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Gnome 2.0 Officially Available For Solaris

Posted by chrisd on from the gnome-without-hairy-toes dept.

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."

15 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. I realize this isn't a support form, but - by vandel405 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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 -

  2. Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris by ausoleil · · Score: 5, Interesting

    ...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!

  3. Sun and GNOME by kruetz · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.)

    --

    This sig intentionally left bla... dammit!
    Who's got the whiteout?
    1. Re:Sun and GNOME by gilesjuk · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

    2. Re:Sun and GNOME by Stephen+VanDahm · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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

    3. Re:Sun and GNOME by haggar · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      --
      Sigged!
  4. on a sunray config? no way! by hummer357 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

  5. Check Me On This (Slightly Off-Topic) by ewhac · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

    --
    Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
    1. Re:Check Me On This (Slightly Off-Topic) by Osty · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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).

  6. Re:CDE by Pflipp · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

    --
    "We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
  7. Re:Good to see by borg · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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

    --
    Fermat's other theorem: "I have a simple proof, but I can't write it down as I fear it's a DMCA violation to discuss it"
  8. Sun Linux by fdawg · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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?

  9. Fitting by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Fitting by swordgeek · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      --

      "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
  10. Hope it helps on the desktop by tbuskey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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......