Gnome 2.0 Officially Available For Solaris

MoonRider writes "Today, Sun Microsystems announced the availability of the GNOME 2.0 Desktop for the Solaris Operating Environment.
You could already download beta versions of the Gnome 2.0 desktop but this is the "official" release that will replace CDE as the default desktop for the Solaris operating system. You can get it on the Sun website."

Comments

2.0? Why, oh why?

[Furry Ice]

Gnome 1.4 is very nice. 2.0 still has a long way to go. I wish they wouldn't turn off so many Solaris users by giving them something half-baked. Then again, if they're willing to put up with CDE, they're probably willing to use _anything_.

Re:2.0? Why, oh why?

[Dingleberry]

Sun has been working on Gnome 2.0 with the Gnome community. It's not exactly a stock Gnome 2.0 installation. You might want to check it out before giving it the thumbs down...

Re:2.0? Why, oh why?

[Anonymous Coward]

holy shit, the trolls are out in full force today.

can someone with mod points objectively read the parent post? there's nothing of substance in it. basically an opinion that gnome 2.0 is somehow "half-baked" without any supporting statements.

kind of reminds me of the presidential debates...

Re:2.0? Why, oh why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I have been using gnome now for about 1 1/2 years while working at SUN. I have been using their pre-release of 1.4 and recently they have "rolled out" version 2, which I was eagerly awaiting. But I'm not impressed. 2 has been less stable than 1.4 (and it is pretty bad on the stability front). It has too many bugs. For example on the version I have here you can't log out since you can't be sure that all of your settings will be saved (Wasen't very happy when I discovered that :( ). To be honest I am a bit baffled by the fact that they would release this yet. Personally I don't think its ready.

CDE and SNL

[Anonymous Coward]

(CDE walking towards exit on plane, cue SNL bit from a few years ago ...)

buh-bye

I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[vandel405]

Anyone know if there is any chacne of getting this setup on a sun ray with our having root privlidges? What about if there was a 100meg disk quota?

CDE on a class a acount sucks big time.

Thanks -

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[Anonymous Coward]

No.

UNIX, unlike Windows, doesn't let you install stuff to your home directory that easily. You need libraries, etc. With a 100 meg quota, it's impossible, and even so, it would still be difficult and things wouldn't work right. For everything to work, it has to be in /usr.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[echo]

This is intirely incorrect... check out LD_LIBRARY_PATH sometime... you can have a ~/lib with all the libs you want to run things out of your user account... you can even override system libs with LD_PRELOAD.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[stefanlasiewski]

Gargnome will install to your home directory just fine.

However, it needs more then 100megs. You might be able to squeeze out some unnecessary files, but Gnome without the addons isn't really Gnome.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[Anonymous Coward]

It requires 600MB disk space, doubt you could squeeze it in under 100MB

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[steve.m]

No, *YOU* are entirely incorrect - it ships in PKG format, so you'd have to be root to install it corectly. Even if you did extract all the files and copy them into ~/bin and ~/lib I think you'd probably run into some static dependency (it's built to install in /usr/gnome). He's using a SunRay, so the only other problem to work around is how to actually start it. Solaris is set to ignore .xinitrc by default (somewere down /usr/dt - i'm not at work right now). Why not just ask the sysadmin to install it. It's just another option on the login screen then.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[nathanh]

UNIX, unlike Windows, doesn't let you install stuff to your home directory that easily. You need libraries, etc. With a 100 meg quota, it's impossible, and even so, it would still be difficult and things wouldn't work right. For everything to work, it has to be in /usr.

Pure utter garbage.

Most Solaris packages are relocatable. You use the -R switch to pkgadd.

Most source packages built with autoconf will support --prefix for specifying a non-standard root directory.

You get around quota problems by installing stuff into /tmp. If your quotas are too small then that's hardly the fault of UNIX: it was a purposeful decision by the administrators!

Regarding libraries: the Solaris superuser can add runtime library paths with crle and individual users can add runtime library paths with LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

As a student I commonly installed packages to my home directory. On the student network I had installed LaTeX, LyX, VIM and half a dozen games under my home directory. This was a decade ago!

There's absolutely no truth in your bullshit claim that "UNIX ... doesn't let you install stuff to your home directory that easily". It's as easy as pie. It always has been.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[Cyno]

Some of us sysadmins get sick of that mentality. Personally I would say its not supported until it become part of the default install. You can always learn how to do it yourself.

But in the case of GNOME I might make an exception, since I hate CDE, possibly even more than you do.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[Anonymous Coward]

hey, you don't have to log in anonymously to LIE you know? Lying is allowed on slashdot with logged in accounts.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[zmooc]

If there's enough space available in /tmp, just ln -s it to there and keep a backup.tgz in your homedir for when it gets deleted:)

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask your sysadmin to install it, as unsupported if they so prefer.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[1lus10n]

some sysadmins are just lazy.

others know that 80 - 90% of there job is interacting with Lusers.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[kcurrie]

..and your admin will LOVE you if /tmp happens to be a swap filesystem :-)

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[Anonymous Coward]

just hack root, dude.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[zmooc]

As he loved you 3 or 4 years ago when you did this on Solaris: mkdir /tmp/hehe, cd /tmp/hehe, vi /tmp/hehe, suspend with ^Z, cd .., rm -rf hehe, fg, *hang*. So what can we conclude from this? Never call a directory hehe. Apart from that - making /tmp a swap fs is just asking for problems on multi-user systems. And those that ask should get what they've asked for - we don't want to be impolite do we?:) So go ahead and install gnome in /tmp please.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[Gothmolly]

You installed to /tmp?! And then when you rebooted and your stuff was gone, where do you think it went? Or did you mean c:\tmp? Boy does the parent of this lack a clue.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[alsta]

I was unaware that XSun ignores ~/.xinitrc. We use this heavily at work without any modifications to a default install. If ~/.xinitrc is not present however, settings are read from Xdefaults.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[orangesquid]

So why does it do this, exactly... I'm not familiar with using /tmp on swap.

And how about that fully-userland transparent filesystem driver that uses a LD_LIBRARY_PATH hack? =) He could have the tree on a remote linux box, exported over NFS, and "mount" it on the solaris machine. It would be kinda slow, but...

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[nathanh]

Are you totally spastic? These were student servers. They rebooted them once a year in January.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[Anonymous Coward]

UNIX, unlike Windows, doesn't let you install stuff to your home directory that easily.

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[steve.m]

whoops. I meant .xsession - I had to uncomment 'DTlogin*xdmMode: True' in /usr/dt/config/Xconfig, otherwise ~/.xsession gets ignored. ~/.xinitrc gets ignored anyway - dtlogin just restarts (on Solaris9)

Re:I realize this isn't a support form, but -

[echo]

So, you can't download the source code and compile it?

Good to see

[fault0]

That SUN is finally replacing the archaic CDE. However, there seems to be a pretty large gap in release time. GNOME 2.2 is almost out. Will it be "officially" released for Solaris onc GNOME 2.4 comes out? I don't think Sun is doing a service to Solaris users here by using such a old version. One could argue that they made sure that everything is stable, but the fact is that GNOME 2.2 itself has more bug fixes from GNOME 2.0.

Re:Good to see

[LarryRiedel]

I think because this was their first "official" release of any revision of GNOME, there was a lot more that went into it than what they will need to do for an update for the changes in 2.2.

Larry

Re:Good to see

[stefanlasiewski]

I know many Sun users who liked CDE because it was stable as a rock.

Gnome 2.2 is great, but it's not stable. I used Gnome1.2 and 1.4 (Vanilla and Ximian) on a Sun workstation for almost 2 years, and was really annoyed by stability and memory leakage.

Sun really shouldn't release Gnome2.2 until it's gone through a trial-testing period, and after several patches have been released.

Re:Good to see

[elmegil]

Its worth noting that the Sun version of Gnome 2.0 is supposed to have a number of fixes that aren't in the "regular" release of Gnome 2.0, but are in Gnome 2.more. So it's perhaps not so out of date as 2.0 might indicate.

Re:Good to see

[borg]

what i think amazing is that back in the day (1996), the posts on usenet announcing the beginning of the KDE (way back then, it was the 'Kool Desktop Environment') development effort specifically cited CDE as inspiration.

want proof? check out this article from the Google archive.

then KDE sparked the Gnome effort...

...and now Gnome's replacing CDE.

but i'm left wondering how Kevin Bacon fits into it all

Re:Good to see

[Anonymous Coward]

There is not much wrong with such a long release time. The time allows for the applications and libraries to be proven stable while giving time for internal developers to code fixes to some problems. You also see this type of lag with Debian. Debian stable still uses KDE 2.2 and GNOME 1.4 because of stability and integration with the distro. There will always be a lag because it takes several months for the target version of a project to tested and patched for a particular OS release.

Re:Good to see

[mattdm]

I know many Sun users who liked CDE because it was stable as a rock.

Oh yeah? Rocks come to my mind when I think of CDE, but for different reasons. For example, I liked it because of all of the gaping security holes in tooltalk that take Sun forever to patch whenever they crop up.

Re:Good to see

[stefanlasiewski]

I think of smashing my head on a rock when I use CDE.

Sun was pretty slow when patching CDE. Let's hope things get better now that they are using an OSS solution.

Re:Good to see

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, don't forget that CDE is licenced Microsoft technology also.

Re:Good to see

[Futaba-chan]

"Stable" doesn't exactly describe this release -- I just installed it, and it just crashed.

Re:Good to see

[Lozzer]

I know many Sun users who liked CDE because it was stable as a rock.

On most of the low end Solaris machines I have used it was about as fast as a rock too. Does anyone know whether Gnome will be (or feel) quicker?

Re:Good to see

[Zigg]

I've been using 2.0 beta 3 for several weeks now on my Ultra 10 and it's dog slow. Especially when metacity opts to crash (multihead and all that), sigh.

