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Sun Mad Hatter Linux Desktop Revealed
magellan writes "Sun has released screenshots of its upcoming Mad Hatter Linux desktop. Mad Hatter includes GNOME, StarOffice, Evolution, and Mozilla. Sun has made minor modifications to Gnome to make it more familiar to Windows users. Sun's Mad Hatter, along with SuSE's new push on the desktop, could make Linux on the corporate desktop and laptop a bigger reality."
If windows is so bad why do we keep trying to copy it?
fp
I can make my fluxbox/kde/gnome desktop look just like this. I guess its the fact that it runs on Solaris.
Speaking at Defcon 12 - Credit Card Networks Revisted: Pen
maybe i'm a big geek, but whenever sun releases something new, i get all giddy.
scott king
i like it, long lives gnome!
Nice, but I like the beta redhat screenies better: https://listman.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-list /2003-August/msg00117.html
Gnome sure can be pretty - it mught be time for me to switch back from kde....
Personally its not God I dislike, its his fan club I cant stand (bash.org)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
What's the obsession with hats?
--
Violators will be prosecuted and prosecutors will be violated.
but promising! Clearly, Sun has cooped something that looks good. Let's hope they'll be a nice player and release this vor x86 as well.
At the end of the planet of the apes, Charlton Heston discovers that HE IS ON EARTH!!!
Sounds good, I could do with a bigger reality...
THis is good news. I will be making 500 users of our call center to use Mad Hatter. If we had to pay for Windoze licenses will would not make it. It is way to expensive.
i agree. woohoo for linux, indeed. and verily go linus.
but...
YOU STILL FAIL IT!
But it looks like the finished product won't be ready for the enterprise yet. However it seems to work pretty good together with laptops.
Proud patriot and republican voter.
I'm so happy Sun is finaly getting a peice of the Linux pie. They have such great hardware and libraries (intelectual) of staunch Unix skill. With Sun joining the Linux world, this would help strengthen their own Solaris operating system in the light of the media because it also may not be immune to the SCO lawsuites. I'm still skeptical about Linux not getting away from SCO. The code was shown and all it takes is one stupid jurry and one battered ("Linux hurt me") witness to go on the stand to say Linux is a Bad Thing(TM). Of course, the SCO lawyer isn't available on the IBM side to stretch the lawsuite out a couple centuries, but who needs lawyers when you have Truth? Remember, Truth is sovereign. In Slashdot Land, this is not a troll; Slashdot Trolls you!
Named after their target audience? Risky.
Over at LinuxWorld, Sun was demonstrating the Mad Hatter desktop. However, it wasn't just Mad Hatter on a single computer, rather it was set up on dummy terminals connected to a network computer, with a login simply being a smart card inserted into a reader within the terminal. So, what's special about that?
Well, now imagine if your work (well, porn watching) was interrupted by a nosey boss (or mother). All you have to do is yank the card out, the screen locks itself and renders itself ready to other users. You can go on to another more private terminal and simply stick your card in, and presto - everything you were doing is now displayed on the new terminal. (back to porn!)
Cool stuff, but fairly much in competition with LTSP.
How many desktops does linux have now? 20?
Unless there is only one desktop, you don't have a standardized system for businesses. Personally, I think KDE is a better option for businesses, since it's hardware requirements are much less than gnome's, but that is just my opinion.
It's still good to see companies making a drive to make linux more user friendly and usable for the masses.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
Did anyone notice the moz shot with the (I think) modern theme? Any clues as to why they wouldn't implement a GTK-based version of Mozilla to help get that unified feel they need for corporate desktops?
I always think it's great when another hardware manufacturer sees the light of open source software. But when it's coming to sun the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is saying.
Here we have Scott McNealy telling people ""Don't touch open-source software unless you have a team of intellectual-property lawyers prepared to scour every single piece" of open-source code. " yet they're also releasing an open sourced distribution of Linux.
What's the deal with Sun? One minute their CEO is in a penguin suit extolling the world starts with open source, then it's Solaris will save the world, then it's Linux is doomed because of the SCO thing, etc.
I wouldn't want to support someone so wishy washy
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
It does not have to look like Windows to be user-friendly. Yes, many people are familiar with the Windows interface. Look at OS X. It's not like Windows, it's probably the best user interface out there.
Let's get a unique, yet intuitive interface for Linux, not a copycat.
IANAL, but naming your Linux distribution Hat is pretty close to the fine line.
:-)
Oh well, they'll probably call the final version
something lame like "Sun Enterprise Linux Desktop"
and the whole thing will be a non-issue, if it ever was to begin with
I would have expected them to create a theme for Mozilla that fits better with the Gnome theme they're using. It would make it look a lot more polished.
Heh heh. Just checking your reflexes.
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
Cool, now show us looking glass. I've been looking forward to a 3D desktop for a while. Unless croquet is in overdrive this is my best bet I suppose.Hopefully they incorporate the 'portal' idea and allow for a 'ground'. I think the portal idea is the most innovative idea for the desktop since multiple desktops, (or insert whatever).
I do security
what the hell is a mad hatter ?
more like YOU FAIL IT! lol
OMG!
tell me that ist not true!!! tell me that i am not really seeing a "Control Panel" item in that menu... this is just an illusion...
wake me up!
Scott has ba dnightmares of a past opensource movement resposnible for opengroup and OSF1
:)
:)
Sun competed by using divide and conquer
Thus the recent move of licensing something from SCO Group scum..
However right now as opposed with open group Linux devs and user far outnumber SUn employees
I think Scott has met his match is scared
Don't Tread on OpenSource
Dude, if you'd ever had to work with CDE (Sun's desktop) on Solaris, you'd realise ANYTHING is better! (And yes, I have had to!)
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Those screenshots look VERY similar to Windows XP. Why copy it if Microsoft is _SO_ evil and Windows is _SO_ bad??
I'd get it just for the sake of having the Sun logo on my taskbar!
I am a viral sig. Please help me spread.
Anyone knows which fonts they are using on this screenshot for This Computer, Documents and other headings under the icons?
Here we have Scott McNealy telling people "Don't touch open-source software unless you have a team of intellectual-property lawyers prepared to scour every single piece" of open-source code."
Hmmm, did they link with GPC (general polygon clipping library)? It's a prerequisite for building OpenOffice, and is totally non-free. The author of GPC has actually said that anyone using OpenOffice commercially linked with GPC needs to contact him for a license.
Has Sun?
Have you?
Until this is fixed in the main OpenOffice sources, I'll continue to view this project as a sham.
(Posting anonymously to dodge zealot attacks, but check up on it. I speak the truth.)
Why no matter how hard I try my fonts never look as good as everyone elses screenshoots of linux? I swear it shouldn't be this hard! Apoptosis
I've been swashdotted -- Elmer Fudd
Come on, what do you mean it's not clickable? what's so hard about gohere.com ? ;-)
t /2003-August/msg00117.html
Fine I'll do it myself:
https://listman.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-lis
I, for one, welcome our new psychodelic overlords!
I could never make evolution work correctly (albeit in KDE environment), but locale ru_RU.KOI8-R (standard russian localisation) always makes it use unicode with non-unicode fonts now and then. Sun and many US companies think of i18n in the last moment, so for me kmail will still be the mailer of choice for a while.
No, it isn't that I can't go deep down into gconf files and fix some font names (if I am thinking in the right direction - gnome becomes a mystery for me at times like windows registry, you never know where to look for some setting), I am just used to how KDE has lived over font/encoding nightmare of 2.x version and with ttf unicode fonts in Qt it in 99% of cases pics the correct font for the correct place. I cannot say that about gnome.
