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Inside Ximian
An anonymous reader writes "Linux and Main is running a story of a visit to Ximian headquarters and a talk with Nat Friedman, Miguel de Icaza, and Jon Perr about GNOME2, Ximian 2, and getting Linux onto the corporate desktop. Interesting and funny, with lots of details about the place and the guys."
If you kiss Microsoft's ass, you'll contract Mono.
And once we're in there, we discover that not all Open Source developers are Dope Smoking Long Haired Linux Hippies...
Jim
"Oh, yes! Writing code and squashing bugs. I usually get here at 7, 7:30 a.m., and I learned not to turn on the lights, because there are probably people who have been here all night coding, who are asleep on the couch or the floor."
Well, let's hope Ximian has a better year than the Red Sox ...
(Score:-1, Wrong)
I've often wondered why people bother with ximian. Are the packages it releases any better than the ones released by gnome itself?
.... And if you install it then your installation seems to be not quite compatible with a standard gnome install.
Sure, it has a pretty autoupdate feature, but then so does debian and mandrake, and it can be added to redhat,
I can see why people would install gnome2 over kde3, although I personally prefer kde, but why would you install ximian gnome over normal gnome?
Is it yet another linux company that is going to crash and burn once it runs out of VC? Just what is there to encourage people to pay them money?
Corrin (sounding really like a troll...)
1) Does it have to be aesthetically-pleasing to the eye?
Yes.
2) Does it have to be just like MS Windows?
No. Working with any computer's interface is a learned behavior. People learned about the _ [ ] X buttons at the top right of their programs because every computer they sat down at was running Windows. They soon realized that the X closed a window, the _ made it temporarily dissappear.
Many studies say that modern day UI must "look like a Microsoft product". Sorry to break it to you, Sun et al., but this simply isn't true.
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
*sigh* reminds me of the place I worked last year before the layoffs hit. I'm miss working there. The work environment was just like this, the people were talented and smart, and the work was challenging and fun. Those were the days.
Finding God in a Dog
Did you notice the building Ximian is located in? Looks so .gov to me... I'll better run a 'find / -name "gnome.nsa"' fast
42 + 1 = 42
Well the project sounds ambitious and all... but I tend to gauge the success of a company such as this by how cool their logo is. I think these guys are going to have a great future. Anybody else as shallow as me?
A couple of our programmers are night owls. Yes, they work all night, but they sleep all day. Gets a bit inconvenient having to walk around them when they're sprawled out, but it doesn't affect the code quality.
If you only manage one computer, and you like to spend your time installing and updating software, then you probably don't really need to pay for Ximian. But it is great if you've got other things to do then worrying about keeping a mess of workstations updated.
However, if you like a company's product you should buy it. By purchasing from Ximian we are helping to support Gnome development. It is just self-interest. Gnome is good for us, so we pay for Gnome.
From the article and other statements they've made, they are really going after corporate desktops with their for-sale products. There's really no reason for an individual user to actually buy the CD since it can be downloaded. If I remember correctly, the whole thing is only 80Mb or so (it installs to around 200Mb), so it's possible even with a modem connection.
Corporate users who decide to adopt Linux and GNOME for their desktops may indeed decide to buy it, however. If Ximian can really provide a consistent and reliable set of applications, easy updates, and support, then corporations may perceive it as a viable alternative to the endless Microsoft license cycle. If they feel they will get timely support, painless updates, and good consistency, then they will be willing to pay for it; it will still cost them a bundle less than MS.
Although paying for free software sounds like an oxymoron, corporations are willing to do it if they perceive it buys them consistency and support.
>I've often wondered why people bother with ximian.
:)
... and one of the ways you can add autoupdating is by downloading Red Carpet. :)
:)
>Are the packages it releases any better than the
>ones released by gnome itself?
The Gnome project doesn't provide packages at all, so yes, the Ximian packages are better because they exist.
What they're really competing against is the distribution offerings. It seems the common consensus that Ximian is a much more polished product; e.g. the misfeature of filenames in save dialogs disappearing if you changed directories was first fixed in their distribution.
It becomes even more of an issue if you're running an older distribution, since the majority of companies only release bug fixes rather than new versions of software. So if you're running Red Hat 6.2 you have the option of sticking with Gnome 1.0.55, which shipped with it, compiling from scratch, or installing Ximian, which is based off 1.4.0.
