Interview with Chris Schlaeger from Novell/SUSE

Fabrice Mous writes "At aKademy I had the chance to talk to Chris Schlaeger about SUSE and their relationship with the KDE community, his view of a Linux enterprise desktop and the speed of development of several key features in KDE. Read the interview at the KDE news website."

Comments

Big Green Thing?

[GR1NCH]

What's the big green thing in the photo?

Re:Big Green Thing?

[aquadood]

The KDE Dragon mascot :)

Re:Big Green Thing?

[cmbofh]

It's Konqi Konqueror

Re:Big Green Thing?

[Dante Shamest]

I think Konqi looks much better in that photo than in SUSE's log-off screen.

Re:Big Green Thing?

[GR1NCH]

Ahh! I see... Sadly I find the Konqi interview more interesting than the one posted above. For a while I liked KDE a lot but its getting too big, and they are only talking about making it bigger. What linux needs is a window manager thats more scalable. So that 1 guy could have his desktop set up in a *box config and another guy could have his set up in a fully loaded KDE type config, and yet they both use the same toolkits and stuff. Standardization wont happen if all they do is keep bloating KDE, there are too many people that love thier efficiently little *box configs.

Re:Big Green Thing?

[Coryoth]

What linux needs is a window manager thats more scalable. So that 1 guy could have his desktop set up in a *box config and another guy could have his set up in a fully loaded KDE type config, and yet they both use the same toolkits and stuff.

The closest thing to that right now is GNOME and XFCE. GNOME provides your big heavy "provide all the libraries you could need" approach (which is very useful for most people), while XFCE provides a fairly light fast Desktop environment. Both use GTK2, and share a certain amount of configuration.

Yes, XFCE is not as light as a pure *box WM, but then it is actually providing a reasonably rich desktop environment rather than just window management. It is a remarkably fast and light DE all things considered.

Jedidiah.

Novell/SuSE?

[gatesh8r]

No no no no! You got it all wrong! It's GNU/Novell/GNU/SUSE. Sheesh. RMS will be here shortly...

Re:Novell/SuSE?

[xlyz]

No no no no! You got it all wrong! It's GNU/Novell/GNU/SUSE

ehi! shouldn't we mention linux as well?

Re:Novell/SuSE?

[aurb]

Well, actually, it should be GNovell (GNovell is Not Novell) and GNUSE (GNUSE is No USE).

Re:Novell/SuSE?

[pete-classic]

This joke is getting awfully tired.

RMS only wants "Linux" systems that use the GNU tools to be called GNU/Linux. He doesn't want, for example, embedded systems that don't use GNU to be called GNU/Linux. He doesn't want the Linux kernel to be called GNU/Linux. He just wants systems that are constructed predominantly from GNU code to be called GNU/Linux.

Linux is great, but we wouldn't get very far without GCC, the binutils, bash, the coreutils (which include chmod, cat, su, ls, tail, and on and on), etc.

Just a little credit where credit is due. This seems reasonable to me.

-Peter

Re:Novell/SuSE?

[falonaj]

Linux is great, but we wouldn't get very far without GCC, the binutils, bash, the coreutils (which include chmod, cat, su, ls, tail, and on and on), etc.

Unless you are working in text mode always, you also would not get very far without X and without a window manager / desktop.

This is why I like the abbreviation KGX (Kde/Gnu/linuX/X). Credit where credit is due.

Re:Novell/SuSE?

[pete-classic]

Well, GNU covers Gnome. To my chagrin it seems to be the most popular desktop. Getting X in there would be good, but you can operate without that stuff.

IMO the "OS" is kernel plus the basic tools I mentioned above. So I would want to call the OS GNU/Linux.

-Peter

Re:Novell/SuSE?

[falonaj]

it seems to be the most popular desktop.

My impression is different, but it is impossible to get reliable statistics.

IMO the "OS" is kernel plus the basic tools I mentioned above.

I think it depends on how you are using your computer. For me the most important thing is the desktop I use, because this is what I really work with. To the normal user, a computer running KDE on top of Linux, GNU and X looks and behaves in exactly the same way as one running KDE on top of BSD and X.

The perspective is very different of course once you use the command line tools a lot. For some people, the desktop environment is only a very small part of their desktop experience. For others, this is all they see and deal with.

Re:Novell/SuSE?

[cbr0005]

I, for one, welcome our new GNU/* Overlords.

Re:Novell/SuSE?

[Billly Gates]

BSD runs fine with just the posix utilities and libraries. Only gcc is used so this makes the emphasis on gnu kind of unimportant. There were many free c and c++ compilers back in the 90's and if gnu c was not around, we would use one of them and they would probably still be updated.

Besides for something to be gnu all of it needs to be gnu. Go read the license?

Only debian with pure non free software even meets this requirement.

Re:Novell/SuSE?

[pete-classic]

My impression is different, but it is impossible to get reliable statistics.

My impression is based on the default desktop on the majority of major distros.

I think it depends on how you are using your computer. For me the most important thing is the desktop I use, because this is what I really work with.

I disagree that this determines what components are part of the OS. For a huge swath of PC users Outlook fits that bill. You will NEVER convince me that Outlook is part of the OS ;-) Even Microsoft agrees with me on this!

The system is usable without the GUI. It is not without the core tools. You can get by without ls, but not without init. (I'm honestly not sure if the init on my system is GNU or not, though.)

To the normal user, a computer running KDE on top of Linux, GNU and X looks and behaves in exactly the same way as one running KDE on top of BSD and X.

