> Red Hat Linux 6.2, 7.0, and 7.10
> Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (Potato) on x86 hardware
> Linux Mandrake 7.0, 7.1, and 7.2
> SuSE Linux 6.4, 7.0 and 7.2 on x86 hardware
> LinuxPPC 2000
> Yellow Dog Linux Champion Server 1.2
> Turbolinux 6.0
> Solaris 7 and 8 on UltraSPARC hardware
We'll be working on more in the future-- HP/UX should be out in a few months, for example.
We had some trouble with SuSE 7.2 and it took longer to do it than we thought it would, but we have got those packages available now as well.
If you're interested in using Slackware, visit my home page for the unofficial explanation and workarounds: http://primates.ximian.com/~aaron/slack.html
You asked:"Now, why on earth did de Icaza bring in Gnome and KDE into this discussion?"
Peterley brought it up, actually, by saying that Mono a "dangerously ignorant" GNOME attempt to fix all of its inherent brokenness, which he blames on using C rather than C++. Then he goes on to state that Mono, GNOME, and C should be abandoned in favor of Java, KDE, and C++.
Miguel mentioned, and dismissed, the extraneous passions that have already been brought into the fray here.
Other issues you bring up:
I don't think that there's much that Microsoft can do to improve their image in the eyes of the Justice Department. They have been convicted of Sherman Act antitrust violations. Submitting one language to a standards body doesn't make them any less guilty.
If we as a communtiy get involved in C#/CLR specifications with ECMA, then that specification won't be dominated by MS only.
We're living in a Microsoft-dominated present. Using.NET is admitting that, and taking steps to bridge the divide so we can bring ISVs to our platform.
Microsoft is still guilty of a shocking number of antitrust violations and other assorted naughtiness. I imagine that they will try to break the standard. If they do that, we'll have to point to the standard and say "Microsoft is incompatible with our widely deployed, cheaper, better, commodity, Free, etc. software." With any luck, the Justice Department will peer over their shoulders to keep them on the straight and narrow as well.
He's not just oversimplifying, he's paranoid and ranting. I mean, JScript didn't kill javascript/ECMAScript. MS didn't really kill Java either. If it's a standard, we can implement it. Passport isn't the point. Java isn't the point. C#/CLI offer things that Java doesn't. GNOME can benefit from that. If it fails, it fails.
Lots of people keep confusing the development of a cross-platform development tool with the vague hype that is.NET. Let's call it "Ximian's C#/CLI implementation", as someone here suggested. If Peterley had any idea of what was going on, maybe he'd be less inclined to froth at the mouth.
Whether you think the project is stupid isn't the point. Feel free. Peterley thinks it's immoral and wrong and evil, and it's that kind of mean-spirited shouting that makes all of us look bad.
People like the monkey. It's cute. It's a mascot. So we sell those, and t-shirts along with the CDs. Why do we sell them? Well, we gave out a few at LWE and COMDEX, and the next week got around a hundred mails a day asking "I didn't get one when I was there, can I have one now?" So we started selling them. It's not a big deal, it promotes our brand, and people like it.
Plush monkey sales are not, however, the business model. Our path to profitability involves consulting work and network services, and has already generated substantial revenue streams for Ximian. No, I'm not naming names, that would be impolite.
I personally am delighted to see MS and the BSA shooting themselves in the foot, and this is another instance of it.
If MSFT is hostile to its ISVs -- if it is difficult, impossible, or unprofitable to founda business on selling software for WinXP, the ISVs WILL eventually switch to a new platform.
My platform, ideally.:>
a.
Dennis Powell's consistent inflammatory rhetoric and constant GNOME-slagging are not an indication thathe is a troll. His consistently deliberate misinterpretation of the facts is the indication that he is a troll.
He says:
It is absolutely undeniable that the FSF has thrown its support behind a desktop controlled by two for-profit companies, one of which has an officer who sits on the FSF's board;
He, and you, ignore the fact that the order was like this: First, Miguel started GNOME, which won the support of the FSF because it did not have the same restrictive license (restricive for DEVELOPERS, mind you-- the whole Free Software thing isn't about users having software that is free-for-use but developers having access to, and use of, platforms on which to develop their software, free of charge and free of interference from corporate entities like TrollTech.)
Only later did Miguel start a company. DEP implies favoritism and nepotism where it does not exist.
This company, Ximian, does not control GNOME, certainly not in the way Microsoft controls Windows, or the way TrollTech controls QT, or the way TheKompany controls Aethera. Ximian is certainly a major leader in GNOME, in the way that, say, HP is a leader in the PC-sales field, but we're competing in an open playing field that no one controls. And we're certainly not controlling GNOME, charging people to develop for GNOME, or anything of the sort.
