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OEone HomeBase Desktop
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."
It's an OS that runs on top of a BROWSER that run on top of another OS...
Could somebody explain to me the benefits of this? Please? Because I haven't the foggiest clue... Seems like a case of going around your elbow to get to your backside, but that's just me...
This actually looks like a potential OpenSource killer app. It gives most non-techie users what they need, what they want and what they will use, for a fair price. Like Lindows, but without the crappy attitude and marketing tripe. The screenshots look slick, and the stuff looks easy to use. Not something I would go all that wild over, but I can see my wife, or her parents for that matter, using this without any major hassles. Add OpenOffice.org to the mix, and you are done. Cool stuff!
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
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Well, I watched the flash demo and I have to say it looks like a very slick environment. Without using it, it's hard to say, but I think this is the kind of thing I could give to my mom to use.
You can argue about the technical merits of their implementation all day long but look at how elegant and aesthetically pleasing the interface is compared to say the screen shots on the website of say... your favorite window manager...
At least as long as it will take users to realize that .doc is just a dot and three letters, designating a bunch of different file formats.
Incidentally, while reading such file formats is relatively easy, writing them so Word can read them is hard. .doc files, in addition to the document itself, contain lots of Word internal garbage: flip the wrong bit in the wrong place and watch Word burn in ashes when opening the document...
It took years of trial and error for the StarOffice guys (and others as well) to get this almost right for the existing versions of Office, so please don't say programmers don't "get it", because this is not true.
So somebody releases another Linux desktop. Not important. What is important is that it's based on XUL, theoretically a fully cross-platform toolkit; many simple XUL-based applets can run, unedited, on Mozilla on all platforms, at native speed.
Imagine if this OEone desktop can somehow be designed to work equally well on Linux, Windows, and Mac OS. So that a user can have a completely identical desktop no matter where they are. It makes transition to Linux much easier than before. Eh?