>Sure, it has a pretty autoupdate feature, but
>then so does debian and mandrake
I'm not familiar with the Mandrake solution, but Ximian is much more end user friendly than apt-get. I'm an experienced user, and I still find value in having a simple graphical interface to browse through updates.
>and it can be added to redhat
>.... And if you install it then your
>installation seems to be not quite compatible
>with a standard gnome install.
What's not compatible? I've never had issues running either binaries or source I've compiled myself, and I've been running Ximian since they were Helix.
>Is it yet another linux company that is going to
>crash and burn once it runs out of VC?
Without looking at their financials, wouldn't be able to tell you.
You should keep in mind, however, that their revenue is solely from product sales. Both Sun and Hewlett Packard have contracted them for work on getting Gnome ported and packaged to their respective platforms.
>Just what is there to encourage people to pay
>them money?
Depends on the person. Someone looking for interoperability with Exchange might be encouraged by Red Carpet. Someone looking to deliver a standard desktop with centralized management across multiple platforms might be tempted by Ximian Gnome and Red Carpet CorporateConnect.
And I've already given examples of programming contracts.
Matt
To Moderate or post...oh what the hell.
>>.... And if you install it then your
>>installation seems to be not quite compatible
>>with a standard gnome install.
> What's not compatible? I've never had issues running either
> binaries or source I've compiled myself, and I've been running
> Ximian since they were Helix.
I think what the orig poster may have been talking about is what happens when you Install Ximian and then try to use anything *other* than Redcarpet to update...up2date doesn't play well with Ximian packages, and it makes upgrading your distro a PITA (first have to force rpm to remove all the Ximian packages, then upgrade, then reinstall Ximian...and hope it works).
I'd disagree with you on the apt-get being hard comment, but I don't use debian on desktops.
Bugs Bunny was right.
I admire the hard work put into Evolution. I was in the process of moving all my contacts over into their PIM. Until... I had a large message to send out and the program was straining under the weight of not having , instead of ; between addresses in an e-mail to ~40 people. These folks were not on a regular distribution list and probably never will be. It made sense to send the message that way. It took minutes for the program to move through through the addresses so I could add another.
It's slick... I'll use it some day but it didn't impress this time around. I'll try it again in about 6 months.
I also got the impression that the purpose of Red Carpet was more to-do with providing Ximian with some kind of business model, than actually providing useful functionality to the end-user - otherwise why not just build it around apt-get and give us all some flexibility?
In the end, I didn't really see any solid advantage to going with Ximian Gnome (although I do like Evolution), and it had the disadvantage of making my rpm dependency tree more complicated than it needs to be.
>I think what the orig poster may have been talking
>about is what happens when you Install Ximian and
>then try to use anything *other* than Redcarpet to
>update...up2date doesn't play well with Ximian
>packages, and it makes upgrading your distro a
>PITA (first have to force rpm to remove all the
>Ximian packages, then upgrade, then reinstall
>Ximian...and hope it works).
I considered that, but it didn't seem to fit the "incompatible with gnome" statement very well.
In any case, I agree that upgrading the distribution after a Ximian install is harder than it should be. Unfortunately I think the problem transcends Ximian alone. If you install any third party package that overlaps with what Red Hat provides, there is a distinct chance of clashes.
One possible way these sorts of issues could be avoided would be for package management tools to make more intelligent use of the Vendor metadata tag. For example, the Red Hat installer could match for "Red Hat, Inc." (I believe they set this consistently), and either skip packages from other sources, or prompt the user.
It doesn't entirely solve the problem. Say I installed Ximian on Ficticious Linux 1.0. At the time FL 1.0 didn't ship anything that depended on libfoo, so Ximian installed libfoo-1.2.4. I go to upgrade to FL 2.0, and they now include an application which requires libfoo-1.2.7. It might turn out that the installer would ask me about the dependency, I'd tell it to go ahead an install the new version, and life would be grand. But even if you assume there's no incompatibilities, it still complicates the install process.
>I'd disagree with you on the apt-get being hard
>comment, but I don't use debian on desktops.
If I gave the impression that I thought apt-get was difficult, I apologize. However, I do think it isn't as intuitive for inexperienced users as clicking on "Get Software" followed by clicking on "Upgrade Now" or choosing the new application you want to install.
Matt
Having worked above Ximian in the same building for the summer i know the space well. The building is quite nice. I believe Ximian has the 3rd floor in the West Wing although I have not been there.