I think the slowness is Xsun's fault though, since essentially the same software runs nicely on my Debian-based laptop. (I'm looking to get this box recommissioned as a dev server and get a Linux box on my desk instead.)

Re:Good to see

[pmz]

I liked it because of all of the gaping security holes [securityfocus.com] in tooltalk that take Sun forever to patch whenever they crop up.

Well, hopefully no one is running ToolTalk and CDE on their servers. It isn't needed and just eats up useful virtual memory.

Re:Good to see

[clone304]

It's working fine for me so far.

what took them so long

[softwave]

I really do wonder what took the people at Sun so long to realise they should replace CDE with something "fresher". Frankly I think CDE was getting a little bit outdated. Hopefully this'll put Solaris closer to the people ;)

Re:what took them so long

[ZoneGray]

>> CDE was getting a little bit outdated

Geez, too bad there's no mod option for "understatement".

Re:what took them so long

[DrXym]

CDE has stunk as a UI for at least five years and possibly longer. I got given an account in a big corporate back in 1997 or so and I was appalled with it even back then. What the hell is so complicated about a glorified clock, calendar and icon bar that it has hardly changed in all that time?

Frankly it's a wonder that Sun et al in Unix land weren't obliterated by Microsoft for sticking with that piece of shit.

GNOME should give a welcome boost to commercial *nixes, though knowing Sun they'll probably ship a default GNOME desktop which exactly mimics CDE thereby negating any point in changing at all.

Re:what took them so long

[Gortbusters.org]

Yes, but getting old Sun users to change to Gnome is like getting Windows users to change to OSX or Gnome. They probably should, and we're boggled if they don't - but let's face it people like to use what they know.

What's another analogy, perhaps if you lived in the US and then moved to the UK and had to drive on the other side of the road. Still all the same functions, just another interface. Yikes.

Re:what took them so long

[pmz]

Frankly I think CDE was getting a little bit outdated.

How? Just because it doesn't have animated options for menus and rarely excersized theme options doesn't make it outdated. CDE really is a good workstation desktop. It is spartan yet functional--it lets people do work without getting too much in the way.

Your argument that CDE is outdated needs more substance. Other than looking pretty, are there features in Gnome that will genuinely postitively impact the day-to-day work of workstation users everywhere?

Sun's move to Gnome is more likely a marketing tactic, where people have come to expect eye-candy from their desktops. This really has nothing to do with the underlying desktop, it is more like an appeal to the superficial masses of end-users out there.

Re:what took them so long

[Yet Another Smith]

Hmm, So am I retro-hip for using OpenWindows? or just a dork? :-P

Re:what took them so long

[sparkz]

So what key features does GNOME give that CDE lacks? Windows, icons, app-launcher, virtual desktops. CDE offers more than MS Windows, even now.

It's not perfect, but it's Good Enough.

I don't want bells and whistles (I'm used to IceWM, clean, simple, stays out of my way) just access to the machine.

CDE is old and crusty.

[argonaut]

I was getting really tired of having to use CDE on Solaris workstations. Gnome is a major improvement.

I wonder what sort of impact this will have on the usage and adoption of Solaris for workstation use?

Re:CDE is old and crusty.

[Anonymous Coward]

My guess: The End.

Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[ausoleil]

...not that Solaris is "bad"...

But who would have ever thought five years ago that the predominant commercial *NIX flavor would be adopting the GUI of it's open source competition?

Hopefully, little goodies like a Gnome Package Manager, an RPM like interface for package installation will be included or coming shortly.

Funny thing is that I am bringing a Solaris 8 box up to life as an AMPS (Apache MySQL PHP Solaris) box this week, so I guess this little gem will have to be part of the roll-out!

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

gnome isn't linux only. it depends on alot of GNU programs/libraries, but every unix should have them installed anyways. gnome runs on all the free *bsd's, linux, solaris, hpux, etc.

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[stefanlasiewski]

Er... are you sure that you want to run X on a web server?

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[ausoleil]

I may be putting it together, but it is going to be run in a department setting. Gnome means less me, I HOPE.

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever actually _used_ a Sun machine?

The damned things have a hardware console that is implemented as a hardware IRQ (so that every time the machine spits output to the console, the rest of the machine actually stops and waits for it to finish).

Using X is really the only way to make a Sun machine usable at the local interface.

Now, granted, you shouldn't have to administer it locally much, but you shouldn't have to put up with the disgusting Sun console any time that you do.

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[stefanlasiewski]

Using X is really the only way to make a Sun machine usable at the local interface.

I can see your users cringing every time you bring up an xterm on the local machine.

If you're running Apache/MySQL/PHP, you shouldn't need to see the console very often. Connect remotely using SSH.

I'll say it again, X has no place on a production machine. It's acceptable, but form for a development machine.

For security and stability, you should run the minumum set of tools needed to run the system. X is many wonderful things, but it is not minimal.

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[ausoleil]

You are probably right for a box that would live in the server room and run by "us".

This one will live in marketing and will be operated by Mac users. Now, I know that OS/X is Unix-like, but I know my phone will be ringing every time a graphic artist stands at a server console with only a shell to work within.

That said, and given that this is an intranet box, Gnome is entirely appropriate.

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

"Open Source competition"? Very little Open Source software competes with Solaris. A lot of it runs on Solaris. A lot of it is included with Solaris. Linux and other OSS kernels may compete with Solaris on the low end, but certainly not in the high end enterprise market. And, lest we forget, Sun sells Linux now, too. Now that's remarkable!

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[stefanlasiewski]

I was mostly replying to the AC :)

You're right. Running Gnome on a intranet box is probably an acceptable tradeoff.

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[Schemer]

X does have a place on production boxes, in some scenarios. An example would be a web site which has graphics that are rendered on the fly on the server. Depending on what graphics library you are using, it may need a running X server to do it's rendering. In these cases, its also good to have a high end video card in the box, even though the machine will be running headless, hardware acelleration for the graphics is a big help.

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[juuri]

In these cases you should install the X virtual framebuffer only.

I cringe when developers try to dictate the COE on the production servers.

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[axxackall]

Once Sun brins most of Linux userland it's time to plan to bring whole Linux on Sparc!

I know, it's already done by Gentoo, Debian, some others. But not by Sun.

Perhaps, it's time for Sun to rise and shine :)

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[Animixer]

If you're running Apache/MySQL/PHP, you shouldn't need to see the console very often. Connect remotely using SSH.

I'll say it again, X has no place on a production machine. It's acceptable, but form for a development machine.

Amen brother! I have to convince people at work about this very fact all the time. Imagine a lab where every machine had a CRT and a keyboard/mouse, or even kvms! Yuck. Unimaginable in a production enviroment (which I don't have, I just run a lab.) I get much higher density with rack mounted solaris boxen (mostly 220Rs and 280Rs, with some E4x00's thrown in the mix), where you can ssh in or if you need console access use a tip server or serial concentrator. Nothing like watching your server post from across the country! Heck, if you really want, the power sequencers in the rack have a serial line, which I'm pretty sure you can instruct to disconnect power from a particular power cord. (I admit, I haven't yet had the opportunity or necessity to try this feat.)

Concentrating serial console lines for this sort of thing is really efficient, compared to having to have some kind of video (!) output to watch a PC type box post. I swear, having a serial console line is probably the one thing I like most about the unix servers that support it (e.g. all sun sparc machines, and most from other unix vendors). 9600 baud is more than enough to see the few lines of text that you want to see when something is coming up. :)

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[kcurrie]

In these cases you should install the X virtual framebuffer only.
.....or, if you wanted the option to connect to it later, start up a vnc server that listens to only local connections and connect when needed via a SSH tunnel.

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[fucksl4shd0t]

Once Sun brins most of Linux userland it's time to plan to bring whole Linux on Sparc!

Last time I checked Sun's long term strategy hinged around Linux. Don't they want to add the features in Solaris that aren't in Linux to Linux and phase out Solaris completely? Best to start on the desktop, I guess, with Gnome. Now that Gnome runs on Solaris, when they switch out the kernels they know that whatever extensions are needed to the LInux kernel will work with Gnome pretty quickly. KDE is the one falling behind, now. Crap. I like KDE.

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll say it again, X has no place on a production machine. It's acceptable, but form for a development machine.

Unless the production machine is a production destkop server serving dozens of desktops for users running X terminals.

Don't try this under Linux, but Solaris handles is very well.

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[pmz]

an RPM like interface

Sun really should either stick with what they have or adopt something significantly better than RPM. By this I'm thinking about Red Hat's rpm command. It is among the top examples of feature bloat and convolution among the Open Source software offerings. Sun's pkgadd command, however, is pretty damn simple. If the RPM file format is superior, then that's another matter, but Sun would need their own command implementation in that case.

Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris

[g4dget]

The choice doesn't come down to, as you seem to imply, running a serial console or putting a monitor and keyboard on every machine. X11 is network transparent. Use the serial console for booting, and afterwards run a desktop on that machine and access it over the network, either using X11 directly or using VNC.

Re:CDE

[doublesix]

Tell us how much it sucks, then. Examples?

Sun and GNOME

[kruetz]

Can anyone remind me why Sun chose GNOME over KDE or any other desktop environment? Was it because RedHat has adopted GNOME as their default desktop, or they liked the look of Ximian GNOME? Because I can't really believe that they chose GNOME purely on technical reasons.

Let me defend my last comment - I'm not a KDE or GNOME user, so I don't see one as being evil and the other as good or anything. But I do think that the duplication of effort is a sad waste of effort (I know why RMS started GNOME, and he kinda had a point, but still...)

Anyway, did Sun choose GNOME because it's more "enterprise-friendly" (ie, you can get support from Ximian)? I never heard much discussion on this point and I'm rather curious. (I'm also glad that they chose to adopt on of the main-stream Linux desktops.)

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Sun didn't want to pay royalties for proprietary non-open applications they developed against KDE, perhaps?

