Slashdot Mirror
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."
What a horrible review.
This thing was all of 10 sentences, contains no detail, and just plain sucks.
Can we have a _real_ review, by someone competent, please? Perhaps one that actually took more than 3 minutes to write, and has some detail?
Is it just me, or does this review amount to little more than "Ximian Desktop reorganised my menus nicely for me". It seems hardly worth posting on Slashdot at any rate.
It doesn't even have screenshots! I thought it was accepted here that reviews without screenshots are worthless?!
It's more like a long blurb. Where's the beef?
............. kris
"I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me."
You do? I never have.... ALL distros I have ever used that set up a KDE or GNOME desktop for you, have a web browser, normally Mozilla/Konqueror.
Personally I snarfed the Ximian artwork/theme and stuck with my RH9 desktop. It does everything I need, and is pretty well organised. Nonetheless, for business I would definately consider it, if only for the integrated OO and printing work.
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?
Sadly, that was more informative than the review itself.
For Redhat 9 user, there is a serious problem with rpm db conflict. It has been reported here, so install at your own risk.
I searched for quite a while, trying to figure out how to change the default browser for XD2 from Galeon to Opera. I always like to write up tutorials on little things like this when I come across them, so you can find that info here.
--It's Pimptastic!--
It's new and, uh, stuff.
And new stuff is cool!
Think I could make headlines on Slashdot?
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
Geez, something really stinks here.
First, a really lame and pathetic review gets posted to
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
What an abuse of power.
With the recent thread on the decline in white-collar jobs.. I'm not surprised, when they post nonsense like this to some of the world's biggest sites.
I think it's time some of the editors were given the finger and let some nice Indian people give us quality links for $5 an hour. Slashdot would live on, have more money, be of a higher quality, and so on. (CmdrTaco could stay on as general manager though.)
Normally reviews are cluttered with screenshots or useless information about how a product actually functions and is better than another product. Or even worse where they talk about limitations that a paticular product has over something else and recommend a best fit.
This review was exactly what you want, very little useful information, a claim around it being better without really explaining the short-falls of other options, and a killer feature of recognising menus, which is clearly the most important element of a suite of products that aims to present a user-focused simple desktop solution.
I applaud the Slashdot editors for doing away with reviews that leave us informed or challenged and have instead opted for reviews based just on opinions of someone only a few grades above Joe Sixpack.
This is truly a change for the better on Slashdot and I look forwards to the Windows Server 2003 review where it tells me that installing IIS6.0 was a breeze.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Bruha writes "Lewt [THAT'S ME!!!] over at Warcry News Network has written his [MY] review for Ximian Desktop 2 targeted at the home users that are looking for a good desktop solution. He [I] 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. Thanks for reading my crappy so-called review, boosting my site's traffic and increasing my Karma, my pageviews and my ad revenue.''
Since many of you do not have the time to read such an elaborate, sprawling column, allow me to summarize:
"0MGz!!!1! X1m14N 1Z t3H r0X0R!!!1!"
You will note that, in summarizing, I have attempted to remain consistent with the author's breathtaking command of the English language, meticulous attention to detail and stunning grammatical prowess.
It seems to me a trifle thing to use the same package names your vendor does and work within how things in your distro are already done.
Never overestimate the end user. -jeramy b. smith
I stronly suspect Ximian marketing pay /. to post articles about XD2, mono, etc
/. editors searched long and hard and eventually found a positive (but unfortunately lame) review (DEF positive review: a review that doesn't say something along the lines of "gnome is just a dock, XD2 is an expensive dock with a better default theme")
the
right now Ximian PR persons are composing angry emails to cmdr'taco, demanding a refund.
DISCLAIMER: this is only a conjecture
Before adopting WHATWG, read the moonlight.NET EULA [http://www.microsoft.com/interop/msnovellcollab/moonlight.mspx]
You can download the installer and packages seperatly and point the installer at the files, the installer supports it. (though I can't vouch for how well, not having tried it.)
find the files at one of the Mirrors
I installed it the day it came out. I've been mucking with it for a week now and have some observations.
1) What is the "integration" with OpenOffice? Aside from a different splash screen? OK, my theme fonts come across to the user interface, and it uses Ximian icons now, but it loads (the first time) as slowly as ever.
2) They should have left the GDM splash screen scheme alone. It took a while to figure out how to replace their splash screen with my old (custom) one.
3) Mozilla is broken and shouldn't have been released. When on a page that uses javascript to open a smaller window (like TV Guide listings is where it can easily be reproduced) then sometimes the text in the child window is randomly truncated. There are other bugs but that's the most glaring.
4) Ximian cripped Galeon so that it can no longer use themes!!! Bad Ximian.
5) Ximian's installer destroys a users custom menus even when told to leave them alone. My RedHat "system tools" menu is gone, along with my Crossover Office menu. There's got to be an easy way to restore my old menus but I haven't found it yet.
6) The RedHat "alert" icon no longer works. I miss it - it was a nice way to tell instantly if there were any updates (yeah I know, RedHat sends out emails for their updates, but I still miss it).
7) There are some nice improvements like the "network proxy" setting that doesn't workin the default RedHat 9 install works now, so you only need to set the proxy once, and panel applets that need network access actually work now.
8) I know this sounds harsh but overall I do like it. Bugs have been filed so we'll see how it goes in the next few weeks...
No, everyone's complaining because it was a badly written, uninformative and utterly useless review. Don't try to pawn it off on people just not liking what you want to hear, it's not going to work.
1) Read the definition of "review" in a dictionary. I don't think you fully grasp the meaning yet.
2) Learn to write. You know, properly. "Redcarpet really looks cool." Oh, wonderful. What looks cool about it? Guess you forgot that part..and just about everything else that entails a review.
3) Make sure you've finished one and two before you ever submit a story again, if for nothing else than respect for the other visitors.
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.
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
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."