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Solaris 9 Will Be Updated WIth Gnome 2.0
JAZ writes: "According to this article, 'The newest version of the GNOME open source desktop will not be ready in time to ship with Solaris 9 next year, but it will be included with a subsequent Solaris 9 quarterly update ...' Go Gnome!" I wonder if anyone truly prefers CDE.
Why? Because its smaller and runs faster - nuff said, I'm a speed freak. I don't need bells and wistles on my Sun's desktop, I'll save em for machines that aren't expected to compile large programs on demand and as fast as possible.
man is machine
I'm not big on Gnome or CDE but XFCE is a great WM I use it with Solaris and Linux it's similar to CDE but a bit more flexiable and quicker. IMO I don't see the big deal if Gnome ships with Solaris or not bacause you can always download it. But then again that may suck for people on a dial up connection.
Snoozer.
That the important thing - for the next few versions of Solaris - Gnome may be the default, but you will have a CHOICE. A CHOICE to install CDE instead - and that's good. I personally do not prefer CDE, but if you like it, that's cool.
:) )
(for a while, until they stop supporting CDE
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
You're only wondering that because you haven't experienced the pain of OpenWindows[tm], winner of the [entirely fictitious and just-invented] Most Unintuitive Interface In The Entire Fscking World Award.
Drop-down menus are dropped down with which button? The first, you say? Oh no, that would be far too obvious and industry-standard. The third button drops down a menu. If you press the first button, it activates the first entry in the menu, without ever dropping the menu down. Sort of a speed-select. Confusing as flaming fuck to people who don't expect it: if the first entry is "New Window" then you merely have windows popping up. "I clicked on "File" and a new window popped up? Huh?"
If the first entry is more, shall we say, "proactive," then you just lost data. Or had a file overwritten when you were just experimenting. Or... who knows what just happened, since there may not be any visual feedback to whatever the fsck the first menu entry happens to be.
I and my users were both extremely happy when we were able to move from OpenWindblows to CDE. They will be happier still if I ever get the chance to build KDE 2.2 for my SPARCs.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I thought this statement from the article was rather strange:
:)
"The other nice thing about GNOME is you can continue running your standard CDE motif applications, they just run on the GNOME desktop. Also, Java
applications can run on the desktop, so you really end up having the best of both worlds."
Under that logic couldn't you argue that since you can use gnome applications under CDE is the best of both worlds? If they still have motif applications you're not getting the best of both worlds, you're getting gnome with some nasty motif flavored bits
Ian
Not to bash Gnome, but I've had plenty of troubles getting a clean install of any linux disto w/ Gnome as the default work consistently among more than 2 reboots. Icons disappearing, bitmaps getting corrupted out of the blue, etc... It seems a bit odd that Sun is making Gnome the default desktop just out of the blue like this without first distributing it as simply an 'alternative'. Does anyone agree? Am I misinformed about Gnome becoming the new default. -C "All the world is like cereal. If you're not a fruit or a nut, you're a flake."
*nix? You mean like Linix? Oh wait, thats wrong. I guess you mean BSDix. Opps, not an OS either. Clearly you mean Qnix. Oh, thats QNX, my bad.
I love going down to the elementary school, watching all the kids jump and shout, but they dont know I'm using blanks.
If you really prefer speed over bells, why don't you use something like fvwm?
As an administrator I found CDE to be overly complex, difficult to use and customize, and generally a pain in the ^@$@! Having Gnome availible on Solaris in a pre-packaged, official distribution is nice even if you don't use it as your desktop just for the included applications, which can be a pain to compile properly otherwise.
On my current desktop I'm using Gnome and sawfish and it's quite reasonable. On my Sun cluster (used solely for remote computation) I don't install CDE OR Gnome.
I think the reason for this is that Unix was never intended to be a desktop for the everyday home user. Sure people are trying to change linux int this and thats great but Solaris? I doubt it will ever make a dent in the desktop wars it just wasan't built for that. I use Sloaris at work and Linux at home but I couldn't picture my mother using Solaris, mandrake maybe...........
Snoozer.
And I'll tell you why...Three reasons:
1) I do 90% of my work from a terminal. The only reason I even run X is to have Netscape, XMMS, and SDtMail. I actually tried running just console for a while, and didn't notice any degredation in my productivity - it was just hard to read UserFriendly.