Re:Sun and GNOME

[bshuttleworth]

Probably "Yes" to the fact that GNOME is more enterprise support, but "No" to Ximian-based support. I think a large part of the decision is based on the fact that GNOME and GTK are LGPL, and thus "friendlier" to ISV's who want to write proprietary apps using them.

And (IANAKDEU) but think GNOME's accessibility support _may_ have had something to do with it.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[JoeBuck]

If Sun chose KDE, then they'd be in the position of either writing checks to TrollTech with every sale, or telling their customers that they can't develop proprietary apps without buying a separate license from TrollTech.

In practice, though, a number of software companies are already selling Qt-based apps on Solaris.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Telastyn]

Stupid question time: why can't you believe that they'd pick gnome for technical reasons. I've never heard or seen anything concrete one way or the other; I've found that they perform similarly, and gnome has a nicer look/feel/layout (imo).

Any link or direct explination (unbiased preferably) as to the pluses/minuses would be nice.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

-kde
+qt

Re:Sun and GNOME

[tjwhaynes]

Can anyone remind me why Sun chose GNOME over KDE or any other desktop environment? Was it because RedHat has adopted GNOME as their default desktop, or they liked the look of Ximian GNOME? Because I can't really believe that they chose GNOME purely on technical reasons.

There were probably a raft of reasons rather just one. GTK is written in C, so it's an easier task to tie GTK to anything already existing than QT would be. Sun needed to find an architecture with strong accessibility features and they may have felt that GNOME would be easier to get those accessibility features in ...

Probably the clincher though is the licensing of GTK. It's LGPL, rather than GPL. So Sun can take their proprietary stuff and dynamically link it to the GTK libraries and keep their proprietary stuff proprietary and closed. With QT, they would either have had to completely open their sources up under the GPL or they would have to have licensed the QT libraries from Trolltech. Like it or not, if you are developing proprietary Linux/Windows apps and you want a toolkit, GTK2 looks pretty good, doesn't force you to reveal your stuff and is a capable, accessible toolkit.

Cheers,
Toby Haynes

Re:Sun and GNOME

[DeadMoose]

Well, first off there's the entry in their FAQ, titled "Why did Sun choose to support GNOME instead of KDE?", but that's a bit light on details.

A couple years ago I went to a presentation from Sun about Gnome, and they went into more details, but my slides are at home. The couple that leap to mind though: there were the licensing questions with QT. There was also the fact that Gnome's C based rather than C++, and the large portion of Sun folk were much more comfortable working w/ C rather than C++.

When I get home, I'll dig up my slides, and if they add anything more to this discussion (since lots more people will probably respond by then, and I'm not sure how indepth they went into this particular topic), I'll append something more.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[nslu]

sun has predicted this kind of questions and answered in their FAQ

quoting from http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/gnome/faq/genera lfaq.html#4q0

Q. Why did Sun choose to support GNOME instead of KDE?

A. GNOME and KDE are both powerful desktop environments. Sun has completed a comprehensive technical review of both environments and concluded that GNOME's architecture is a better match for Sun's software strategy, which promotes the creation and use of highly distributed, network-savvy software, as well as easy access to data wherever it might be located. One example is GNOME's innovative use of CORBA for network-aware interprocess communication between disparate systems. Others are the Bonobo component architecture, which enables easier creation of compound documents and system-wide scripting while promoting code reuse, and GConf, the network- and component-aware configuration management system.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

Can anyone remind me why Sun chose GNOME over KDE or any other desktop environment?

Because the libraries used by applications written for gnome (gtk and friends) are LGPL, while the library (QT) used by applications written for KDE is either GPL or available from Trolltech for $$$.

All developers for Sun would either have to make only GPL software (not likely) or purchase a third party library to write (GUI) apps for Solaris. It really isn't an option for Sun to make developers purchase a third-party library because a) the developers would not tolerate it and b) it gives Trolltech control over the Solaris platform. Imagine hat would happen if Trolltech refused to license QT for comercial use to some or all developers.

For Sun to have gone with KDE for the desktop, they would have had to purchase rights to license and distribute QT to developers under a comercial license. And they would still not have any control over the developement of QT.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[gilesjuk]

Shame GNOME doesn't have a modern stable integrated filemanager IMHO. Nautilus is flakey, i've tried both Redhat and Debian distros and with both it falls over or refuses to start sometimes. With Debian I had Sawfish problems too, KDE just seems to work better for me.

At least with KDE you get Konqueror which is fast and stable.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Stephen VanDahm]

This is the issue as I understand it -- someone will certainly come along and correct me if I'm wrong.

Anyway, as you may know, KDE uses a library called "Qt" to implement all of the GUI stuff that you see in KDE. Troll Tech, the company that makes Qt, has licensed it to UNIX users under the GPL. This is good for Free Software developers, but not so good for makers of proprietary software. As I understand it, in order to release a closed-source KDE app, a developer would need to buy a commercial license for the Qt libraries from Troll Tech.

GNOME uses GTK as its widget library. GTK is licensed under the LGPL, which allows a developer to write closed-source software without having to
pay licensing fees. I think that, by choosing GNOME over KDE, Sun ias trying to make it more attractive for developers to write software for their platform.

"But I do think that the duplication of effort is a sad waste of effort"

Yeah -- and I think the fact that we have two competing desktop standards has done a lot more damage to the free software community than people like to admit. Say that I want to write a GUI application for Linux. Do I make it GNOME app or a KDE app? If I write a GNOME app, I alienate all the KDE users out there. If I release a KDE app, I alienate the GNOME users. The solution seems to be to ignore both APIs, which is what Mozilla and OpenOffice have done. But that defeats the whole point of having a desktop environment. It's a big mess now, but both GNOME and KDE developers have invested too much into their work to expect either project to give way to the other.

Steve

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Telastyn]

Ah, I've little use for a file manager; probably why I didn't notice. ty

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

macs
sgis
windows
linux
bsd
atari
amiga

look at all this duplication of effort

what a waste of time.

everyone should just use windows.

and why do we have to have 20 plus types of marsupials? can't we just have one? sure seems like a lot of duplicated effort.

or could it be that the strongest will survive?

could it be that taking the entired Gnome team and locking them in a room with the KDE team, will result in development that is no faster?

9 women can't have a baby in 1 month.

so quit worrying your pretty little head about something.

and quit posting the obvious.

how many people do we need to duplicate the message about duplicating effort?

Re:Sun and GNOME

[the_real_tigga]

Thanks for the link.

And if you read on, there are two nice other FAQ:

24.Q. How does GNOME compare to CDE?
A. CDE [...] provides a consistent graphical user interface for UNIX workstations.
GNOME leapfrogs CDE in [...] visual design.

25.Q. How does GNOME compare to Microsoft Windows?
A. GNOME is an open, free, and productive desktop environment that sparks innovation and excitement among users and developers worldwide.
Microsoft Windows is not.

Apples to oranges to the point.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[diamondc]

Hmm.. I suggest you use Nautilus 2.x. Nautilus from GNOME 1.4 was real slow and flaky. Now, it's pretty fast.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

A file manager. . .who the needs a file manager? What do you do sit around moving files all day?

Re:Sun and GNOME

[bolthole]

The solution seems to be to ignore both APIs, which is what Mozilla and OpenOffice have done.

But mozilla uses gtk, so it doesnt completely ignore gnome.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[supabeast!]

"Can anyone remind me why Sun chose GNOME over KDE or any other desktop environment?"

Sun makes a lot of money selling their hardware to the USA, UK, Candada, and Australia. Much of this hardware goes into military/intelligence systems where software controlled by companies/groups outside the English-speaking nations.

If Sun had used KDE, the desktop would tie back to a German group. Even with the source readily available, there are plenty of old guys in the English-speaking world who won't want German software near their networks. The last thing Sun needs is Microsoft FUD pushing Solaris as supporting Euro-Socialist-Anti-American stuff.

Gnome, however, has a huge amount of American work behind it. Gnome gives Sun the ability to point at companies like Ximian as the big American influences, and bring GPL software into the government world. This forces the government to admit that their systems really DO run on open-source/GPL software. BIND, Sendmail, Postfix, Apache and so on are all important apps that the infrastructures of our governments rely on, but they all stay hidden away. In the long run Gnome on Solaris 10 will help change the way the world looks at open-source and GPL software, and we will all benefit.

Unless, of course, Sun goes bankrupt first ;b

Re:Sun and GNOME

[JoeBuck]

Once the KDE and GNOME folks work out the interoperability issues, end users simply aren't going to care which library you used to implement your app: it will be expected to perform properly whether run from a KDE or a GNOME desktop, or from some other window manager.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

And if you would have used your brain then you understood that GTK+ != GNOME (GNOME only uses it) and Mozarella can easily be compiled using QT. but who wants Mozarella if you can use Konqueror ?

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't care but I do.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[rfm]

Explain why the other main open source desktop software from Sun -- OpenOffice -- was German based?
(As McNealy did not say on TV: "I liked it so much I bought the company!")

Re:Sun and GNOME

[haggar]

Heck, I don't know why they chose Gnome over KDE: I have installed KDE on my Blade 100, from the applications CD that comes with the Solaris 8 (and 9) media set, I think it's a version 2.x KDE, and it's even faster than CDE, all the while being prettier!

Yes, sounds unbelievable, but it's true, it's really snappy, compared to CDE. I guess compared to Gnome 2.0 it totally flies.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Frater 219]

If I write a GNOME app, I alienate all the KDE users out there. If I release a KDE app, I alienate the GNOME users.

Nonsense. The vast majority of people who happen to be running either KDE or GNOME are neither football hooligans nor jingoists about it. They will run whatever applications will help them get their job done. There is after all nothing about the KDE window manager which woukd make GNOME apps quit working, nor vice versa.

I use KDE chiefly because I like its window manager, its browser, and its flavor of xterm. That doesn't stop me from running GNOME and GTK applications, such as dia or nessus. (And I'm glad it doesn't, since I'm a security technician and would be a little hosed without nessus.)

