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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)."
Granted, this was the first time I read osnews, but didn't the article seem weird to anyone? They hinted at an interview, but instead of quoting the person, they paraphrased the whole interview... Who knows what the Sun guy actually said, and what got interpreted by the interviewer/writer?
Je ne parle pas francais.
Not a troll, but does anyone else feel that strategically, TrollTech should have made QT LGPL?
KDE is much more tightly done than GNOME and the overall effect is defnly smoother, kinda like Windows done right!
But if Companies prefer GNOME, then in the long run TrollTech will see reduced demand for its product... or am i wrong?
Of course, there is the counterargument that LGPL would ensure that TrollTech would never get any money out of QT, but i suspect that it would have fetchdd more in the long run, like it is doing for Ximian.... consulting you know!
A crank is a little thing that makes revolutions
I think you fail to realize the gravity of what is going on here. GNOME is being shipped as the default desktop for the biggest player in the commercial UNIX market.
And Sun is definitely mainstream. Maybe not if you're talking about the home PC market (Joe Dumbass Windows XP user with his shiny new Dell). However, if you're involved in any sort of scientific work or other serious applications such as oil exploration then chances are good that you're using a Sun workstation.
What's important to note here is that a major open source project has become a key component of an OS that holds a large share of the high-end market - a market that open source and MS OS's currently lack the technical merit to enter. In other words, open source software now has credibility for high-end, serious work. An important step.
I wonder if this commitment to Gnome from Sun could also be considered some sort of admission that Swing, despite years of research and development, is not (yet?) that adeguate to make a desktop environment.
But then, Sun people probably just didn't want to reinvent the wheel.
Not to be anal retentive or a Troll or anything, but Apple is actually now the leader distributor of UNIX, with OS X. Of course there's no arguing that in it's markets, Sun is the leader of commercial UNIX, but overall...Steve Jobs slings the most *nix licenses. That's just info.
And what I was getting at is that in the markets that Sun is aiming at, most users (geeks) know of Gnome already and its features/benefits. The only thing this is doing is making it easy to put it on the Sun machines...because it's already there! I doubt it is going to attract that many new Gnome fans. What would be bigger news, as I've already said, is if a PC with Gnome were to be targetted at "Joe Dumbass Windows XP User." Not so likely....but hey we can always dream!
Will they finally flesh out the woefully inadequate GTK+ documentation?
One of the biggest problems I've found when developin free software is I'll think "Ooo... this toolkit/framework has the features I need" (happened with GTK+ about a year ago) and then it'll take a month to find documentation or guides about it or figure it out from scratch myself.
It's been said heaps before, but developer documentation for Windows stuff comes by the bucketload and there's less different things to document. Of course, the ever-changing nature of free software APIs may have something to do with it...
This is a big boost for Gnome...and it's been needing the boost since KDE is coming on so strong. Unless of course, Sun screws things up...which is entirely possible. My big concern with the dueling desktops is that for uniformity's sake there really should be only one standard desktop.
Actually, that would be very useful. Solaris/CDE is seen on a lot of high-profiles desktops where training is very expensive (think traders at a bank). It would be kind of nice to be able to switch desktops on the users without them noticing.
Not to start a flame war here, the fact that I personally prefer Gnome to KDE does not mean that the latter sucks (it doesn't) but the Gnome interface is very clean, smooth and consistent.
Allthough flamebait, I agree with you. We run Solaris at school for Java programming, Matlab, Maple and some other stuff. CDE is default of course. Most people have no idea how to do anything. They can open a terminal and know how to start (x)emacs and compile a Java program. When they get home they start their Windows machine and would never think of trying say Linux.
I have of course changed to Window Maker which is fast, stable and pretty. For what we do there's no need for Gnome, or even a filemanager. I presume many of Sun's customers have the same needs, but Gnome is still way better than CDE.
Ciryon
The cost of QT is per developer, so in order to have their customer's application developers use QT, they'd have to include a QT license with the distribution of Solaris development tools. Not cheap. Not cheap at all.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Linux won't be able to ship with Java/Gtk by default until Sun open source the jdk.
.NET environment (from mono), but not a Java environment.
If they don't do anything you will have the weird situation of Red Hat 9.x shipping with a
I know about gcj etc, but to be able to run Apache Tomcat you really need a Sun derived JDK.
-- Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.
For those thinking to develop with the free edition, then just buy a license when they're ready to deploy:
Can we use the Free Edition while developing our non-free application and then purchase commercial licenses when we start to sell it?
