Ximian Desktop 2 Reviewed

Bruha writes "Lewt over at Warcry News Network has written his review for Ximian Desktop 2 targeted at the home users that are looking for a good desktop solution. He mentions this is a good product that could be bundled with Redhat or Mandrake to provide a one stop solution for the desktop user where they dont have to install any extra software to fully surf the web. Which you do with KDE/Gnome installs of most distro's."

Comments

Worst review ever

[Sanity]

Perhaps it is just me, but this is one of the worst and least informative reviews of anything I have read in a long time. He starts out mumbling something about fonts, then goes into an unintelligable discussion of "menus". Apparently Red Carpet looks "cool" - very informative, thanks.

I learned more about this product by spending 20 seconds on the ximian.com website than by reading this entire "review". Are the /. editors even bothering to read these stories before they post them these days?

Re:Extra Software

[Blymie]

Geez, something really stinks here.

First, a really lame and pathetic review gets posted to /., while countless other, more complete and competent reviews do not.

Then, the same guy that submitted the story makes a lame comment about the review, and gets modded up instantly.

I'm beginning to wonder if someone at /. is all buddy buddy with the guy that runs this site, and is helping out the advertising budget this what.

What an abuse of power.

Re:Does it still break your system?

[bheerssen]

That is a valid concern. Ximian is not right for everybody - if you do a lot of tweaking to your system, lots of upgrades and whatnot, then you would probably be better off without it. If you are running IT for a business, Ximian has a lot to offer - simple install, consistant, bundled with many third-party applications. That last point is a big time saver when rolling out numerous new desktops.

As far as distribution support, that's like trying to hit a dozen different moving targets all at the same time. Better to settle on a common target and leave it to the administrator to take care of his/her distro's idiosyncracies.

Re:How does Ximian compare to vanilla gnome?

[ubernostrum]

I do not understand the point of buying ximian if gnome2 is just as good. Is there any goodies that are not included in vanilla gnome?

Software-wise, Ximian includes the heavily-tweaked OpenOffice.org suite which is apparently a lot nicer than the standard version. But primarily, Ximian makes it easy. Installing GNOME is a pain in the ass; you have to download a bunch of packages and compile them in just the right order. Ximian makes it easy by automating the install, and makes things easy afterward with the Red Carpet update service. Insanely easy package management is also something GNOME doesn't do by default.

Finally, Ximian is a company which will provide support to customers who want it. The people who produce GNOME are (while producing a wonderful product) a non-profit bunch of programmers who will refer you to the FAQ or the mailing list if you have a problem. To corporate customers, that one feature is all the "goodies" Ximian needs.

[OT: apt] Re:Extra Software

[legLess]

Can't speak for Debian (but come on, apt often still leads to dependancy hell, which means that things don't get installed).

I've seen the thread below this, but hate replying to ACs :).

I've used nothing but Debian for years and I've only had dependency issues in two situations:

• First install on a new system, when apt is still trying to get a working base config.
• Installing packages from unstable, which is always caveat emptor.

Not that apt is perfect or anything - some people will happily tell you it shits roses, which ain't the case. But I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to manually mung a package or any other files apt controls. Files which control apt - sources.list and whatnot - I do change every now and then, but mostly as mirrors appear and disappear.

Not that it doesn't have a bit of a learning curve. Apt sometimes isn't smart enough to figure things out on its own and needs intervention. But in those cases you can nearly always use apt's (or dpkg's) public interface to solve its own problems.

So ... I don't want to evangelize or flame yer ass, but depending on what you want from a computer you might try Debian again. Red Hat is easier to install, comes with more stuff OOTB and is more integrated; Debian is easier to customize and keep stable and up-to-date.