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."

16 of 188 comments (clear)

  1. What a horrible review. by Blymie · · Score: 5, Informative

    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?

    1. Re:What a horrible review. by SkArcher · · Score: 5, Informative

      You could try Here for a slightly more indepth review, or Here for a selection of screenshots.

      Or, perish the thought, you could try Here

      --

      An infinite number of monkeys will eventually come up with the complete works of /.
  2. Pants review by danrees · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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?!

  3. This barely qualifies as a review by Kris+Magnusson · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's more like a long blurb. Where's the beef?

    ............. kris

    --
    "I thought I could organize freedom. How Scandinavian of me."
  4. Worst review ever by Sanity · · Score: 5, Interesting
    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?

  5. RPM db conflict with RH9 by A5un · · Score: 5, Informative

    For Redhat 9 user, there is a serious problem with rpm db conflict. It has been reported here, so install at your own risk.

  6. My Review by daemonc · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.
  7. Re:Extra Software by Blymie · · Score: 5, Interesting


    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.

  8. Time to outsource Slashdot editor jobs to India by Peter+Cooper · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.)

  9. Best Review ever by MosesJones · · Score: 5, Funny


    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
  10. Bruha = Lewt = Karma-Whore by HardcoreGamer · · Score: 5, Funny
    Let me rewrite the intro to more accurately reflect what this is about.

    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.''

  11. Review summary! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  12. Does it still break your system? by jeramybsmith · · Score: 5, Insightful
    My biggest problem with Ximian is that it breaks your distro's dependency tree. Sometiems they will use split packages wheres your vendor doesn't. Installing ximian means you break your upgrade path, now why would anyone want that?

    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
  13. Re:Extra Software by Miguel+de+Icaza · · Score: 5, Funny

    I stronly suspect Ximian marketing pay /. to post articles about XD2, mono, etc

    the /. 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")

    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]
  14. From a real user's perspective by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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...

  15. Re:Hrmmm by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.