2) This is Solaris, and GNOME is very Linux-oriented. I don't care what anyone says, it is. I don't like not having access to some Sun-specific keys in the hotkey editor, or having all these "Unknowns" pop up in my sysid.
3) It's slower and less mature than CDE. GNOME is trying to hit a moving API, and there is the one problem with Open Source development: The second-system effect. CDE knows what it does, and does it well. GNOME tries to do everything - which I don't want. I like that it just manages my workspaces, windows, cut'n'paste buffers, etc...And doesn't browse the web, grab the weather report, make julienne fries...
Anyway, just my two cents. But CDE is a good desktop if you want a more UNIX-y (small tools doing one thing well, instead of Nautilis trying to be a web browser, file manager, PIM, etc.)
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
gnome is dead. why do you ask. because i say so because i know it. i am developing gnome myself and am getting pissed with every new day. GCONF = windows registry, no plugins system, 3 different configration systems, a tons of library which number increases every day. nautilus is slow and doesnt work properly, evolution permanently crashing and and and....
Not so! glib provides a plugin system; gconf is significantly better than the Windows registry; evolution 0.15 is extremely stable (I've been using it as my sole mailreader since the patch to a single disabling bug came out in version 4 of the Debian package). Yes, Nautilus sucks -- but there's no obligation to use it.
Also, as a C programmer, I much prefer the design philosophy behind GNOME to that of KDE. Yup, it's personal prejudice. Hell, maybe it's wrong. Nonetheless, I prefer it.
As for the development community, I've had excellent support from them. Perhaps you've exercised poor grammer or a conspictuous lack of research in your posts? (The lack of respect both of these show can rightfully, in my opinion, get one ignored in almost any community).
Finally, you may need to note: Wishing something dead doesn't make it so.
Although the mention of KDE in an article about Gnome is just asking for a [-1 troll] rating (wouldn't it be terrible to allow any real debate on Slashdot?), you really have to ask whether Sun gave KDE fair consideration in making their decision. My bet is that their decision to use Gnome has more to do with the geographical location of its core developers than the code itself.
I work in a sun shop. I'm allowed to run FreeBSD on an old poweredge instead of using solaris on a blade or ultra5. Almost every person around (all sun) has grabbed the gnome addons cd and installed it. At first it's so they can get xmms installed easily. As soon as they see someone else running the gnome desktop and ask about it, they are hours away from running it themselves. I pretty much compile and run blackbox on everything including solaris when I'm forced to use it. :)
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
It doesn't take that long to learn a new window manager. I suggest looking at as many as you can and then deciding. Get used to the idea that you have a lot of choices, and revel in it. Don't be afraid to try out new stuff. That fear is what keeps certain monopolies in business.
The most important thing any republican needs to know.
I'm struggling _now_ to get mozilla up and running on Solaris (sparc). I'm past adding gunzip and make, grabbing gcc now, and have the source to the gtk tool kit. Less painful then setting up Oracle on Linux, but still...
This is GREAT news for those of us (me) who are not use to "using the source" and working from scratch. If they are bundling Gnome, they will have the GTK toolkit installed too! Its hard enough for a Solaris newbie like me to get an app installed, much less this plumbing. I've really gotten spoiled by Linux distros -- a C compiler and all the other parts are usually just there.
Wish it was bundled in there now. That which does not kill us...
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
It should be worth mentioning that this story is an "update" to a previous story here on /.
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
Gnome if free both ways. KDE has to be licensed for commercial use. At a hefty price, too. If they want to sell thousands of workstations they will want to keep the marginal costs low.
Best Slashdot Co
It depends on what you're after and what you have the time for. CDE is simple and doesn't seem to get in the way. Having been forced to use either CDE or OpenWindows for several years, and having found OpenWindows to be a royal pain, CDE was what i stuck with. I use KDE now, because it most closely resembles CDE for me. I've tried some of the more feature-laden (or ridden) window managers - tho some of my acquaintences may grouse and complain that i don't give things a fair chance, i require two things from a window manager : that it doesn't make me use the mouse any more than necessary, and that it doesn't force me to eat up screen real-estate with whizbangs and visual funthings. I'm definitely a terminal power-user, and would operate in text-mode exclusively were it not that I require a web browser (feh). If you gave me a choice between Gnome and CDE, i'd take CDE, just because i'm not convinced spending X amount of time learning how to deal with another environment will buy me anything - it certainly won't improve my productivity, as I am definitely of the opinion that GUI's hamper productivity (unless you're doing something visual).
