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Ximian Desktop 2, Evolution Released
An anonymous reader writes "Ximian has released their long awaited Ximian Desktop 2, their popular Gnome-based desktop, and Evolution, their popular email client and calendar program. They can be found on the main Ftp server. You can also check their mirrors."
With all that has been said on the issue of GUI's on Linux, its great to see consistently improved releases across the board. Ximian 2 looks great, and the closely tied integration of OpenOffice is the kind of thing that will probably be appealing to those looking to roll Linux out to corporate desktops. Seems to be the 1.0 branch though, which is a shame since there are a lot of useful enhancements in the 1.1 series.
Since switching away from Windows, I will never again understand the use of graphical email clients... it's like using your TV as a letter opener IMHO ;)
wget -q -O - http://go.ximian.com |sh
I would say it doesn't get much easier than that =). If this version is anything like the last it will automagically detect your distribution and use its default package management system.
Fear trumps hope and ignorance trumps both
Is it easy to de-install and return to a pristine (current distribution level) state yet? The last time I tried this, which is required when performing a distribution update with Redhat, it required a couple of hours dependency resolution. As a result, I never re-installed after the distribution upgrade. Redhat now includes Evolution, and the new "--aid" option on rpm makes automatically pulling in dependencies much easier (I don't need Red-Carpet).
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Well, our press release points out we had roughly a million and a half installations of Ximian GNOME 1.4. And we had... well, we had a whole lot of downloads this morning well before it hit any community news sites, from people sitting and reloading ftp.ximian.com all night. :) So, I guess 'popular' is totally subjective, but I think it's fair to say there is at least some interest out there. :)
IAAL,BIANLY
Anyone have a bittorrent for this one?
This isn't a troll but a serious question...is Gnome/Evolution truly popular? Does anyone use it?
I've tried it out every time I install a new linux distro, and i've always found it to be terrible. Particularly the user interfaces, dependencies (i cant install a new version of mozilla because it'll break evolution??), and speed.
Yet another option is to use a product where localization is better. I had big problems with Redhat 8 in this regard. The tree weird characters that me and my fellow citizens use in every other word we type did not show up well in its hybrid KDE-desktop. I got tired that something so essential (for me at least) was not working properlty out of the box. Last week I changed distribution: it was the first I payed for, Suse 8.2 Professional, and it looks much better.
Localization is something that is very essential. In -96 it was fun to tweak and fix, about -99 it just became annoying, and by this time, if it does not work, I see no reason to pay for a product that does not implement it properly. I expect current Linux distributions to be more mature by now.
Trust you? why? Do you have *any* credentials in the corporate linux market? The fact that GNOME and Sun are now practically joined at the hip, and that RedHat has GNOME switched on on all their serves by default does *not* mean they are somehow an unstoppable force on the corporate desktop.
/usr/bin/killev for the joys of CORBA programming . Years after CORBA is dumped in just about any enterprise as an archaic, slow-moving and basically retarded piece of middleware (mainly due to design-by-comittee politics, not technology, I hasten to add), the GNOME/XIMIANS dudes and dudettes jump and say: "Hey! how cool! lets use CORBA. Sometimes I really wonder how much Microsoft is paying Ximian.
On the other hand, I have designed and managed about 8 large scale pilots (think thousands of seats) for linux on the desktop, and have been involved with many more, all aimed at the Corporate/Government market. So far, for every single one of them, KDE has been the top choice of both admins as well as users, for a tremendous amount of reasons. The Ximian/GNOME team are really not heading in the right direction, when it comes to desktop design, and they have pretty much made sure that the design decisions that went into XD2 will scare off any serious systems manager, or at the very least, give them the same amount of lock-in and dependency that Ms offers them today.
The Ximian Connector you so highly tout only delivers value to Ximian, not to the end user (it enables Ximian to get more users on Evolution). I can easily connect and collaborate with Exchange servers, in a variety of ways, including a fat-client, if I would wish to do so -- without having to use Evolution, *or* suffer a major loss of functionality. Evolution, besides being a badly-implemented Outlook Clone, does not really offer me any unique solutions, and combined with the tight GNOME coupling, again makes for an uncompelling argument. Moreover, any application that requires a 3k killscript, just to get the system back to a usable state when (not if, when) the application crashes, need to be taken out back and shot. several times. Just check out
As roll-out managers go, Red Carpet (as well as the Red Hat Network) would only truly entice ex Microsoft Menu Monkeys and admins of the braindead vegetable type. There are SO MANY good application admin solutions for Linux, that could tie in with your overall enterprise management strategy if you wanted to, that the use of what is, essentially, a massive security hole, should be termed a capital crime. So far, all the stuff cooming out of the GNOME camp has been aimed at doing away with the strengths of the Linux platform and the weaknesses of the Microsoft Platform: less configuration options, those config options that are available are tucked away in a "registry" type, binary databse, outlook look-alikes, doing away with text-based management and the tremendous amount of flexibility that gives you, and now with XD2, they even set OpenOffice.org to save by default in MS formats!! how fscked up is that?!?
So, to make a long rant short, I reiterate my original remark: What are you credentials in the corporate linux market so that I should "trust you" at your word, as you ask?