For the umpteenth time, Ximian doesn't hate Slackware, and is not biased against Slackware.
There are two major reasons Ximian GNOME isn't build for Slackware:
1) Slackware does not support internal dependency checking or management, and the rpm bolt-on is not sufficient for Red Carpet. We have spoken with the Slackware maintainers and they feel that users should know their own dependency trees and maintain them. Any user who cannot sort out library versions for him or herself does not deserve root privs, they say.
2) Slackware users are not the Ximian GNOME target market. Slackware users are frequently console users, compilers-from-scratch, and knowers of their own dependency trees.This is excellent for them. They don't need Ximian GNOME, so we're not really there for them.
If you want Ximian GNOME in Slackware, talk to the Slack maintainers and ask them to port it.
You can see a longer explanation, and install tips, at my unofficial Ximian GNOME on Slack page at http://primates.ximian.com/~aaron/slack.html
Sincerely,
Aaron Weber
Technical Writer
Ximian, Inc.
Re:hmm nice.. now get some work done... right now!
on
Ximian gets new CEO
·
· Score: 1
>But if there is going to be such a significant
difference between Ximian Gnome and just
> plain Gnome that it takes 2.5+ weeks to get
it ready, what about the people that want
> just plain Gnome as binaries?
There will indeed be substantial differences between the plain-vanilla 1.4 and Ximian GNOME 1.4.
Namely, Ximian's version will have fewer bugs and more features (easier to install, Red Carpet 1.0, etc).
Those who want just plain GNOME can do what they have always done: compile it. It's not Ximian's job to be a compiling service for gnome.org, it's
Ximian's job to produce a truly excellent desktop, which is what it will release as Ximian GNOME 1.4 as soon as it's ready.
> Also: If you think their products could be
> useful: *please* buy them! It'll keep the free
> stuff coming.
In other words, TheKompany sells shareware/crippleware/demoware. Now, that's a totally legitimate business plan, of course, but TheKompany isn't a free software company any
more than Microsoft is. They're just selling proprietary software for an otherwise Free platform.
So don't claim that they "Get it." And why are you knocking Ximian? It's fine to praise TheKompany in this forum, but will you (and TheKompany's prez!) quit it with the "t-shirt and monkey" crap?
Ximian doesn't support Slackware officially because
Slackware doesn't have a dependency management system. See the detailed explanation and unofficial workarounds listed at:
http://primates.ximian.com~/aaron/slack.html
a.
Now, I answer this at least twice a day as webmaster@helixcode.com. We may support Slack in the future, but we don't right now. There are lots of distros, and we can't support them all at once. The reason Slack isn't supported yet is that its package system isn't as easy to deal with automatically.
If you want to try and use it you have two options: get everything from ftp.helixcode.com and use rpm2tgz, or alter/etc/redhat-release and trick the installer. I would guess that both work, although I'd love to have confirmation. Send email to chetohevia@yahoo.com if you can confirm that working.
Sincerely
hevia.
sgml and xml promise better searchability, as well as the opportunity to use both print and online docs, as they can be output to mutliple formats -- html, pdf, print, whatever.
Print for ease of reading and carrying everywhere and putting next to the screen while you're doing something. Online docs can be more up-to-date and more easily machine-searchable.
Where i work, we're going with both-- yes, the printed manuals are more expensive than the online ones. They're still pretty cheap to manufacture, given that the content is being prepared for the online versions as well.
>>Java is not the same as Cocoa.. of course not. But they're both hot beverages, and both of them are 'hot' (forgive the pun) technologies. OK,java isn't as hot as it was. but still. I'm not sure the hot-beverage theme is so good. But basically an aside. sorry. thanks for the clarifications! aniceto.
Darwin is the core, based on BSD, upon which OS X (pronounced "ten", not "ex", but spelled as X for the allusion to *nix and its stability) there's a great deal of information-- especially in reviews of the Developer's Preview Releases-- on arstechnica.com.
Apple is exposing (correct me if i'm wrong here) three APIs-- one for Darwin, which is most of the BSD/Unix api's, one for "Carbon"-- halfway between old-style mac stuff and the newest-coolest, and "Cocoa", which aside from being a lame reference to Java, should provide real advantages in speed, and of course stability. Did I get that right?
anyway, it looks like lots of Linux stuff should now be trivial to port to mac, and THIS IS GOOD FOR EVERYONE because it means that Windows will have less software than Mac or Linux. cool.
http://www.spanishdictionary.com is a redirect to a pornographic site, as i discovered while looking for a spanish dictionary. (yes, i'm opposed to blocking/filtering software, but this is one of those exceptional cases where porn can indeed show up unexpectedly. even so, all you have to do is close the window. don't like it? don't use it. porno, MS Windows, whatever.)