I've tried for ages to get Xinerama support using XFree86 under Solaris - no dice, until recently I got it all compiled. Of course, documentation is extremely scarce, and I'm pretty sure I don't need an XFConfig file for the Sun framebuffers, but there isn't one included, either. Haven't gotten it to work yet...
The problem with Sun's out-of-the-box implementation is that there are no header files or some such (can't remember exactly right now) and it works with CDE, but nothing else! That is, you can't compile sawfish or enlightenment, etc. against their libraries due to missing files. CDE which is pre-compiled by Sun, of course, works.
So unless Solaris 9 w/GNOME supports Xinerama, guess what I'm choosing to go with my two 21" monitors?
Well, OpenWindows was basically a port of the old SunView system, which was the original windowing system, to X11R3. SunView was rather revolutionary at the time and, I think, predates X by a number of years. Hence, it doesn't "follow industry standards" because it pre-dates them.
The Openwindows (or OpenLook) libraries are pretty well call for call compatible with the SunView library calls and look nothing like the normal X library stuff.. and are arguably easier to use, hence they were used quite widely in scientific applications.
For those who are used to the interface, moving to the other windowing systems and desktop environments can be quite a culture shock.
On our systems we have Openwindows, CDE, KDE 1, KDE 2.2 and GNOME 1.4. There are a number of people who I can't get to move from Openwindows, others who PREFER CDE, a lot who prefer KDE 1 to KDE 2 etc.
Each to their own, I say.
Agrajag: "Oh no, not again!"
Oh, certianly CDE sucks asteroids through a garden hse, but it sucks less than OpenWindows. There are far better windowing systems out there. I was just restricting my observations to the 2 choices that are currently shipping with Solaris.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
FWIW, I actually use OpenWindows as my desktop (oh, the horror, the horror!) and along with olvwm, it does its job and stays out of the way. All my real work is done with xterms, gcc/cc, emacs (so go on, flame me) and custom astronomy software. If you ever had the misfortune to use AIPS, you'd be into B&D too.
With Linux (and gnome) on my laptop and on our newer production machines, I just don't know: it looks (and feels) clunky. What 5 year old drew those ugly icons? Even with the "tiny icons" on my laptop Gnome toolbar, the only icon I actually like is the simple red star of Mozilla. And my work is all at the command line, I don't use icons! But I still can't convince Gnome, even with repeated "Save settings," that I'd rather not have an icons for /dev/fd0 and /dev/hda cluttering my desktop. Non-intuitive, hard to learn (this from an OpenWindows user!!) and ugly: is there any reason for Sun to switch to Gnome besides saving development costs?
I, for one, am not impressed.
"I will take the Ring," he said, "though I do not know the way."
I got to discover OpenWindows' many qualities (sigh) when working in Denmark. My machine, a SPARC, was oooold as hell. So old that I actually saw a configure script tell me:
Humiliating.
This said, it's OpenWindows that got me hooked on the 'focus follows mouse pointer' scheme. Guess it wasn't entirely bad after all.
-- B.
This sig does in fact not have the property it claims not to have.
You are about 2 years out of date. The QT licence prevents you from using the free version of QT in closed-source code, the same is true of Gnome's license.
A comment I made during the Unix International/OSF wars, when it was Sun and AT&T vs. Everyone Else with Open Look and Motif their dueling GUIs:
"This just shows that it's not only about look and feel, but also smell."
QT does not have to be licenced for commercial development, provided that the result is Open Source. The GPL which Gnome is distributed under also prevents use of Gnome code in closed-source applications.
I happily compiled and ran KDE on Solaris about 3 years ago.
OpenWindows has been completely dropped with Solaris 9; you only get CDE. Good riddance.
It is not just about licenesing but also about the choice of programing environment. My understanding is that KDE pretty much forces C++ onto you. That is fine if everything is only ever built with on compiler which is using the same revision of the C++ ABI and interepretation of the standard. For Sun customers that wouldn't work because the Sun compilers and gcc and others all get used on Solaris by different groups of people for diffrent reasons.