If you are concerned about "alienating" the football hooligan type of user -- well, recall the old Chinese parable about the man, his son, and the donkey. You can't please everyone, and if you try to please all the fanatics, you just end up falling in the river.

(Regarding the mistaken idea that the friendly competition between GNOME and KDE constitutes "wasted effort", I will only direct the reader to the second of my ways to make yourself look stupid. The existence of choice is itself valuable, not a waste.)

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

Eh, nautilus isn't that fast but it has potential. I'd say it's a bit heavy when it's using 3MB on top of the shared resources just for running the root window (no background image). It also needs to have saner icon caching when you actually use it for a file browser.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Gothmolly]

Fuck RMS.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[mattdm]

You could follow the link in the story and find out what Sun has to say about it -- it's in their FAQ. Basically, the key word is "network-aware".

From a what-Sun's-not-saying standpoint, I imagine it appeals to them that you can write closed-source software for GNOME without having to pay Trolltech.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

Gtk under Windows is pretty flaky. I doubt it was part of the consideration, where as the licensing issue and how it applies to Solaris was.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me where you can compile Mozilla against Qt.

Oh wait, you can't. Looks like someone confused TrollTech's Communicator porting effort with Mozilla! Oops!

And who wants to use a less functional, less compliant client like Konqueror when there's Mozilla?

Re:Sun and GNOME

[asa]

"Show me where you can compile Mozilla against Qt."

http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF -8 &oe=UTF-8&group=netscape.public.mozilla.qt

--Asa

Re:Sun and GNOME

[supabeast!]

" Explain why the other main open source desktop software from Sun -- OpenOffice -- was German based?"

Was and is are two different things... but first...

OpenOffice is not from Sun. Sun does not sell or provide OpenOffice to its customers. Sun bought StarDivision, and then the StarOffice source was then released to the OpenSource community as a both a great gift and a great way to attack Microsoft Office. OpenOffice will slowly tear into one of Microsoft's two profitably divisions, and in the end may well destroy it.

At the same time, StarOffice is now a proprietary American product with an American company in charge from a government point of view. Toss a pretty Gnome gui and anti-aliased fonts on top of it, and the office UNIX geeks no longer need a Windows workstation next to the Solaris box. It's a win-win situation for Sun.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Stephen VanDahm]

"Nonsense. The vast majority of people who happen to be running either KDE or GNOME are neither football hooligans nor jingoists about it."

I should have chosen my words better -- I didn't say what I meant to say. I wasn't concerned about KDE and GNOME zealotry, and I do know that GNOME and KDE apps can run on the same desktop at the same time. That said, you can't run Galeon from KDE without first installing the GNOME libraries, and even after you do that, it doesn't have the same look and feel as the rest of your KDE apps. GNOME applications run on KDE, but they don't run as well as KDE applications run on KDE. And the same can be said for KDE applications on GNOME. Developers are still in a bind because if they choose one platform, their application will appear to be less efficient and not as good looking to users of the other. The whole "Linux on the Desktop" thing is a big sprawling mess.

The problem isn't that there are two competing desktop envrionments, it's that there are two competing APIs for interfacing with a desktop environment. I think it's totally reasonable to fault the GNOME and KDE developers for not working this out when they had the chance. As it stands, a GNOME user needs to install 200 MB of KDE libraries just to use KMail.

In your journal, you liken those of us who want to see more consolidation and cooperation in the free software community to Soviet economic planners. I think that's a bit far-fetched. Standardization doesn't have to limit freedom of choice at all. SMTP, for instance, is a standard protocol and your MTA has to adhere to it, but because SMTP is a standard, you can run any MTA you want, depending upon your needs and tastes. Likewise, because HTML is standardized, you're free to use whichever web browser you want. Standards actually encourage freedom of choice and promote the creation of different alternatives to choose from.

Steve

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the dumbest shit I've heard of in a while.. Great Troll!

Re:Sun and GNOME

[sbryant]

Even with the source readily available, there are plenty of old guys in the English-speaking world who won't want German software near their networks.

These are the same people who like to drive Mercedes cars - or Porsche even! (OT: see that Carrera GT3? Mmmmmm!) While there are a few old guys who still think that Germans are Nazis and Hitler is in charge, most everybody else has recognised German engineering for what it is: second to none. I'm not a German, but I drive a German car!

If Sun had used KDE, the desktop would tie back to a German group.

I've heard rumours that StarOffice is still being developed by Germans. KDE was started by a German, but has long since been an international effort. By that reasoning, GNOME would be Mexican, right?

It's only important to (some) Americans that something was developed by Americans. Some Americans can very very prejudiced and racist, and it's this attitude that make certain other parts of the world prefer products which have not been touched by Americans! The rest of us don't care who made something, as long as it works.

-- Steve

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Smid]

> If Sun had used KDE, the desktop would tie back to
> a German group. Even with the source readily
> available, there are plenty of old guys in the
> English-speaking world who won't want German
> software near their networks. The last thing Sun
> needs is Microsoft FUD pushing Solaris as
> supporting Euro-Socialist-Anti-American stuff.

Would that be opposed to Euro-Socialist-Anti-American developed in Finland?

And since when has European being Anti-American?

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Lozzer]

And since when has European being Anti-American?

3rd September, 1783.

Only joking :-)

Re:Sun and GNOME

[oldmanmtn]

On why Gnome and not KDE...

If Sun had used KDE, the desktop would tie back to a German group.

Even for Slashdot, that's an amazingly dumb statement. And demonstrably wrong: Staroffice is almost entirely developed in Germany.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently they forgot to mention that GNOME (just like KDE) keeps aping Windows as much as they can legally get away with. As someone who uses open source to get an alternative to Windows, that irks me to no end.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[sysadmn]

This is the issue as I understand it -- someone will certainly come along and correct me if I'm wrong.

Hell, this is slashdot! Someone will certainly come along and correct you if you're right.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[Frater 219]

That said, you can't run Galeon from KDE without first installing the GNOME libraries, and even after you do that, it doesn't have the same look and feel as the rest of your KDE apps.

I don't think that's nearly so much of a problem as it might seem. Actual differences in user interface behavior matter more than appearance -- and in this regard the GNOME and KDE developers have been unifying their user interface design recommendations.

As it stands, a GNOME user needs to install 200 MB of KDE libraries just to use KMail.

But, you see, except for football hooligans (who might call themselves "purists"), there's not really such a thing as a consciously exclusive "GNOME user" or "KDE user". Reasonable and sensible people install the libraries they need to get their work done, rather than fighting over it -- and newbies click "install everything" and get both without thinking about it.

By saying that "GNOME users" would have to take on an extra burden in order to have KDE libraries available, and that this is a problem for ordinary non-hooligan users, you are implying that anyone besides hooligans worries about what desktop environment they, as users, "belong to". But ordinary Linux users don't do that. They don't regard themselves as "belonging to" a desktop environment; they just use what works.

In your journal, you liken those of us who want to see more consolidation and cooperation in the free software community to Soviet economic planners. I think that's a bit far-fetched. [...] Standards actually encourage freedom of choice and promote the creation of different alternatives to choose from.

Sometimes. There is a vast difference, though, between writing an open protocol and letting people implement it, and attempting to impose "standardization" upon diverse people and projects who do not want it -- projects which value their differences.

What I was referring to, with the "Soviet planner" analogy, was not standardization at all. It was rather the tendency on the part of some commentators to criticize exuberant and diverse development as "wasted effort" or "redundant". For instance, there are the folks who say "Why did KDE waste time coming up with their own browser? It would be better if they just helped Mozilla!" or "Those GNOME people forked the Linux desktop environment just to spite KDE; what a waste of time!" And I think we can agree that's just foolishness.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[the_real_tigga]

I don't think that is true.

They ape Windows no more than they "steal" from the Mac, and for example the "drawer" scroll-out thingie from GNOME is from OS/2.
Also, I think it is perfectly legal to do it, because those OSes have had a lot of money put in to ensure good useability. (Wether they succeded is another thing, and the GNOME HIG earned a lot of flames too...)

In fact, I found it hard to make KDE look good, and not look like OSX at the same time. All the themes have Crystal and Aqua all over them.

Although I must say that other windowmanagers like E or *box are way more fun IMO and have a better "this is linux" feel. They lack "Integration" though, and you spend more time to get it to do what you want than with the desktops.

Re:Sun and GNOME

[gilesjuk]

Used it with the latest Redhat. Seemed to exibit the same features as before like not starting up if I saved my session.

I don't have the patience for something if the basics don't work (like actually loading and not locking up).

Re:CDE

[Alex]

I used CDE on Solaris because it is VERY VERY stable - sure gnome may be pretty - in fact it is my GUI of choice on Linux but on a stable OS I use a stable UI.

Alex

Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.0

[Amsterdam Vallon]

5 -- Footprint logos are way cooler than green dragons

4 -- Your KDE installation died

3 -- 2.0 is the same version number as your Linux kernel installation

2 -- If Stallman uses it, it's gotta be good

1 -- You'd rather embrace Evolution than Jesus

Don't forget to sign-up

Re:Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman doesn't use it. He uses Emacs.

Re:Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Stallman doesn't use it. He uses Emacs.

Yes. The complete desktop solution that existed even before X.

Re:Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

EMacs excellent operating system, shame it hasnt got a decent text editor

Re:Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

>> EMacs excellent operating system, shame it hasnt got a decent text editor

LOL.

Re:Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.0

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

The complete desktop solution that existed even before X.

Too bad it doesn't have a decent text editor.

Re:Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.0

[Any Web Loco]

Can somebody think of the "Top 5" ways to stop this guy doing "Top 5" posts? Please?

Re:Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.0

[mav[LAG]]

Too bad it doesn't have a decent text editor.

Sure it does :) Put this in your ~/.xemacs/init.el file (or ~/.emacs):

(setq viper-mode t)
(require 'viper)

Motif sucks ... this is about time

[YetAnotherName]

Motif/CDE's design philosophy could be boiled down to one phrase: "Make everything look 3D except the menubar!"

