Slashdot Mirror


An Interview with Jeff Waugh

An anonymous reader writes "LinuxWorld has published a nice interview with Jeff Waugh, one of the core members of the GNOME community. In the interview Waugh talks about the upcoming GNOME 2.6, his views on software patents and on the involvement of the big vendors in the GNOME development process. Waugh is the current chair of the GNOME release team."

19 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. GNOME by Tom-the-Great · · Score: 1, Informative

    I have always used GNOME, so I am excited that a newer version will be released. I am a little behind, I am still using the GNOME version that came with Red Hat 7.1 :(

  2. Re:I'd love to Gnome out! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    try garnome. It is a great 'installer' for gnome. In reality it is just a bunch of makefiles and scripts that fetch, unpack and install packages in order of dependency.
    http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/garnome/
    It worked great on my RedHat box, but not sure if it will work on OSX.

  3. Re:I'd love to Gnome out! by This+is+outrageous! · · Score: 2, Informative
    So anyone know an easy way to get Gnome on an OSX box?

    Google is your friend, the first six hits (after which I stopped checking) all send you to the right place.

    --
    This is...

    O
    U
    T
    R
    A
    G
    E
    O
    U
    S

    !

  4. Re:Gnome or KDE by Horny+Smurf · · Score: 0, Informative

    KDE 3.2 is noticably faster than GNOME 2.whatever. KDE is also more like windows than gnome (which is more like motif). You might want to look at Lindows, which uses KDE for the GUI. HTH.

  5. KDE and Gnome *do* run side-by-side by jonathanbearak · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't understand how people keep saying that KDE and Gnome don't work together. They're different environments, but all they're parts are pretty darn interchangeable. A while ago, for the heck of it, I replaced gnome-panel in Session prefs with kicker. Worked perfectly. After reading your post, I called kwin --replace to switch from metacity to kde's wm.

    And OO.org ... that's for running across OS's, not KDE/Gnome. Besides, Native Widget Framework is due for the next major release AFAIK.

    Mozilla ... it uses gtk+ or gtk2, many of which would consider to be (sort of) Gnome. XUL is not a KDE/Gnome issue. Like OO.o, it's another platform issue.

    Gnome and KDE don't need to converge. At this point, they're aiming at different markets. KDE is uber-customizable. Gnome is focusing on KISS usability issues. The important backend stuff is already being taken care of via freedesktop.org.

  6. Freedesktop.org is the fulcrum point by Ars-Fartsica · · Score: 3, Informative
    A great deal of work is taking place to push commonalities up the food chain to Freedesktop.org. Mostly this is X related, but I suspect this will grow over time into a true interoperability effort.

    Once we've reached a point where the projects are not duplicating effort needlessly, we can truly say vive la difference with no guilt over wasted efforts.

  7. gnome 2.5 by prockcore · · Score: 4, Informative

    I'm using Gnome 2.5 (Subscribed to the 2.5 channel in Red Carpet, automagically upgraded everything for me). I have to say that Nautilus in the 2.5/2.6 branch is amazing.

    How amazing, you ask? It's as fast as gmc used to be. Although it is a little strange to switch back to the old OS9 style Spatial Finder style of file management.

    Things are a little buggy, Nautilus crashes every once in a while, and Evolution sometimes doesn't quit correctly. But in general, the whole desktop is great. Gimp1.3 is super sweet, and finally supports re-editable Text layers (ala photoshop)

    1. Re:gnome 2.5 by prockcore · · Score: 2, Informative

      hah. Try konqueror 3.2.
      Blows the pants off nautilus.


      No, it really doesn't. The new Nautilus is perfect. It handles files, it's clean and simple. It's the least cluttered file manager I've ever used. Konq on the other hand, is as unweildy as Explorer.

      There's even a thread by the konq devs talking about how nice the spatial nautilus is and how they want to do something similar.

    2. Re:gnome 2.5 by prockcore · · Score: 2, Informative

      I can't seem to find the link to the thread in google, but here is the blog entry that I think kicked the thread off:

      http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/view/218

  8. The reverse? by Gyan · · Score: 4, Informative

    Waugh: The whole point of the patent system is that they're supposed to be obvious things. But there are a lot of things in computing that are unobvious to a point

    Umm, isn't it the opposite? Only those insights and ideas which are "non-obvious".