You seem to be arguing my case here. Since GNU/Linux and BSD are defined as different OSes, X and KDE or Gnome must not be part of the OS.

Tell me where I'm not understanding you, here.

-Peter

Re:Novell/SuSE?

[pete-classic]

BSD runs fine with just the posix utilities and libraries.

Great! Is somebody calling such a version of BSD "GNU/BSD"? If not, how is this germane?

Besides for something to be gnu all of it needs to be gnu. Go read the license?

I checked your posting history, 'cause this sound so much like a troll. You really should read the license, and get your pronouns straight.

1. By "something" do you mean a piece of GPLed software? That's true, but . . .
2. . . . Being "GNU" and being distributed under the terms of the GPL are orthogonal. The Emacs manual is GNU, but not GPLed. SquirrelMail is GPLed, but not GNU. And . . .
3. . . . being GNU means that the Free Software Foundation holds the copyrights, and has made the software part of their system.
4. The license explicitly permits the aggregation of GPLed and GPL incompatible software. Nobody but you has a problem mixing GNU and non-GNU at the application level.
5. 
   
   
   So, the question remains; should a system be known by the same name as its kernel? Or should it have a moniker that indicates its more complete heritage?
   
   -Peter
   
   PS: Debian has created a BSD version of their GNU system, they call it , which seems perfectly appropriate to me.

Groupwise Integration

[grunt107]

One of the nicest features in Groupwise was the message tracking. Without setting up back notifications, I could see if the message was received, opened, and/or removed. Then, when someone told their superiors they did not receive a message, I could grab the history and show if it was received and just ingored or removed.

Adding this to Linux is a good improvement.

Re:Groupwise Integration

[IceFox]

Hehe, but some groupwise servers have pop3 enabled so before I just pulled my mail through it and they never got those messages (as they were left unopened). Then one day I went through and deleted them all in the actual application. A whole year worth of notifications went out to people. :)

Re:Groupwise Integration

[lukewarmfusion]

I like the "yes, you did receive it" part, but it's also nice to have your privacy. I turn off email notifications for just that reason. I've had clients call and ask me why their request wasn't done because they saw that I opened the email yesterday and it should only take a few minutes to do.

People don't always respect your time.

Re:Groupwise Integration

[grunt107]

These weren't email notifications. (This was awhile ago so maybe it changed): Groupwise had a status panel that had the dates displayed. No return emails were needed to track when something was received, opened, or deleted. It was just in the metadata attached to your original message.

Re:Groupwise Integration

[yamla]

This would presumably only work locally though, right? I mean, if you send an email to me across the Internet (and I use a different email client), your status won't be updated. You have no way of knowing whether or not I opened the email because I am not sending anything back to you.

Re:Groupwise Integration

[Degrees]

Yes and no - GroupWise supports DSN (Delivery Status Notification) if you want. Not a whole lot of MTA's support it, however.

It doesn't do the whole depth that you get inside your own GroupWise system - but you do get back a message that the remote MTA received the message.

Too Many Toolkits

[Dante Shamest]

Linux is plagued by too many toolkits. We've got Tcl/TK, Java, Motif, Athena Widgets or the old X toolkit, GTK, and Qt, and all of them look and feel totally different. Applications written in those toolkits do not follow the same standards and guidelines and are a mess to use. Especially if you have them side by side or you need to use them frequently. - Chris Schlaeger from Novell/SUSE

This has been said many times before, but I have to agree because there hasn't been much improvement in this area.

To an experienced Linux user, multiple applications using different toolkits doesn't pose much of a problem. But for Average-Joe, who is used to most applications having the same look-n-feel on Mac OS or Windows, this is a BIG deal.

We really need some simple standards, e.g. standard shortcuts. But alot of people think this would kill the flexibility of Linux.

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[chez69]

so why don't all the versions of ms office that look different confuse windows users?

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[Dante Shamest]

so why don't all the versions of ms office that look different confuse windows users? Really, only the colours have changed. The shortcuts/etc remain the same. =) And the changes aren't as drastic as Motif to KDE.

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[Dashing Leech]

so why don't all the versions of ms office that look different confuse windows users?

They do. But it's not the difference between versions that confuse them, it's that all of them do confusing things. *$$#*&$% Stupid Figure TOC won't recognize figure captions &%$(*$ !!!!.

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[be-fan]

applications having the same look-n-feel on Mac OS or Windows,
In what alternate reality? Windows, in particular, is completely schizo. You've got so many toolkits:

Office XP toolkit. Note the lack of Luna-style buttons.
The Visio toolkit. Note the freaky blue gradient toolbars.
The .NET toolkit. Note the flat buttons and .NET combobox.
Windows Media Player 10 theme.
And here's Luna. Note the distinctive Luna-style buttons and tabbar.

Now, this doesn't count any non-Microsoft apps! Yes, all this schizo-osity is from a single company! Throw iTunes in there, or ephpod, or musicmatch, or AOL (all common apps), and you get even more schizo-osity. Just having GTK+ and Qt is looking pretty good right now, isn't it?

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[FooBarWidget]

There aren't many Motif apps left today. The only Motif apps that I know are Netscape 4 and RealPlayer. Netscape 4 is dead; nobody uses it anymore. The latest version of RealPlayer uses GTK 2. 99% of all GTK and QT apps use the same or similar keyboard bindings. Also, inexperienced users are likely to use RedHat/Fedora/Mandrake, which have unified themes, thus making both toolkits look the same.