Guy 1: Yeah, they had like three pictures. .
Guy 2: Yeah, it was awesome.
Guy 1: It looked so unique.
Guy 2: . .
Who cares? These screenshots show nothing special or cool.
Is there a new meaning of unique that marketeers use? Unique meaning "not in the equivalent Microsoft product".
Tabbed browsing - unique to mozilla, workspace switcher, unique to Linux???
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
Sun needs a better theme for anyone to take this seriously. I know themes seem trivial, but it does help to have a nice looking UI if you are going to be looking at it all day. This looks like a step backwards compared to Mac OS X, RedHat's Bluecurve, or early screen shots of longhorn.
Karma: The shiznight, mostly because I am the Drizzle.
From the article:
Project Mad Hatter will include a Web browser based on code from mozilla.org.
Looking at the screenshot, that appears to be Mozilla itself, not a browser "based on Mozilla code." It seems to me like Sun is trying to to make it sound like they wrote the frontend themselves, which doesn't appear to be true. Anyone know about this?
My tase may be totally fucked up but Mad Hatter is ugly. So is SuSE. Sorry Mandrake looks nice stock out of the box and it's pretty taste free.
King Henry, VI part II act IV
"The first thing we do, lets kill all the lawyers."
It's a joke about lawyers sure it is. There are to many lawyers. Do your part.
As you can see I don't care about my karma.
the interface that matters is the applications' interfaces. people are familiar with office. hell, ask most of the windows users if they can do mroe than minimize and close a window and they'll say no. most people are accustomed to a particular application. especially office. sun would be better off just to map /home to /My Documents and make the OO.org UI as identical to office as legally possible. this is even more true for more specific apps,like accounting apps, what have you. that is what holds linux adoption back. most people don't even "use" the operating system, nor do they even care to. they use a tool. they could really care less what the OS is. in fact, they only know what it is when it does nasty things.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
It's VERY well done, and some of the things (like the start menu and the systray) are very well done.
You press start to stop the computer.
You press start... to stop the computer!
And pressing the Logo key between Ctrl and Alt will unceremoniously dump the player out of a fast-action full-screen game.
The "standard" Windows GUI, is quite good though.
The graphical shell lacks some things. Does it have a way to search for file names by regular expressions, by exact substring/phrase, or even by all the words? I can't get Windows 2000 to search by anything other than any of the word stems.
Will I retire or break 10K?
I'v always prefered the look and feel of Gnome desktop and especially gnome apps. Sun choosing Gnome/GTK for its officila distro is a great win for all gnomew developers and users.
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
If windows is so bad why do we keep trying to copy it?
Actually many Sun employees uses Mac OS X at their work.
Including James Gosling, the man behind Java language, who has recently switched to Mac OS X. Here's a quote from his weblog: "One of the nice things about developing in Java on the MAC is that you get to develop on a lovely machine". Interesting words from a man who is VP and Fellow at Sun. But he's the man who can tell what is the best platform to develop Java.
There's even a story about Gosling's switch at Apple.com.
An OS can have a great UI (like Windows), but still be terrible in most other ways (like Windows).
Microsoft Windows is the bimbo that everyone wants to date -- great looking exterior, but nothing underneath the surface. It's it only real purpose is to fuck you over.
Linux is like the mousy looking girl who works at the library. Smart and fun as all get-out, but not necessarily as pretty as the bimbo.
Now Sun is trying to offer a library girl with bimbo good-looks. I say more power to them.
...about you but i plan to stick with my march hair distro.
from the article, corporate users, or actually most people, are more likely drawn by the GUI [than the security], thus most linux distros are now trying to copy Windows' GUI, hoping users will eventually switch over.
for example, users might find the 'preview' feature in Outlook very userfriendly and easy, although it might 'preview' some virus for you.
so, my question is - can linux be so similar to Windows without forsaking the important security?
Didn't Sun kill the Mad Hatter project a year ago ?
Guess not.
I just recall hearing something about Mad Hatter being killed of and Red Hat becoming Suns Linux supplier. Must have hear wrong.
You gotta remember when someone says windows is bad, it is the internal design not the outer GUI, which is good and the sole reason why windows is popular among the non-geek end users. I dont see why it is bad to imitate the user friendly features of it while keeping the strong internals of linux.
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
I have not used Linux before but wish to try it. I have heard that Mandrake is the easiest to install and use, but RedHat seems to be the most popular. I want to make it dual boot and the computer has WinXP on the first hard drive and only mp'3 taking about a 1/3 of the 2nd 80GB hard drive. Will it be easy enough for me to install linux on this computer and which one should I use?
Mac OS X is the hottie who goes all night long and makes you breakfast in the morning.
Mmmmm...I like that.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
Why am I feeling less than impressed. Don't people end up rejecting the branded crippled versions of free software?
Take Netscape/Mozilla for instance.
It looks exactly like XP - I guess that's good for corporate migration?
Is it really that safe to stick your card into so many terminals?
Hopefully in all these distros there will be some innovation and advancement of the desktop concept, instead of a million distros that do exactly the same thing, use exactly the same apps, and never take us anywhere. Well, that would be great for compatibility, but leaves us in the dust. I don't see anything in Sun's distro that differentiates them from any other. Nothing there to sway me from wearing the old familiar Red Hat.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
Did anyone notice the differences between the times on the screenshots from Sun and from RedHat (https://listman.redhat.com/archives/rhl-devel-lis t/2003-August/msg00117.html)???? The Sun's being around 4 AM and those from RedHat being 4 PM.....
Sun keep whining about Microsoft yet they're using Windows as a basis for useability?
because evil microsoft will charge you an arm and a leg for that! it is a good UI, but it's expensive and not open. sun will charge for this stuff, but it probably will be available to download as well.
... until then I aint all that interested. Be nice to have some cheap dumb terminals of fairly consistent quality.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
This isn't "flamebait" - it's an honest criticism.
>>You press start... to stop the computer!
You press start to begin (a synonym of start) the shutdown process.
I'm sure you were trying to be funny. Try harder next time.
This desktop is not targeted at most readers of /. - so don't judge it based on what _you'd_ like your desktop to be.
Linux will _never_ gain any major ground in the coporate desktop world until it looks and feels like Windows. Most non-computer-industry types do not like change--no matter what the benefits are. This project appears to fill that very important hole - something that's almost a Windows "workalike" while eschewing any proprietary Microsoft code.
This *looks* good, a bit cleaner than WinXP & it is laid out a bit nicer. Things like "This Computer" instead of the pandering, cheesier "My Computer" set it apart yet the thing looks instantly familiar to anyone who has used Windows.
Kudos to Sun for finally getting the desktop right.
or does it look like sun is playing both sides of the linux vs. SCO{microsoft/sun} situation?
Hrm, if Ximian can release their own modified desktop, and Sun can release their own modified desktop, why don't we start a project that reintegrates all those features that had been removed or hidden back into Gnome, and call it "Hackers' Gnome" or something? We all know that the Gnome project likes to remove stuff in order to not "confuse" the newbie, so producing a "Hackers' Gnome" could be our chance of keeping all the functionality that we're used to having in Gnome.
Can we *please* not end every Linux desktop submission with "[perhaps this] could make Linux on the corporate desktop and laptop a bigger reality."?!?!?!
*If* it happens (and that's a big "if") it'll take years, and it's entirely likely that it won't. Assuming Microsoft has only 90% desktop marketshare, that's 10% split among Apple, Linux, etc. That means *no one* is even *close* to MS's dominance on the desktop. (Remember the Princess Bride? Think "land war in Asia") So why does anyone think Sun or Mandrake or anyone else is going to be the one who makes PHBs say "Well, gee, if Sun is behind it, I'll switch everything tomorrow!"?
