the Take/Do paradigm, or the shelf idea. Lots of possibilities.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
Nautilus already has keyboard navigation, is decently fast, and you can move files around quite easily. What the Nautilus developers are doing is soliciting feedback on how they can improve these qualities--i.e. complete and consistent keyboard navigation, even faster performance, and better methods for managing files. Nautilus 1.0 arrived at the basic framework; it's very usable and impressive. But now the developers can look ahead to adding some serious features. Since the framework is there, some of these additions have been quick to arrive. Already in the hourly builds there is cut/copy/paste functionality, arbitrary script execution on selected files, preferences for displaying directories before files and adding an option to delete directly instead of moving to trash. There have been some speed tuneups I've seen tossed into CVS as well.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
The thing that worries me that is any product that is tied to a company such as this needs to make money for that company. The first thing they will try to do is get it established as some sort of standard, something that seems to be happening. Then what happens is you get bugged endlessly to use their "services", or maybe the product is not fully functional without some sort of subscription. I have used Nautilus and all of it's asscociated bits. It seems to be that it does not do a real lot, except give them a window into your desktop for thier services and tie everything into it as a dependency.
.. a nice little file manager would have done ok. Who needs them.
Geez
It didn't really matter that we fired half the people here because they didn't have anything to spend the money on anyways because we supplied all the coke and pizza they could eat and a place to sleep. Most of them have moved back in with their parents and now we get all their code for free which is a good thing cause we're never gunna make any money off writing an open source Mac gui for linux.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Nautilus runs on Solaris. This was something I put a lot of work into prior to release. We're not releasing binaries, but rather have been assisting Sun in creating their own performance pack for GNOME. Hopefully this will impact the largest number of Solaris users.
Nautilus also has packages available in Mandrake Cooker, I believe.
cheers,
-Seth
2. Ability to more easily move files around (using either cut/copy/paste or shelf idea)
3. View content of
4. Ability to delete files directly without going through the Trash folder
5. Integrated shell features
6. Better browser functionality (inc. Download functionality, Mozilla related problems etc.)
7. A no-frills, lean and mean file manager (no Mozilla, no services)
8. Better MIME type support
9. Clean quit
10. Elegant way to drop app launcher icons on the desktop
11. Better keyboard navigation
12. Bootstrap installer better recovery after failures
13. Sort directories before individual files are listed
14. Text on desktop more readable
15. Stability
16. More previews (HTML, pdf)
17. Automount floppies
18. SMB support
19. Root password popup box
20. TLC to Tree View and List View (easy Rename in List View, for example)
21. Virtual folders not just as bookmarks
Isn't this just a list of features, most of which should be in a file manager from the very beginning? For heaven's sake, keyboard navigation, speed, and ability to move files around?
What is up with today's software anyway, if it doesn't even do what it's name implies?
Since we shitcanned half our people, the rest of us have been working like dogs, pulling much overtime to keep our already underpaying jobs and we realize now that there's no way in hell we'll get this done in time.
What exactly is the business model for Eazel? How are they expecting to turn a profit ever? How (besides the now dried-up venture capital) will they pay their engineers and sustain a viable company?
If you look at their website, you will notice that they have corporate dealings with Sun Microsystems, Red Hat Linux, and Dell. They also are partnered with Xythos and Loudcloud.
They may not be turning over a profit yet, but they are working toward making a profit with a product that may be an innovation.
Black and grey are both shades of white.
I am impressed. They seem to be listening to the Gnome community. Their list of feedback and suggestions actually reflected the criticism and feedback they received on Gnotices. I look forward to their next release, but in the meantime I will not be using Nautilus. I doubt they will remain in business long enough to make a profit, but I wish them all the best. IMHO, the best case scenario at this point would be an Eazel/Ximian merge. They each have qualities and philosophies that benefit the Gnome community and a merger would end the duplication of efforts. Either way, Red-Carpet is the superior software delivery tool and Eazel should just abandon this avenue to Ximian.
I spoke with Maciej? from Eazel at the recent linuxworld expo in New York. I asked him about Eazel's plans for KDE... He responded that there were a lot of interesting conversations going on between Ximian, Eazel and some of the KDE community about implementing bonobo. The conversation was not very specific, but the overall tone was that KDE was within Eazel and Ximian's radar. Perhaps more cooperation between the KDE and Gnome communities will be possible within this corporate framework?
So far, only Redhat and Debian have releases available to them.
This is a very visible time for both Eazel and GNOME, and they need to get on the ball. Especially since these new platforms can do a lot of good to those projects.
As far as how Eazel will make money, you have to be creative and think outside the box a bit. The answer is corporate partnerships, services, support. I don't claim to have the inside scoop on what things Eazel is exploring behind the scenes, but a few things jump out readily:
1. Customizations, enhancements, add-on components and feature requests funded by other companies. As the Gnome platform gains popularity there will be an increase in the need for third party products to integrate well with it. I can see Eazel writing custom views, components and services that integrate with Nautilus for third party vendors.
