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Gnome for Solaris 8 Preview
jiggywhiteboy writes: "Sun has released a preview version of the Gnome desktop for Solaris 8.
The release includes version 1.4 of the desktop, Nautilus, Gnome-VFS, Bonobo, and GConf. Sun warns: "Exploring the GNOME 1.4 Desktop is an unsupported prerelease of the next-generation desktop for the Solaris Operating Environment. Given its prerelease status, we recommend that this software be installed on a non-mission-critical system, and used only by those who regularly test prerelease products" Try it out!"
> Is it just assumed that Sawfish is it nowadays?
Pretty much, yes. KDE has KWM and Gnome (now) has Sawfish. It may even be included in the official Gnome "releases" though I haven't checked.
Sure, you can use other WM's, but I can understand why Sun wouldn't want to advertise that fact. It would confuse most users. The division of labor among programs that make up our graphical shells isn't commonly understood, even by experienced users. And there isn't much need for them user to understand this division, anyway. If they want to learn, they'll figure it out quickly enough anyway.
And I'll take a moment to praise Sun for moving away from the badly dated CDE, and towards a more modern DE. And thank heavens they picked Gnome instead of trying to create another homespun, closed, proprietary system.
It is worth noting that the acceptance of Gnome as an standard, common system among commercial Unix vendors represents a large step towards the vision that RMS layed out in the GNU Manifesto.
Viva la revolution!
--Lenny
Who said anything about a "special version"? What Sun is releasing is Solaris binaries. Someone has to do the build, and Sun is releasing their binaries. Also Sun has made numerous contributions which have gone right into Gnome CVS. These contributions include patches to fix certain quirks with running on Sun hardware. For the most part, GNOME is highly portable--and has been from the beginning. GTK+, Glib, and the gnome libs were implemented and designed using highly portable C. And yes, you can "just build it on Solaris and be done with it."
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Celebrate the finer things in life
- Sun's Slide Presentation
- Test Script used in the study
- Comments and conclusions taken from the study
Enjoy.----
Celebrate the finer things in life
Try it. Building GNOME on Solaris was a complete pain in the arse. http://www.clanger9.demon.co.uk/computer/gnome/ is a list of the various hacks to build on Solaris (no longer nessessary).
Someone you trust is one of us.
I've had Solaris 8/KDE on my Ultra 10 workstation since I set it up 6 months ago! KDE and Gnome ship with Solaris 8 in the install media kit, on the same cd with GCC, gtar, gnu/emacs, Ethereal, and an entire cd of GNU tools. Don't y'all use SunFreeware or Sun BigAdmin for your Solaris/GNU packages?
I work for Sun and recall seeing an email a few months ago asking for both technical and non-technical users to undergo usability testing with Gnome. This is one of the best things to come out of Sun's stewardship; they're able to do due diligence and add the missing ingredients that the OS community never could (or would). If you ever want to see UNIX or Linux broadly deployed on the desktop, this is the first big step in that direction.
The only certainty is entropy.
I support 75 Solaris machines in one of the larger computer labs on the Columbia University campus. This lab is used by many undergraduates who have never seen UNIX before, and frankly, CDE muddles many of the. We've tweaked the "Control Bar" thing that shows up at the bottom of the screen to make things nicer, but when I think how much easier it would be to use GNOME instead I drool. Right now, if a user wants to do something as simple as setting a customized background (as opposed to the builtins), they have to edit their .dtprofile in addition to changing some settings using the CDE controls. The Gnome Control Center gives them much more power, all with one graphical interface.