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[Quattro Vezina]

Just like how IE uses its own toolkit, separate from other Windows apps? Just like how Office uses its own toolkit, separate from not only other Windows apps but from other versions of Office, as well?

Windows UI consistency is a myth.

Mac OS X is a little more consistent, but there are separate Aqua and Brushed Metal styles, with some apps using one style and other apps using the other style. Plus, there are X11 apps that use neither.

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[Brandybuck]

One of the more insistant and vocal themes heard in the desktop debate
is that that Unix desktop needs to be like Windows. It is said that
multiple widget toolkits, inconsistant dialogs, and other evidences of
a decentralized development model must be removed before the masses
will accept a Unix destkop. This cry for uniformity can be especially
shrill, almost as if the very survival of a certain free operating
system depended upon it. But is the underlying premise true? Is
Windows really a consistant and uniform desktop?

The answer is resoundingly negative.

While conducting a quick survey of configuration dialogs under
Windows, in an attempt to understand what a newbie user of my software
would be familiar with, I discovered that there was no standard
procedure for these dialogs. Even configuration dialogs from the same
manufacturer varied wildly. By all Slashdot accounts, Windows users
must certainly be mentally damaged from their constant exposure to
such inconsistant interfaces.

Where is the configuration dialog located for a Windows application?
Using the Windows system I use every day at work, I discovered that
even this simple item was highly variable. Microsoft Word had two
configuration dialogs, "Tools->Customize" and "Tools->Options",
while Microsoft Outlook added an additional
"Tools->Services". Microsoft WordPad had only one under a completely
different menu "View->Options". Moving on to non-Microsoft products, I
see that Adobe Reader and Quicktime Player have
"Edit->Preferences". But lest you think those are consistant, Adobe Reader
has a single dialog, while Quicktime Player has a submenu of three
dialogs. Firefox and Roxio Creator Classic follow the WordPad model of
placement.

What about the dialog contents themselves? Microsoft Word has modal
tabbed dialogs, while Microsoft Outlook has a modeless tabbed dialog without
a help button. Adobe Reader and Firefox have modal dialogs using a listbox
instead of tabs to separate the pages. Quicktime Player is similar,
but uses a combobox instead of a listbox. Some of these dialogs had
help buttons while the rest lacked them.

Okay, what about the look and feel? Certainly the Windows platform has
a consistant widget set? Sadly, no. Adobe Reader has an
almost-but-not-quite Win2K look, that matches neither the Windows
Classic nor Luna themes that comes with Windows XP. Roxio Creator
Classic has a "brushed plastic" look with odd splitter
controls. Quicktime player has, of course, a look and feel straight
out of another operating system! Comparing native Microsoft
applications only improves matters slightly. Microsoft Word has a
completely different toolbar style than Microsoft WordPad! I could
continue on to some truly egregious examples of inconsistancy, but
I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader.

I think by now that I have thoroughly debunked the notion that the
Windows desktop is uniform and consistant. The question remains
though, is the Unix desktop better? The answer is similarly, "no". But
since Windows isn't consistant, the urgency of the question is clearly
lessoned. Newbies aren't going to be rendered insane by seeing
Evolution running alongside Konqueror. They aren't going to go running
back to Windows when their distro forgot to include Plastik icons with
Mozilla.

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[mpcooke3]

It does look a bit weird when you upgrade office, you get the feeling that you are actually installing a part of the next version of windows.

But then it's better than IE, where you ARE installing part of the next version of windows!

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[M. Baranczak]

Mac OS X is a little more consistent, but there are separate Aqua and Brushed Metal styles, with some apps using one style and other apps using the other style.

The differences between Aqua and Brushed Metal are purely cosmetic. The behavior of widgets is the same in both. And the placement of common items is consistent: undo, cut, and paste will always be under the Edit menu, cmd-Q will always quit the application, etc. Which brings me to my next point:

The biggest issue here is not GUI libraries, but application design. For Mac OS, there are well-established standards for interface design, and most developers actually stick to those standards. This is not the case with Linux (Linux is catching up, but it's not quite there.)

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[killjoe]

Outlook is the single worst UI in all of the world.

Not only do you have tools.services, tools.options and tools.customize but you can also make changes from the control panel!

Virtually every tab in the options dialog has buttons on it that open up other dialogs and even some of those have "advanced" options which open up yet another dialog.

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[cpeterso]

Fortunately, most people do not have multiple versions of Microsoft Office installed side-by-side.

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[starseeker]

Well, it's science oriented, but the Grace plotting program uses motif and I find it extremely useful.

Geomview, iirc, is also motif based.

Then there is Nedit, which is still my favorite casual text editor. (Sorry emacs/vi crowds ;-) I do use emacs, but only when something heavy duty is required.)

For mainstream desktop programs, you may be right. But believe me there is a LOT more out there than that, and a lot of the more specialty programs would be a LOT of work to convert to another toolkit. More to the point, scientists (for example) often don't even add a good build system, to say nothing of being able to casually switch toolkits.

So yes, there are a fair number of Motif apps - it's just that they aren't as mainstream as Gnome/KDE.

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[be-fan]

More or less the same is true of GNOME and KDE apps too. The major shortcuts (including the ones you mentioned) are the same.

In any case, the title of this thread is "too many toolkits." Obviously, that is not the case, relative to the other popular desktop operating system. Standards between apps is a seperate issue.

