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ABCNews GNOME Acticle
dumptruck
was the first of many to send us this ABC News article
on The GNOME Project.
Features a picture of Miguel, and a lot of people have noted
that there are an abnormal number of mistakes in it.
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It's a decent article, no worse really than anything the media produces on other topics. Ever read an article on foreign policy and weeped at historical inaccuracies? Read a political report and cringed at the complete lack of either memory or intelligence on the journalist's part? That's media for you. As for me, I'm happy they pointed out a very important thing -- 1.0 might have sucked, but it took only a month to iron out the most glaring problems, because of the open source nature of the project.
The key is not in the details, but in the spin.
AC
These are from the last 4 days or so.
e 1b.htm
p ?ArticleID=4578
2 911,00.html
http://www.forbes.com/tool/html/99/may/0503/sid
http://www.varbusiness.com/news/breakingnews.as
http://www.zdnet.com/sr/stories/news/0,4538,225
Now, let's wait and see how many seconds it takes for this post to go -1
When you think about the innacuracies of this article you wonder why these people are actually paid to write them. I've been using Linux since 1996 and the X-Window system (the GUI) has been around since I started using Linux and X dates back into the eighties. OK when I started the window managers were quite poor compared to the ones you can have today such as WindowMaker, but at the time FVWM served my needs it certainly provided a graphical user interface.
They're not the only ones to make such as mistake. I remember an article in a british newspaper a while ago that was reviewing Linux and said 'at the moment Linux doesn't have a graphical user interface, but don't worry as RedHat are working on GNOME'.
If by GUI they really mean desktop environment you have KDE which predates GNOME and a few other desktop environments are also around (free and commercial).
I don't think slashdot should link to these articles as the site is getting more hits which means they can get more from advertising revenues and the author will get praised for bringing in loads of revenue and keeping their advertisers happy. It obvious that these people don't care about accuracy thay just want people to visit their site, although now you've visited the site you can all send a reasonable non-offensive email stating clearly the innacuracies. Don't send emails that are offensive such as 'you are an idiot' as that will do us no good.
The only problem is I can't find the authors email address, can you?
--
Noone sees the abstract layers in Linux and Unix, ie, X, window manager, desktop manager (GNOME). So basically the highest, most visible one in the chain gets the notice, not X. That's okay I guess, but if we are to distinguish ourselves from OS's where the gui is ingrained into the kernel and everything else (which of course isn't good), we need to tout the fact that when GNOME fucks up...as it does a lot, you can normally get back to X or the command prompt and restart it, not the machine. Gnome however, has caused my system multiple times to freeze altogether, not ctrl-alt-backspace or ctrl-alt-f1-f6 which sucks, and I'm not using it until it's more stable. However, they're missing the point. Gnome is really still in development and never should've had the 1.0 version tag. However, it is very very good, despite it's still being in development. I think when it is stable it will rival all others.
The problem with all the open source software is that not all groups apply the same scrutiny that Linus and the Kernel guys do. they have no corporate timeline, and don't rush things, they wait until it's solid, and I think pressure from RedHat to get it done in time for RH6.0 pushed Gnome out the door too early. Enlightenment too, they wisely haven't chosen to give it a 1.0 version, and it's not ready. they've got a lot of really good stuff in there, but some of it noone really gives a shit about. I think that the development teams on these two should solidify their code so it's really stable, and then get some convergence on writing GTK apps, and get a really nice development environment with easy libraries, and then it will be easy for people to port apps from M$. Java and (I hate to say it) Visual C++ with MFC have a lot of functionality built into their languages. They have simplified functions for a number of things. Linux development would boom if developmers didn't have to find the code that they wanted out of 30 different GNU programs, if they had those same things they needed as stock functions we'd be set, and apps would be all over the place.
As a few others have stated, one has to keep in mind that these articles are written for the layperson that may have an eye on what the latest 'spin' is in this 'new linux thing' (direct quote heard recently from a friend with a rather large tech stock portfolio when he heard me mention the OS on my laptop). Ever try to explain what linux, X, and the difference between a desktop environment and a basic GUI is to an everyday Mac or Windows user? Most people just have a hollow stare, even when they really want to understand.
;-). Oh yeah, my e-mail and domain are no longer active.
The point made about the authors' lack of knowledge as pertaining to current linux development can possibly be due to the fact that anyone with a real thorough working knowledge is most likely working in the computer field and not a columnist. What we (linuxers) may need is some sort of a centralized press consortium to release more accurate announcements at a central location. Possibly yet another mailing list where the releases can be hashed out for detail and accuracy before their public release. If such a group were formed, wouldn't it be wise to have representatives of the 'major' projects such as KDE, GNOME, X-Free, and the kernel developers as examples?
Due to the fact that most of the development is done on such a large scale with so many participants, the logistics of disseminating accurate updates are a bit complex. I think that some sort of centralized information source would be a great asset and fix many of these articles. I don't mean a help page for active linuxers with details that will go over the heads of the mainstream computer public, there's a ton of those. What we may need is a laypersons guide to linux. Quite frankly wording descriptions will be an interesting task.
Realize that when someone such as Caldera or Redhat makes a press statement that they indeed have a business interest at stake, and rightly and fairly so, the same for the GNOME or KDE developers, although they don't have profit in mind of course. Anyone representing these groups will obviously only include pertinent information to their efforts. What is needed is a sort of neutral ground, community based information source for the general public.
I appologize if this is a bit of a ramble, be glad I'm not a columnist