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)."

Comments

It's about time!

[msobkow]

Sun has been babbling about the switch to Gnome from CDE for almost two years now. I use both KDE and Gnome, and both are far more a "desktop" than CDE ever was.

It also confirms my decision to use GTK for GUI development under Linux (I love QT's APIs and structure under KDE, but GTK lets me port to Win32 clients without cost.)

Re:why Gnome?

[Dionysus]

If I remember correctly, the engineers at Sun liked gtk because it used C, which they were used to. Also they felt their customers were more used C too, since Motif is C.

Re:Where does that leave KDE?

[msobkow]

Last time I checked (almost a year ago), QT for Win32 was several thousand dollars, a far cry from 8 billable hours. Not that the price was/is unreasonable compared to similar products (such as the now-defunct Neuron Data Open Interface, which ran around $10K/developer.)

Promisses, promisses ..

[guacamole]

The rumors that tons of freeware software and even Gnome might be integrated into Solaris started floating around even before Solaris 8 release. After Solaris 8 release, Sun has made several official statements promissing to include the Gnome desktop in Solaris 9. Solaris 9 has been released in May and it still does not include the Gnome desktop. The last rumor I have heard, was that Solaris 9 12/02 (which was supposed to be released this month) will include it. However, I haven't heard a confmation of that rumor in a long time and now this. They're asking us to wait until Solaris 10 release, damn you Sun.

And no, an unsupported add-on beta package is not good enough. I want it to be integrated with Solaris and supported by Sun, just like any other Solaris package (this includes fixing bugs and providing patches as part of Solaris patch clusters).

Re:hmm? u check prices recently?

[swordgeek]

OK first of all, the Blade 100/150 um...sucks. I've got one on my desktop at work, and I tend to use my dual Sparc20 for everything besides websurfing. Sad but true. (and once my Ultra-2 comes in, the blade will become my blow-up box)

And "Constant change of GUIs?" Hardly! This is the third GUI that Sun has had in their history. Also, OpenWin (a better environment than CDE from the start) has officially Not Been Supported for some time now. I think late Solaris7 releases ended support, and with Solaris8 Sun stopped shipping it. (Which isn't quite true, but don't let Sun hear me say that.)

Sun won't have more than two environments to support, and there's really nothing to support with CDE.

CDE was an attempt at GUI by committee, and just never worked well. It has finally become stable, but has never had the functionality or configurability (or usability!) required. Gnome has the potential to be whatever GUI you need it to be. That is a big win for selling Solaris to specific target markets.

And in nearly 15 years of SunOS/Solaris life, I've not yet met a single CDE zealot. :-)

My point is that this isn't indecision. It's a clear, planned progression to a modern desktop. In five years, they'll likely dump gnome for the next one, and be right in doing so. Things change.