I like Linux as much as the next guy, but this pie-eyed optimism is not getting anyone anywhere. Hell, headlines here oughtta read "Company X introduces Linux desktop that's nicer than last year's; world continues not to care."
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
But that can't be because . . .
/.'s front page.
Netcraft has confirmed . . . SCO is dead
Nobody really knows what SCO died of, but two days ago, their site went offline. It could bave been an attack of mad hackers or the SOBIG worm, or just a BIG ASS WHOOPIN by someone they're suing.
SCO, we will miss you. No longer will your name grace
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
Yep, that's unintuitive. To start shutting down, go to start and then shutdown. That makes much less sense than going to the big K and choosing log off to shut down the computer. You'll have to try harder than that.
Is this a professional product or what?! I'm really embarassed. At least Sun could spend a few bucks on professional designers.
actually looks like a step back from CDE.
:-)
I've never said that about any other interface, considering how I hate CDE
It looks like a cheap clone of win95, just not properly done and with inconsistancies everywhere. I think they should have just used bluecurve or something like that.
Ok, I know I'm going to be flammed for this one, but here goes:
Please, Gnome developers, switch Cancel and Ok to a consistent Ok(LHS) and Cancel(RHS)... Please?!!!
So annoying! I'd use Gnome, be proud of it and recommend to all, if not for this one, single, pull-my-hair-out irritation.
As it is, every time I try to introduce Gnome to someone (Mac or Windows user), that's the first place they stumble. Then I have to say, "Well... Eheh... Why don't we try KDE. Mk?".
Look, it sure seems that the whole left-to-right-reading world thinks this way. I think Gnome is a terrific windowing environment, otherwise.
[puts asbestos suit on, real fast]
There have been some improvments but not quite there yet. I don't see this happening on any large corporation I'm related to. I've seen some medium sized companies migrate to OpenOffice(on win32) ,but changing everything??... not happening.
The last person you want to disturb is the tipical Desktop user. Just upgrading a version of Office makes tech support beg for death after weeks of stupid user questions.
...but I think the software is not. Looking at those screenshots, I sneared. It's no improvement over RedHat's desktop, save for some shinier looking icons (pointless). The arrangement tries to look too hacker-like. We don't want a desktop that looks like most things from themes.org. Overall, this reminded me of what most open source interfaces looked like years ago when only 31337 people worked on them. Again, it's good to see backing from Sun, lending their credibility, but over all, I see nothing impressive about this.
On a more humorous note, they'll be sorry they put that comments form on the bottom...
Join Tor today!
I like being able to position the task bar at the top of my screen and not have it stretch the entire width of the screen. I like multiple desktops and the only thing windows has I wish did a better job of is the oganization of system configuration guis. I said gui for a reason, I don't like having to learn every venders settings and which config files they use to get my stuff working. The control center does and ok job with this, but I hope it improves some in the future. I can make my desktop look as pretty as windows or gnome with kde, so the diferenciator is the functionality and kde has much more of it in my opinion. Namely being able to easily change permisions on menu items as well as orginizing now it looks. I also like being able to menu items as different users. Maybe I haven't figured out how to do such things in gnome yet, but that's the point, it's easy to figure out in kde.
The thing I think will be most problematic for the average user is that installing software is a pain on any UNIX. Please don't mention red carpet as why should a user go to a second application to install software, what if they don't know about red carpet. Installing from the command line (rpms or any package manger) is also not good enough. A user should not have to go in to another metaphor (command line v's GUI) to install software.
Please don't mark me down as a troll am just telling it like it is, and don't think I am saying Linux is not ready for the big time (it is).
Isn't SUN financially backing SCO in their fight? I Don't think this will be GPL'd.
Sun Microsystems: putting insanity into reality
I mean seriously, what kind of company besides sun will name their product "Mad Hatter"?
K
should be built into it too?
I bet less than 1% of the population needs that extra flexibility in the Multimedia Settings control panel.
What IS microsoft's aversion to regular expressions?
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
http://www.computersurplusoutlet.com/viewproduct.a sp?productid=NET-HDSVSs outlet.com/viewproduct.a sp?ProductID=MON-HP7006
http://www.computersurplu
Well we can all see that Sun is now trying to get M$ windows customers to switch to linux...! I think this will be a major push to linux/open-source for companies considering other solutions than M$'s DAMN EXPENSIVE solutions... This will also benefit devs who are SiCK of Sun's old CDE desktop [like me]... LOL, the intresting thing is it's code-name which is 'Mad-Hatter' which probably means Sun is going directly after M$ (as in HATING M$ as always...) ;)
I know you're aware that there's much more to a user interface than look and feel, so I won't go into that.
If Linux is so good, why aren't more people using it? You know that there are fewer Linux users on the planet than Mac users, right?
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
CDE is still X11, so provided they have their tool chains and libraries sorted out from Solaris I can't imagine why stuff shouldn't work. I have no idea about Solaris user-land, is it much different to GNU?
They complement each other, really. It's good for Sun to have Linux to push on workstations instead of Solaris.
Linux boxes make good clients (and servers, usually) for NFS/NIS, Sun's automounter, LDAP, they support PAM, etc.
There's a lot of parallels in configuration and functionality, so it's easy to have admins who can handle and integrate both.
I'm not saying other OS's DON'T play nice, but I've found Sun + Linux a natural match in an infrastructure, moreso even than OSX.
I think Sun sort of senses this, and that's why they tolerate and assist OSS (Linux specifically).
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
A lesson I learnt early on in my business dealings is that you sometimes have to work closely with people you do not trust or see entirely eye-to-eye with. And that you sometimes have to bury the hachet long enough for the two of you to get some common good done.
McNealy, Sun, open-source organizations, supporters have a lot in common; For starts a competitor that has 90+% of markets they're interested in.
Linux only has at most 3% of the desktop market. Now let me ask you, do you have a better way to get a significant piece of the other 97% of the desktop market? A make it a plan that you're in a position to directly execute or initiate, by the way.
If you don't, I think we should just tell Sun thanks, and move on.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
If Sun wants to make progress with Linux on the business desktop, they'll have to make Linux users more productive than Winders users.
This Sun desktop has the same problem with icons that I'm seeing with Red Hat 9. They're huge! The icons and the text are quite large and clunky looking. Same with whatever file manager it is that I'm using out of the box. The icons in list mode are so big and you don't see that many items at a time.
/a/b/c.conf, let me confess: I don't know much about Linux. I've been using Windows for years and am pretty well versed in it, but for a long time I've wanted to switch to Linux, for the freedom, stability, power, what have you. So I'm trying again.
:-)
Now before you flame me as a moron who doesn't know how to tweak
But I can see for myself that the Windows interface does look pretty good and is fairly easy to use. I think the hard-core Linux users miss something when they dismiss everything in Windows. There's good stuff there. I'm willing to dig to figure out how to do stuff in Linux, but I think I'm atypical of Windows users in general.
I shouldn't even post this because I'll probably get flamed in to oblivian, but I'm hoping someone will reply with an answer about how to fix the godawful icons on the desktop
There were versions of CDE for Linux (TriTeal and now XiG make a release). It's not very pleasant.
-- Another informative post from an AC! People who value "karma" etc. are pointless wasters of time. It's just a site. Screw it. There are no professional journalistic standards here. May contain peanuts.
Just going by Google's Zeitgeist, Mac users accessing Google outnumber Linux users 3 to 1.
The Navy buying Macs and installing Linux on them is about as irrelevant as it gets.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
What kind of desktop environment called "Project Mad Hatter" is going to be taken seriously by a CIO?
