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Interview with Taylor & Pennington from Red Hat
RH-Gimp writes "OSNews has put together a long and informative interview with Havoc Pennington and Owen Taylor from Red Hat. They discuss about the KDE issues, the UI on Red Hat 8.0, the future of the Linux desktop and XFree and other interesting stuff."
RH 8 is slick. Kudos to RH for raising the bard for other dists that claim to be for the desktop. RH has shown consistent improvement from release to release, that's all we can ask.
At first I criticized Redhat's blending of KDE and Gnome, but now I am beginning to appreciate it. It is adding yet another dimension to Linux on the desktop, and seems to be doing so in the same spirit of creative development that has driven Linux as far as it has come. Maybe having only two choices wasn't enough?
The article states that after many years of "It's not a bug, it's a feature!", real resolution changing has just been added to XFree86's CVS.
About bloody time.
... the missing Taiwanese flag.
It was really a no brainer that some distribution would finally decide to try to piece together the different UI's, and at least try to make them look similar to one another. Imagine a bathroom with a gold shower head, a chrome drain, and marble knobs. Things look much better when they are in sync. Kudos to RH for finally getting the ball rolling in this area.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
I'm glad they're busy tweaking out a decent interface and making it more readily-usable -- making sure everything's aligned right, implementing an xFree86 that can actually do dynamic resolution changes, sticking to a GUI standard, and so forth.
But if people spent more time working on or with Redhat and less time talking about/flaming it, it would have a lot more commercial success and would serve as a better bulwark against you-know-who.
RedHat is one of the most important companies involved in getting linux accepted and used outside of its traditional audience, along with IBM and now Sun. I personally like RedHat 8 and wish them coninued good fortune.
Why is it freedom only goes on to the point where it offends you, and then it becomes money-grubbing?
Seriously, if you're so all-fired worried about freedom, why not defend the freedom of RedHat to do something which is implicitly allowed in the GPL in the first place, namely adding and removing parts of a program to suit tastes?
I think the reason OSNews didn't bring this up is because either
1) They didn't know
or
2) They knew but didn't care
seems like a safe bet, because I didn't know, and now that I do I don't care.
I do sympathize with you though. It seems pretty spineless, but RH still can't get in anyone's way who wants to implement a retrofit with the Taiwanese flag.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
Not everyone who uses Linux thinks that Free Software is a viable moral argument; some of them just use it because it is free-as-in-no-cost, not free-as-in-freedom.
How about right on their MISSION STATEMENT?
http://sources.redhat.com/mission.html
The one where they not only reference "Free Software" MULTIPLE TIMES but include 3 links to the FSF in the space of about 2 paragraphs?
Feel like a fool? You should. On the plus side, you could probably get a job as a Slashdot editor considering the skill you just showed in spouting off without doing any basic double checking to make sure you're right before you post.
I never thought about:
"OWT: A lot of it was misunderstanding, but there are certainly real issues as well. Red Hat is interested in a desktop that is well integrated into the OS. The KDE project is interested in a desktop that is well integrated with itself. These goals don't always completely coincide. "
Now that I think about it this is so true KDE seems to try and do everything itself, gnome apps seem to add onto things while KDE makes its own program for something already there.
"of course thats just my opnion, I could be wrong" --Dennis Miller
-- "of course thats just my opinion, I could be wrong." --Dennis Miller
You don't understand free software at all... Free software is about letting the market decide, and if they decide that the removal of the Taiwanese flag from Redhat 8.0 is acceptable then you should know where you stand. Don't assume that market forces will support you just because your story is sad...
As a young developer (14), I couldn't agree more. I see a lot of young programmers who don't know what this whole "open-source" thing is all about. This is not a good thing: at the least, they should know about what OSS is and what values it stands for.
I for one, think that the best place to reach out to get OSS rolling past the Juggernaut is to get our young programmers involved. After all, I don't think even Linus can hack from the grave.
First of all, there is a committee for free desktop standards[freedesktop.org]. Secondly, all other distributions have no need for creating a unified desktop. Red Hat did it because it felt that it was its responsibility, as market leader, to provide something that offers new users that extra cushion. Distributions like Slack, Gentoo etc, on the other hand, don't command such a high market share, and therefore, do not feel the need to spend thousands of $$ developng a unified desktop. The user base of such distros(Slack etc) is already well accustomed to the idea of two separate DEs and a bunch of WMs. If these users want a unified desktop, they should go for Redhat. If RH users want the full freedom of choice between DEs and not something modified by RH, then they should go ahead and try out other distros like Mandrake, Suse etc. Linux is all about choice and every distro has something unique to offer. If distros start copying each other, then linux bubble will burst, just like the unix bubble did a few decades ago. Kudos to RH for trying to stand out from the pack.
