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Interview: Ask Mandrake Anything
Mandrake, AKA Geoff Harrison, is a heavy contributor to the enlightenment project and has also left his mark on Gnome, XFree86, and a bunch of other excellent free software projects. In real life, he works for VA Research as (surprise!) a software developer. Mandrake is, without question, one of the leading lights of the Linux and free software development communities. Check his Web site, and post any question(s) you have for him below. Answers to most or all of the highest-moderated ones will be posted Friday.
I think it's safe to say that Linux users will always demand flexibility and choice.
But there certainly are a lot of popular window managers out there, not to mention our friends KDE & GNOME. What changes, if any, do you foresee in the current Linux model of desktop environments? Will GNOME and KDE agree to some kind of standard? Will each solution specialize further, so as to appeal more to a specific group of users?
Have the GUIs usable with Linux matured to something resembling their final state, or do we have some distance to cover yet?
Jonathan Pearce jonathan@pearce.name
3EAAFB2A http://www.jonathan.pearce.name/
QT/KDE themes are a bit confusing, because there are different types. The current KDE themes in 1.1.2 are pretty typical pixmap stuff, not super fast, but I don't have any problems on my PII/350 with a crappy 4 MB on-board ATI.
Qt 2.0 themes, however, can be quite fast. They don't rely on pixmaps, but just override a virtual drawing function. Very cool stuff.
My one flamebait on the GTK/Qt debate: if you use C++, Qt is a dream: pure, object oriented libraries. Not a wrapper like GTK-- (which isn't bad, though) or MFC in windows. If you use C, stick to GTK.
--JRZ
actually it shouldn't place all windows in the same place using automatic placement - I'm willing to bet there's a state save gone awry or a windowmatch putting all the windows there or something really odd... auto-placement should do the smart placement stuff. or try to, at least (it could use some work)
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Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
I know allen wittenauer (sp?) used to be pretty anal about making sure it worked on solaris. and kainx (the guy who did Eterm).
:)
but since raster and I pretty much just use linux that's the way it goes
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Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
why isn't it? he did start everything, and he did write more code than I did (I tend to find that's a pretty good judge of things). Besides, he's got a lot of that "black magick voodoo" thing going on most of the time anyways in some of his code. (ever read imlib's rend.c?) he DESERVES more credit than I get. I just happen to get to take the time to talk to folks more these days (lucky raster gets to code)
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Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
In the early days I ran managed to get E (.97?)working on a sun solaris box. How does cross unix platform support working these days?
I've always had trouble scrounging up all the requred toolkits in order to compile E - primarily things like all the ImageMagick graphic formats. In the future will there be a way to get all the pieces needed to compile together on one website - or something like kde-shared does? ("the search for imlib" comes to mind.)
Mandrake, have you ever seen a communist drink a glass of water?
Is enlightenment going to go the 3D way of desktops ? Some companys were promoting kewl 3D accelerated desktops and with the Xfree 4 accelerator support can we expect 3D accelerated desktop support in E ?
I run both KDE and Gnome, It would be great if the two would play nice with each other. My question
is: Are there currently any plans for getting kde and gnome to work together, and if so how far
along is the gnome team? Is the gnome team even talking to the kde team?
This is standard on "high-end" workstations. Any feel for when we'll get it on x86 hardware?
I know this probably gets kicked up the tree to X-level rather than window manager level coding, but you got your hands in that, eh?
Ever say "No thanks, I have enough RAM"?
How soon do you expect a 1.0 release of E?
.15 yet that you would like to see?
What features, arenn't in E
Do not read this
1) Mandrake is a co-maintainer of Enlightenment (more than just a contributer)
2) Isn't it VA Linux systems now?
...nitpicks, I know, but this is Slashdot, for heaven's sake. I expect that > 60% of us keep up with Enlightenment.
And remember, kids: Geoff has nothing to do with Linux-Mandrake.
I, for one, would like to hear about the file browser that they are going to add to the Enlightenment "Desktop Shell". I still haven't found one for Linux that suits my fancy. The new KDE fm may do the trick, though...
--Lenny
as far as picking up an E theme from GTK+ I have to say they're not really designed to work that way - but being able to pick up a GTK+ theme from E will prolly happen in the next month or so. :)
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Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
What kind priorities do your projects have?
Do you spend 50% of your time on enlightenment,25% on gnome, and the rest on other projects.
We all know the strenghs of Enlightenment(customization and etc), but what weaknesses do you see in Enlightenment that you are itching to fix?