...
I spend a lot of time with corporate management trying to convince them to make the move towards open-source software, and one of the biggest stumbling blocks is when a serious piece of software has a ridiculous name.
Me: Well, this a multi-user enterprise desktop, with groupware, task-management, exchange-server integration, a full office-suite compatible with MS Office. The great part is that it's going to save you more than 90% in terms of TCO over Micrsoft Windows and Office.
CIO: Great, what's it called?
Me: erm... *mumbles* Mad Hatter...
CIO: (hilarious laughter)
Me:
CIO: No, really. What's it called?
Now, You can get away with it for programming languages, and for some way-out software (though trying to sell a creative director on The Gimp is always tricky), but when you're gunning for the enterprise desktop, wacky names just aren't helpful.
Please, for the sake of those of us actually trying to raise awareness of the Open Source Community, try to bear this scenario in mind.
I fail to see how this is different from any other linux desktop out there. What's their selling point?
Please, can someone tell me where these posts come from? I see them in nigh-on every story, and they make interesting references to Malda and OSDN. The writing style is somewhat imaginative too.
You, the guy writing this: what's the deal? Keep up the good work, anyway.
install cygwin
I do not have permission to install software on a significant number of Windows computers that I use. And does Cygwin (including its installer) work well on Windows 9x, on computers that connect to the Internet through dialup, or on computers whose Internet access is filtered to a whitelist of approved web sites? And is Cygwin XFree86 mature enough to be usable for everyday work?
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sun is one of the two "SCO Source" licensees who are financing SCO's lawsuits.
Sun expands Unix deal with SCO
One might argue that Sun is simply making sure it doesn't get sued, rather than actively supporting SCO. I don't believe that, because in addition to whatever license got, Sun also got the rights to buy 210,000 shares of SCOX stock at $1.83 per share.
I wouldn't want to support someone so wishy washy.
There are two effects here. First, as other posters have pointed out, Sun is a large organization with different people controlling different activities. It's quite possible that the Sun executives who decided to finance SCO are different from the Sun executives who decided to invest in Mad Hatter.
Second, Sun is neither for nor against open source, per se. Sun has their own goals. Sun is in favor of making money for Sun. Sun's decided that Mad Hatter will help them make money for Sun, so they will keep developing and marketing it as long as they continue to believe that.
I wouldn't want to support someone so wishy washy.
You don't have to support them, but you do have to think about what kinds of alliances to have with people whose goals are different from you. Because most of the people in the world are like that.
The SCO connection really bothers me, though. It's not like Sun is competing with Linux -- they are funding a legal attack to kill Linux. Why is Sun doing that? I wish the press would, well, press them about that.
With the standard open source, highly distributed, "herd of cats" development model, it's pretty easy to make incremental changes and copy the functionality and look of another GUI. But to design something New, Different, and Better is a whole different thing, and all but impossible to do with that development model.
I understand that the idea of multiple workspaces (desktops, terminals, etc) is a traditional feature of UNIX, but I rarely use this feature. One of the strenths windows has over Linux is the ability to EASILY integrate applications into the system tray. I rarely get to the point of having 10 windows open, especially when I can have applications like Winamp and AIM reside in the system tray full time. One of my pet peeves of Linux is having to Alt+Tab through three windows for XMMS (player, playlist, equalizer). With this in mind, I can see why using multiple desktops could be helpful, but is it really a necessity?
---
Take it sleazy,
-The Shockmaster
After all, it *is* the main menu.
Agreed. I don't understand why RedHat and now Sun want to standardize on Gnome. It's a piece of crap. Not to mention you're supposed to pronounce it like "GNU". Fucking gasbag Stallman.
but you need to realize that Microsoft and others have poured a lot of money into making it's system very user-friendly -- perhaps a little too much for nerds who aren't used to friends. As such, they front-end of their system (I would like to see a critique based on the actual interface) is very intuitive especially since us kids have been using Windows as long as we've used computers. So the Windows feel and the "this looks like Windows so it should act like it" is actually something we should want. Linux can only catch up in terms of end-user usability, but once it does that, it can then start to innovate. That's what I'm looking towards Mandrake and others to do.
This is my digital signature. 10011011001
GPC is indeed a requisite for building OpenOffice.org for Linux (see http://tools.openoffice.org/dev_docs/build_linux.h tml#GeneratingtheBuildEnvironmentandBuildTools ) .i ndex.html, "This software is free for non-commercial use. Anyone wishing to use the gpc library in support of a commercial product please email gpc@cs.man.ac.uk." OpenOffice.org is non-commercial. It is not sold but obtainable for free from the website, http://www.openoffice.org/. But, of course, it would be more in keeping with open-source work methods if all the tools needed were open source. Thus, if you can create such a tool, or persuade the owner of GPC to open-source his tool,or point us to a satisfactory open-source equivalent, please go ahead. It seems a better strategy than to complain that OpenOffice.org is a sham.
According to the GPC site, http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/aig/staff/alan/software//
Louis
OpenOffice.org
Why is it in every screenshot I see of a Linux desktop the icons are so big? It looks like they're running in 640x480. Certainly higher resolutions can be achieved...
I got your tinfoil hat right here.
... Sun should ship a bunch of copies with a broken JVM not licensed by Sun Microsystems.
they're on robbIE's enemIEs list, & should be ignored/deleted at everIE opportunity.
they took a daze or 2 off, when ROBBie actually posted a few stories about stuff that really matters, so it goes.
He has been contacted, and maintains you'll need a paid license from him if you use OO in a commercial setting. He is not willing to change the license, so that angle has already been tried.
There are some patches to remove gpc, but it breaks features of OO.
A decent open source replacement might be something like libart_lgpl, but fixing this is not a trivial problem, and I'm already doing almost more than I can handle in the open-source realm.
Complaining about this MIGHT be a decent strategy, if it causes someone with more time on their hands than me to do something about it. As it is, few people are aware of the problem. And it's a MAJOR problem -- it's not even legal to be linking a default OO build right now, because the GPC license isn't compatible with the GPL.
The article was actually quite speculative, to be fair, but it is quite irresponsible to put these speculations as facts, but who are we as Slashdotters to judge?
No one can accuse Sun of not making an attractive GUI. Although it does look a lot like Windows. :)
GJC
Gregory Casamento
## Chief Maintainer for GNUstep
From www.redhat.com:
C. "Plays On Words" And Other Actions That May Cause Confusion Are Also Prohibited
There is no connection between the words "Red Hat" and Linux-based computer software, products and services other than the association created by the Red Hat(R) brand of Linux-based products and services. Red Hat, Inc. has created this association by spending time and money to establish goodwill in its products, services and trademarks. As a result, you may not use the words "Red Hat" (together or individually), words with similar connotations or pronunciations, translations of those words, or other words that may cause confusion in the market as a trademark for your products. Some examples of prohibited uses include, but are not limited to, "Red Cap" Linux, "Sombrero Rojo" ("Red Hat" translated into Spanish) Linux, "Redd Hatte" Linux, "RH" Linux, and "Green Hat" Linux.
I don't think this is going to overtake RedHat any day soon, but it's good news for me and people in a similar situation. I've been having lots of trouble getting Linux working on my Sparc Ultra 5, because everything is optimised for 32-bit i86 platforms. I'd would love to have the goodness of Linux optimised for my lovely Sun hardware. Sun's problem was always the software rather than the hardware, and this looks like the best of both worlds.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Removed the non-redistributable GPC library, replaced it with libart. This means not only that we can legally ship OOo, but we import PowerPoint(tm) presentations more accurately as well.