Remember when checkbuttons and radiobuttons could only be differentiated by innie/outtie appearance? (Now let's see ... if it's "in" it must be on, unless the light source is the lower right corner of the screen ... then ... ummm ... wait.)

I always thought XView was clever and a lot more user-friendly: you'd be paging through a huge document by clicking in the scrollbar. And when the thumb got too close, it'd warp the pointer for you so you didn't have to pay attention to the interface elements, just the content. Smart.

Oh well, at least GNOME's quite a bit prettier.

Re:How good is it on solaris?

[Anonymous Coward]

download it.. it's free, if you don't like it.. rm -rf /opt/gnome (or wherver Solaris installs it..)

Performance still needs work

[green pizza]

I just got done trying out this release of GNOME on a SunBlade 150 (550 MHz UltraSPARC II, 512 MB RAM, PGX-64 graphics). It works and it's kinda snazzy, but it's mighty slow. I don't know if it's the fault of my low end hardware or maybe the software itself, but this beast really makes my machine chug.

While Motif has often been considered bloated in the past, CDE (which is Motif based) runs like a champ on this machine. The look and feel is pretty stark, but it does the job and is easy on my hardware.

Hopefully Sun will have GNOME zipping along by the time 2.1 ships. I would imagine there are still many tweaks that can be implemented.

Re:Performance still needs work

[acoopersmith]

Check out the Sun GNOME 2.0 Performance Troubleshooting Guide. Perhaps it can help you.

Re:Performance still needs work

[restive]

I agree about performance. I signed up for the beta of GNOME 2.0 with Sun (yeah, I got some free stuff for it!) and performance was always significantly slower than CDE. Maybe 5-10 times slower on average when just moving windows, opening new shells, etc.

It was usable, but going back to CDE brought me back to "no waits" for anything.
Oh, I was running on a Blade 1000, dual 750s, 5GB of RAM with virtually no load.

Re:Performance still needs work

[Darren.Moffat]

Installing the medialib packages (not part of Solaris or the GNOME download) should improve peformance. You can download these from here

Re:Performance still needs work

[BrokenHalo]

Can anybody explain why Gnome 2.x is reputed to be so slow on Sun boxen, while my (admittedly anecdotal, rather than formally benchmarked) experience with the product on x86 and related machines is that it's much faster than version 1.4?

Re:Performance still needs work

[damiam]

Gnome2 for Linux on my old 500Mhz K6-2 is quite snappy. Since your box is considerably nicer than man, either the Solaris port really sucks, or you're doing something wrong.

Re:Performance still needs work

[bolthole]

When gnome was first developed, its fanatics^H^H^H^Hsupporters used to always claim "use GNOME, because it's less bloated than CDE!!!"

Funny how you dont hear that any more...

Re:Performance still needs work

[Animixer]

I just got done trying out this release of GNOME on a SunBlade 150 (550 MHz UltraSPARC II, 512 MB RAM, PGX-64 graphics). It works and it's kinda snazzy, but it's mighty slow. I don't know if it's the fault of my low end hardware or maybe the software itself, but this beast really makes my machine chug.

Your sunblade 150 is a fairly low-end machine, not that you would think it would take much horsepower to make a snappy feeling gui. Basically put, I've used many classes of Sun workstations/servers (from SparcStation IPX to SunFire V880), and the gui 'feels' horribly slow on all of them. The system underneath can do things very quickly and reliably, but nothing 'feels' fast. For example, my workstation at work is a Sun Blade 1000 (essentially a SunFire 280R in a desktop case), dual 750 usparc3's, fc-al disks, and the same old video card as you. Still feels slow. I have a p2-233 at home with a matrox millenium, 128mb of 70ns ram, and a couple crusty narrow-scsi barracudas, and running CDE on it feels a couple orders of magnitude faster than the sun workstation. Granted, any real work being done goes much quicker on the SunBlade.

I think the problem lies in several areas. First, the pgx-64 has been around for a few years and was probably several generations behind in video acceleration when it came out. Second, I don't think there's too much video acceleration going on with the sun video cards (excluding those that do opengl). I think this is the primary problem. Third, the feel issue. Maybe Xsun is just set up to not update ultra-fast, or maybe it's set by default to make background applications get most of the cycles? Wish I knew how to configure it to try and update the screen at about 10x the current rate...based on the cpu usage of Xsun, it's GOT to be sitting around twiddling it's thumbs between screen updates.

Something is just skewed with X's response time. Granted, gnome will use more cycles to display the fancy graphics, but what I'm talking about is very noticiable even with CDE. CDE feels fast on HP workstations, such as the B2000, which is fairly old. Feels fine on alphas too. I have mixed emotions of ibm/aix. X HAULS on SGI from r4400 based workstations and up (early 90's). Sun.....just feels slow for the gui, everything else runs just dandy!

p.s. In case you're interested, the sunblade you have most likely uses the same pc133 ECC SDRAM DIMMS (cas 3) as a sunblade 100, a seagate barracuda IDE disk, and has a slightly higher-clocked CrippleSparc(tm) processor, which has significantly less cache than the 'real' server-model UltraSparc IIs. My favorite part is running a 'prtdiag' and have it say '1-way memory interleaving'! :-)

Re:Performance still needs work

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen my brother. I've got an old AIX box running a 233 Mhz PPC and CDE is plenty fast on that. Surprisingly fast. I've also got an HP-UX with a 110 Risc Mhz chip and CDE is usable on it. I'd a hate to see Gnome try to run on that machine.

CDE is not slow, ugly yes, slow no.

Re:Performance still needs work

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Sun's hardware is slow. If you used GNOME 2 on a PC with equivalent hardware to the ghetto Sun machines people here complain about it running poorly on, you'd fucking hate it, too.

Re:Performance still needs work

[sparkz]

OpenWindows is Motif-based. CDE is the replacement for Motif. Gnome is the new alternative for CDE.

Facts. Optional, on slashdot.

Re:How good is it on solaris?

[acoopersmith]

It installs in /usr/bin, so you probably don't want to rm -rf that. There is a remove-gnome script to pkgrm all the packages though.

Security Hole in Solaris GNOME 2.0

[dananderson]

Please read this message at http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/gnome/get/#downl oad:
a security vulnerability in the GNOME Print Manager could allow unauthorized reading of files. To resolve this issue, after installation of GNOME 2.0, execute the following command (as root user):
chmod u-s /usr/lib/gnome-print-manager-remote

Thanks!

[Anonymous Coward]

Phew, now I don't have to put up with the clogged servers. Thanks, AC!!

Release? Its BETA 3

[dennisr]

Looks like BETA 3 to me. Am I missing something?

Re:Release? Its BETA 3

[stefanlasiewski]

Perhaps there's a webproxy cache in between you and Sun?

The webpage changed sometime this morning.

Re:Release? Its BETA 3

[dennisr]

Wow am I an idiot:( I should have posted AC.

Re:Release? Its BETA 3

[Anonymous Coward]

I was just gonna bust out with the same thing, thanks for saying something a refresh was all I needed. And to think I just started fighting with the beta again a couple days ago and here it is a release.

Re:Sun := Idiots.

[licketyspit]

I think even debian installs kde and gnome in the tasksel now. Oh well, I'll just have to skip the desktop install and apt-get install gnome by itself.

as a recent 2.0 convert, I beg to differ

[SHEENmaster]

Many gtk2 features, particularly the file selection dialog box, are better.

A few of the configuration dialogs haven't been finished, but it is definitly worth the upgrade.

As for giving the something half baked (*cough*SCO UNIX*cough*), why not give them GDM and the choice of using CDE, KDE, GNOME, or TWM?

I apologize for calling SCO UNIX "half baked." This statement was in error, in fact SCO is such a load of useless non-functional crap that I don't consider it UNIX at all. Even OS X is more complete! (I also apologize for comparing OS X to SCO, winshit(my first choice), sucks nearly as much as SCO.)

Thanks

[faceofsun]

A huge thanks to Wipro and Ximian who really put huge amounts of work in to make the Sun release happen. Thanks guys.

Re:CDE

[Breakfast Pants]

perhaps you do not consider linux stable os precisely because you run gnome on it?

binaries

[soorma_bhopali]

are binaries for solaris 7.0 available?

Re:binaries

[G�tz]

No, unfortunately only Solaris 8 and 9. My administrator told me that he cannot update to Solaris 8, because it would break some apps, but I don't know which. So I'm stucked on Solaris 7 with Gnome 1.4.

As one who uses Openwin on Solaris...

[Anonymous Coward]

I can safely say CDE Sux and GNOME Sux (I've used them both).
I'm still using Solaris 8 so I can still use Openwin.
Guess when I move to a newer version I'll have to figure
out how to install XFree or some other X.
Sorry, but some of us do like to have processor cycles
to do things other than run a crappy window manager.

To all the icewm folks: IceWM Rulz!
To all who are not icewm folks: IceWM Rulz! :)

Re:As one who uses Openwin on Solaris...

[acoopersmith]

OpenWindows, CDE & GNOME all run on top of X, they do not replace it. You don't need to install XFree86 or any other Xserver to run a different window manager - just install the window manager of your choice and run it with Xsun.

Re:As one who uses Openwin on Solaris...

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, loser

Re:As one who uses Openwin on Solaris...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but some of us do like to have processor cycles to do things other than run a crappy window manager.

In which case I'd strongly suggest you to kick Openwin off your computer, and into an all-consuming fire, where it should have been kicked into long time ago.

Uhh...

[BrokenHalo]

Gnome 2.2 is great, but it's not stable.

Gnome 2.0 is very stable. Gnome 2.2 isn't (quite) out yet.

Re:Uhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Gnome 2.0 is very stable.

If that's your idea of stable, why don't you just run Windows 95?

Re:Uhh...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll second that. I'm using one of the first releases of Gnome 2.0, the one that shipped with RedHat 8.0 and it's as stable as any release of KDE I've ever tried. Maybe I'm lucky and I just haven't hit any of the bugs but this thing works great for me.