I totally agree with you about the patchwork license and free software issue. Anyone who feels strongly about using GPL-only software can not really use KDE. /."), because it's stripped down. More importantly, KOM/OP is a fantastic object model with a very easy learning curve, and the KDE2.0 daemon implements an extremely easy-to-use naming system. I've been nothing but impressed by KOM/OP and the thought that went into it, especially as I use KOffice, which is already quite advanced.
However, I'd take issue with your comments on the core technology and the object model. Bonobo and ORBit have a lot of good features, but they inherently suffer from GNOME's focus on C-programming and ORBit doesn't even have C++ bindings! While MICO is a very large ORB, KDE 2.0 will actually use tinyMICO, a scaled-down version that cuts out the unnecessary crap. MICO is a very serious CORBA 2.2 implementation, with many more features than ORBit. ORBIT, however, is clearly the faster ORB, much as MySQL is faster than, say, Oracle (ooh, nice tie-in to a recent "Ask
I don't mean to start a flame war. But it is important to look at the details of these implementations. Ideally, we'll get a level of object interoperability in the near future.
--JRZ
That error message is a little bit cryptic. While it's technically okay for the ale to just sit in your fridge, most of the developers haven't tested under this configuration. The recommended setup involves actually -drinking- one or two of those ales before compiling. While this won't actually eliminate the error message, it will make it seem a lot less important.
First, it seems to me that some of the newer features that you and Rasterman have been working on duplicate features already found in Gnome/KDE. Examples are the new iconbox and the pagers. (They admittedly work *better* than the other versions, but that's not the point). My question is are you heading more in the direction of making e more 'stand-alone' and reducing the coupling with the desktop environment.
Secondly, while I think e is the coolest wm out there due to its almost infinite configurability, its weakness right now is the lack of documentation. I understand that it's still under intense development and it's hard to document a moving target. But I hope that when we get closer to the 1.0 release and things settle down a little, you guys will think about putting together a good doc package. Any comments?
Thanks for your time.
aj
Admit nothing, deny everything and make counter-accusations.
X is great and everything, but it's pretty old. If you had an infinite number of monkeys, and they were going to start over on X, what would you want them to do differently? Or, put another way, what is on the top of your wish list of things to change in X?
"There's so much left to know/ and I'm on the road to find out." -Cat Stevens
PERFORMANCE and OPTIMIZATION:
.xresources and making that a MOTHER_OF_ALL_THEME_CONFIG repository?
How about optimizing the code and getting it to really perform on older hardware? I know that the pace of CPUs make some people think that it's OK to require a 200+ mhz cpu... but reality is that many people have older systems. E on my sparc20 is a bit sluggish. I used WM up until recently for the sole reason that E (and gnome...) made my system too slow...
THEMING and CUSTOMIZING X
How about making E pick up it's theme from a GTK theme. It's really getting confusing to have a GTK theme, a gnome theme, an E theme, etc. Or... better yet, how about reviving
also, how about shipping with a default theme that is completely stripped down and has all animation, funky cursors, tooltips, etc. turned off?
(We really need to come up with better standards for global and user prefs so that every app doesn't need it's own dotfile... also apps should be able to infer setting from the config files of other apps.)
What is more important in finding a coding job: writing 100,000 lines of open source code or getting a technical, quantitative oriented degree like CS with good grades? So far a lot of students swear by open source projects but when we look at people who actually get paid to write software some have written open source projects but all have CS degrees and usually well above average grades.
I have to say that in the past I was not a real big fan of enlightenment. However, I have started to enjoy working in this environment (gnome/E). I haven't had any real problems ever since I disabled the tapping function of the touchpad.
After programming for a while I noticed that I was repeatedly using the same tricks to speed up development time (I started using templates and virtual functions). What change to your programming style has helped you the most, and do you have any specific time saving tips?
I've recently noticed that over the years my tighty whities have become yellowed and streched. Further, they are no longer compatible with the new glibc 2.x libs.
Which underwear do you find most linux compatible? Boxers? Briefs? Hanes? Calvin Klein?
Are you aware of any open source underware projects?
Know what I like about atheists? I've yet to meet one that believes God is on their side.
Hi, it's best if you use http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/rhalos instead of http://members.xoom.com/rhalos the people will not be bothered by all the crap Xoom advertisements and javascript.
Whenever I try to compile Enlightenment, I get an error saying my fridge is out of ale, even though it isn't. I tried stocking my fridge with different kinds of ales, to no avail. I even tried removing everything not beer from my fridge, and that didn't work either. Can you help me figure out what's wrong?