Please, Gnome developers, switch Cancel and Ok to a consistent Ok(LHS) and Cancel(RHS)... Please?!!!
Heh, that reminds me: I was cancelling an online subscription last night, and after verifying my password it gave me a summary screen of what I was doing and had two buttons : "Continue to Cancel" and "No, Do Not Cancel".
I printed it to PDF but haven't put it online yet.
Yeah, I know. That's one version of the ugly, feature-breaking patch I mentioned earlier.
The OO developers need to do something about it... this needs to be fixed by them, not by Ximian's fork of their project. If Ximian's patch works, they should merge it in right away. If not, a correct fix should be their number one priority.
All your fp are belong to me :)
Still, FVWM95 has not helped Linux to penetrate the corporate desktop market even though FVWM95 has been available for at least 3 years.
However, there is good news. The vehicle that is helping Linux to penetrate the corporate desktop market is the powerful 80x86 chips by Intel and AMD. Numerous small American companies (like those in Silicon Valley and Boston's Route 128) are moving en masse away from Unix workstations with crappy processors like UltraSPARC to Linux desktops with powerful processors like the Pentium 4, the Athlon, and the PPC 970.
In fact, the CEO of one company developing radio-frequency chips deploys only Linux desktops and servers. The Linux desktops are powered by Pentium 4s. To quote her, "Linux running on an 80x86 chip creates a desktop that gives 3x the performance and 1/3 the cost of a Sun workstation."
The bell tolls. It tolls ominously for Sun.
OR is exactly the problem with Windows search. I want a switch for ANDing instead of ORing, or at least a switch to sort by relevance, putting ANDed results at the top.
Will I retire or break 10K?
FVWM95 is crap. :)
Will disagree with poster who cites copying of Windows. Who wants it? Hatter looks as good or better than Windows, but what kind of yardstick is that?
Ever since the taskbar things have gone downhill - to my mind, what a terrible GUI design decision...
But then again, I'm spoiled. All I use today is a TiBook. There you have a GUI to copy...
radsoft.net
There's actually some fairly solid UI research that says the OK button should usually be on the RHS of a dialog. People who speak and read left-to-right languages like English tend to scan a dialog box from upper-left to lower-right, and their brains really want to click on whatever is in the lower-right corner of the dialog. Thus, the default button (usually OK) should almost always go there.
I remember reading this in a book on user interface design about 10 or 15 years ago. I think the research was done at apple, but it wasn't an Apple book. It was a collection of articles in a big blue paperback with a poorly-designed walk/don't-walk sign on the cover, but I can't remember the title. Now I may have to go dig through the boxes in my closet.
Something clean for a change. I hate the clutter most Linux distros have. And if it looks like Windows, well maybe it's because the windows design works because of itself, not in spite of itself.
Laminate your card each time before use.
One thing I never quite understood with Microsoft was the shear number of variations of the same OS. Surely having so many variations of the same operating system they are giving themselves a support nightmare? Apple and Sun seem to have two versions of their OSs, server and non-server. This simplifies support issues a whole bunch. Maybe Sun is not such a good example since they are 100% workplace, but Apple on the other hand is found in home and in the workplace.
Generally the only differences between a workstation version of an OS used the workplace are the networking features and the groupware style apps, but then again the latter is extra anyhow. Sure the kernel may be optimized differently, but the core components are architectually the same. Maybe I am missing something, if I am then please let me know?
Although I didn't mention Linux, it too, for any single distro, comes in a limited number of flavours.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
It would be cool to see sun come out with a desktop that well incorporates java. Thing is I suspect this will be yet another crippled distro where "the good stuff" is locked away in some secret container, which means you might as well use vanilla debian or redhat and buy a "cooked" copy of WINE.
Any desktop can have a nice background picture. Trying to improve the screenshot with nice background pictures is just an illusion, a proper screenshot should have a blank background showing menu items and a few application windows open and several screenshots showing this.
--
Analytic & algebraic topology of locally Euclidean meterization of infinitely differentiable Riemmanian manifold
I just tried KPat, and it has nice eye candy, but pysol is the best, and easy to install too.
Yeah, but the real risk is that you KNOW your probably going to catch something if you tap the bimbo. Aisde from syphylis, she's got viruses, and even worms!
JWall: GUI client for IPTables
So, does it have the latest JDK installed? Looks like they took matters into their own hands.
I'm a writer, a poet, a genius, I know it. I don't buy software, I grow it.
The long answer ultimately has to do with usability studies.
Then why, in Windows 2000 Explorer as configured by default, is there a 1-pixel gap between the corner of the screen and the Start menu? It would be nicer if I could slam the mouse pointer against the upper left and then click (Fitts's Law states that the corners are among the easiest screen pixels to hit), but no. Microsoft had to put in a gap between the screen edge and the Start button that does nothing but slow things down.
And why, in the taskbar, does a selected program lighten in Windows 2000 but darken in Windows XP? That difference confuses me every time I work at an XP machine.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Seriously...you could use the 'root' window context menu to arrange your windows as Expose is bragging to do. That was just one of very many tricks (like work area folders). Everything was consistent, efficient, and intuitive.
Some of you posters remind me of the crwod that wathed the Emporer's parade as he showed off his new clothes - wither nobody noticed he wasn't wearing any or nobody dared to have an original thought.
Did any of you even LOOK at the screenshots?
This is nothing new!
For anyone who's installed the Ximian Desktop 2.0, this is deja-vu all over again.
I even re-installed RedHat 9 because I like their Gnome much more than Ximian's.
So big deal. Just because it has the Sun name on it does that make it better?
There's ZERO in those snapshots to get excited about because there's nothing new!
Sun confirms this here.
Sun received an option to buy SCOX stock at $1.83 per share, too.
No, this is not speculative. This is fact.
I don't know if anyone else has already noticed this, but isn't it a little funny to have the java logo in mozilla, which to my knowledge is a C++ application?
Most statistics show Macs at about 4% of the market. Linux generally grabs between 1% and 2%.
I'm really sorry the numbers don't agree with you, but that's the way it goes.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
i love it!
It doesn't matter what the desktop looks like or even how well it works. What matters is how much deskside support it needs. That is the
ONLY
Criterion for corporations to determine if they want to use it. Now if the past two weeks are any measure, when deskside support is too expensive people just don't do it. And when that happens you are just waiting for something to go horribly wrong. And when that happens the support is overwhelmed and they simply start pulling network ports out on their own.
So a useful measure of this new desktop is how cheap it is to run and how much of workload can be automated and administered remotely. The next important metric is how locked down can the desktop be made. Is it possible to head off user inventiveness and build a desktop that can't easily be broken and is VERY resilient and forgiving to user 'stuff'.
Well the only thing I use windows for these days is for games, fully changed to Red Hat 9 now for all my computing needs :-P
So thats one less person using the "unsafe os"
"WebTV: bringing the Internet into the shallow end of the gene pool since 1995" - Martin Bishop
So, let's see, Sun's proposition is that they will "enhance" the Linux desktop by throwing Java in there.
Now, Java is about as proprietary a platform as they come; just to download the specifications, you have to agree to a license that requires any implementation you base on it to pass a Sun conformance test (I'd like to link the license itself, but the Sun site uses some dynamic content that makes that difficult; just click on the download next to the documentation to see the license). If you dare to download the JRE or JDK, the license gets even scarier, with having to donate pretty much everything you do "based" on that to Sun.
Well, it's par for the course, I suppose: the same cast of characters from Sun Microsystems has been trying to replace open UNIX desktop GUIs with something proprietary before, most notably with NeWS. (As an aside, one of the main Java movers and shakers, Gosling, actually sparked the creation of the FSF and GNU Emacs by creating a proprietary version of Emacs.)