Note this is my personal interpretation and is not to be taken as an official Sun position.
What has Windows got to do with anything? We are talking about Unix platforms here, whatever software QT does or doesn't write, or the license they release it under, is completely irrelevant to this debate.
"stripped down"? No, Sun just doesent include every package and application under the sun with a nice point-and-drool web-based sysadmin interface.
Personally, I *like* building up a system from scratch from a "bare" OS install. I know exactly what goes on my system, exactly where its installed, and know that 1000 other packages that I *dont* need havent been installed as well.
This is one of my least favorite Stupid Slashdot Misconceptions (tm).
.o files so that they can re-link it themselves. (That's no big deal -- commercial UNIX software has been distributed in .o format for years.)
The "QT Free Edition" is licensed under the GPL. The GPL dictates that if you wish to distribute a derivative work of a GPLed program (or a program linked to a GPLed library), you must distribute it under the terms of the GPL. The set of all GPLed closed programs is closed under the operation of derivative work creation.
The GNOME libraries (with the sole exception, IIRC, of the non-essential libgtop) are licensed under the LGPL, or Lesser (ne'e "Library") GPL. The LGPL allows linking with closed source code; it merely stipulates that you must re-link it with new versions of the library and/or supply customers with
So, to recap: an LGPL library allows closed-source applications to link with it. It is possible to write closed-source GTK+ and GNOME apps. A GPLed library, on the other hand, can only be linked into GPLed software, so if you want to make closed-source Qt programs, you're stuck forking over the ducats to trolltech.
It is not in Sun's best interests to force Solaris application developers to pay royalties to trolltech for commercial applications.
The biggest drawback of the Windows registry is that it is stored in a binary format so if it is corrupted you're basically screwed.
GConf provides multiple backends. The default XML based backend is much more resistent to corruption that the Windows registry. If something goes wrong and something gets corrupted, it's almost certainly going to be limited to a single file. Also, if you're ever in a pinch, you can easily edit XML with your text editor of choice.
System adminstrators can set system defaults for users and can make certain settings non-overrideable.
A system like GConf is necessary to allow different programs to share common settings (e.g. the user should only have to specify his or her proxy settings once rather than in each application). GConf provides a mechanism for notifying applications of changes in settings pertinent to them.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Although QT does not have to be licensed for 'commercial development', it does need to be licensed for non-Free (non-gpl) development. (see this link.)
On the other hand, gnome libraries are licensed under the LGPL, which allows non-gpl (closed source) development based on it.
Although I believe this was one of the deciding factors--potential software partners would not need to depend on an external company to develop, this is currently true with Motif, so it probably wasn't the only factor in their decision.
Probably Sun engineers felt Gnome was more true to unix traditions than KDE, felt more comfortable with it, and felt they would have a bigger say in the direction it ultimately took.
You are right, I misread the post to say that QTs licence procludes integration with commercial applications (which is no more true of QT than it is of the Linux kernel).
Xinerama support within either... If you watch during the "configure" script's output, you'll see that "-lxinerma" bombs out - at least under Solaris 7, it sure does. Haven't tried it on Solaris 8 yet.
I'm very excited for Gnome 2.0, not the least b/c it will support anti-aliased fonts. I know this is childish and stupid, but nothing makes your GUI look more professional that anti-aliasing. I use KDE for this at the moment, but KDE is lacking in other parts of the visual department. Gnome 2.0 sounds like just what I've been waiting for.
Anyone know how far off this really is?
I use Solaris. Once you've visited Sunfreeware.com and got all the things to make it into a proper UNIX (it doesn't come with a compiler, for heaven's sake! Unix without a C compiler is like a car without wheels!) Solaris becomes perfectly usable.
:-)
In fact, after a visit to sunfreeware.com, Solaris feels pretty much like Linux
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Is it just me, or does everyone who likes CDE like it because it doesn't do that much? Maybe it's because I've only used it on HP/UX, but it seemed like CDE managed to botch every single thing it did. Admittedly, you can almost entirely avoid it, but "it's almost as good as nothing, and better than many other things" is not really a good sign.
I have to admit, it does include a window manager that lets you move, resize, and iconify windows and change the keyboard focus. But, other than that, just using an xterm would be nicer.