-- Reality is just an extended dream.
we do not need a compatibility layer, we need native apps!
"Every desktop OS has at one time or another a compatibility layer to ease users over to its use. Mac OS X has one for old OS 9.2 apps"
Yea so what's your point? These compatibility layers were for running apps from the previous OS, NOT apps from an entirely different OS! OS 9.2 couldn't run windows apps, and Win 3.1 couldn't run Mac apps. We already have an OS that can run all of the windows apps, it called Windows.
Making wine work perfectly only serves to enforce the Windows monopoly. Do you now want the MS Office monopoly, proprietary file formats and all, to dominate the linux platform? Because that is what your idea leads to.
How is a "compatiblity layer" even a marketing tool?
You: Hey switch to linux you can run all of your old apps.
Customer: But I can already do that now.
You: Yes but you also get to enjoy zero tech support because your running in an unsupported configuration
Customer: runs away
Wine is a crutch that keeps people stuck in the windows world. It's not like I don't understand why you or anyone else wouldn't want to stick with some old app you've been using for years, but the fact remains native apps are better in every way imaginable way.
I look at Open Office when I'm in Redhat 8.0 and think God, I remember using Netscape composer for word processing because there were no gui word processors for linux. It apps like that and Evolution that will over time surpass the very same MS versions you want to bring over. Don't you think that end result is better?
Linux gaining the ability to run all windows apps natively leads to a windows clone, and I didn't switch to linux so that I could use IE, Office and Photoshop.
If you wanna get rich, you know that payback is a bitch
Hmm. "attention to detail" was a phrase they used a lot. Ok, sure, these systems need polish.
But -- fuzzy icons -- unified shortcuts -- moving text around by a few pixels. Not _bad_ things to do, by any means. Still.
What about -- "attention to architecture", so that all of these "details" don't turn into infinitely long task lists, so that apps are far better and more consistent at being self-documenting, so that it doesn't take a ton of new code for every little app, so that interactive extensibility is built-in to the core, so that process are managed less horribly....
second, let me let you in on a secret about open source software...
if company X packages/distributes OSS in a way you don't like, you are FREE to do it differently yourself.
face it, redhat doesn't owe you anything, nor do they lead/represent/speak for 'the movement' and yes the majority of people use free software because of the free part and not the road to world peace part
What the hell were you thinking when you said that "Multiple Desktops" had all the functionality needed, so viewport people were out of luck?
They do have all the functionality needed.
If you need more pixels on your screen, go buy a bigger monitor. For everything else, there is Mast^H^H^H^H the multiple desktops functionality. Duplicate features must be occamed out. And boy, did I ever cringe over the clipboard implementations galore that coexist in Emacs.
To be true, I too have issues with over-simplification. Right now, I cannot drag windows between desktops with the deskguide applet, but I don't think it's infeasible to implement without re-inventing yet another way to provide more than single desktop.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
A lot of goodies which 1.4 had missing from GNOME2 IMHO.
The ability to dynamically bind keychords to menu items, lot of customisability options (panel behaviour etc.) etc. are all missing. I tried to customise Metacity and I get a small menu from the gnome-control-center with two or three options which is definitely less than what I can do with sawfish.
You have to love the fonts though :)
CheerioA lot of people seem to misunderstand that most of the debate surrounding Red Hat's changes has to do with unified look and feel.
It's not that that I, and many other KDE-philes, have a problem with (in fact, I and many others support the idea), it's the seeming favouritism for GNOME applications for the default shortcuts. In fact, I don't know if any of the default shortcuts link to a KDE-based application. For example, why not setup a default shortcut to Quanta? It's a highly respected web-development editor.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
I cannot agree more with their stance on the closed-source nVIDIA drivers. Not only their closedness hamper the development of their open counterpart, it slows down their very adoption and resolution of real problems, as opposed to imaginary IP threats.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
The important questions here is.
Will the other distro's do the same?
Will they impliment them in the same manner?
Will the KDE group complain about those changes?
Tune in next week for another exciting chapter of "As the distro's burn".