O yeah, before anyone freaks out, I have nothing to do with KDE project, and have used GNOME and KDE for about the same amount of time. I am now a happy KDE user, most of the time. And no, this is not a troll, or anything like that. It is honest opinion.
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Well, to be fair, Japanese support under the English version of Outlook ain't so hot either (see what happens when you receive an ISO-8859-1 message and use Japanese in your reply...).
Still, you do have a point - Evolution is basically unusable as a day-to-day mail client for multi-byte languages. Personally, I use Sylpheed, which is getting closer and closer to that magic 1.0 mark.
There is this thing called checksums. You might have heard of it.
I agree with the parent. If you're running a shell script, as root, straight from a web server, you migh as well run Windows.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
Just keep your mail on your mail server and use IMAP to connect to it. Then you can use Mutt, Evolution, KMail, Netscape/Mozilla or even Outlook ot get at your mail. Best of all, you can access it while you are at work too ;-) I presonally use Kmail when I'm at home, Mozilla if I have to boot Windows for a bit, Pine when I shell in, and Mozilla from work (since Outlook acted all pissy about it for no good reason). IMAP means enjoying your mail no matter where you are.
You can also move all your contacts and stuff into an LDAP server for bonus points. Now I have one address book which I can use wherever I am with all my email clients on any OS. Only downside, I have yet to find a decent client to update that LDAP address book...anyone got some recomendations?
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
I see Mandrake has been dropped and only SuSe and RH distributions are supported. Does this mean that Mandrake is already user friendly enough and doesn't need any pasted-on-top solutions?
(This sig intentionally left blank)
Well, I expected to be flamed to bits for this post, but am also prepared to back up my claims. I am, however, at work, and that means my replies may not be as comprehensive as I would like them to be.
you asked me to list some reasons as to why KDE consistently comes out on top of the pilots I have lead or been involved with. Well, there are many. Polished, looking good, fit for purpose, easy to configure, easy to manage, sane backend architecture and infrastructure are some of the ones that most frequently come up. On the other hand, GNOME is frequently found to be more robust in the individual components (whereas KDE is found to be more robust overall.) Those are just some of the reasons. I have well over 600 pages of documentation that back up this fact. Some are public domain. Most are not, sadly.
You ask me to list the reasons why XD2 will scare off any serious sysadmin. Here goes a brief list. XD2, as well as GNOME, employ a philosophy that "less is more" however, that concept is, initself, seriously debatable. Less is more may work for a sub-class of your end-user base (task-workers, typically 65% of the linux-deployable desktop users), but there are users where this doesn't work at all (knowledge-workers, about 30% of the linux-deployable users. Typcally, about 80% of a given Fortune 100 company is "linux deployable" on the desktop. These are, of course, generalisations and simplifications, but the point is clear). So at the end of the day, you will end up with a situation where you need a fast, flexible, scalable and manageable approach to administering and customising the desktop environment. different users have different needs, and these needs change form company to company. For Ximian to assume that "they know best for all" is ridiculous.
As th whether or not i use drugs, I don't. My knick is a reference to the Slashdot madness, and my willingness to participate in that. You, on the other hand, do not address the issue of lock in, that most certainly exists.
People buy the Ximian Connector for the same reasons MS is the market leader today: smart marketing, and selective education. I think we can at least both agree that the Linux desktop, in whatever form, is often the better solution to the MS desktop, although I suspect our reasons will probably significantly differ. Nevertheless, MS has the vast majority of market share. Go Figure! why do they buy that?
As to supporting an unix client on exchange: IMAP, SMTP, LDAP, WebDAV. etc. etc. They actually work, you know?
As long as the killscript ships with the default distro it comes with (in this case, redhat) I am working on the asumption it is required.
You can call me many things, but ignorant I am most certainly not. I may not share your opinion, and you may love CORBA while most enterprises don't use it, but still, that does not make me ignorant. CORBA is dying. Your sleigh of hand with mentioning lesser implementations still don't make CORBA much more alive. Moreover, you don't support your assertion that CORBA is alive and kicking. Why don't you search for "CORBA developer" and "J2EE developer" on any jobsite. or "CORBA Architect" and "J2EE Architect". That usually gives you an idea of how wanted a certain technology is in the marketplace.
Regarding the GConf comment, are you saying that binary databases are not used as GConf backends? that they are not possible? Sure XML is used now, but that is only after some seriousl flamewars a few years ago.
Phew, almost there.... Now, with respect to OpenOffice.org saving in MS format, that is just wrong in so many ways, it is an essay on its own (which I am, in fact, writing, and will be presenting as a discussion paper in a conference sometime soon). However, As MS has so successfully shown, Technology can NEVER replace education. when is the last time *you* researched document and information flow within the enterprise? I have, just recently, and found that roughly 65% of the information flow in a typical enterprise is internal, and the
People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
Good point... this check only makes a potential hacker need to go one step further.
MD5 checksums are verifyable against a trusted source for example against a known public key.
However, you could try the root servers, they are actively maintained and most people would know if they were giving out bogus information.
dig @a.gtld-servers.net ximian.com