No, Sun just doesent include every package and application under the sun
Last time I checked they did, shipping with and turning on unnecessary RPC based services, Telnet servers, and having a fucking Netscape based install process (that was avoidable, at the expense of missing out of some features. There's at the useless dt* programs I'm not aware that anyone uses.
with a nice point-and-drool web-based sysadmin interface.
If I remember correctly both Admintool and Solaris Management Console (or whatever its called - that thing that used to be in Easy Access Server) are both installed by default in Solaris 8.
In addition, it seems they don't give anything a modern Unix server needs out of the box - like Tripwire (or another IDS) and some basic default packet filtering system (although Sun does give away their basic firewall product for free).
If you're talking about default installs, give me Red Hat 7.2 anyday.
I recently installed Ximian GNOME (recent release version) on my Sun Ultra 30 machine, and I've got to say that thing's a dog. It felt so sluggish it's not even funny.
Now I'm running KDE 2.2 on the box, and it's really snappy.
My only complaint is really slow opaque window dragging, but that's really Sun's fault, for somehow deciding not to include pixel-copy hardware 2D acceleration in their Creator3D framebuffers. (a strange reason why for some things, SunRay thin-clients feel faster at graphics) Anyone know if other newer Sun framebuffers fix this lack of feature?
Lots of people prefer CDE of GNOME. Many Solaris desktops are X Terminals in large companies--say, at banks, financial services companies and so forth. The people who use them access e-mail, do data entry, and query old big-iron databases. You want such a system toi be free of distractions and clean and easy to use.
Few things are cleaner and simpler than a stripped-down CDE desktop. A drawer with the 4 or 5 most common applications, a clock, a trashcan, and a drag-and-droppable printer icon. No taskbar, no nested program menus, no disk icons, no desktop clutter.
It may be awful for an engineer (but then, maybe not; if you primarily use the command line, who needs all of GNOME's gizmos?) or a "power user", but CDE is great for heads-down managed environments like call centers, trading floors and so forth.
Yes, a modern, flexible desktop comparable to what MacOS and Windows offer is necessary for home and small-business use, and for some breeds of power user, but that's mostly because such users have to do nearly all of their own file and system maintenance. For someone who has no need for that--and that's true of many a work environment--the empty simplicity of CDE is a virtue. Not to mention easier to deploy, maintain and support on a network. CDE is terrible as a "general purpose" desktop. GNOME and especially KDE are far better for that. But the work that has to go into stripping down and locking down GNOME or KDE for ease of use in a 100-seat call center makes me cringe.
Maybe someday, Tim, you'll work for a company where Unix people have more than 20 desktops to worry about, where most of the people using those dektops aren't techies, and servers really have to be up 24/7.
First of all, your initial grips about window behavior is undue since all of those options are configurable! This is just how your admin set up the defaults to be. This can be changed.
Actions are super easy to create and are much more versitile and useful than window shortcuts. The is a program that should be in your desktop apps folder.
Windows is only intuitive because you've spent your life wacking off in front of it and have gotten use to how it behaves. You have no right trashing a system that you absolutely do not understand. It's like driving a porche when you've only ever driven a bicycle...
CDE is ugly because it supports a very large range of platforms and therefore needs to be scalable. It's default values will work on most systems but it can be configured to be just as pretty as windows.
Gnome is superior by all means, but CDE blows Windows out of the water.
BTW: xlock is an X-Windows program and has absolutely nothing to do with CDE.
int func(int a);
func((b += 3, b));
Great Scott,
Is this some kind of conspiracy from Taco to post actuall trolls as stories to circumvent the noodnick trolls who post comments? First the slackwear troll and now this... I mean, really.
Well anyways, I LIKE CDE, ya rat jap bastards. It's light and fast, even on my butt slow sparcstation. I shudder in uncontrolable spasms to think of how KDE or Gnome would behave on my box. Yeah, CDE is far from pretty, but hell, it's running on solaris so it all makes perfect sense if you think about it.
Okay, so there you go, IHBT, IHL, HAND.
All the best,
--Bob
Sure: Consider a binary format with sync markers or some sort. GIF has "restart markers", which clear the LZW dict. So, a bad character could screw up a few pixels, or at worst, a few lines, but once a restart marker was found, it would be fixed.