Slashdot Mirror
Ximian supports the following operating systems:
> Red Hat Linux 6.2, 7.0, and 7.10
> Debian GNU/Linux 2.2 (Potato) on x86 hardware
> Linux Mandrake 7.0, 7.1, and 7.2
> SuSE Linux 6.4, 7.0 and 7.2 on x86 hardware
> LinuxPPC 2000
> Yellow Dog Linux Champion Server 1.2
> Turbolinux 6.0
> Solaris 7 and 8 on UltraSPARC hardware
We'll be working on more in the future-- HP/UX should be out in a few months, for example.
We had some trouble with SuSE 7.2 and it took longer to do it than we thought it would, but we have got those packages available now as well.
If you're interested in using Slackware, visit my home page for the unofficial explanation and workarounds: http://primates.ximian.com/~aaron/slack.html
Yours,
Aaron Weber
Ximian, Inc.
You asked:"Now, why on earth did de Icaza bring in Gnome and KDE into this discussion?"
.NET is admitting that, and taking steps to bridge the divide so we can bring ISVs to our platform.
Peterley brought it up, actually, by saying that Mono a "dangerously ignorant" GNOME attempt to fix all of its inherent brokenness, which he blames on using C rather than C++. Then he goes on to state that Mono, GNOME, and C should be abandoned in favor of Java, KDE, and C++.
Miguel mentioned, and dismissed, the extraneous passions that have already been brought into the fray here.
Other issues you bring up:
I don't think that there's much that Microsoft can do to improve their image in the eyes of the Justice Department. They have been convicted of Sherman Act antitrust violations. Submitting one language to a standards body doesn't make them any less guilty.
If we as a communtiy get involved in C#/CLR specifications with ECMA, then that specification won't be dominated by MS only.
We're living in a Microsoft-dominated present. Using
Microsoft is still guilty of a shocking number of antitrust violations and other assorted naughtiness. I imagine that they will try to break the standard. If they do that, we'll have to point to the standard and say "Microsoft is incompatible with our widely deployed, cheaper, better, commodity, Free, etc. software." With any luck, the Justice Department will peer over their shoulders to keep them on the straight and narrow as well.
Aaron Weber
Ximian, Inc.
He's not just oversimplifying, he's paranoid and ranting. I mean, JScript didn't kill javascript/ECMAScript. MS didn't really kill Java either. If it's a standard, we can implement it. Passport isn't the point. Java isn't the point. C#/CLI offer things that Java doesn't. GNOME can benefit from that. If it fails, it fails.
.NET. Let's call it "Ximian's C#/CLI implementation", as someone here suggested. If Peterley had any idea of what was going on, maybe he'd be less inclined to froth at the mouth.
Lots of people keep confusing the development of a cross-platform development tool with the vague hype that is
Whether you think the project is stupid isn't the point. Feel free. Peterley thinks it's immoral and wrong and evil, and it's that kind of mean-spirited shouting that makes all of us look bad.
Ashamed? On a web page with four items?
People like the monkey. It's cute. It's a mascot. So we sell those, and t-shirts along with the CDs. Why do we sell them? Well, we gave out a few at LWE and COMDEX, and the next week got around a hundred mails a day asking "I didn't get one when I was there, can I have one now?" So we started selling them. It's not a big deal, it promotes our brand, and people like it.
Plush monkey sales are not, however, the business model. Our path to profitability involves consulting work and network services, and has already generated substantial revenue streams for Ximian. No, I'm not naming names, that would be impolite.
a.
Ximian is focusing on the core of the GNOME desktop. This is only one of the projects we have, and will not detract from our focus.
Aaron Weber
Ximian, Inc.
I personally am delighted to see MS and the BSA shooting themselves in the foot, and this is another instance of it. If MSFT is hostile to its ISVs -- if it is difficult, impossible, or unprofitable to founda business on selling software for WinXP, the ISVs WILL eventually switch to a new platform. My platform, ideally. :>
a.
Dennis Powell's consistent inflammatory rhetoric and constant GNOME-slagging are not an indication thathe is a troll. His consistently deliberate misinterpretation of the facts is the indication that he is a troll.