Maybe there would be some argument that this is a deal one had to live with if Sun actually had something to offer in terms of user interfaces. But look at what Sun's history of user interfaces: SunView, OpenWindows, and NeWS--not exactly stellar success stories, either in terms of technology or in terms of industry adoption. These days, Sun is shipping Swing, which manages to be bloated, slow, and thoroughly unintegrated with the Gnome or KDE desktops, and OpenOffice, which also manages to be bloated, slow, and thoroughly unintegrated with the Gnome or KDE desktops.
If Sun wants to ship MadHatter, that's their business: Gnome is open source and as long as they comply with the GPL/LGPL, they can do whatever they want. But I think the Linux desktop and UI needs help from Sun about as much as the US needs economic advice from North Vietnam.
"...could make Linux on the corporate desktop and laptop a bigger reality."
Anything above no reality is a bigger reality for Linux on the desktop.
Last week in amongst the Blackout of 2003 and Blaster/Nachi worm taking down the Internet as well as the network at work, MY WINDOWS BOOT DRIVE DIED!
/proc a bit, I figured out that the USB reader gets mapped to a SCSI device. A simple:
/dev/sdb1 /mnt/camera
:)
./configure, make, make install or rpm -i package.rpm isn't exactly rocket science. I typically like to compile the code myself so it's better optimized from my processor and libraries.
Not having the time or desire to replace it, I decided that I would throw my Linux box in as my primary desktop. After a few short days I am happy to report that the Linux Desktop is actually VERY usable and VERY stable.
First I needed an MP3 player capable of working with Shoutcast (streaming MP3's). RedHat decided not to include one. I headed over to source forge and picked up XMMS . XMMS is very similar to Winamp.
Once I had my tunes, it was time to get the core services working i.e. (Printing, Office Automation, and Digital Camera). Since I have an HP printer which handles postscript setting up printing was a no brainer. My color printer is an EPSON CX-5200 attached to a windows machine via USB. I know I can get connectivity via Samba, but I am not sure how the driver is going to work out. I'll tackle color printing later.
Open Office works extremely well, is compatible with MS Office and prints very nicely. For kicks, I went back to Sourceforge and downloaded and compiled the latest version of WINE and then, installed MS Office 97. My first attempt went poorly since the paper clip assistant crashes WINE. I wiped out the install and started over and minutes later I could run MS-Word and Excel under Linux. Let me repeat that, YOU CAN RUN MSOFFICE UNDER LINUX.
Next it was time for getting the pics off my digital camera. I have a USB Compact Flash reader plugged into the USB port. I stuck the compact flash card in and the harddrive blinked a bit but nothing mounted. After digging around in
mount
and VIOLA! Pictures!
Next I needed an image editor. I played around with GIMP, which is very very nice but longed for Photoshop 6.0. I tried to install Photoshop with WINE but had no luck. I googled for help and found the only way to do it was to use CrossOver Office. After downloaded and installing Cross Over Office I was able to install both Adobe Photoshop Elements V2.0 and Photoshop 6.0 . I haven't shelled out for the 7.0 upgrade yet but 7.0 supposedly works as well. Photoshop works well under WINE and I haven't had any problems except with the ALT-key. In GNOME pressing ALT and clicking in a Window is the shortcut for moving a window. You have to remap the ALT-Click to something else and I chose the WINDOWS/Logo key. I never knew this feature existed, but I find it quite useful
I was in bliss... GNOME, Photoshop, XMMS, OpenOffice, MS-Office, Ximian, and Mozilla with everything running in it's own workspace. If you haven't tried Linux as your Desktop, give it a shot. It's not as easy and point, click, install however,
Next I needed to get into work. Using SSH, I created a tunnel into work and cranked up VNC to my Windows 2000 box. VNC was running mightly slow, 40 secs for a screen update. The version of VNC that comes with RedHat 9.0 is pretty crusty so I went and obtained the new version and performance is much better (1-2 sec screen updates). Note: In VNC PRESS F8 get execute a remote CTRL-ALT-DELETE or shuffle clipboard contents.
I also used SSH to create another tunnel and used rdesktop over the tunnel to access a Windows Terminal Server. Very impressive and FAST! Between VNC and rdesktop I can access my remote deskop Windows box at work.
I haven't got any games to work yet. My favorites are Star Craft Broodwar, CIV3, and Age of Mythology. If anyone has gotte
Who the hell is "we"!? ;)
Try "them" ---> http://www.apple.com
is kick you in the teeth and out of my house, you pretentious know-it-all. Don't touch my machine.
I can, and have, made my KDE really purty too. However, that doesn't change the fact that there are very few actual, viable, installable, usable replacements for the Windows apps that people actually use. Sure, it's nice to look at a pretty desktop, for a minute or so...
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
When you write code to create a dialog box in Cocoa, you don't specify the order of the buttons. Instead, the arguments to the dialog box API call include the default choice, alternative choice, and third choice (I think there are specific names for the choices, but that's irrelevant). Then the dialog box created for you places the default choice right-most with the Return key bound to it. The other buttons go to the left in order.
Now, when you create your own dialog box NIB, you need to make sure to follow this convention.
But regardless, if Cancel is the default action, it will show up right-most. If OK (and it is OK and not Ok) is the default, it will show up right-most instead. Of course, you're supposed to use a verb instead of OK, but your choice.
Actually, looking too much like Windows may not be a good idea.
Siemens Business Systems has done usability tests with Gnome and KDE on secretaries and found KDE less usable, because it was to Windows like.
It seams that because KDE looks to much like Windows, people expect it to work exactly like Windows and will quickly be disappointed. Gnome however looks different enough to make the user expect differences in behavior and was therefor easier to use for the subjects.
So maybe we really shouldnt get too close to Windows. (Although too far away isnt good neither IMHO)
Note that this test was about people using a IDE that has been choosen for them, not what IDE would make people more likely to switch.
I also agree with another post that people tend to choose the next local minima instead of the best solution when left on their own. And that's exactly the reason why usability test were created ... dont think it's better, measure it.
The article on newsforge about the testing
Because there is a HUGE bias here. Stuff like this gets ignored while the latest dumb-user-hole gets posted as a "Microsoft hole." Windows is not as bad as it is made out to be, and Linux is LIGHT YEARS behind it in the desktop department. Give Linux the market share Windows has and we'll see how secure it really is.
"Sufferin' succotash."
you will like a linux desktop.
Like it or hate it, the windows desktop is an order of magnitude more responsive than anything put out by KDE or Gnome. The problem though resides in X Winders - it is a massive kludge.
If you want unix with a pretty gui get a mac. Quit offering up this pap that runs on x-winders as a contender when clearly it ain't.
Haven't you heard of Aurora Linux?
Nope. Got a link for the poor n00b?
I'm running Debian Sparc at the moment, but finding it a bit l337 for my liking. I just want something that I can write code on and that my flatmates can use to surf the web, word process etc.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
That's a very good point. I never though much of it, but NeXTStep had it right 15 years ago (and therefore Mac OS X does now).
Close an unsaved document in Edit.app, and you get a dialog saying:
Save changes to UNTITLED.rtf?
[Cancel] [Don't Save] [Save]
Save is the default (activatd by pressing Return)
If you quit Edit.app, then the dialog is:
There are edited windows.
[Cance] [Quit Anyway] [Review Unsaved]
Review Unsaved is the default. Clicking it brings up the aforementioned Save dialog. It makes perfect sense. Much better than Yes/No/Cancel.
"It's better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."
