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OEone HomeBase Desktop

Posted by michael on from the training-wheels dept.

Mike Potter writes "OEone has released its OEone HomeBase product as an open source project, and a free download. HomeBase is a complete operating environment that runs on top of Mozilla, with the base operating system being RedHat Linux 7.1 or 7.2. There's a review of it over at Newsforge. Some of the OEone software has already been released as open source to other projects. For instance, OEone's calendar was the basis of the Mozilla Calendar project."

4 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hang on here... by Jucius+Maximus · · Score: 3, Informative
    Ironically enough, 'HomeBase' was one of the names considered for what eventually was named 'Microsoft Bob,' a 'friendly' computer interface where the computer was represented with a house and a variety of characters - try looking up the old slashdot column "Who Remembers Bob?"

    I can't find it because the slashdot search engine does not index 3 letter words.

  2. Re:Hang on here... by Jack+Hughes · · Score: 4, Informative
    It isn't built on top of the browser.. it is built on some of the the same building blocks that Mozilla is built on. Perhaps the most important is XUL (XML User Interface Language).

    So rather than using KDE/QT or GTK+ or Motif or whatever it is using XUL and a load of other technologies to create the interface, widgets, look and feel and whatever.

    The intention is to create a relatively clear and simple user interface that can be used for key tasks but also lends itself to "kiosk" type applications - for example embedded systems such as set top boxes.

    They aren't necessarily trying to come up with a completely new general purpose desktop system but one which is appropriate for a, potentially, significant niche - set top boxes, internet kiosks and so on. They hope to make money by flogging the system to OEMs

  3. Before you install... by Jodrell · · Score: 3, Informative
    You might want to know the following before you install...
    • The installer appears to be based on Ximian's Red Carpet. This is actually a pretty snazzy tool, but it can be unresponsive while it resolves dependencies. It will download any packages it needs into /var/cache/redcarpet and clobber the installer file in that directory, so backup if you think you're going to need it.
    • It wants to install a huge great pile of dependencies (115MB on my system), like Abiword and OpenSSL and many others, even some perl modules, even though most of them were already installed. So be warned that it may clobber (and possibly break) a lot of your existing software. My advice is to use a sacrificial machine if you want to try it out.
  4. Re:Is this really open source? ... doesn't seem so by Vic · · Score: 4, Informative

    Open-Source components are available via CVS. Directions for anonymous CVS are here:
    http://www.oeone.com/developers/

    Cheers,
    Vic