The building used to be a Sears warehouse and then was not used and in ill repair for many years. Now it is reopened as nice offices. It has twin large seven story Atriums in the center of both wings which allow some nice natural light into offices that would otherwise be without. More pictures of the building are here
I've used Red Carpet extensively on both a Mandrake 8 and Red Hat 7.2 box and have never had any such problems.
Red Carpet "just works", every time.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
That's a predictable but wrong answer, and it shows the same blinders that people have when it comes to Windows. Professional cars (trucks, racecars, tanks, etc.) are very different from consumer cars. There is likewise no reason why software for professionals should look anything like consumer software. Asserting that it should is the same idiotic advertising machinery that sells cheap plastic thingies as "professional tools" to consumers who are eager to buy "the real thing".
And even among consumer cars there is enormous variation: other than the steering wheel and two pedals, all the other user interface elements can be found almost anywhere within reach, in almost any arrangement.
Enlightenment is kind of nice, and fairly innovative. And even usable if you turn off some of the animations. I especially like being able to drag desktops over other desktops partially, while working on both.
It's too bad they threw out the code and started v17 from scratch 2 years ago, and are still "at least 2 years away" from having another release. But v16 is still pretty good.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
> Ximian GNOME has a number of advantages over the standard desktop GNOME that comes with your distro.
;-)
.deb packages totally reduce one of Debian's main advantages over other distro's.
;-)
c id=4231 772
Disclaimer: Ximian has a number of nice touches to GNOME that I really like. Standard GNOME2 kicks ass -- I'm using RH 8.0 beta -- so I'm anxious to see what you guys have done. I have some guesses as to what you've done to "enhance" GNOME2. I'll spare the possibility of being wrong by not stating my hunch.
The above is unnecessary fluff to protect against newbie moderators who mod tough questions as "troll". Now, on to my question:
Why the heck can't you guys work out your dependency conflicts with Debian???
I *know* you guys love Debian, and a lot of your coders use Debian, so this conflict I do not understand.
For those not running Debian, the problem is this: install Ximian on a Debian box, and you get circular dependency conflicts... making you feel like you have a RedHat box full of rpm's off Freshmeat. Debian puts a lot of work into their package management, and your
Your packages cause the APT database to think GNOME-related stuff is not installed, or is OLDER than Debian's (sometimes a mix of older AND newer). It's a messy problem.
The problem is magnified on Debian far worse than Red Hat (which also has the same problem), because it's easier to network-update Debian. When I ran Debian, I'd apt-get a couple times a day. I was an apt junkie
OH, and the OTHER large problem with Ximian GNOME is it seems you install your own menu system. This plain STINKS when you have large numbers of GNOME apps installed... those shortcuts are GONE, unless you enable multiple GNOME menus off the "foot button". Grrr.
-Scott
BTW, this sentiment was first touched upon in the URL below. Moderators, please consider that post.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=39651&
The big things wrong for me are the OK/Cancel buttons being the wrong way around (I don't want to have to think about where the buttons are... with gnome I have to pause, read the desktop, then click rather than just click), and the sucky 12 point courier that everything defaults to (even if you try to change it in nautilus half the apps ignore the setting. gnome-terminal looks bloody awful in its default setting). Bring back the control panel too - I'm not a fan of having to search for 20 minutes just to work out how to change the background image (then finding that the option was broken/unimplemented...)
.0 release.. I really liked gnome 1.4 it was clean and functional.... it'd be nice to get back to that level of functionaliy someday but for now I ended up switching to kde until gnome gets itself sorted again.
This is a
> In any case, I agree that upgrading the distribution after a Ximian
:-( Some day in the future when "everybody" packages source in source.superpackageformat that will get easier, but I don't know if I'll live that long :-)
:-) )
> install is harder than it should be. Unfortunately I think the
> problem transcends Ximian alone. If you install any third party
> package that overlaps with what Red Hat provides, there is a distinct chance of clashes
I totally agree, it's not any diff with any other distro I've used. I think that until it's gets as easy to create and use some distro's package format as opposed to tar.gz that won't change
>If I gave the impression that I thought apt-get was difficult, I apologize
No need, my Debian experience is limited to servers (with no GUI so I can't really comment, since It's not really a "end users" enviroment). For "newbies" I'd agree that Ximian and the like are much more friendly (when they work
Bugs Bunny was right.
I know. Not enough characters in the sig field for the whol-
If you fall off a building, go real limp, because maybe you'll look like a dummy and people will be like hey, free dummy
I hope whoever is responsible for that gets punished in meta-moderation (but I won't hold my breath).