It's about 1,000 times more stable than Gnome 1.0 was. Now that was a train wreck.

on a sunray config? no way!

[hummer357]

as much as i applaud the possibility of using gnome2 on solaris (i've been using the beta3 for a long time, and i will upgrade my sunblade workstation to the gnome2 final release), it really wouldn't work well in all possible situations...

for example:
at work we have a very large number of sunray workstations, which use a chunky 6800 as server (the largest sunray install base in europe!). we use them primarily for managing our data network (as our country's larges telco & isp).

since gnome2 uses A LOT more ram and cpu cycles than good old cde, we won't be using it anytime soon. it kind of isn't justifiable to order a 15k to use a new gui.
and then some.
a lot of the applications we use are very usable in cde (eg: alcatel/newbridge's atm node management software), so using gnome would actually make the thing less user friendly!

h357

Re:on a sunray config? no way!

[calidoscope]

since gnome2 uses A LOT more ram and cpu cycles than good old cde

Not surprising. HP's VUE, the "father" of CDE was designed to run on 25 MHz 68040's with 8 MB of RAM. It also was designed to be workable with smaller screen sizes - 11 years ago, an HP monitor capable of 1280 by 1024 would set you back 6 grand!

Check Me On This (Slightly Off-Topic)

[ewhac]

It's only just recently that I've tried to understand the vagaries of windowing systems and GUI kits under X. (My previous attempt was by reading the Xlib reference manual. Ugh.) There appears to be a mostly-unstated assumption on which bits of your windowed app are handled by what.

What I've learned so far is that the functional separation seems to based on the "conceptual boundaries" established by the window(s). This appears to have led to the establishment of three major components on X desktops:

• Inside The Window: The Widget Toolkit
  This is the piece that's responsible for rendering the various buttons, sliders, textboxes, labels, etc. Applications describe in abstract terms what widgets they want and how they want them laid out, and the toolkit is responsible for actually making it happen. An example of a widget toolkit is GTK.
• Around The Window: The Window Manager
  The Window Manager is responsible for operations on the window proper, allowing the user to depth-arrange, drag, resize, minimize, etc. the windows appearing on the display. To facilitate this, the Window Manager (typically) decorates the borders of the window with control glyphs to accomplish these various tasks. Examples of window managers include WindowMaker and SawMill.
• Outside The Windows: The Desktop Manager
  The space not occupied by visible windows is the Desktop. The Desktop Manager gives functionality to the regions of the screen not occupied by windows. This might include setting the background image, drawing shortcut icons, displaying pop-up menus to launch applications, etc.

Near as I can tell, each of these components exists (mostly) independently of each other -- you can have an app using the GTK toolkit running in the KDE Window Manager on an unmanaged desktop. As such, there appears to be a huge opportunity for similar or duplicate code to accomplish the smae thing.

Each component appears to be independently and variably "theme-able". For example, WindowMaker has relatively little theme flexibility, whereas SawMill apparently has tons. Each manager accomplishes theme-ability in its own way, further contributing to duplicated code.

Further confusing the issue is the use of a single term to refer to all of these components in aggregate. For example, "GNOME" typically refers collectively to the Widget Toolkit, the Window Manager, and the Desktop Manager. ...Except that GNOME actually seems to be mostly an API specification. It is possible for Window Managers to be GNOME-compliant without actually being part of GNOME. Nautilus, SawMill, and WindowMaker are all GNOME-compliant, but not all of them are officially part of GNOME.

So. Does that sound right, or am I completely off-base?

Schwab

Re:Check Me On This (Slightly Off-Topic)

[Anonymous Coward]

>>So. Does that sound right, or am I completely off-base?

Sounds right. But what was that middle part again? I'm not sure I got it ...

Re:Check Me On This (Slightly Off-Topic)

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm....No....

Gnome is not the toolkit, GTK+ is...

Gnome just extends GTK with extra custom widgets.

Re:Check Me On This (Slightly Off-Topic)

[jregier1]

"The Desktop Manager gives functionality to the regions of the screen not occupied by windows. This might include setting the background image, drawing shortcut icons, displaying pop-up menus to launch applications, etc."

I think your description of the desktop manager may be off.

-Background images are usually displayed by a process seperate from the desktop environment, such as xsetroot.

-Short cut's are drawn by a file manager such as Nautalus (if your window manager supports one -- blackbox, for example, does not).

-Menus created by right clicking on the background are created by the window manager. In Afterstep, for example, it is in Afterstep's menu file where the items on the menu are specified.

Come to think of it, I don't really know what a desktop environment does. In fact, I've been told many window managers can run on X windows without a desktop manager (blackbox, for example). Moreover, it is still possible to cut and paste text between applications without a desktop environment, though I thought desktop environment had something to do with cutting and pasting. Oh, perhaps it's all those desktop-related libraries that are so important. Still, I'm not really sure why gnome-related processes need to be running in order to use GTK libraries.

A little help here...

Re:Check Me On This (Slightly Off-Topic)

[Osty]

Come to think of it, I don't really know what a desktop environment does. In fact, I've been told many window managers can run on X windows without a desktop manager (blackbox, for example). Moreover, it is still possible to cut and paste text between applications without a desktop environment, though I thought desktop environment had something to do with cutting and pasting. Oh, perhaps it's all those desktop-related libraries that are so important. Still, I'm not really sure why gnome-related processes need to be running in order to use GTK libraries.

A Desktop Environment is "everything else". It's the glue that bonds applications together. For example, desktop environments provide an object model (bonobo for GNOME, KParts for KDE) that allow applications written for those environments to interact. This is where your copy/paste question comes in. By default, X has very primitive copy/paste functionality -- it can only handle text, it will highlight whatever you select (so don't select anything unless you don't mind losing what's in the buffer), and will paste when you click the middle mouse button (don't accidentally click that button, or you're going to get text spew where you didn't want it). Desktop environments like KDE and GNOME enhance and supercede this functionality by implementing proper clipboards -- you can clip anything to the board (within reason, anyway), such as text, images, files, etc. More, any object that accepts pasting and/or drag&drop knows what to do with those various types of objects (for example, a console app may accept a paste or drop of a file from a file manager, and turn that file into the path to the file, while pasting or dropping on another file manager window will copy/move the file). Without your Desktop Environment providing this common functionality, you could not do anything more complex than copy a string and paste it somewhere. The main drawback is that environments usually don't interact with one another, so a GNOME application and a KDE application won't cooperate. This is what happens when you have multiple desktop environments. Also, because of that, that is why you have to have gnome related processes running in order to use GNOME libraries (not GTK libraries -- GNOME uses GTK, but GTK is not GNOME).

Re:Check Me On This (Slightly Off-Topic)

[IamTheRealMike]

Sawmill is a very old name for Sawfish, which is probably one of the more configurable window managers around.

GNOME is a project to produce a cohesive desktop environment. What is such a beast?

• Desktop manager programs, typically in kde/gnome a panel implementation, a program to control the desktop, panel applets (start menu etc), and a window manager. In Windows and MacOS, the window management is not performed by an user pluggable process, on Windows the app performs its own window management to some extent, on MacOS it's now a part of the display server.
• A bunch of related tools and utilities you'd expect to find on a desktop. Text editors, calculators, character maps, audio players, file managers and so on
• A developer platform: a set of APIs that the developer can use to take advantage of advanced desktop services like a VFS, integrated help, icon management, "recently used items", multimedia and so on. In GNOME, there are many such APIs, usually fairly discrete. Some of them are separate projects from GNOME, like GTK+ (which in turn provides the GLib, GObject, and Pango APIs). GTK+ as you are aware provides widget services to applications.

The projects do various other things needed for a nice desktop environment, like spec out usability guidelines and so on.

GNOME-Compliance is a thing of the past, and has been for years. I don't know where you're getting this information, but it's seriously out of date. In the early years, both desktops extended the x protocol to support window icons and such in incompatible ways. Eventually they standardised on the NET_WM extensions, and today there are only "standards compliant" apps and window managers.

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

a gnome is more like a dwarf... or 'little person' as they prefer to be called.

with every sale?

[7-Vodka]

as far as i recall, you only have to pay trolltech once to be able to develop apps with QT.

Re:with every sale?

[g4dget]

You missed the "or" part of the "either ... or ...". Either of the two alternatives was unpalatable to Sun.

And this wasn't exactly a surprise: people have been pointing out that KDE wasn't going to be very attractive to companies like Sun or IBM since the beginnings of the KDE project. If KDE wants to get back into this game, KDE should really aggressively pursue an LGPL clone of Qt. It's not that hard to do.

Re:with every sale?

[Anonymous Coward]

haha

the GTK developers ain't managed it yet. YUCK.

And if you liked the look of CDE

[Chemicalscum]

And remeber if you liked the look of CDE - then with Gnome you can install XFce and configure to look just like CDE running under Solaris.

Re:And if you liked the look of CDE

[Anonymous Coward]

If you liked the look of CDE and want XFce instead you don't even have to install the entire GNOME. Just get gtk+ and glib (and possibly gmodule and gdk-pixbuf) and you're on your way.

Peder

Gnome 2.2

[Anonymous Coward]

As of today, I am running GNOME 2.2 on XFree86 4.3. Why in the hell would ANYONE use GNOME 2.0, when GNOME 2.2 is, basically, a version of GNOME 2.0 with lots of bug fixes?

Re:CDE

[Pflipp]

Well...

o There's so little of it
o And it still sucks
o There's a file manager that "deletes" to a trashcan
o Where's the darned trashcan?
o And why is my disk still full?
o There's just one icon on the screen.
o Actually, it's a menu. Sorta. But there's an icon within the menu.
o And it says "Terminal". Click on it. Welcome to your UNIX desktop!
o Buhh... close the menu :-)
o Oh wait, there's an other icon there.
o Netscape 4! Yay!
o And whaddaya know! A *graphical* man pages browser? Is it possible?
o Now them Desktop folks will finally know how to invoke strncpy()!
o Close both windows by double-clicking somewhere at the top left.
o That's all folks! Nothing more to see here. Go home.