2. Services. Read anything about .NET web services? Read the interview where it talks about Reef? The possibilities are endless here and it's hard to say where it will be 5 years down the road; it's a rapidly evolving paradigm. Not only can I see users paying for network delievered services, but I can see third party vendors paying Eazel for integration so that their service becomes part of the suite of services integrated with Nautilus.
3. Support. With Gnome popularity rising rapidly there will be more and more demand for support and on-demand fixes and enhancements. Who better to do it than the companies (Ximian and Eazel) who employ some of the best Gnome hackers in the world?
4. Actually selling the software. This one may come as a shock to some of you. Yes, you can sell free software. Red Hat and others have done it. Eazel could too. I could see Eazel selling, for example, a boxed set containing Nautilus (and perhaps the entire Gnome platform) along with a manual for newbies and perhaps gobs of extra stuff--backgrounds, Nautilus themes, icons, more emblems, viewers and components that work with Nautilus (Open Office, various media plugins, etc.), perhaps some extra media files like mp3s and .wavs for previewing in Nautilus.
Anyway, just a few ideas that sprung to my head. The bright folks at Eazel no doubt have many more ideas being lined up right now...
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Celebrate the finer things in life
I just don't see any compelling reason to change from KDE 2 to Gnome/Natilus. The KDE desktop is clearly more advanced, and i can always keep the GTK+ libs installed to run usefull gtk programs. But Konqueror is clearly the killer app. It's somewhere between IE 4 and IE5 now, without the backing of the worlds largest software company. And that they've mananged to write a webbrowser that beats everything out there (for linux) without any webdeveloper support (how many people test their pages for konq. compability?) is just amazing.
-henrik
It seems to me that Konqueror hits 2,3,4,5,6,13,15,16(SMB) and 18, of the Nautilus wish list. Mind you that this is without commercial backing (and with a clear conscience now that Qt has been GPL'd).
Maybe eazel could write an IO slave for Konqueror that can access the eazel services, that could increase thier potential revenues, no?
I'm afraid i mostly agree on this observation. Most of the new linux users seem altogether happy to slam every move a linux developer makes. Wether its the question if the 2.4 kernel can run embeded devices or on 65000 cpu's, mozilla not being standard enough, or to bloated cause of trying to folow all the standards, or now nautilus.
And the odds are very big these are all people who will never contribute a single line of source code, or documentation, or help fellow linux users out. Obviously they just see open source as 'free software', and not as open source, as we come to know and love it.
I think the most apropiate responce would be a old timer responce from the linux-kernel list
"Don't talk, code"
Show us in code what is the 'better' way, fix those bugs, add those features, trim the bloat, document and translate and be welcomed in the world of open source!
None of the apps you love using today (enlightenment, gnome, kde, bind, wuftpd, apache etc) came into existance by hords of users complaining about bloatware and bugs, they came into existance because people disliked bloat and bugs and -did something about it-
just my 2 cnts (Hfl)
-- Chris Chabot
"I dont suffer from insanity, i enjoy every minute of it!"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Two years ago, we were happy about advances in Linux usability and technology. We were a happy band, encouraging and helpful.
Now? Well we've grown out of the innocent outskirts and hit the big city. Screams of "this is bloated", "this sucks", "this doesn't work" and "this will never work, fall from the greasy windows of tall concrete buildings.
Some from MS plants, some from idiots that want us to stop and look at them, and some jealous that they will never get true credit for something good.
Its been a year since we noticed the change from real hackers to wannabe managers on slashdot. And in the confusion, I sit back like many unheard others that think 'I could use this' and 'this is actualy pretty cool'.
So for anyone who is wondering if slashdot shows a cross section of the linux community, rest assured it doesn't. You are invited to join us and let the trolls stamp around in their own go-nowhere lives.
~^~~^~^^~~^
There are a lot of issues that need to be addressed like instability, inability to compile on various platforms, bloat and other things.
Be careful before you rush in to embrace it.
They plan to make money off of Eazel Online Storage and Eazel Software Catalog.
Eazel Online Storage
This is similar to the technology made popular by X-drive that allows users to create a virtual drive that actual exists on a remote server. The problem with this technology is that it is expensive for the service provider (hard drive space and bandwidth) and from what I've seen from the online file storage market is that a lot of them (e.g. X-drive) have given up on the consumer market because of economies of scale and will instead try to capture the business market. Online file storage seems to be at best a break-even part of teh business instead of one that will generate enough profits to cover the cost of software development.
Eazel Software Catalog
This seems similar to RedHat's download page, where one can obtain software from a web interface instead of via FTP. One hopes that they also plan to have something like RedHat's up2date or Debian's apt-get to distinguish themselves, if not then it isn't worth signing up for. Again, I don't see this as a great profit generator.