Anyone wonder how Sun is suddenly making so much noise about Linux? They expect us to ignore all the recent backstabbing efforts (regarding SCO FUD) by merely distracting our attention with pretty toys?
Expect a statement along the lines of "but to really get the benefit of the cutting edge Mad Hatter, along with a robust, industrial strength OS, take a look at this Solaris-x86 over here..."
Sun certainly has a trust problem to deal with.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
... on Solaris. I managed to get KDE 3.0 working pretty well, but I must say that the current GNOME 2 desktop from Sun blows. The desktop feels slow in general, but in particular Nautilus is extremely sluggish and unstable. I generally prefer GNOME, so hopefully Sun got it right this time 'round.
For the love of $DEITY, loose != not win!!!!!
Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2000 Data Center, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Professional, Windows NT 4.0 Server, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation, Windows Me, Windows 98, Windows 98SE
Also, don't forget Windows 2000 Advanced Server, not to be confused with Windows 2000 Server. I have no clue what the difference is between them as shipped, but the 2 do exist. I've seen Windows 2000 Server on a shelf at CompUSA. I have only seen Advanced Server available in places that sell to large companies. (i.e. Not your local retailer and not your local mom & pop shop).
(P.S. I own a copy so yes it does exist).I wonder if Sun is using some of Ximian's work here? These screenshots look *way* too much like XD2 to be an accident....
Cheers,
- hawkeye
"...The smart and lazy ones I make my commanders." - Erwin Rommel
The only way that Linux will ever be completely like Windows is if it runs on top of an NT microkernel and is distributed by Microsoft. Linux will never, ever have the same behavior as Windows. Something will be different somewhere and will act differently in the Linux Windows clone, and it just can't be helped.
Even worse than something being unfamiliar is a situation where a familiar environment is presented and the user expectation of a familiar behavior is violated. If you pursue a Windows clone, you will not achieve familiarity; you will only achieve violation of user expectation, and this will scare users far more than the most alien-looking UI imaginable.
Microsoft are the people who gave us Window-In-Window MDI, multi-row tabs, an unnatural button-ordering in dialogs, and the close button next to the maximize button.
To be fair, some of these problems weren't due to the fact that Microsoft was stupid, it was due to the that they didn't want to get sued by Apple. So they took Apple designs that worked and made it different so they could avoid lawsuits (fat lot of good that did them). In making the Apple designs slightly different, in many cases Microsoft also made them not work.
The question we should be asking ourselves is not "do we want linux to be familiar" but "do we want a bad copy of a bad copy?"
To rebut an argument before it happens, some die-hard Linux geek will undoubtedly proclaim I don't know what I'm talking about and point of that Microsoft spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year on usability research to make Windows extremely usable. I would point out to that person that Microsoft also probably spends hundreds of millions of dollars on security research to make Windows extremely secure.
As said before, Microsoft put the button that closes stuff (the 'X') right next to the maximize button. This is possibly one of the stupidest UI decisions ever made, and has probably cost corporate America, at conservative estimate, at least $100 million. (Every time a secretary accidently deletes a letter or an executive destroys his or her presentation) x (total number of secretaries and CEO's) x (number of years windows has been around (~10)) = a whole lotta money.
Unfamiliarity is brief; bad, destructive or extremely inefficient UI lasts for decades.
There is this argument (virtually always presented by techies who don't know a lot about UI design and it's history) that once we migrate everyone to our new and improved "Windows-On-Top-Of-A-Linux-Kernel", we can then get more daring and unfamiliar and achieve true UI and usability progress.
Yeah, right. Who the hell are we trying to fool?
Do you think that once a company switches to a linux Windows clone that they are just going to one day switch to a non-familiar, better linux UI some time in the future? As the code for most linux UI's is Open Source, it's not going to be like it is with Windows or MacOS, where better and unfamiliar UI can be forced into the situation because the software is proprietary and unmodifiable. If the desktop projects try to push UI progress, dinosaur sysadmins and CTO's can merely modify the UI back to it's less unusable, Redmond-clone state.
And keep in mind that in general, once a UI paradigm is established, it stays around for decades. The computer industry has already had two decades of backward UI design; I don't want several more, no matter what license it's put under.
It only gets worse when you realize that if a Windows clone is implemented, and assuming linux does acquire dominance, all the proprietary software folks who port to linux will be using Windows UI conventions for a very long time.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Yet Another Distro
.tar.gz but the system doesnt have it in its package database. Once you force the RPM package to install and fix scripts by hand, the system doesnt know the RPM application is installed since you didnt use Sun's package. Damn.
Now I like the looks of the desktop, the fact that Sun is bringing forward Linux and that my skills will have a bigger market in the future. But yet another distro confuses me. Why anyway?
I can understand Knoppix being based on Debian. It is Debian only prettier, so all debian packages will work with Knoppix. Knoppix also brings great hardware detection with it. Theres RedHat and SuSE, while I hate the fact that these two are incompatible with debian packages, they at least have compatible RPM packages with each other. Theyre also quite big and proprietary which makes it worth learning them. Hate it also that RedHat is not LSB, makes it tougher for software developers to package them for RedHat and SuSE.
Theres Gentoo and Slackware, each in its own niche. Then theres Lindows, Ximian Lycoris all competing with each other on the desktop (I know lycoris is based on debian too). Thats too many distros already. More so than the niches among current Linux users. One step forward is several distros use deb packaging and almost all can install RPM packages. But it still instills dependancy mayhem. Now you have a Sun distro that possibly uses its own packaging as WELL as RPM. So you need to install an RPM package that depends on another package on Mad Hatter. The other is already installed from
And of course you'll definitely have to install all of GTK and KDE dependency libraries to use various X applications. Total install size will exceed 2GB and overall the system will run slower and in the desktop, will have more problems than Windows XP. THATS how badly standards are needed in Linux.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
You're possibly one of the worst trolls ever. Have the mods ever checked your comment history before modding you up?
I can tell by your comment history that you'll never respond to this, but here it goes. First, name the CEO and company. Second, tell me why Sun is doomed. They were, and never will be a big gun in the desktop market. And last, name the "numerous companies" you cited in the second paragraph.
Thanks for your time and I'm sure we'll never hear from you.
Am I the only person that thought the screenshots were really ugly? I'm seeing a lot of posts saying how great everything looks...
:)
First of all, they're using the worst Mozilla theme ever. It doesn't match anything else and sticks out like a sore thumb. And their gnome theme is just so ugly.
I dunno, I guess I'm just used to bluecurve. If it's going to be gnome, it's gotta be bluecurve. Otherwise, just give me blackbox
This is worthy of a Slashdot news story all in itself. This was news to me - bad news.
it's in my head
For instance in this example, why does the logoff button have to be over the start button, doesn't anyone at Sun realise that this is a terrible design decision because if you are a "sloppy clicker" either from being new to computers or having some physical handy cap your will log off the computer.
Also, why does the trash have to be on the desktop?, wouldn't it make more sense to have it as a applet, I mean even Apple who have a religious attachment to their GUI do it this way in OSX
And on the subject of badly implimented Machintoshisms, Why do we still have to dquble click on a PC just because Macs have only one button?.
Couldn't we have somthing better then the start menu, I mean why can't we have some sort of fixed menu where you just go through sub menu's (like how you issue commands in a FPS) then having to go Applications >> submenu1 >> submenu2. If this was the case at least you would be able to build up some sort of mnemonic. ie pressing the window key then 122 to start word or whatever.
What the hell is the clock doing on the right??.
It be fair they do get it right, ie changing the names of my computer and my network places to this computer and network places. A very annoying MS Marketing gimmick, and reducing items to icons on the taskbar.
