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No GNOME For Solaris 9
Nailer writes: "Subject says it all really. A (very brief) Linuxgram article claims GNOME 2.0 won't be ready for Solaris 9 and the OS will ship with CDE and Motif as defaults. I'm just waiting for the inevitable announcement the GTK port of OpenOffice has been cancelled."
Read Linux gram's article. It says in a feature incomplete pre-beta demo of Solaris 9 there is no GNOME 2.0. There is no GNOME 2.0 ( just an alpha version) for shipping versions of redhat, let alone for pre-beta versons of Solaris. This article is just placed here to pull traffic to LinuxGram and doesn't really add anything.
Try the Ximian packaging (www.ximian.com). It's quite a bit better. I still don't like everything about it, but it's a hell of a lot better than Sun's packaging. If you're going to evaluate Gnome, give it a fair shot.
-30-
As I've read some of the mailing lists every day for the past few weeks, there seems to be MAJOR activity by SUN on GNOME. Sander, Billh, Calum, and Stephen (sorry if I missed people!) are very active on the mailing lists. The Accessability Toolkit has been part of their work, but also in drafting some rather encouraging style guides and documentation, along with general hacking on various libraries and applications (including Nautilus, which was pronounced dead after Eazel went boom...). I seriously doubt they plan to drop GNOME, as I seriously doubt Solaris 9 will ship without it, considering the work they are putting into it. The DEVELOPMENT platform should be out by Christmas, with other applications ported soon afterwards.
And, for a better question, why would Sun want to pay TT for a licence for QT? Redhat? Why would any company want to pay for a widget set to develop (closed-source, mind you) for Linux? If a Symantec, IBM, Intuit, or, GASP, even M$ wanted to write Linux software, my guess is they would use an LGPL library (Gnome) over paying for QT licences. (I could be wrong, as I don't pay much attention to KDE, but their FAQ seem to say I'm not...)
Which brings me to the main point I'd like to make, IT'S BEEN ALL ABOUT THE INFRASTRUCTURE FOR THE PAST YEAR!!! It takes a lot of behind the scenes work for a program such as Evolution to work, so that's what the Gnomers have been hacking on. The problem is, YOU (the user) won't see it right away!
The technologies these guys have been busting their arses on will make the applications (like Evolution already proves) kick butt.
GConf - Consolidated configuration system with multiple backends. XML or BerkleyDB for user now, hopefully ACAP or LDAP for network users soon. Who know's what's next!
ATK - Accessability Toolkit for screenreaders and such, built-in to the platform. This is important for corporate use with the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) in US, and I'm sure others outside the US.
Bonobo - Corba based REAL components, not just OLE. Look at the power in Evolution. (I'm a big fan, as if you couldn't tell, but not just for myself, but for my wife and grandmother as well. I don't think mutt would cut it for them... :>)
Pango - i18n and l10n, Right-to-Left, and such... Don't know much about this being an en-us, but I'm sure it's important!
Glib/Gtk+ - Very nice improvements, Anti-Aliased text, and so forth.
Nautilus - Darin and others have been optimizing and working out the bugs in this for a while. It has it's problems on the bleeding edge, but it's comming along! I'm not sure about the extent of his involvment, but tigert has been showing up on the list. If he is working on it, we can expect quite a bit in the way of jaw-dropping eye-candy...
Glade/libglade/bonoboui(?) - XML UI descriptions at runtime. RAD UI development at it's best... This is very important.
GStreamer - While not Gnome platform, per se, it has ALOT of infrastructure in place in the A/V dept, and once ported to 2.0, will make for a nice multimedia API/Application Toolkit. (If memory serves correctly, it's been a while since I checked up on this one...)
And a plethora of other platform tidbits. Sure, YOU (user) won't see any radical differences between 1.4 and 2.0, other than AA text and such, but just wait until 2.0.1, 2.2, or 3.0, and so on. It took YEARS for the infrastrucure of Linux to become what it is. Now, it is proven solid. The infrastructure of Gnome is REALLY fleshing out. And need I remind you of the 1.0 - 1.2 hurdle... I imagine 2.0 will come out with eveyone trashing it, much like 1.0, then 2.2 come along with much the same reception 1.2 had... Sure, not good for PR, but... :>
NOT that this takes anything away from KDE. Infact, it's what I recommend to my non-developer friends. To my developer and/or sysadmin friends, I show the horsepower under Gnome's hood. So far I've had nothing but ooos and ahhhs from both camps. Later, I'm sure I'll be showing Gnome all-around.
And finally, CUT THAT "GNOME'S DYING" CRAP OUT! Not only does two projects not hurt, it HELPS! We need all the competition we can get, because that's what causes innovation! We've all seen M$ resting on their laurels, because they've had no competition! WE DON'T WANT THAT! And aside from some notable exceptions, the DEVELOPERS OF BOTH PROJECTS SEEM TO UNDERSTAND THIS!!! Take a look at this happy bday congratz to KDE on Gnome News and PLEASE, BE THANKFUL TO EVERYONE.
For my part, thanks Havoc, Owen, Michael, Seth, Darin, Sather, Ian, Jacob, Alex, Maciej, Calum, Bill, George, Chema, and all I've left out for your hard work. Don't let the ignorance of a few make you at all hesitant in your work. It is greatly appreciated!
Chris