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
But most Solaris boxes I deal with are rackmounts through a Telnet session. Maybe I have just slept through the "Solaris as a desktop" revolution. Please someone fill me in on what I missed.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I'm not sure what you mean by "ethical" in this context -- and it's not a "windows registry" system, per se. As for a few real reasons for having such a thing:
- Having each app have its own configuration file format sucks; thus, a single format and API is beneficial.
- App configuration should have a universal means of setting systemwide defaults, without having each app hardcode such capabilities.
Hope this helps.
Believe it or not there are those of us who actually prefer Unix desktops. By the time I get my Windows machines up to speed (cygwin, Emacs, Python, Perl, TeX, LaTeX, ghoscript, sgmltools, etc.) I generally find that it would have simply been easier to install Linux. Especially since getting all of these Unixy tools to work together under Windows is a real chore.
Besides, I can't even imagine trying to be productive without virtual screens. I also have a pile of ssh sessions going on, but each group is on a different virtual screen. That way I can easily tell which machine I am looking at.
Putty is nice, but if most of your actual work is done on Unix systems, there is simply so much more that you can do if you are likewise sitting down at a Unix system.
For a while there I was getting worried that I would have to switch just because Mozilla was taking such a long time to get to the point where it was useable. I was a little bit afraid that I would be stranded without a decent web browser. Nowadays, however, I no longer worry. I actually miss Mozilla when I sit down at my Windows machine. I really like having a modern browser that happens to have Emacs key bindings for keys like Ctrl-K, Ctrl-E, or Ctrl-A.
That makes me very happy.
Read the last line in my Post. :-) I was stating what I prefer. I love UNIX, but I don't like its GUI interfaces. So why waste my time.
I have no doubt that Mozilla WILL BE a great browser. But its still not near enough to IE (again, IMHO). And don't get me wrong on anything, I'm not a Microsoft hoar, I will not install XP until enough hacks come out where i can get rid of all the things i don't like about it.
I guess I just don't let politics bother me, bah.
I've been wanting to see how productive I'd be under an OS X box, but i havnen't had the chance to use one long enough, and I'm ot going to buy one to end up not liking it :-/. I haven't even tried it under OS X.1, though it looks pretty and on the G4 I breifly tried it on seemed pretty snappy.
Prepare to lose all karma.
I actually prefer many of the older, commercial desktop environments and window managers. These include not just CDE but vanilla Motif (mwm, the Motif Window Manager) and OpenWindows.
Why on earth would I say this, especially when GNOME is free *and* certainly looks better??
Because OpenWindows and Motif/CDE have worked. They still work. They'll most likely continue to work well into the future. And they work well with the software I use. As much as I like to fiddle and futz with GNOME (and KDE) on my Linux box at home, I'm actually glad I don't use them for work. Openwindows was fast and extremely configurable back when I used a SPARCstation 2 as my desktop workstation. Because it was running atop the X Window System, I could do far more with it than my buddies on Windows 3.1 boxes down in accounting. Several years later I moved to a SPARCstation 10 with Motif which was quite a change, but by that time most pointy-clicky gui-based software for SunOS/Solaris was becoming Motif based so the move made sense. A year later I tried CDE and found it to be a pleasant yet simple extension to the minimalist Motif/mwm desktop I had been running. Most of the time I didn't notice the difference as I had the CDE Front Panel minimized and was busy working in my own apps anyway. By early 1996 I moved to a Ultra 2, a machine that stayed with me (albeit with two new cpu modules in 1999) up until this past summer when I upgraded to a Blade 1000.
The experience has been great. Never once has the desktop gotten in the way or clashed aesthetically with Matlab, Xilinx, or any of the other tools I work with. I was never working with a piece of artwork, mind you, but it looked good enough and wasn't bothersome. OpenWindows was lean and fast back in an era when it had to be. Motif brought about some unix-wide standards (even SGI uses slightly modified Motif). In fact, I would be willing to bet that Motif has been documented moreso than even Microsoft's GUI libraries. CDE gave us a few extra goodies based on Motif. While I don't use CDE's mailer, text editor, or calculator, I do find myself relying heavily on the simple but quite useful calendar manager. These days it'll even sync with my Palm. A few other utilities are great for the little things I don't do too often (such as change the color scheme, screen saver, or fiddle with the print queue). Even the login manager is quite nice, especially for its age. Like many of the newer freeware options (gdm, kdm, etc) it allows the user to select a desktop environment at login. Quite handy when trying out a few other the up and coming environments (I tried Sun's version of GNOME 1.4 several months ago).