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[mvdw]

I have to disagree vehemently on this one. Open two word documents (in Office 2002), then two excel documents in Office 2002. Close Word (by clicking the close application button in the top right), then close excel the same way. The behaviour for the two applications is different. One will close the whole application (both documents), the other will close only the active document (can't remember which way around, too lazy to check)! If they can't even manage to get Excel 2002 and Word 2002 to behave the same, how the hell do you expect that they go over different generations??

Re:Too Many Toolkits

[Mornelithe]

But then, when people talk about 'too many toolkits' aren't they talking about mainstream users, who would only use mainstream applications?

There are a couple more 'mainstream' apps that use motif. Adobe Acrobat Reader 5 uses motif, as does xpdf. But even those are unlikely to be used by the casual user who people always seem to be worried about.

I don't disagree with you, but Motif apps are largely invisible to the people that these types of chicken little arguments are talking about.

Interview Doesn't Seem To Work

[The Lost Supertone]

Interview's not coming up when I open in a new tab in Safari.

Re:Interview Doesn't Seem To Work

[tanguyr]

mirrordot

i whore, therefore i am ;)

Summary of next 100 posts

[Swamii]

1. Kewl I Kan't Wait!
2. Kough Kough Ahem this kough is killing me
3. Stop spelling everying with K's you douche bags
4. What's that green thing in the background?
5. Imagine a beowulf cluster of Chris Schlaegers.
6. Does it run on Linux?
7. Does SUSE run on Linux?
8. Does Chris Schlaeger run on Linux?
9. Is Chris Schlaeger running a beowulf cluster of GNU/Linux boxes in Soviet Russia?

which eventually leads to...

10. Profit!

Re:Summary of next 100 posts

[brxndxn]

You forgot the +5 Funny comment about how the link was slashdotted because the server was running on Windows.

Re:Summary of next 100 posts

[BRSloth]

You forgot the +5 Funny comment about how the link was slashdotted because the server was running on Windows.

And neither of you tought about posting the whole thing to do some karma whoring. Shame on you.

Re:Summary of next 100 posts

[MegaHyster]

You forgot number 11, you insensitive Klod!

Re:Summary of next 100 posts

[cacoethes]

he he he Slashdot requires you to wait 20 seconds between hitting 'reply' and submitting a comment. It's been 14 seconds since you hit 'reply'. Let me wait for 20 seconds , I think now its 20 seconds

Re:Summary of next 100 posts

[Swamii]

And neither of you tought about posting the whole thing to do some karma whoring. Shame on me for being such a douche bag. Kareful not to insult me nut Kase Kause I've got the Krazies for the Karma.

Re:Summary of next 100 posts

[mbrewthx]

12)I for one welkome our Kernel Koverlords

Re:Summary of next 100 posts

[Thundertje]

You forgot the lame summary of jokes/replies that are about to come.

No, that's too long...

[StressGuy]

change it to GNooSE. Then change the logo from a lizard to a hangman's ....you get the idea...

Coral

[Anonymous Coward]

use this

Don't you mean....

[ImaLamer]

9. In Soviet Russia GNU/Linux boxes run Chris Schlaeger!

Site's slow

[Anonymous Coward]

Interview with Chris Schlaeger from Novell/SUSE

Interviews Posted by Fabrice Mous on Wednesday 06/Oct/2004, @23:05
from the where-less-toolkits-are-needed dept.

At aKademy I had the chance to talk to Chris Schlaeger about SUSE, its relationship with the KDE community, his view of the Linux enterprise desktop and the speed of development of several key features in KDE (a Dutch translation can be found at Bart&David).

Kolab logo
Chris and Fabrice

Please introduce yourself and explain your role within the KDE project.

My name is Chris Schlaeger and I'm the Vice President of Research and Development SUSE Linux at Novell. I'm a long time KDE developer and I used to be the maintainer of KSysguard and before that I worked on the previous version called KTop and I hacked on kdelibs.

Not long ago Novell acquired two companies that deal with Linux: Ximian and SUSE. While Ximian is a derivative from the GNOME project, SUSE is well known for its support of KDE. How does this all come together?

Better than most people seem to believe. Novell is committed to supporting both GNOME and KDE desktop environments in its Linux desktop. We are fortunate to have acquired a robust set of desktop technologies through our acquisitions of Ximian and SUSE LINUX, giving our customers a considerable amount of choice.

We are working on our next generation Enterprise Desktop currently called Novell Linux Desktop which will feature a KDE desktop as well as a GNOME desktop. In the enterprise market the situation is still very open regarding which desktop will have the greater following. For a Linux provider like Novell it is a great opportunity to offer both desktops to our customers and see where the market is going.

During your presentation at aKademy you mentioned that SUSE offers two product lines now: Novell Linux Desktop and Novell SUSE Linux Personal/Professional. What are the differences between these product lines?

Novell's Linux desktop is currently still under development. We are still offering the SUSE Linux desktop, however this is based on the SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 8 code base, which has now been superseded by version 9 (released in August of this year). This represents our business offering as opposed to our consumer product offering.

They both target very different user groups which have different requirements. We have the old traditional SUSE products which really target the private user who is using Linux at home.

The Personal/Professional versions are consumer products targeted at home users. Users who either want to do very little or very specific work with their PC like writing email, surfing the web, word processing, spreadsheets, printing and the like. For those people we have the Personal version. The Professional version is basically the swiss army knife of Linux. You've got everything in there that we feel is of some interest and benefit to our customers. Both products have a comparatively low purchase price and are therefore very cost effective.

