Coding The Future Linux Desktop [updated]

the.jedi writes "With the release of GTK+ 2.4, and Gnome 2.6 due out some time next week, it seems of some the Gnome developers are looking at how they'll be coding Gnome and the rest of the Linux desktop. Havoc Pennington of Planet Gnome has written a short blog pondering and analyzing the available options as coders move towards high-level languages like java and C#. He gives a good overview and assessment of technologies like mono, OO.org's UNO framework, as well as other ways of tying new languages to the existing code base. An extremely interesting read for desktop linux hackers everywhere." Update: 03/17 14:44 GMT by T : Speaking of the future of Gnome, aeneas writes with a list of Gnome 2.6 release parties around the world (linked from gnome.org/start/2.5).

Comments

Next week I will be coding the Linux desktop:

[Realistic_Dragon]

[] in C
[] in scheme
[] in mono
[] in asm
[X] in a penguin suit
[] whilst eating a banana
[] upside down
[] badly
[] perfectly
[] in an easy to use fashion
[] as a placeholder for my terminal windows
[] to look just like Windows

Re:Next week I will be coding the Linux desktop:

[Anonymous Coward]

[X] in a penguin suit

And the week after that Scott McNealy will do the same.

Re:Next week I will be coding the Linux desktop:

[robbyjo]

For Slashdot tradition completeness sake:

[] with Cowboyneal

or

[] I don't code in Linux, you insensitive clod!

These languages are all outdated!

[seguso]

How sad: the only alternatives taken into account by Havoc are C#, Java and C++. If only the open source movement decided to embrace Mercury (logical paradigm) or Haskell/Clean (functional paradigm), and build .NET-like infrastructures for them, their productivity would be so increased that that they would surpass Microsoft before longhorn comes out. Instead, you go check and find out that the Mercury and Haskell projects are sponsored by Microsoft. Also ML and Prolog are being ported to .NET. Well, I suppose we (the OS movement) will get what we deserve for our lack of foresight.

Re:Eeek...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah. Why should we ever do research into something new when we could just use the good old comfortable stand by. Nothing new can possibly be better. That's why I still use punch cards.

Re:Eeek...

[Ada_Rules]

I am asking same question again - why Linux world need to copy everything from Windows world? Do not integrate, do not unify, be free.

Thats an easy one to answer. We could cut to the chase and just copy everything directly from the Mac, but it is easier to let Windows copy it from the Mac first to work out the portability kinks... Then we can copy it and do it right the third time in Linux :)

Re:Community standards...

[maxwell demon]

I'd love to adopt Linux but am still trying to mount /dev/clue ;-)

Well, that's easy. First, download the latest 2.6 kernel (/dev/clue on 2.4 kernels is still experimental). Use a vanilla kernel, the clue patch is probably not working with the kernel your distro may offer. Then get the clue patch, apply it, recompile (configure the clue as module, building it directly into the kernel is not well tested), don't forget to make modules && make modules_install. Install your new kernel (if you use LILO, dont forget to call /sbin/lilo) and reboot. Type modprobe clue. Then look in the proc filesystem if clue has properly initialized. If not, you might have to create a /etc/clue.conf for your system (see the Clue-device-HOWTO for details, but beware that some instructions there are out of date, so check the CHANGES file of the current release). As soon as everything is running, there should be the clue device in you /dev. Now you need to activate the clue filesystem (installed together with the clue device, just do modprobe cluefs). Now you can just issue the corresponding mount command (the exact options can be found on www.cluefaq.org), and voila. To have your clue activated and mounted automatically, you should adapt your modules.conf and fstab.

You see, it's really not a problem, is it?