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Coding The Future Linux Desktop [updated]

Posted by timothy on from the they'll-use-keyboards dept.

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).

2 of 700 comments (clear)

  1. Re:What happened... by Bluesman · · Score: 2, Redundant

    >They added support for one more language, to the other ones out there.

    But...they haven't. The only languages supported acceptably in the environment are C, C++, and Python. Maybe Perl. Maybe Scheme. I haven't checked lately, but I doubt it. With every API change they make, they break a ton of bindings, and it's tough to keep up. cl-gtk and clg are not up to date at all. Last time I checked, I couldn't compile either on FreeBSD, or run the HelloWorld example on Linux. This was two months ago.

    Not to mention, having language bindings to GTK is a far cry from the original idea of having language interoperability through CORBA. With the current development tools, writing a stable "C and Perl" Gnome app is NOT easy. You basically have to extend the C program with run-time dynamic linking, which you can do without Gnome anyway.

    Gnome as a development platform is a mess. If they had stuck to the original goal, "switching" to a new language would NOT even be an issue. It would be a matter of replacing components written in one language with another. If there were a proper interface, the language and run-time wouldn't matter.

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  2. Re:Dump X11 by mrnick · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Well, at least you think so... This was modded down as redundant. I wish people would at least post a response if they are going to mod a post. Slashdot should make that a requirement in fact.

    Nick Powers

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