We provide security updates for a period of 2 years for these products which is something customers tend to forget. There is a lot of work that needs to be done to keep the products secure during their lifetime. A new version is released roughly every six months.

However, in the enterprise arena 2 years doesn't cut it as people want 3 or 5 years support at minimum. So for the enterprise customers we created a new product which was called SUSE Linux Desktop. The next version will be a Novell Linux Desktop which will be based on the SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 9 code base and combines the best of SUSE LINUX Desktop and Ximian Desktop. It will have a lifetime of around 18months and we guarantee to provide support and maintenance for the product for up to five years. Also the quality assurance is much higher. In an enterprise arena you need to do integration tests to a much higher degree and we test extensively so that we don't inject any side effects when we pr

Re:Site's slow

[ndogg]

Coralized

Re:Too Many Toolkits -- only two that matter

[Anonymous Coward]

This statement is silly, the problem does not really exist any more.

Tcl/TK, Motif, Athena Widgets and plain-X-toolkit are not really in common use anymore, atleast not for recent apps. They're out there, it is not like the can be recalled, but who cares?

Java is not a GUI toolkit, he probably means Swing, but there are not alot of Swing apps. Anyways, QT and GTK+ can both have Java interfaces, so unless Sun opens Java, Swing will die too.

So really there are two GUI toolkits, GTK and QT, and that choice is A GOOD THING.

Dual desktop approach for Novell is silly

[Ars-Fartsica]

New adopters of linux in the business world have likely never heard of KDE and GNOME and certainly are not privy to the endless flame wars on tech gab sites...they just want something that works. For a community distro like Fedora or Debian, choice is key as these distros tend to attract developers as a group...but for a product you are pushing at business, it has to "just work". No, the receptionist at FooBar corp does not have a strong opinion on Gecko v KHTML.

I continue to be confused as to where Novell is going here, and I suspect they are confused too. To simplify, if businesses wanted a vendor-supported "kitchen sink", they would already be using ClubMandrake.

Novell needs to make a choice and go forward with one desktop. Some people will express disappointment in the short term but they are likely already Debian or Fedora users anyway who are not actually in the Novell target market.

Re:Dual desktop approach for Novell is silly

[Anonymous Coward]

Reading the interview I got the impression they simply want to have all the options available until the Linux desktop market consolidates. Keep in mind that we are only beginning to see corporate adoption of Linux on the desktop and it is far from clear what changes that will bring and which desktop will come out on top, or even if one desktop will come out on top eventually.

In this situation keeping your options open does seem like a reasonable idea to me.

Re:Dual desktop approach for Novell is silly

[Roadkills-R-Us]

I disagree. Some customers will pick GNOME, others will pick KDE, and others (like us) will let the users decide. We're a technical company with a base of strong Linux users who have a strong preference for their desktop; we believe the users are more productive with what they know.

Certainly there should be a default, but at this point I have to agree with the interviewee that having both is a good idea.

Having just recently installed SuSe 9.1 Pro for evaluation (we've been a RedHat shop for several years), I'd say there's still work to be done on how to pick a desktop and making things seemless (integration with ?dm, etc), but they're getting there.

Re:Dual desktop approach for Novell is silly

[Ars-Fartsica]

I disagree. Some customers will pick GNOME, others will pick KDE

No, they will use what comes up after a boot. They have not heard of GNOME and KDE and probably don't even care. These people are not enthusiasts, they are just trying to save money. If they want unlimited choice, they are already using one of the dozen or so stable distros that focus on that.

We're a technical company with a base of strong Linux users who have a strong preference for their desktop; we believe the users are more productive with what they know.

I doubt this is the market Novell are aiming for long term, sounds like your shop would be better off with Fedora or Debian, which make no assumptions about user choices.

Re:Dual desktop approach for Novell is silly

[Brandybuck]

What's the big deal? The receptionist as FooBar Corp isn't going to deciding this stuff, the trained sysadmins at FooBar Corp will. And if your sysadmins are too dumb to make a decision like this, you have bigger problems facing you to worry about this.

What's next? Do we remove the choice between vi and emacs because some sysadmin panicked during the install?

Re:Dual desktop approach for Novell is silly

[Brandybuck]

Funny, Solaris ships with a choice in desktops, and I don't see admins dying of panic attacks...

Re:Dual desktop approach for Novell is silly

[argel]

Funny, Solaris ships with a choice in desktops, and I don't see admins dying of panic attacks...

Only when I accidently run Open Windows!

Re:Dual desktop approach for Novell is silly

[Ars-Fartsica]

What's the big deal? The receptionist as FooBar Corp isn't going to deciding this stuff, the trained sysadmins at FooBar Corp will. And if your sysadmins are too dumb to make a decision like this, you have bigger problems facing you to worry about this.

You are assuming the admins or their employers want to do this or can do this.

What's next? Do we remove the choice between vi and emacs because some sysadmin panicked during the install?

This comment shows how in tune with the target market you are. If you say "vi" or "emacs" to these people you are going to get a "huh???". Remember, these people run Windows.

Re:Dual desktop approach for Novell is silly

[killjoe]

You are going to ask a sysadmin that does not know the difference between emacs and vi to install and maintain linux?

Wow talk about a recipe for disaster. If your sysadmin can not fire up vi or emacs don't install linux. Just don't do it.

Re:Dual desktop approach for Novell is silly

[Brandybuck]

Solaris 9 gives you a choice of CDE or GNOME.

