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GNOME 2 to Replace CDE As Solaris Default DE
Gentu writes "OSNews had a quick chat with John Fowler, Sun Software's CTO about Solaris 10, Java, the web services competition and more. In the interview, Fowler reveals the timing in which Gnome2 will become the default desktop environment: Solaris 10, which is expected to have its first beta later in 2003. This is a huge step for Gnome2 in the UNIX world, as it will be replacing CDE for good as the default desktop environment (betas of Gnome 2 for Solaris 8/9 already exist) and becoming a standard part of the large operating environment with millions of installations worldwide. Additionally, Sun is now pushing developers on coding on either GTK+ 2.x or Java (they have in fact revealed plans on creating GTK+ bindings for Java which will make all future Solaris apps look like alike)."
Since Netscape 7 is on also Solaris, my guess is an equivalent of Mozilla 1.2.1 (Netscapeized) will come along officially from Sun also.
I speak for myself only.
The initial write up seemed to suggest that this will be a first for interfacing Java and the GNOME-related libs. This is not so. (In fact, with gcj you're able to write native-binary GNOME apps using Java and the above projects... Admittedly, you're giving up portability but Java is nice, or at least interesting, for many other reasons.) There may be other similar projects out there, that's just what I turned up with a few minutes' search on freshmeat and sourceforge.
Bravo to Sun, though, for making the decision to commit to GNOME. CDE is an ugly pain in the ass, IMHO. Even OpenWindows had some degree of retro charm about it, CDE just looked like what happens if you let Soviet housing block architects design a GUI. Feh!
News for Geeks in Austin, TX
QT is free under windoze too. just your programs have to be freeware and i found it easier to port QT programs then GTK+ programs to windoze. not that i would really want to do that too much
He said without cost. QT costs money for other platforms. GTK is free everywhere.
I have a copy here of Solaris, Intel Platform Edition. You dont need Sun hardware to run Solaris. AFAIK Solaris is also free (as in beer) for boxen with 4 or less CPUs.
those who control the past, control the future. those who control the present, control the past.
I think a brand spanking new SunBlade can be had for like 999 dollars. I mean, not Walmart-Lindows-cheap, but I wouldn't call that expensive.
Especially considering that I think you can attach a "PC on a PCI card" and run a full blown x86 OS side-by-side (for what I don't know, maybe apps dev?).
on the other hand, I don't know what to make of this constant change of GUIs. many people loathed it when Sun went with CDE from OpenWin, so they had to support both, and now switching to GNOME when finally CDE is getting reasonabbly stable and whatever (and I am actually pretty sure there are a handful of CDE zealots out there that's very vocal) so they will probabbly need to support all three from now on.
I mean... while good news and all, just another facet of the sun indecision "Sol9 for x86, not for x86, cost $$, maybe not, go with one GUI, but wait lets change it over later." AFAIK Java has not suffered too much amid these indecisions and the specs havn't swayed that much (somebody correct me if I am bs-ing), which is thankful for.
My life in the land of the rising sun.
http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/features/mcnealy _keynote.html
Scott McNealy's Comdex speech was more informative.
Gnome's mentioned down near the bottom.
You can write commercial gnome/gtk applications without paying a penny to anyone. QT license does not allow that (although, it _is_ an open source license)
From the Trolltech FAQ:
For those thinking to develop with the free edition, then just buy a license when they're ready to deploy:
The minimal price for a single platform commercial license is $1240USD. See Trolltech - Pricing Desktop.
The price is very reasonable for the functionality, but I only have so much money to spend on tools, and I'm not willing to plunk down the coin now just in case I need to be able to use my code commercially (i.e. to support a client site.)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
OpenWin was intended to run with DisplayPostscript, and did so very nicely. When the Unix standards wars and POSIX were ongoing, CDE was selected as the standard from various vendors contributions (components of HP's ToolTalk, Motif, etc.)
I've never run into anyone who thought CDE was better than OpenWin, but that's what was selected as the standard, and that's what Sun provided. If they hadn't, they would have been locked out of a lot of important markets.
It's not like there is a "constant change of GUIs" as you indicate. OpenWin was the Sun standard from about 1987 (not sure) until around 1990-1995, when CDE was spec'd. Now they're shifting to Gnome.
Note that all the way through, applications continued to run with the different desktop managers. Or were you under the impression that different versions of apps were running for different desktop managers?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Depending on discount, and what versions of your app, if can certainly vary, but for our crappy little windows app, the QT licence came out to around $1500 per developer. We bill at $200 per hour so, for us, 8 hours was about right.
QT is so well designed that we never needed suport. It just works the way you'd expect. Really a pleasure to work with.
After QT, there are several MFC gods around here that won't ever go back to that POS.
Moneyed corporations, non-working 'poor' and criminal prisoners are turning productive citizens into tax-slaves.
This is just plain stupid. Why aren't you just compiling gnome or whatever window manager you want directly on your sun box, and then configure the login window to have it as an environment option? I don't see anything smart in running only remote linux applications on a sun. If you do this, then what is the benefit of using a sun workstation?
Actually since Solaris 8 - a companion CD has been included. On it is all the GNU stuff, SAMBA, Apache (before it became a part of the default install), fvwm2, afterstep, KDE 2.0 and GNOME 1.0. All you had to do was install it. It wasn't installed by default but it was there.
Not quite sure how old your information is, but Solaris is now FREE (as in free beer) only for single CPU capable machines.
Anything bigger needs a licence from Sun. Go enjoy Solaris 9 for X86 on a single CPU machine today
It would be the fifth - Sunview, NeWS, Openwin, CDE, Gnome.
... brilliant innovative technology but Sun kept it proprietary while X was BSD licensed.
People tend to forget Sunview because it wasn't X based. Hell, it was kernel based, but it ran reasonably quickly on a 68020 with 4MB of memory across 10Mb ethernet. Sun took their GUI out of the kernel and into user space a few years before Microsoft took their GUI the other way. Go figure.
The arguments about NeWS have been well rehearsed
Then there was the Openlook vs Motif holy war, during which Scott McNeally was quoted saying Sun would adopt Motif "over my dead body".
As for Gnome, Sun have been putting development effort into Gnome for a couple of years now, working on some of the boring bits. They wouldn't have done this if they didn't intend to use it.
Dunstan
The last scintilla of doubt just rode out of town
The next major release of HP-UX will also sport a GNOME desktop. Posting AC for obvious reasons!