All in all, This reminds me of a story I once heard that when the japan first whated to moderize their socity someone had the bright idea buying a old diesal engine, and copying exactly, So what they ended up with was a fleet of crappy diesal engines,
Like a developling country the linux community have to learn to abandon what does not work, and favour alteratives that do. Even if linux never becomes dominate on the desktop then we still all win since MS will just knock off our interface ideas (like they do with Apple) for the well being of all users, ie multiple desktops. If we forever follow. then most normal people will think of linux as just being a cheap knock off of windows. Like what we thought of the japan before their auto industry ate ours.
Anyone know where it can be found? Part of the Ximian desktop maybe?
Just because they haven't done so yet, doesn't mean they won't. They could be waiting until the right moment (like when it starts eating their market share in a real way).
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
Mac OS 9 and Linux have the edge on Winshit's gui once again with rollup windows, where double clicking a titlebar shrinks a window to just said bar.
Does the evil OS have virtual terminals? Hell, does it even support serial terminals by default?
I think the biggest turning point for Linux should be the processing power it can offer business users with OpenMosix. If you merge all of the computers in a building, the idle ones can give processing power to the oness in use. If my school did this, they would be able to avoid buying any new equipment for half a decade.
You can't judge a book by the way it wears its hair.
I think that the only "serious" Linux desktop is provided by RedHat. Mandrake just doesn't cut it and Ximian does not make a Linux distribution. Judhing from the screenshots, I can hope that there will soon finally be a viable alternative to the BlueCurve desktop. Personally, I wish SUN best of luck with this venture.
"OpenOffice.org is non-commercial. It is not sold . . ."
Tell that to Red Hat and SuSE, who sell it as part of their distribution. Tell that to Lycoris and Lindows, who sell it as an add-on.
GPL'd software can be sold, legally. If OpenOffice cannot be legally sold, then it is not truly GPL'd, period.
You have to pay attention to details like this, or else they backfire later on.
Title says it all.
MS is about as scared of Linux as I am of your fat geek ass.
They have 64 bit editions for itaniuum, and are developing ones for opetron/clawhammer. Plus the embedded editions of ce, xp embedded, smartphone, ce with telephony, ect.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Maybe i'm just a bit paranoid but when large corporations start tweaking projects like gnome just a bit and calling it "Sun Desktop"... It makes me twitch. Why don't they call it what it is "Gnome" and at least give credit to the oss comunity. Legally, they're fine, but ethically, i feel they should have the respect to use the "Gnome" name.
Yeah, x86 may be cheaper, but can you hotswap CPU's and memory and I/O boards while the machine is still RUNNING like we do on our SunFire boxes? nah I dont think so.. do you enjoy comparing apples to oranges.
I think you're missing the point - This is obviously not an attempt to capture marketshare for Sun--they don't have much chance of ever being the powerhouse they once were, at this point. This is simply a project that delivers a _very_ Windows-y experience under LInux. The other window managers have some of the same attributes as Windows and are Windows-like, but this goes all of the way and even emulates Windows' icons--network neighborhood, "This Computer," "Documents," etc. haven't really been done in the other Window managers yet. This attention to detail- replicating Windows functionality almost _exactly_ - is what will put this on corporate desktops.
"Even better than the Mad Hatter demo was a demo of a futuristic (and open source) project titled Looking Glass. Schwartz termed this "a thought exercise."This was a truly eyepopping demonstration of what I'd call 3D internet computing. Some of the revolutionary features of the Looking Glass interface are transparency and translucency -- you can put one window behind another and see one through the other as though the window in front is translucent. You can also rotate windows. Schwartz moved two windows he didn't currently need off to the side by rotating them along a vertical pivot point (much like swinging back a door). He also showed windows rotating 360 degrees. In fact, one of the windows was playing a video (the same "Java is Everywhere" video) -- the video rotated and played flawlessly (even upside down). Last, but not least, Schwartz showed an music selection application that opens up a set of CDs in 3D." -- http://forum.java.sun.com/thread.jsp?forum=451&thr ead=431411&tstart=0&trange=15
spiff g blablabla nsd
That command will unpack, configure, make and install a tar.gz package of source code. For RPMs:
spiff ri blablabla
and to remove
spiff ru blablabla
Simple, huh? Get spiff here, version 0.6 is coming out v. soon.
If you're happy and you know it read my blog
What does Sun have in Mad Hatter that Novell (nee Ximian) doesn't have in their desktop offering?
I'm assuming that they hope to compete in that desktop niche, where now Red Hat and SuSE also have targeted.
Competition is good; may the best distribution win.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
On the other hand it's hard to imagine buying [i]any[/i] new pc at this point because used ones are so cheap. I bought my current one for $75, and if I wanted Linux I'd just install it for free.
So I guess I'm offering myself up as one of a potential market, and the answer is I can see some buy not all of those like me plunking down the cash for this.
But then again it's not aimed at consumers really but businesses. But maybe that's been one of M$'s strengths. Most computers are sold to businesses, but they are marketed to individuals. Perhaps they get bought by companies because individuals like working with them. That and the fact that i/o has always seemed to be about a generation slower (from the user perspective) on a Mac than on the same generation PC.
You are correct, Redhat and SuSe (among others) sell distributions that include OpenOffice.org. However, the point of my comment is that OpenOffice.org is a free download (hence non-commercial) although commercial distributors such as RedHat, etc., may certainly bundle it in their offerings and sell those. What they are selling is the packaging, their own software, and whatever other elements they include in package, as well as service, etc. Further, OpenOffice.org is not GPL but SISSL and LGPL. louis
This bbj news article reports that due to the recent microsoft virii/wormies, Mad Hatter is being made available now...interesting. They are really pushing it as an alternative to windows.
What is the screen resolution they [Sun] were displaying Mad Hatter at? Now the main thing to remember is how small a price Linux is compared to keeping up with Microsoft licensing. Maybe Sun is showing that a corporation can remain vibrant while keeping their old IT purchases whereas renewing the Microsoft licensing and keeping up with their OS releases would require purchasing new machines with Pentium IV's (or if they are lucky, AthlonXP's). But if Linux is going to be the best barring price alone, it is going to have to come out with a better GUI. My parents just bought a Mac and I am very impressed with how the GUI uses OpenGL/hardware accelleration for even the most basic things. And of course Longhorn will have its own version using DirectX in late 2005...just some points to consider...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Ergh.. FVWM95 looked like ass years ago when I had the misfortune to try it, and it still looks like ass now.
The Windows GUI, whilst slated by most people, has gradually progressed and tidied itself - Windows 95 doesn't look (or behave) the same as Windows 2000 or XP in 'Classic' mode.
FVWM95 does look like Windows 95.. but god knows why we would want that on a desktop now.
Several other users have claimed that a search by file name in a default Windows shell does not need support for a generalized regular expression syntax. I'll grant this for purposes of this discussion.
The point remains, however, that the Windows 2000/ME Explorer search function has no easily discoverable support for ANDing the search terms (rather than ORing them), for searching on exact phrases, or even for searching on whole words (rather than parts of words, so that "MGM" doesn't find "winmgmt").
Will I retire or break 10K?
Ok, this is a really silly, minor, nitpick gripe, but nevertheless it drives me crazy...and yes, keeps me using KDE instead of GNOME: in GNOME/GTK applications, the mouse pointer flops to the other direction (eg normally points to upper left, but changes to point to upper right) when you select menus. That drives me crazy - it's so different from any GUI I've used, or any GUI I currently use, that I could not ever get used to it. And there was no option I could find to change it. It's apparently part of the GTK library.
Did Sun change that? *That* would be a way of making it more familiar to Windows users...