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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."
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."
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_.
(CDE walking towards exit on plane, cue SNL bit from a few years ago ...)
buh-bye
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.
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 Frankly I think CDE was getting a little bit outdated.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 ;)
...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!
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?
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
Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
Motif/CDE's design philosophy could be boiled down to one phrase: "Make everything look 3D except the menubar!"
... if it's "in" it must be on, unless the light source is the lower right corner of the screen ... then ... ummm ... wait.)
Remember when checkbuttons and radiobuttons could only be differentiated by innie/outtie appearance? (Now let's see
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.
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.
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.
Please read this message at http://wwws.sun.com/software/star/gnome/get/#downl oad: /usr/lib/gnome-print-manager-remote
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
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.
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.)
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
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:)
0x or or snor perron?!
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
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:
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.
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.
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
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.
Well...
:-)
..." instead of "Are you sure you want to ..."? Makes you feel less of a baby.
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
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
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.
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")
I didnt realize until today that Sun actually has a version of linux.
= fa lse&refurl=http://wwws.sun.com/software/linux/inde x.html
http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/lx50/?redirect
Check out the OSes available and you will notice an option for sun linux 5.0. What window manager comes default with that?
..and your admin will LOVE you if /tmp happens to be a swap filesystem :-)
-- I speak only for myself.
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
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.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
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......
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?