Actually, there's one good thing about (the Sun version of) CDE, and that is the logout screen. It says "Please confirm your exit from the ..." instead of "Are you sure you want to ..."? Makes you feel less of a baby.

Did Sun pay Ximian to work on Solaris GNOME?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Sun pay Ximian to work on Solaris GNOME?

Re:Did Sun pay Ximian to work on Solaris GNOME?

[Anonymous Coward]

Did Sun pay all the people who spent millions of hours into GNOME ?

NO !

Re:Did Sun pay Ximian to work on Solaris GNOME?

[Wesley Felter]

Yes.

Well, this is nice....

[Thatmushroom]

but I won't be impressed until I see GNOME on an Atari 2600.

Re:Well, this is nice....

[Znonymous Coward]

Forget that, what we really need is GNOME for toasters.

Re:hmmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Place your bets on a date for Sun to start gnome tossing...

welcome to slashdot

[Anonymous Coward]

land of kde troll moderators trying to knock on gnome through cheesy comments cause they can't touch it on technology :)

(ain't nothing wrong with kde, but there is a lot wrong with the kde zealot moderators around here)

Benefits?

[numbski]

I've never had more than a user shell account under Solaris. I'm used to MacOS X, FreeBSD, and Red Hat Linux. That being said, from an administrator's POV, what differences/benefits would there be for me to use Solaris, other than knowing another Unix? Most of my work under FreeBSD and Linux are command line, OSX I do an awful lot in terminal out of habit, but it's my primary OS.

Honestly, i386 is available, just not sure of the benefits of doing so...

Re:Benefits?

[Bishop]

If you ever wanted to apply for a job as a Solaris admin you may want some Solaris experience. It is different (archaic) enough from FreeBSD and Linux to warrent a look. But that really just qualifies as "knowing another *nix." For a single computer, single user (or few user) system Linux and FreeBSD are more advanced from a users perspective. I am guessing by the ammount of automount and NIS+ junk that keeps getting in my way Solaris works well in multiuser, multi computer environments.

don't be ridiculous

[g4dget]

I can see your users cringing every time you bring up an xterm on the local machine.

An xterm requires less resources to start up thatn a Perl CGI script. If your users cringe when an xterm starts up, you have a seriously underpowered web server.

I don't know where this "X11 is big and slow" myth comes from. Come on, use your head. On an 8Mbyte 68k-based UNIX workstation--you know, less power than a low-end Palm--X11 was kind sluggish--around 20 years ago. Machines have gotten more than 100 times more powerful since then--running X11 isn't even noticeable.

Of course, you can make X11 big and slow by letting it allocate huge bitmaps. But that's not X11's fault--any graphics application can do that under any window system.

As for security, use "xauth" and/or only allow local connections (you can still tunnel through "ssh"): the result is pretty much bulletproof.

Re:Sun and GNOME-Cross-platform.

[Anonymous Coward]

"But mozilla uses gtk, so it doesnt completely ignore gnome."

If that was true? Then explain all the other platforms that Mozilla runs on.

Is it completely 100% Gnome 2?

[unsinged int]

May seem a crazy question, but it seems like half the packages for Gnome are still versioned 1.4.x and half are 2.x (at least as far as what's in Debian).

I've been using KDE for a while now because I think I've got some weird half-and-half Gnome install despite all my packages being called up-to-date.

Sun FUD about KDE?

[Moritz Moeller - Her]

I mean seriously, KDE has all the features as well. And it is not below GNOME despite all the money that was poured into GNOME:

innovative use of CORBA

DCOP, kparts? KDE even used CORBA before GNOME-1.0 but they ditched it, because it is too slow and complicated

easy access to data wherever it might be located

Sounds like kioslaves to me. Imagine gnome-vfs from the ground up.

and so on.

Re:Sun FUD about KDE?

[nslu]

I can't disagree. Actually, if you look at that FAQ - it's all rigid like diarrhea, they say nothing in there. Real reasons might be licensing (Sun started looking at gnome at the time when Trolltech still dind't GPL their stuff) and language - some people really hate ++. Look at other comments around...

Re:Sun FUD about KDE?

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE ditched CORBA because they used a bad ORB (mico) for what are essentially not platform-agnostic distributed component architectures.

Go put your zealot suit back in the closet and stop worrying about why companies don't want to play with your silly desktop.

Re:Sun FUD about KDE?

[boots@work]

"rigid like diarrhea"? That's the wierdest metaphor I've heard for a while.

X11 doesn't impose any of that

[g4dget]

What I've learned so far is that the functional separation seems to based on the "conceptual boundaries" established by the window(s). This appears to have led to the establishment of three major components on X desktops:

If you like to componentize your GUI that way, you can. But X11 doesn't care. Traditionally, X11 has a window manager, which also does some limited things with the desktop, and applications would use lots of different widget set. X11 is really more like Macintosh Quartz or Windows GDI, with a wide range of choices for GUIs built on top of it.

Many commercial X11 applications (bank terminals, etc.) use the X11 server completely differently.

Further confusing the issue is the use of a single term to refer to all of these components in aggregate. For example, "GNOME" typically refers collectively to the Widget Toolkit, the Window Manager, and the Desktop Manager.

It's basically an attempt to bring a Windows view of the world to the UNIX environment. Technically, I don't think it's the best approach. However, environments like Gnome and KDE give Windows refugees a warm and fuzzy feeling.

You might well want to consider weaning yourself off Gnome or KDE--give window managers like IceWM or blackbox a try.

Re:X11 doesn't impose any of that

[MikeBabcock]

Let me push the almost-never-talked-about Enlightenment as well. Love it :)

Re:X11 doesn't impose any of that

[Dunkalis]

I'm not a Windows refugee. KDE may seem like its strapping a Windows-like UI on top of X, but I disagree. Many features probably make Windows users feel at home, but the really nice terminal (Konsole) and all the powerful tools (regexps in Konqueror, all of the Kate features) KDE provides make it fit perfectly in a Unix system. I haven't done any KDE programming yet, but I'm guessing it makes Qt even better to code with.

GNOME does all of these things, too.

I used to use a combination of Oroborus, DeskMenu, and some small taskbar application for my desktop. Before that, Window Maker. KDE is wonderful, even after moving from those.

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

laughing the fuck out loud while singing a song from The Hobbit

Re:Goodbye CDE

[Gortbusters.org]

A co-worker of mine used to, and still likes, CDE. Quote him "Everything works perfectly, it's perfect, it's a Sun."

He's an older fellow, but I guess it's just like talking to a Windows user. Once they get used to something, they don't like to change.

Anyone's parents still use your old computer with Win95? *shiver*

No more to add

[DeadMoose]

I dug up my slides, and beyond the dated tutorials of basic GTK+ work, and some ancient screenshots, it doesn't add much.

They've got a slide with a few buzzwords about why Gnome's so much better than CDE, but I guess all the talk of Gnome/GTK+ versus KDE/QT was done during Q&A

But if memory serves it was basically what everyone's saying; they liked C more than C++, and they didn't want to worry about QT licensing for themselves or anyone else (since saying "it's free to develop for our platform!" is more enticing than "it's almost free; you just have to pay QT royalties")

Re:No more to add

[fucksl4shd0t]

since saying "it's free to develop for our platform!" is more enticing than "it's almost free; you just have to pay QT royalties"

It's almost free. If the underlying OS is free, then you get Qt for commercial apps under the GPL. Since Solaris isn't free yet, they'd have to pay for a license for every programmer they've got (or almost), and that's close to $1000/pop (just over, iirc). They might be able to get volume discounts or something.

Now, Sun's longterm strategy (or at least it was a year ago) is to phase out Solaris in favor of Linux, and to add to Linux (and donate the code) the features that Solaris has that Linux lacks. In the process, they get all the features Linux has that Solaris lacks. The drawback, at that point, is that Qt will be GPL, not LGPL, and Sun will have to GPL all of their code that links to Qt. Now, they can build a GPL abstraction layer and bundle it with the OS, and then just use that abstraction layer, but after all that, they may as well have just started with GNome and added function and feature that they need as they go.

Point is, Trolltech only makes you pay a license if you're developing for a non-free OS. Since Linux is free, then even if you develop for KDE and release GPL stuff, and you do so commercially, you still don't pay Trolltech a license. iirc. I could be wrong about that, which would sink my whole point.

Re:No more to add

[jonbelson]

>Now, Sun's longterm strategy (or at least it was a year ago) is to phase out Solaris in favor of Linux, and to add to Linux (and donate the code) the features that Solaris has that Linux lacks.

Erm - I really don't remember this announcement. Do you have a reference?

--Jon

http://www.witchspace.com

Re:No more to add

[fucksl4shd0t]

Well, I found something that talks about making Linux more compatible with Solaris, but it doesn't mention Sun wanting to phase out Solaris in favor of Linux. Maybe I'm confusing this article with one I read where IBM really does intend to replace AIX with Linux instead.

Read about it here

Re:No more to add

[madhippy]

Point is, Trolltech only makes you pay a license if you're developing for a non-free OS. Since Linux is free, then even if you develop for KDE and release GPL stuff, and you do so commercially, you still don't pay Trolltech a license. iirc. I could be wrong about that, which would sink my whole point.

link to trolltechs faq thingy

Re:No more to add

[fucksl4shd0t]

They really dodge the question, which is this: If Sun releases a completely free-as-in-speech OS, can they write commercial GPL applications with Qt?

When I communicated with Trolltech about this issue, it boiled down to these things: (mind you, I was intending to write for Linux, not for any Sun OS)

1. If I were going to charge a fee for my software, it didn't matter what license I used, I had to pay for a Trolltech license. Basically, if I were going to make money from selling the software, I had to pay for a developer's license.