Re:Dual desktop approach for Novell is silly

[Brandybuck]

Remember, these people run Windows.

If that's all they can handle, then don't bother with anything else. Just give them Windows and forget about them. Sheesh.

Re:Dual desktop approach for Novell is silly

[Tony-A]

Novell needs to make a choice and go forward with one desktop.

Nah, any single choice is demonstrably wrong.
Between Gnome and KDE, some will prefer one. Some will prefer the other. Some will keep changing their minds. Some people even like to wear more than one color of shirt.

To simplify, if businesses wanted a vendor-supported "kitchen sink", they would already be using ClubMandrake.
Some yes, Others will somehow or another have a different set of priorities as to being attracted to the cutting edge while avoiding as much as possible the bleeding edge. There will be a large number of distributions, even supported distributions, which will differ on those priorities. If Novell is well atuned to the priorities of its customers, Novell should do very well provided their software is not markedly inferior to everyone else's. I would expect, for Novell's (and its customers') priorities, it will be markedly superior. This is not nearly so simple as finding the right spot on a cutting-edge - stable curve. The optimum point depends. On a lot of things. An enterprise version on a lightly loaded home server is not necessarily more stable than the latest hacker-grade release candidate! The priorities are that different.

Re:Dual desktop approach for Novell is silly

[Mornelithe]

This comment shows how in tune with the target market you are. If you say "vi" or "emacs" to these people you are going to get a "huh???". Remember, these people run Windows.

That would make sense, except he's posting a comment on Slashdot, where people know what vi and emacs are, and that part of his comment was an attempt at humor, not a serious business proposal to the 'target market.'

He's an imposter!!!

[Timesprout]

What have you done with the real Kris Schlaeger ??

The market will sort this out

[Ars-Fartsica]

I suspect that over time those firms that do migrate to linux will be going with a product that works correctly with minimal administration and narrowed options. I don't see the market rewarding a kitchen sink distro...RedHat likely is further ahead in grokking this vs. Novell.

No more Suse?

[ImaLamer]

We are working on our next generation Enterprise Desktop currently called Novell Linux Desktop which will feature a KDE desktop as well as a GNOME desktop.

Novell Linux Desktop heh? Good, I'm all for more distributions which I know how to pronounce. Being that I only see these names on the Internet and no one around to talk about Linux I'm often at a loss when trying to come up with fancy ways to say the names when I do encounter a user.

At school we did have one "Linux" class, although it should have been called "The VI Editor", where the teacher refered to Red Hat and Linux as one in the same. His pronunciation of Suse bothered me as he said it like 'Sue-say', where I prefered 'Suzy'.

You don't even want to know about the d-bee-ann vs deb-e-an fights we got into.

Re:No more Suse?

[Trigun]

This begs the question, will we end up with N prefixes.. Doesn't work as well as the KMail.

Maybe they'll just drop Konqueror for Nautalis, and drop the 'g' off of gnome.

By the way, I pronounce it Soos, mainly to piss off everyone.

Re:No more Suse?

[L7_]

I always pronounced it "Soose". But then again, I don't talk to any of my linux friends IRL either.

On a related note, since I had only seen it in print, I used to pronounce "melee" as ME-LEE instead of using the more common/correct may-lay.

Re:No more Suse?

[PoprocksCk]

I pronounce it "Zoo-Zuh" I think it would be a very wise idea for Novell to either create their own standard theme that makes GTK and Qt look the same by default, or standardize on theme that already has GTK and Qt versions, such as Keramik/Geramik, Thin-Keramik/Thin-Geramik, or Qinx/QNX. But Novell, I'm begging you, don't create Bluecurve ][. Making them look the same is fine, but making them feel and work the same totally defeats the purpose of supporting two environments. Rather, what I would fully support, would be a single standard desktop with elements of both KDE and GNOME, as they have talked about in the past. As people have stated already, don't place too much burden on the user, especially considering the target audience here. We've got PHBs making the decisions here, and they're just going to want a desktop that works, and won't give a damn about KDE vs. GNOME, KHTML vs. Gecko, GNOME Office vs. KOffice vs. OpenOffice.org, etc.

Re:No more Suse?

[Illissius]

sue-ess-ee, or sue second edition :)

Re:No more Suse?

[Proteus]

the teacher refered to Red Hat and Linux as one in the same.

And *that* is part of the reason Linux isn't more popular. Teachers and PHBs who find that RedHat doesn't fit with their business model suddenly discount all distributions. We need to educate these people that part of the benefit of Linux is choice between niche distributions.

His pronunciation of Suse bothered me as he said it like 'Sue-say', where I prefered 'Suzy'.

'SOO-zuh'. If you're following the pronunciation rules of German, that's most likely. A previous client solved the dilemma by using the acronym SLES (SuSE Linux Enterprise Server) pronounced as 'slez'.

You don't even want to know about the d-bee-ann vs deb-e-an fights we got into.

Actually, there is a right way for that. IIRC, the people who first created the distribution named it after Deborah and Ian -- thus Deb-Ian or Debian. Ian is pronounced "ee-an", so it's "deb-ee-an". This is (was?) buried on the Debian website.

Re:No more Suse?

[RaymondRuptime]

How about one pronounced "sue-e", like the pig call? That stands for "sue everyone", and it's spelled S-C-O.

Re:No more Suse?

[foobsr]

Pronunciation of SuSe

Zoo-sa.

IPA (International Spelling Alphabet): zu:z[e rotated mathematically positively by 180 deg.]