I say all of this as a combination hardware and software engineer, mostly working in the embedded RISC world. I'm not a sysadmin with every script, utility, flag, and manpage memorized. Nor am I a graphic artist with a need for a PowerMac and its Postscript, ColorSync, and FontSync. I'm just a guy that needs to get real work done on a platform that's both flexible and not going to give me problems. Thankfully the past 11 years have be extremely nice to me. Of the 5 workstations I've used, each has had it's OS installed only once (with the exception of the Ultra 2 which I upgraded from Solaris 2.5.1 to Solaris 7 [2.7]). I only had to install my software packages once. Of all this, the gui toolkits and windowmanagers played a very small part. But they played that part with exemplary performance. They weren't wiz-bang, but they weren't a moving target either. They did their job - well. As for me, I am going to continue working with my current setup. I don't need the toys and whistles while I'm at work and thus will continue using CDE. I'll let my two UltraSPARC III CPUs spend their time working on my code.
That said, I'm glad Sun has an open mind and is working with GNOME. I personally don't think GNOME (or KDE) is the long term answer, but at least they're looking in other directions. Motif and CDE are old, but well used and well documented. For many, it's time to move on. Lets do so with some common sense and a historical perspective.
Calculus and alcohol don't mix. Never drink and derive.
>Putting everything in one file (binary or not) /etc
.gconf]$ find . -type d -maxdepth 2
.gconf]$ find . -type f | grep galeon
>is a pretty stupid idea.
>I just upgraded my distro and was very happy
>that I could copy single per-app configfiles
>instead of the whole "registry" (that may not
>work). This happyness is about both the
>files and the KDE config files.
Whew... Good thing Gconf has nothing to do with storing everying in a single file, and allows you to copy single per-app configuration instead of the whole "registry".
[galt@damballah
.
./%gconf-xml-backend.lock
./apps
./apps/nautilus
./apps/eazel-trilobite
./apps/eog
./apps/gda
./apps/galeon
[galt@damballah
./apps/galeon/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/State/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/State/prefs_dialog/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/Advanced/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/Advanced/Crash/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/Advanced/Filtering/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/Advanced/Network/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/Rendering/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/Rendering/FontsColors/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/Rendering/Language/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/Browsing/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/Browsing/Find/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/Browsing/General/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/Browsing/History/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/UI/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/UI/Tabs/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/UI/Windows/%gconf.xml
./apps/galeon/UI/Toolbar/%gconf.xml
> > In fact, after a visit to sunfreeware.com, Solaris feels pretty much like Linux :-)
:)
>Um, why not just use Linux then?
That'd mean re-installing the OS, and quite frankly, Solaris works fine and I don't need to fix something that ain't broke.
(You might then go on to ask why I went to the trouble of making my Windows system dual-boot Debian and Windows. Well, Windows ain't Unix, and Win98 is definitely broke )
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
For most people, Gnome certainly beats OpenWindows. But if you don't like the Gnome desktop (I don't particularly) and the icons, you certainly have enough choices: XFCE, icewm, and many others. That's the nice thing about X11: you get the choice.
You don't need to pay anybody to develop Motif applications: it comes with the OS for free, and you write your applications for it. Furthermore, Sun already is part of the consortium that owns the rights.
Even though I like OpenWindows, I almost always have my default sessions set to use CDE, since that way I can easily have my window manager the same on all the UNIX platforms I use (AIX, HP-UX, Solaris, OSF/1), with the exception of IRIX. :)
If you really want CDE for IRIX, call up SGI telesales and request "CDE 5.0" (part number SC4-CDE-5.0). It's free of charge, though you will have to pay for shipping and handling. Great for someone that wants or needs to have the exact same desktop environment on all of his machines.
Sun was originally primarily a workstation vendor, their servers was just something for their workstations to connect to.
They have moved thei focus from workstations to servers recently, as NT and Linux have taken over the workstation market.
You experience with Sun is probably after this happened.