You've been involved with some of the later XF86 development, and you run xinerama on your machine, (as evidenced by your screenshots) so my question is this:
Can Xinerama run on two monitors at different resolutions? I know they have to be the same bit-depth, but it would be nice to be able to buy a 19" monitor and use it alongside my existing 17".
On my P1-233MMX-Matrox Mill II system, GTK applications like E, the Gnome suite, and stand-alone applications like FreeCiv display (at times) sluggish interface response and slow screen draw times. Complex interfaces can often be seen drawing in or updating widget contents in sequence.
It can be oddly reminiscient of my old 25Mhz Amiga running a 3rd party widget toolkit like MUI.
My questions for Mandrake are:
1) Where does the fault lie - X, GTK, E, the application, or "all of the above"
2) What efforts are being made to increase performance?
3) Do you think we'll ever see optimisations like hand-tweaked assembly in the GTK event loop, or in the widget redraw code?
DG
Here's a log of the SlashNET Forum with mandrake a few months ago if anyone wants to look over it.
Do you think that a newer release of X will be sufficient to carry linux for a few more years or do you think a project like berlin (or some other windowing system) deserves more programming weight put behind it? Is X11 fit to carry all of the linux graphical weight or is it becoming a dinosaur?
-Pos
The truth is more important than the facts.
-Frank Lloyd Wright
Hey Mandrake! How is the perl/gtk book coming along? I'm already drooling in anticipation! Can you give us a ballpark figure on when it will be published? Or how about a topics list? Any info would be greatly appreciated!!! Keep in mind you have at least one guaranteed sale!!!
I have questions:
;)
;)
1) How do you cope with having to read Rasterman's code?
2) Are the groovy features of the G400 (like DualHead, TV Out, etc) going to be supported in XFree 4?
3) Can you swing me a job at VA?
(OK, you can forget #3)
Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
Hi Mandrake,
How important do you think a component object model is for Linux, and do you think that Bonobo will be the answer for developers looking for an activeX type infrastructure for linux?
Geoff Harrison (Mandrake) has little or nothing to do with the Mandrake-Linux distribution. Please limit your questions to the scope of his work! (Enlightenment, a WM/desktop shell, XF86, xripple, etc) Now my question(s)?.. Why has the weak gradient between a Window Manager/Desktop/Shell been made into such a clear cut, line-in-the-sand issue? In the past, a WM was expected to provide all the features X didn't. Now the field has fragmented. Why? How does the rapid escalation of hardware performance (and availability of accelerated servers) affect Enlightenment? Are there times at which you say 'I could put in this new three-phase atomic pixel effect for window close, but can't because it would take a week on a 486'?
.sig: Now legally binding!
May I have your children?
Actually, that was written by Ed Howe.
in fact, the only way you got my email address was by whois'ing intellimedia.com.
in fact, I had absolutely nothing to do with that - most of what I did at intellimedia involved writing code for airtran (an eastern seaboard airline). I don't know (nor do I care) why you got spammed about it - but I can promise you I had nothing to do with it other than forwarding each of the emails you sent me to other people who were actually involved with it.
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Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
because it's just that easy chuck.
I never really asked for anyone to pay attention to me. I get a real big kick out of it, though.
--
Geoff Harrison (http://mandrake.net)
Senior Software Engineer - VA Linux Labs (http://www.valinux.com)
Geoff "Mandrake" Harrison
Some Random UI Hacker
Microsoft, as much as we love to hate them, spends tons of money (which I'm sure Enlightenment doesn't have by comparison) on useability and the human interface.
I can rely on the same keystrokes, the same mouse clicks, a consistant Clipboard, the same file dialogs, etc. etc., no matter what Windows app I run.
Linux apps, be they for KDE or Enlightement, or any WM, seem to be as different from one another as possible. This is all in the name of "We're Unique!", which seems to translate to "We're Unusable and have a HUGE learning curve!"
What, if anything, is going to make Enlightenment/Gnome/KDE/Anything else, more usable than one another? Themes are lovely, but a pretty face is only skin deep.
Can we at *least* "steal" some of MS's better ideas for use in "our" environment?
Comments?
mindslip
Who would win in an all out iron-cage brawl between you, Raster, Tammy, Miguel, and Rob?
.sig this pop I as Watch
I need this information for a current scientific endeavor.
+--
stack. the off
+-- (Score:-1, Moderator on Power Trip)