Me is a native German speaker.

No need to remember this anyway, the distro will disappear.

CC.

Re:No more Suse?

[hawaiian717]

Actually, there is a right way for that. IIRC, the people who first created the distribution named it after Deborah and Ian -- thus Deb-Ian or Debian. Ian is pronounced "ee-an", so it's "deb-ee-an". This is (was?) buried on the Debian website.

http://www.debian.org/intro/about#history

Ian Murdock created Debian, and named it after himself and his wife, Debra. Thus, Debian.

Re:Too Many Toolkits -- only two that matter

[Ars-Fartsica]

So really there are two GUI toolkits, GTK and QT, and that choice is A GOOD THING.

Not if you are planning on rolling out a thousand desktops across an organization to users with potentially no experience outside of Windows. Stop applying Debian rules to the business market.

Questions about development pace

[Sunspire]

Is SuSE really going to be waiting for KDE4, which is still a long way off, before starting to move to DBUS & HAL? It seem a bit strange, considering that we're starting to see this tech being included in most distros right now. It's a major feature of Fedora Core 3 which is about a month away, Mandrake 10.1's got it, Gentoo's had it for a long time in testing, Debian spinoff Ubuntu should have it etc.

I think they should coordinate timetables more with other projects, like Red Hat does, in this case with Freedesktop.org. It's just seems strange to me that they'll be releasing SuSE 9.2 one month from now, yet it will still ship GNOME 2.6 and nothing overly exciting. I know this is because the code went "gold" a while back and they need to press cd's and stuff, but is the availability of a boxed set really worth a whole month of slack time? By the time the customers get their hands on the product there's likely to be a set of errata out, which doesn't look good. With Red Hat, even when you buy the big bucks enterprise versions, as soon as you plug in your credit card details you can download the images and then order the CD's for free later if you want them for some reason.

Ah well, that's just me. I'm always putting off buying stuff because there's something better around the corner. I just wonder how SuSE decides when to cut a release, must be hard with the rapid pace of development in the community.

Re:Questions about development pace

[Robert The Coward]

It say's in the artical. They release every 6 Months. So 6 Months has passed. In 6 More months 9.3 or 10.0 will be out. It is there release schd. Overall I have found out that works best. Redhat/Fedora I believe release every 6 Months. It appear the most hobby/consumer dist release every 6 Months and Corp./enterprise release every 18 Months that is not set in stone but overall seem about right. Debian as far as I know is the only major dist that releases based on no set timeframe.

Primer Ventures

[DraconPern]

Anyone noticed the ad for Primerventures.com? It seems to be a PR stunt for ThinkFilm. =)

Ximian is gone that's for sure. Zip, Nada.

[Karma Sucks]

Have you been to www.ximian.com lately? Not even a decent announcement of Evolution anywhere. Even on GnomeDesktop.org the cold reception and reaction to the new Evolution was puzzling.

KHTML will be obsolete

[Dulimano]

Important quote:

"Customers that do web application development heavily use DHTML and other special features that Konqueror doesn't handle very well and it is a lot of work to implement this. Although I like KHTML and the architecture quite a bit I am sad to say that probably the Gecko rendering engine will be the dominant one used in the enterprise arena, and as KDE developers we've got to make sure that we can integrate Gecko fairly well into KDE.

So Lars Knoll and Zack Rusin started working on this at aKademy and I was delighted when they put me aside and showed me what they have done in just three days. It is amazing! I think it is the right way to go! It is a bit sad for KHTML and I hope that despite this people will still maintain it as it is a nice lightweight browser. If it would be a purely technical decision, KHTML has the better architecture, but sometimes you need to go the shortest way to get to your target."

Re:KHTML will be obsolete

[Brandybuck]

KHTML will be obsolete

Bullshit! Every professional web developer I hang out with uses Safari, a KHTML based browser.

Re:KHTML will be obsolete

[AkaXakA]

No, KHTML will be used in Safari and it'll mature through Safari. All Safari development will roll back into khtml, so the engine will (at a certain point in time) be on par with gecko.

Thus, Khtml won't be obsolete. In fact, if a windows part could be made, it'd be quite beneficial to web development.

Re:KHTML will be obsolete

[LMCBoy]

No, KHTML will be used in Safari and it'll mature through Safari.

I wouldn't be too sure about this. Think of Apple's WebCore as a fork of KHTML; they are no longer one and the same.

Once the slashdotting subsides, go to the linked article and search for "So what is happening with Safari Patches?" (can't expand the discussion right now; they've gone static to face the /. horde).

Apple has already changed WebCore enough that backporting changes to KHTML is very non-trivial. As usual, we are starved for developers, especially when the task is simply porting someone else's code, rather than solving problems for yourself. Many devs would much rather do the latter, even if "results" come more slowly.

Childish name wars

[Roadkills-R-Us]

If you seriously got into arguments over pronuciation, I have to ask why you were in school, and why the professor or teacher didn't have control of the classroom. That's just a really stupid thing to waste time on. Either whoever's in charge mandats a pronunciation (hopefully after finding out the correct one 8^), or you agree to let people pronounce it however they like, so long as everyone knows what they mean, and move on.

If nothing else, you'll understand vi much better. 8^/

Re:Too Many Toolkits -- only two that matter

[FooBarWidget]

So use the Bluecurve theme for both toolkits?