    1. Re:The reverse? by jdub! · · Score: 4, Informative

      Yeah, the interview was done in the middle of the linux.conf.au wireless area, with a tape recorder. It seems a fair few things were lost along the way. ;-)

  9. Re:I'd love to Gnome out! by caseih · · Score: 2, Informative

    yup. fink install gnome-bundle. or fink-install [gnome-package-name] to install individual components. I did this and it took about a day of compiling off and on, but I have a full gnome desktop that I run on top of the normal OS X desktop (turn off nautilus, use quartz-wm). On the left side I have the normal OS X panel, and on the bottom I have a small gnome panel. The best of both worlds.

    See the fink home page for more information. But really, it's not hard at all.

    Michael

  10. Re:Smart People by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    gtk 2 renders slower due to internationalization added when gtk 2 was being worked on. Its much harder to render when you have to be able to render in everyone's native language.

  11. Re:Desktop Apps by mcrbids · · Score: 2, Informative

    I keep a windows box with Quicken around for that.

    Dunno about you, but some time ago, I put a version of Quicken5 for DOS on a Linux system in FreeDos using DosEMU. I can now access this instantaneously via SSH from any computer in the world on the Internet, with a very high degree of security.

    Nice. Very, very NICE.

    --
    I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
  12. Re:Speaking of GTK 2.4 by anarxia · · Score: 2, Informative

    From the same page:
    "A timescale of 8-9 months seems reasonable; that is, a final 2.4.0 in late August or early September. As always, we're a bit late, so our current target date is early in 2004."

  13. Re:Here is the roadmap by claes · · Score: 4, Informative

    There is more to convergence than just toolkits. It is unfortunate that every comparison between Gnome and KDE always involves comparing toolkits and the differences between them. A desktop is so much more than just the stuff that builds the GUI. Actually, I think we should stop talking about desktop at this point, since the "desktop problem" is more or less solved. I would say both Gnome and KDE have accomplished what was envisioned at the point when the KDE project was started. I say there is a need for a new vision now, something that goes beyond just the simple toolkits on the desktop.

    Convergence can take place in a number of areas. The configuration problem needs to be dealt with. Ideally, all programs should have a common configuration mechanism. Apache, Samba, mail servers, X, drivers etc should be easier to configure. There is a need for a common approach to these problems. This is a major problem to solve, since it needs cooperation and a common vision between all developers, not just the desktop developers.

    Better hardware handling. There is work in progress here, and it is more important than most other things going on in KDE or Gnome.

    Documentation and help systems. Every program should deliver documentation in a way so that can be integrated in a common help system. It should contain relevant metadata, be easily translatable, viewable in different environments. The information about available programs in the system today is scattered: there is information in the package management database, in the man pages, in the doc directory, in the menu hierarchy, but it is loosly coupled and it is not easy to find the documenation given the .desktop entry in the menu directory. I believe the free software community should define a metadata format like the one that freshmeat uses. Every tarball should include descriptions in a common format, and it should be usable in a number of contexts. There is a need for a distributed web of metadata. Today it seems the metadata is centralized in the package repositories and on freshmeat. There is a gap between description of packages and descriptions of the programs they install. Every available application needs good descriptions. Not just "Mozilla" "Web browser". "Konqueror" "Web browser".

  14. Evolution Dataserver version 2.0 by axxackall · · Score: 3, Informative

    Something magical is upcoming. I've tried to find anything about Evolution Dataserver version 2.0 mentioned in interview, and all I found so far were references to cvs. Looks like apart few developers accessing thisnew wombat no one else knows what it is, how it is designed and how it works.

    --

    Less is more !
  15. Re:Waugh ? == Most hated ! by Coverfire · · Score: 2, Informative

    Can you support any of that with facts? Examples from IRC, or the GNOME mailing lists? I seriously doubt it.

  16. Re:LGPL by donscarletti · · Score: 2, Informative
    If you don't like the LGPL you are in a little trouble because all the KDE core libraries are licenced under the LGPL KDE Licencing policy as well. You will find that no KDE library can be anything tighter than LGPL and many of them are far looser

    It is QT that is duel licenced under GPL and QPL but that is not part of the KDE project and they are connected very little except of one depending on the other.

    --
    When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem