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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."
"Well well well, what is he good for?" [Only the aussies here will get this. Nothing on *this* (Jeff) Waugh)]
What a sad state of affairs that this is one of the main topics that the GPL community has to discuss.
More than the progress of the GNU project, more than software engineering breakthroughs, more than new ideas in user interface design, software patents seems to have eclipsed all that.
I used to be excited about computers and sharing ideas, but when the community dedicated to sharing has become a one note wonder, I find myself dulled by such harping on technicalities rather than technologies.
I have been pwned because my
What is the roadmap for convergence of Gnome and KDE? It is good to have choice, but sad to see a fragmentation at the application level. Apart from the different programming languages used in the two, is there any fundamental reason why a common API cannot be defined or added?
Right now it seems that the only solution for applications that want to be totally portable is to bypass KDE and Gnome entirely and use their own libraries (Mozilla, OOorg) and/or X.
Even being able to run Gnome and KDE side-by-side in the same sessions would be a good thing.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Wasn't it supposed to be released on the 2nd?
http://gtk.org/plan/2.4/
New file selector, yum.
After a few lackluster attempts at installing Gnome on my OSX box I have to say that a nice easy step by step instruction would be most helpful.
For many users, all the untarring, compiling and whatnot is a major headache -- akin to grasping the concept of depth of field in photography for me. Once I finally got it, it was super easy, but getting it in the first place was a big struggle.
I guess there's something about the whole process that I either just don't get, or maybe I think it's a lot harder than it really is.
So anyone know an easy way to get Gnome on an OSX box?
Here is the unification roadmap:
KDE: ----------X
GNOME: ------------------->
</biased_gnome_user>
But, seriously, it doesnt make sense to talk about unifying them, as they are built around fundamentally different toolkits. ( Qt uses a modified subset of C++, GTK+ uses C as a base but has a nice C++ wrapper)
So they cant really be unified, though they can be made quite compatible.
I'm personally biased towards GNOME, because as a C++ programmer I love the stl, and thus hate Qt and the moc. But that doesnt mean I really think that KDE will die off: Free code is, after all, immortal.
In terms of the technology, we've basically got all of the desktop applications solved. Between OpenOffice.org, GNOME, Mozilla and a number of other projects, the stack of stuff people generally use on the desktop is pretty much there.
:)
Which really makes me wish that GNUCash was in that group. I do everything (word processing, email, spreadsheets, gaming) on Linux inside Gnome except for managing my finances. I keep a windows box with Quicken around for that. GNUCash could replace that for me but probably not before GNUCash-2 which is supposed to be GTK2. I heard they were short on developers and that was stalling progress on that. I guess personal finance doesn't have much of a place on a business desktop and gets less attention. I've been playing around with SQL-Ledger but thats a bit overkill for my needs.
That aside I love Gnome and am looking forward to 2.6 and Epiphany 1.2.
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.
... that's for running across OS's, not KDE/Gnome. Besides, Native Widget Framework is due for the next major release AFAIK.
... 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.
And OO.org
Mozilla
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.
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.
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)
I've recently been introducing my staff at my day job to GNOME since we are moving away from OpenVMS to Unix. Since HP-UX will be coming with GNOME as a default in future releases, I figured it would be good to get the guys used to it by having them use it on a daily basis for basic work stuff. So far they have taken to it pretty well. The most amazing thing is that some of them actually find it EASIER and more FLEXIBLE than Windows. Thank you for a terrific project!
I try to be fu
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".
Why do you think Linus Torvalds is so popular? He's so down-to-earth about these things and interested in the technology and not the technicalities. This SCO mess forced him into it, but even then he still spits out the choice quotes, like the infamous "crack" comment.
this wasn't flamebait (no one is gonna bother flaming the first part of his post lmao), however, it may have been a bit redundant as this question comes up EVERY TIME an article like this rolls around...now i'm not karma whoring here, BUT there is only one answer:
USE BOTH... Whichever one you like better (and you will, its never a toss up!) use!
replacing it with NEW Folger's Crystals! (lets see if they notice the difference)
KDE is whatever you want it to be. I've got mine set up like OS X --- menubar at top, panel at bottom, toolbars and menus simplified. Out of box, its pretty Windows-y, but I'd wager most KDE users don't use the desktop the way it comes out of box.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Does anyone know about the legal status of Mono? I mean, if Gnome starts using it all over the place and M$ decides to shut it down (they have like a million lawyers, so they can probably do that), won't Gnome be, well, dead? Or at least in a very uncomfortable position?
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 !