No. The Free Edition license applies to the development phase - anything developed without Professional or Enterprise Edition licenses must be released as free/open source software.
Not to get to picky, but this is one of those things that I don't feel a company has a right to determine. It's not even enforcable. Prove that I developed with the Free Edition. I agree with you, there is no reason to lay the money out now, if you're not necessarily going to need to use your code commercially.
Especially since QT is essentially just an operation system extension. Technically, it's probably perfectly legal to develop the software with the free version, sell your code to the client and tell them that it will not run without QT installed. In the same way that, for instance, Apple did in the early days with some hardware related to their video out. I can't recall the details and it's far to early to look it up, but there was some piece that was necessary that had to be sold separately to avoid unecessary cost.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
QT costs money for other platforms. GTK is free everywhere.
Qt works properly on other platforms. GTK+ is broken everywhere except X11 (doesn't work, or is very buggy, doesn't look like a native app).
If you are going to recommend an alternative to Qt for cross-platform GUI development, you do yourself a great disservice by suggesting GTK+. Try wxWindows instead - a much better alternative than GTK+, although it does still have issues.
Whenever SUN and GNOME is brought up, there are always someone suggesting they should have used KDE instead. I'm a GNOME-user and I do not want to get into a discussion about quality here, so lets assumed that the (biased) assumption that KDE is better than GNOME is correct.*
The main issue is control. GTK+ and most GNOME-libraries are based on a LGPL-license, while Qt is based on GPL. This is all fine and dandy for free software, and this is certainly not a question of morality. Qt is free software.
For closed source development however things look different. For GTK+/GNOME you can develop closed apps without problems, with Qt/KDE you have to obtain a license from Trolltech. This could be fine for SUN themselves, but:
SUN would not like to be held totally at ransom by Trolltech for all third-party developers. If Trolltech wanted to, they could cease giving out commercial licenses for the SUN Solaris platform at ANY TIME. Do you think any OS-developer would be boneheaded enough to let someone else control the platform? Do you think Microsoft would form the next Windows using Qt?`
The question for SUN is:
"Do we use a platform that is in direct control by another company for third-party development, or do we use a platform that is not?"
This is an easy question to answer wether or not you like KDE or GNOME better.
(*) It might be. I like GNOME better, but this might be my biased opinion. I just wanted to state that this was irrelevant.
It's funny.
I'm running KDE on Linux on dual 2.2GHz Pentium 4s with an nVidia card. It's great.
But I've used Sun workstations from (Sun 3/160) 1985-2001 (Ultra2).
When OpenWindows started to ship with XView and then with CDE, I moved over to use plain old twm, then ctwm and finally fvwm. Avoided CDE all these years. It's only now under Linux that I've conceded to using one of these full-featured desktops because it doesn't feel heavy.
Desktop UNIX is going free and Sun will be wise to change to the times.
Sun still rules in the big server arena, but it could leverage that in making a name for itself in the newly emerging low cost UNIX desktop area, as long as it doesn't get caught up misty-eyed pining for the times when people were willing to shell out $20K for a workstation. Enterprise level integration and management of UNIX LANs running StarOffice, Mozilla and Evolution is a potentially huge market playing to Sun's traditional strengths. (NFS, NIS, etc.)
If Sun doesn't, then we'll have to look to other players that may not be quite as well positioned from some perspectives: HP, IBM, Red Hat, Dell...
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I know this isn't the point that the submitter chose to focus on, but I have to point out the anti-IBM spin that the OSNews author let through or inserted:
The omission of AIX on POWER4 is completely bogus. IBM is Sun's only real competition right now, and Big Blue's offerings outperform Solaris on Sparc at a fraction of the cost.
I'm sorry, but who really thinks that it's a bad thing that IBM is paying a large number of developers to contribute GPL'ed code to the Linux kernel? IBM's work has had a lot to do with the high-end progress that we've seen in 2.4 and will see in 2.6. They're not steering the kernel and they're not subverting the process, they're just submitting their patches like anyone else could. They're adding their efforts to the efforts of others in the community, and everyone is benefiting from the results.
Sun, on the other hand, is willing to make the massive contribution of writing some drivers, if no one else will do it form them. Otherwise, they're satisfied to offer Linux, only as a low-end player, and do their darndest to make sure it stays that way.
It's false that IBM is "not evolving AIX" anymore -- their last release was less than 2 months ago. But their actions clearly show that they want to help Linux grow into the role that AIX currently fills (to be clear, that would be running on pSeries machines to outperform Solaris on Sparc). Obviously, Sun has a problem with that, but why should anybody else?