Re:Too Many Toolkits -- only two that matter

[be-fan]

Then you better recall those thousands of desktops across the organization that are running Windows. Because on your average desktop, you've got a *minimum* of three toolkits (.NET, Office & Luna), and four look & feels (.NET, Office, Luna, Media Player).

That should be...

[Quattro Vezina]

10. ???
11. Profit!

Re:Apples use of Safari goes against the spirit of

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you even read the article?
After dot.kde.org stops getting slashdotted go read the comments from actual devs that back up what I'm saying.

I understand that the code is GPL'd, but do you understand that Apple has basically created their own fork, that while still GPL'd, isn't compatible with the original code? Thus most of Apples (undocumented) improvements are NOT going back into KDE. Thus KDE devs saying they should just use the Gecko rendering engine.

Re:Too Many Toolkits -- only two that matter

[Proteus]

Not if you are planning on rolling out a thousand desktops across an organization to users with potentially no experience outside of Windows. Stop applying Debian rules to the business market.

You needn't install KDE and GNOME just to get GTK+ and Qt. In fact, there are a large number of windowing-related toolkits on a common Linux-based system. Motif, Notif, tk, GTK(+), Qt, and so on. Maintaining the toolkits is easy as pie, if you keep your distro updated.

So, you can standardize a Linux Desktop Environment, keep all the toolkits installed, and developers continue to be able to choose the toolkit that best satisfies the product requirements.

There are actually a number of toolkits available for Windows as well (wxWindows, GTK+, Qt, etc.) -- it's just that they way Windows allows users with install permission to install libraries means that developers can (and do) package the toolkit with the app. As long as the toolkits remain interoperable (and they are, esp. between Qt and GTK), there should be no real issue in deploying them in the business world.

And before I get flames of "You've obviously never done any of this", let me just say that my main source of income is deploying Linux on both server and desktop in the Medium-Large business market.

Re:Apples use of Safari goes against the spirit of

[Anonymous Coward]

You're mixing two things here. First, Apple has to abide by the restrictive GPL, and they do. However, nowhere does the GPL say you have support the code you borrowed from. If the modified Apple code doesn't work on KDE, tough luck.

The main reason for choosing Gecko is purely practical. The KDE team can concentrate on making a better desktop and not reinventing the wheel. Mozilla has a lot of people working exclusively on the HTML engine, so it's a win-win situation. KHTML's design might be better but the result is that Gecko is the best html engine you can get today (open source or commercial).

Erlang Smorgreff

Re:Novell Linux is concentrating on Gnome

[otis wildflower]

There are too many toolkits and because of QT being proprietary, Novell has to concentrate on one desktop.

Erm, QT is GPL.. You can fork the GPL QT version, if you so desire.

BullFeathers!

[Ars-Fartsica]

Apple broke its own guidelines with the QuickTime player a few years back and hasn't gotten much better. I love it how the slightest variation on linux desktops gets berated but the fact that OSX will soon sport THREE skins at the same tie (pinstripe, metal, platinum), is just shrugged off.

Just admit it! Apple is no more consistent than anyone else.

Re:BullFeathers!

[M. Baranczak]

Apple is more consistent than anyone else. They're just not perfectly consistent. And as I said before, changing the appearance of the GUI doesn't matter too much if the behavior remains predictable.

Re:Apples use of Safari goes against the spirit of

[twener]

khtml is *L*GPL'd.

Whats Novell's vision with SuSe and Linux

[Billly Gates]

Where do you plan to go with your new investment in the near short term and long term future? What improvements would you like to make to it?

How does this affect Novell's strategy with Netware?

What do you plan in SuSE that will be different from the other distro's?

Last do you plan to put NDS into Linux? Samba gave Microsoft quite alot of lead away with its Active Directoy. How do you plan to counter this? What about Novell's other system administration tools and services?

Re:Too Many Toolkits -- only two that matter

[IntlHarvester]

All of which use the same configuration system and user interface mechanics.

In other words, the problem isn't toolkits (the more programming tools, the better). The problem is that the enduser is painfully aware of the toolkits.

Re:Apples use of Safari goes against the spirit of

[IamTheRealMike]

You're mixing two things here. First, Apple has to abide by the restrictive GPL, and they do.

Actually KHTML is LGPL licensed, not GPL licensed.

However, nowhere does the GPL say you have support the code you borrowed from. If the modified Apple code doesn't work on KDE, tough luck.

Correct. Apple is clearly not interested in supporting the open source community, only taking from it what they can to push their own proprietary operating system forward - this type of community hijacking is a rather disturbing trend.

They did it for FreeBSD (last I heard FreeBSD got some test cases and a couple of minor bugfixes out of it, and that's that), now KHTML which was forked in secret and developed so fast that the resulting patch dump was unusable - remember that KHTML has been extended to use proprietary Apple APIs so it's not just a case of dropping it into KDE CVS.

Even if it was, that'd be pissing all over the volunteer developers who added features whilst Safari was under development only to find that Apple duplicated their work. Not a pleasant situation for a project to be in. I hate to say it, but probably KHTML is dead code : the changes Apple make constantly are undocumented, so who in their right mind would want to spend their evenings and weekends hunting through enormous patch dumps extracting changes rather than writing code - but equally, who wants to make improvements already made?

So when will Novell buy Trolltech?

[LWATCDR]

I am not kidding. It would be great for Novell to buy out Trolltech and LGPL all versions of QT.

Of course the other project I would like to see is a windows version of Evlolution. It would nice to have such an outlook like mail client that I could migrate some of my windows users on to.