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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."

19 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Good to see by fault0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Good to see by stefanlasiewski · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
  2. Re:2.0? Why, oh why? by Dingleberry · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...

  3. 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!

    1. Re:Nice New Face...Same Old Solaris by stefanlasiewski · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      "Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
  4. 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 Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    2. Re:Sun and GNOME by JoeBuck · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:Sun and GNOME by tjwhaynes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

      --
      Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
    4. Re:Sun and GNOME by DeadMoose · · Score: 4, Informative

      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.

    5. Re:Sun and GNOME by nslu · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

  5. Top 5 reasons to use GNOME 2.0 by Amsterdam+Vallon · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.
  6. Performance still needs work by green+pizza · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Performance still needs work by acoopersmith · · Score: 4, Informative

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

  7. Security Hole in Solaris GNOME 2.0 by dananderson · · Score: 4, Informative

    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

  8. 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

  9. Re:what took them so long by ZoneGray · · Score: 4, Funny

    >> CDE was getting a little bit outdated

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

  10. don't be ridiculous by g4dget · · Score: 4, Insightful
    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.

  11. Am I alone? by GS11_Pus · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?