Red Hat 8.0's new consistency is provided using Xft2/Freetype with 'heavy modifications' and the Bluecurve theme. Underneath remember, it's still Gnome 2 and/or KDE.
The world is a big free and happy place. Which means you too can have the Red Hat desktop goodness on your distribution of choice and not have to complain about Taiwanese flags, RPM, additional packages for MP3 playback etc.
I haven't got a hard disc spare to install Red Hat 8.0 on (I'd really like to see it based on all the screenshots), but I do have a couple of Debian systems. Someone could make me a very happy man (and earn some serious karma) by taking the bits that are good about Red Hat 8.0 and making them available in other distributions.
That's how Linux works. Take the bits you like, ignore the bits you don't. Is Bluecurve on Freshmeat's themes section yet?
The only thing i think needs attention is installing/uninstalling applications. Today that is a pain in linux and should be addressed. To get adoption on the desktop that have to be as easy as in Mac or Windows to install and uninstall software.
Besides that i really like RH 8.0 and it works just fine for me and my wife.
HTTP/1.1 400
It's notable that the interviewees admitted that RH is still not ready as a consumer desktop.
Rather, RH is meant to be used by non-technical users on a carefully controlled system, installed by a knowledgeable systems administrator.
A lot of the PR I've read on 8.0 are breathless in proclaiming 8.0 as a Windows replacement, but as RH's own developpers point out, this is not the case.
evanchik.net
Sigh... it always comes back to this. "If Linux doesn't have it, do it yourself!"
Then why bother trying to make normal desktop users, companies, anybody that doesn't program, use Linux? And when they come back and tell you "Umm, I'd like to, but it doesn't have [missing feature], so I can't" you reply with "gee, that's too bad, you fix it".
They didn't miss the boat or anything. Slashdot asks time and time again why Linux isn't being adopted. Then you have to accept to be answered by people that have no skill, time or interest to actually fix it (or money, if there was a commercial alternative running under Linux). It's not like they all see GPL programmers as a bunch of people they can leech free (as in beer) software of, they just gave you the facts. Deal with it.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
One of the interviewees said, "But in general: say you woke up one day and everyone on earth simultaneously agreed to switch from windows/icons/mouse to some new paradigm. It would still take 20 years, trillions of dollars, and be mind-blowingly difficult."
This is more than an understatement. We've been trying to make the metric system switch for more than 20 years and we're still only inches off the starting line.
System/application developers frequently forget this point and underestimate the importance of backward compatibility. Evolution will always win in a war with revolution; even if revolution wins a few of the early battles.
That's true, the KDE project isn't too big on making individual components that separate well from the rest of the project. But the entire point of the project is to have some kind of unity within the system. Say what you will about CORBA, it's hideously complex and overkill for the desktop. The KDE solution is lighter weight (not crippled-by-design any more than XML is crippled in relation to SGML) solution to their particular problem.
The KDE team didn't need something like a standalone signals/slots library because it's built in to the Qt toolkit which the whole project is based on. Why reinvent the wheel?
As for "a powerful C portability/utility library", I don't know what you mean besides libc, which isn't a part of gnome any more than libstdc++ is a part of KDE.
Pango is great, no doubt about it, but on the other hand KDE doesn't have shabby international support. They also didn't have someone from Redhat who was paid to write Pango for them.
On the other hand, why doesn't Gnome give us a complete development environment on the scale of KDevelop? A unified office suite (no, Open Office doesn't count because it's not really part of Gnome).
KDE doesn't focus on providing standalone libraries for uses outside the project, but they provide a hell of a toolset for use inside the project. DCOP is simple and powerful. Kparts was ready and in extensive use well before Bonobo. The C++ object model is inherently easier to work with than the hacked on gtk C pseudo-object model for UI programming. The KDevelop environment is the best GUI development environment on Linux. And that's just for developers. The whole system is very well unified, which is the benefit of the project's focus. Whether or not you like it is a whole other issue. They have done a great job at making a unified system for both developers and users on *NIX. You can't say this as well about Gnome, with its shifting window managers (Metacity is the third standard one in the project's lifetime?)and multiple Office programs.
Perhaps that's why so many of the KDE people are mad about the whole Bluecurve thing. They had already done a great job at making a unified desktop system, and to see it merged with Gnome in the name of unity was perhaps a bit insulting.
"I may not have morals, but I have standards."