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Lumina: PC-BSD's Own Desktop Environment
jones_supa (887896) writes "The PC-BSD project is developing a new open source (BSD license) desktop environment from scratch. The name of the project is Lumina and it will be based around the Qt toolkit. The ultimate goal is to replace KDE as the default desktop of PC-BSD. Lumina aims to be lightweight, stable, fast-running, and FreeDesktop.org/XDG compliant. Most of the Lumina work is being done by PC-BSD's Ken Moore. Even though Lumina is still in its early stages, it can be built and run successfully, and an alpha version can already be obtained from PC-BSD's ports/package repositories."
What is wrong with XFCE, LXDE etc? Why can't we just make 1 environment that is really good, rather than 110 mostly complete ones?
Terrible name. Now I can associate it with junk cars:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Lumina
"pr0n": An anagram of "porn," possibly indicating the use of pornography. - www.microsoft.com
So is this going to be like Xubuntu? LXDE, anyone?
The summary contains several mistakes.
1. Lumina is not yet available in the ports tree, searches for it do not return anything.
2. The project is not trying to become the PC-BSD desktop, at least not yet. Right now it is in the early/experimental stages to see if making a PC-BSD only desktop is feasible.
3. There is no default desktop on PC-BSD. KDE is one of the install-time options, which include MATE, LXDE, Cinnamon and many others.
http://razor-qt.org/
but I have to admit, my desktop is something I look at very very often and since I have only modern machines running as desktops, I'd like the option to put on all the bells and whistles I want, even if it's only for vanity and nothing to do with functionality.
It seems there is this interesting trend to keep targeting mobile/low powered PCs which I've found to be kind of funny considering how much progress we've made with our desktops. This course of "mobile first desktop second" is annoying.
The problem with xfce, gnome, and most of the other desktop environments is that they tend to focus on Linux and most of them have actually removed *BSD compatibility recently in favor of the latest trends in the Linux community.
XFCE famously dropped FreeBSD support for some functions in their file manager for example. Gnome told us to FSCK off entirely.
We have to fight back.
Why not use something like LXDE or XFCE?
Why not use exist post that state the same thing a thousand time before? Why did you feel so important that you had to input your own?
Answering these questions will answerer your. Fuck off.
This is relivant:
http://blog.martin-graesslin.c...
I can't add much to Martin's sage words, but basically the term doesn't have much meaning in and of itself. Its the tech equivilent of stamping a "Natural" label on a box. What does that mean? Almost anything.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Maybe it'll be awesome.
No, it won't be awesome.
I also want to start a new Desktop Environnement.
My goal will be to make it heavyweight, unstable, slow-running, and compliant with nothing!
The goal of all good Desktop Environnement!
Who want to help me?
Jokes apart. They all promise that and time passing they all end far away of....
This is great and all, but I really don't see any reason to reinvent the wheel besides anal-retentiveness about licenses and Not Invented Here. KDE's libs (and the Qt they're using) are LGPL.
KDE license requirements (a partial list)
LGPL version 2.1 as listed in kdelibs/COPYING.LIB or later
LGPL version 2.1, or version 3 or later versions approved by the membership of KDE e.V.
BSD license as listed below.
Ensure that the BSD license does not contain the so called 'advertisement clause'.
Qt license for free software is LGPL or GPL 3.0.
Documentation for free software based on Qt is FDL.
The argument that there isn't already another desktop based on Qt is obviated by the existence of the Razor desktop, which could really use the extra development help. Why start from scratch when you already have this?
http://razor-qt.org/
This reeks of Not Invented Here syndrome.
--
BMO
What does the alpha look like?
"SO we bide our time, waiting for a purer kick to bloom and the future is still bleak, uncertain and beautiful" -GSYBE
I have no doubt that it will start out that way. And then after a few years of development to achieve feature-parity with other window managers, it will likely become just as bloated, buggy, and sluggish as the rest of the window managers.
It is build on QT, there is no way it is lightweight, stable, fast-running, especially the last two. Not to mention, QT is ugly looking.
You're right. This is why Linux has been such a flop in the embedded market, and Windows has retained the same interface and driver model for twenty years.
The PC-BSD project is developing a new open source (BSD license) desktop environment from scratch. The name of the project is Lumina and it will be based around the Qt toolkit
OK, so they're developing a BSD-licensed desktop environment atop a GPL v3/LGPL v2.1-licensed toolkit, right?
I learned today why no sane company uses linux
Given that this is a desktop environment for FreeBSD, atop which PC-BSD is based, not Linux (it might also work on Linux, but I presume that's not the primary goal), that's not relevant to this article (and also involves labeling a large number of significant and successful companies "insane", but that's probably your intent).
I'm grateful to have so much choice in the *nix world, and you should be too.
When you forget that, consider your situation with ISPs.
I think it's actually Kris Moore, not Ken Moore.
First of all, this story is about BSD, not linux.
Second of all, Linux *does* include drivers for new and old stuff. It does not generally speaking, include closed source drivers. So, if you are using open source drivers that are in the kernel today, you're A-Ok.
I've had several cheap motherboards that never worked with windows XP or above due to sound issues, but all of them worked perfectly in Ubuntu Linux. They were set up back in 2006, and are still working with the most current version of Ubuntu. That's pretty good I'd say. Of course you mileage may vary, depending on the motherboard, and the open source drivers available for it.
And then you have the various governments that have moved over from windows:
http://linux.slashdot.org/stor...
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
With some desktop environments asking for linux-specific features, it seems like a good idea for them to keep their own, hopefully light but workable, environment. Hopefully they will also be adding FreeBSD-specific features.
nt
Has anybody actually tried to take the KDE and trim the rarely used and niche functions?
Knowing the KDE people, if somebody found a usable subset of functionality, sufficient for a larger chunk of applications, they would be probably happy to merge it as an option.
All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Entropy. That's the answer to everything.
Not a troll question, but as far as desktop systems go, why even choose PC-BSD when there's Linux? What is the typical profile of an average PC-BSD user in terms of profession/education/background/etc?
Sure an end user only sees that part, but something like KDE is far more than that and there is a whole lot of stuff going on underneath.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Is this new DE based on X or Wayland?
xkcd may be a lot of things, but most definitely not lame.
Thinking about it, I would MUCH prefer xkcd over the Dead Sea Scrolls. Whatever insights and morality that might be found in the scrolls, xkcd has them too, just more succintly and without the sky-daddy cruft.
This is actually a good thing for PC-BSD for a variety of reasons. First, KDE's support for BSD is spotty - try mounting NTFS volumes using Dolphin in PC-BSD. You can't because KDE uses Linux-style mount options instead of BSD's. Also, KDE is (L)GPL, which BSD has been trying to avoid lately (hence Clang, LLVM, etc.).
I'm concerned that iXsystems and the community is biting off a bit more than they can chew - Canonical's having issues getting Unity out the door and, though I don't have either of their financials in front of me, my assumption would be that Canonical is a much bigger company with a much bigger community of developers behind them. However, if PC-BSD is going to get the stability and ease of use that's necessary to be a compelling desktop alternative for all but a few hobby enthusiasts, they're either going to have to maintain a BSD-friendly port of KDE or roll their own desktop manager.