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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_.
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 Frankly I think CDE was getting a little bit outdated.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
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Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate. Ex-O'Reilly/MIT employee, now a full-time Google employee.
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.
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
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.
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?