2. If I were going to distribute the software for free, but I was going to be paid by a company (in this case, the company that I own), then I had to buy a license.

3. If I were going to develop the software with commercial interests for Windows (or any other non-free OS) then I had to buy a license.

4. If I were going to distribute the software for free, under the GPL, for only free OSs, then I didn't have to buy a license, even if I was developing it for the company and being paid to do so.

The idea is that they want to make money from you under these conditions:

1. The software is proprietary, regardless of cost.

2. You work for a company and are paid to develop the software for internal use only.

3. You intend to distribute anything except the student/hobbyist software for Windows or Mac.

The FAQ isn't real clear about it, in this sense, but it probably clears up the issue for most free software developers. But what if you work for RedHat and you're a KDE hacker? Does RedHat own a license for you? Or are you allowed to do that?

Bottom line is, Qt isn't free, no matter how many times they give it to KDE developers for free with GPL attached to it. It's still not free.

Re:No more to add

[madhippy]

Bottom line is, Qt isn't free, no matter how many times they give it to KDE developers for free with GPL attached to it. It's still not free.

IMO thats KDEs biggest, perhaps only weakness when compared to Gnome. I'm a KDE user, but looking at Gnome. I develop bespoke windows apps (mainly VB) and I can see that the KDE licensing issues will be a pain for companies developing bespoke app software - Gnome is much nicer in this respect.

Sun Linux

[fdawg]

I didnt realize until today that Sun actually has a version of linux.

http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/lx50/?redirect= fa lse&refurl=http://wwws.sun.com/software/linux/inde x.html

Check out the OSes available and you will notice an option for sun linux 5.0. What window manager comes default with that?

Re:Sun Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

It's basically re-branded RedHat (7.x if I remember correctly) meant to run on their Cobalt rack-mounted blades (up to 2 Intel CPUs; 2 ethernet cards; 6GB of RAM (4GB segmented), up to SCSI drives, etc.)

All this fuss? It's only GNOME!

[Anonymous Coward]

Send GNOME to /dev/null

Re:Sun and GNOME-Cross-platform.

[Anonymous Coward]

gtk+ is crossplatform.

Re:CDE

[Anonymous Coward]

It sucks worse than Windows 2.0 did back in the 80

Are you saying that CDE failed at it's stated goal of "achieving the visual elegance of Windows 3.1"?

Fitting

[Anonymous Coward]

Sun gave the world NFS and RPC for free, and now Sun gets a complete desktop in return.
Sounds like a fair trade.

Anything to speed up the eridaction of Motif is a good thing.

Too bad Sun is becoming an increasingly irrelevant computer company with way overpriced hardware. Perhaps when IBM takes it over they'll find a use for it.

Re:Fitting

[swordgeek]

Sun is becoming irrelevant?????? Holy shit man, where did you hear that?

Linux is coming. Microsoft is pretending. IBM is still stuck in the dark ages. Sun is, despite their stock value, a HUGELY important company/platform/(hardware/software solution) in several markets. Perhaps the biggest is the petro/oil industry, but believe me--there is no way that Sun is going to become irrelevant in the next five years.

Yes I said five years. Yes, I *do* know how huge five years is in IT. IBM will be gone before Sun.

sig anagram?

[Woodrose]

a cab meddles, host shot, loss?

Re:Sun is dying

[Morky]

Duh? Duh!

Re:Sun and GNOME-Cross-platform.

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's an idea, it uses different toolkits for different platforms! Amazing!

Mozilla doesn't use GTK widgets pervasively so that it can comply with CSS.

Re:"Stealing Mushrooms" starring Frodo and Sam

[Anonymous Coward]

100% Troll? I don't think so. This is 100% Hobbit!

PERFORMANCE FIXES!

[swordgeek]

OK, here's the disclaimer. I've been using the betas (1, 2, and 3) since they were first released. I don't know how much of the following is still valid information, although I suspect all of it is.

To MASSIVELY increase performance of Gnome 2.0 on Solaris...
1) Install the mlib libraries.
2) Do a CUSTOM installation, and make sure that 64 bit libraries are included if your hardware is 64 bit. (they weren't by default in the betas)
3) Don't use transparent windows.
4) Don't use a fancy bitmapped background.
5) If you do, store it on your local drive. (we had problems with NIS/autoFS users keeping their bitmaps in their home directories--on the server)
5) Add more memory.
6) Add more memory.

I was using the Beta3 on a blade100/550MHz with 128MB of RAM. It was almost unusable, when Mozilla was running. Now I have a Blade150/650MHz with 512MHz of RAM, and it's fast. Faster than CDE ever was on anything that existed when CDE was first introduced. With Gnome 2.0, Mozilla, Staroffice/Openoffice, Acroread, and mediaplayer, I can get away from Windows for all non-game requirements.

Re:PERFORMANCE FIXES!

[Anonymous Coward]

7) best speed increase... dont use gnome at all :)

Re:PERFORMANCE FIXES!

[LucidityZero]

Now I have a Blade150/650MHz with 512MHz of RAM

Lucky bastard. I wish I could measure MY memory in speed. :(

in defense of CDE

[commodoresloat]

ummmm, err, well, there's....

never mind.

Hope it helps on the desktop

[tbuskey]

I've been a Sun user since SunOS 4.1.2 on a sparcstation 1+. I also started running Linux SLS (kernel 0.98pl5) on a 486. This is around '93.

Then, the PC wasn't too bad as an xterminal. Fire up a compile in the background & the sparc was better hands down.

Skip ahead to the Ultra10 vs a PIII 700MHz. Probably pretty close.

However, using linux/*BSD on the PC I can get many more apps. Lots of precompiled binaries are there for the lazy. up2date/MandrakeUpdate/aptget/ximian make keeping up with patches easier on Linux. I don't remember ximian offering OS patches for Solaris 7...

I'm trying to think of a reason I'd rather have a sun on my desktop instead of a PC. Ok, graphics intensive apps that only run on Solaris such as CAD. Most other stuff can be run off a server that I ssh/xterm to.

Plus I get more choices in keyboards, mice, USB stuff, cameras, etc.

btw - I do have several suns at home. My firewall is an LX running OpenBSD, my fileserver is an Ultra1 and I have a sparc20. My main machine? A PC laptop......

rigid like diarrhea

[nslu]

Google thinks so too.

Am I alone?

[GS11_Pus]

Am I the only one out there who likes CDE? It seems like so many people are bashing it because it's... boring? Outdated? Ugly?

Huh?

I'm a UNIX Sys Admin, and I do 99% of my work on... drumroll... a TERMINAL WINDOW. What difference does it make if I have CDE or GNOME or whatever... I'm still using text commands to do my work. VI won't open any prettier in GNOME than CDE.

Anyone out there who actually uses Solaris for a living have a major problem with CDE?

Re:Am I alone?

[chegosaurus]

Nope. All the people who bash CDE have never really tried to use it. It's as fast as you could ever want, and rock-solid stable. It's also easy to tweak, if you take a little time to learn.

GNOME for me, especially on Solaris, is flaky as fuck and offers little CDE doesn't except for pretty graphics. But then that's what sells stuff for the cluelees "my Gentoo boxen" haX0r wannabes on Slashdot.

Re:Am I alone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't forget the fact that GNOME tries to be as Windows-like as possible... they even copy the idiotic parts in order "to be easy for Windows users" (which presumably includes the Slashdot haX0r wannabes).

IBM will be gone before Sun?

[Anonymous Coward]

What have you been smoking?
IBM is worth 13 times more than Sun.
Take a look for yourself.
Nevermind the fact that unlike Sun, IBM actually has a software strategy and successful consulting division!
IBM will be around 100 years from now, whereas Sun will be acquired within 5 years.

Re:CDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Its not really CDE's fault that Motif looks like turd on a stick.

Who am I kidding? CDE and Motif don't even achieve the visual elegance of an elephant thats been smashed into concrete at terminal velocity.

Or..

[Anonymous Coward]

Use KDE and get over the fact that GNOME sucks and has lost.

SUNW vs. IBM

[Steve Hamlin]

but believe me--there is no way that Sun is going to become irrelevant in the next five years.

Yes I said five years. Yes, I *do* know how huge five years is in IT. IBM will be gone before Sun.

===== =====

I agree that SUN is not anywhere near becoming irrelevant. Even without growht and new products, their installed userbase could carry them for years. However, they cannot rest for a second, or they will last ONLY those few years as a legacy vendor.

I realize you are probably joking about Sun outlasting IBM, but in case you're not:

..SUN.......IBM
.$10.0B....$132.1B Market Cap
.$12.2B....$ 81.2B Sales
-$ 2.8B....$ 6.8B EBITDA
-$ 2.4B....$ 5.3B Income
.-19.4%......6.6% Profit Margin
.-23.0%......8.4% Opert. Margin
.$ 2.6B....$ 6.0B Total Cash

ps. - how do you do layout tables in with Slashdot-limitied html and no ?

Screenshots?

[Refrag]

Can someone post some links to screenshots of Gnome on Solaris? I loved using Solaris in college, and would be very interested in seeing what they've done with their desktop and Gnome.

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should we provide a means for people to use Free Software to create proprietary software? If they want people to use the software they create under a restrictive license, why shouldn't they do the same for the tools they use to create their software?

It's completely hypocritical for these people to expect users to pay money for their closed-source crap, when at the same time, THEY THEMSELVES are unwilling to do the same and pay Troll Tech a fair price for their excellent libraries.

GNOME fanboys are laughably inconsistent. When Qt was distributed under QPL, they had to start their poorly-thought-out desktop because Qt wasn't free enough. Troll Tech GPLd it, and not Qt is "too free."

Not just Solaris

[sparkz]

Though I only use Solaris and Linux, for those admins who use, say, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, CDE is the ideal solution - it's the *Common* Desktop Environment. Maybe not the best, it's a compromise, but it's good enough for most uses, and works across *nix.

The question should not be, "Why should Sun use GNOME", but "Why hasn't CDE been ported to Linux?"