He says:It is absolutely undeniable that the FSF has thrown its support behind a desktop controlled by two for-profit companies, one of which has an officer who sits on the FSF's board;
He, and you, ignore the fact that the order was like this: First, Miguel started GNOME, which won the support of the FSF because it did not have the same restrictive license (restricive for DEVELOPERS, mind you-- the whole Free Software thing isn't about users having software that is free-for-use but developers having access to, and use of, platforms on which to develop their software, free of charge and free of interference from corporate entities like TrollTech.)
Only later did Miguel start a company. DEP implies favoritism and nepotism where it does not exist.
This company, Ximian, does not control GNOME, certainly not in the way Microsoft controls Windows, or the way TrollTech controls QT, or the way TheKompany controls Aethera. Ximian is certainly a major leader in GNOME, in the way that, say, HP is a leader in the PC-sales field, but we're competing in an open playing field that no one controls. And we're certainly not controlling GNOME, charging people to develop for GNOME, or anything of the sort.
My personal opinions, of course. a.
For the umpteenth time, Ximian doesn't hate Slackware, and is not biased against Slackware.
There are two major reasons Ximian GNOME isn't build for Slackware:
1) Slackware does not support internal dependency checking or management, and the rpm bolt-on is not sufficient for Red Carpet. We have spoken with the Slackware maintainers and they feel that users should know their own dependency trees and maintain them. Any user who cannot sort out library versions for him or herself does not deserve root privs, they say.
2) Slackware users are not the Ximian GNOME target market. Slackware users are frequently console users, compilers-from-scratch, and knowers of their own dependency trees.This is excellent for them. They don't need Ximian GNOME, so we're not really there for them.
If you want Ximian GNOME in Slackware, talk to the Slack maintainers and ask them to port it.
You can see a longer explanation, and install tips, at my unofficial Ximian GNOME on Slack page at http://primates.ximian.com/~aaron/slack.html
Sincerely,
Aaron Weber
Technical Writer
Ximian, Inc.
> plain Gnome that it takes 2.5+ weeks to get it ready, what about the people that want
> just plain Gnome as binaries?
There will indeed be substantial differences between the plain-vanilla 1.4 and Ximian GNOME 1.4. Namely, Ximian's version will have fewer bugs and more features (easier to install, Red Carpet 1.0, etc).
Those who want just plain GNOME can do what they have always done: compile it. It's not Ximian's job to be a compiling service for gnome.org, it's Ximian's job to produce a truly excellent desktop, which is what it will release as Ximian GNOME 1.4 as soon as it's ready.
a.
> Also: If you think their products could be
> useful: *please* buy them! It'll keep the free
> stuff coming.
In other words, TheKompany sells shareware/crippleware/demoware. Now, that's a totally legitimate business plan, of course, but TheKompany isn't a free software company any more than Microsoft is. They're just selling proprietary software for an otherwise Free platform.
So don't claim that they "Get it." And why are you knocking Ximian? It's fine to praise TheKompany in this forum, but will you (and TheKompany's prez!) quit it with the "t-shirt and monkey" crap?
a.
Ximian doesn't support Slackware officially because Slackware doesn't have a dependency management system. See the detailed explanation and unofficial workarounds listed at: http://primates.ximian.com~/aaron/slack.html a.
Now, I answer this at least twice a day as webmaster@helixcode.com. We may support Slack in the future, but we don't right now. There are lots of distros, and we can't support them all at once. The reason Slack isn't supported yet is that its package system isn't as easy to deal with automatically. If you want to try and use it you have two options: get everything from ftp.helixcode.com and use rpm2tgz, or alter /etc/redhat-release and trick the installer. I would guess that both work, although I'd love to have confirmation. Send email to chetohevia@yahoo.com if you can confirm that working.
Sincerely
hevia.
Print for ease of reading and carrying everywhere and putting next to the screen while you're doing something. Online docs can be more up-to-date and more easily machine-searchable.
Where i work, we're going with both-- yes, the printed manuals are more expensive than the online ones. They're still pretty cheap to manufacture, given that the content is being prepared for the online versions as well.
a.>>Java is not the same as Cocoa.. of course not. But they're both hot beverages, and both of them are 'hot' (forgive the pun) technologies. OK,java isn't as hot as it was. but still. I'm not sure the hot-beverage theme is so good. But basically an aside. sorry. thanks for the clarifications! aniceto.
Apple is exposing (correct me if i'm wrong here) three APIs-- one for Darwin, which is most of the BSD/Unix api's, one for "Carbon"-- halfway between old-style mac stuff and the newest-coolest, and "Cocoa", which aside from being a lame reference to Java, should provide real advantages in speed, and of course stability. Did I get that right?
anyway, it looks like lots of Linux stuff should now be trivial to port to mac, and THIS IS GOOD FOR EVERYONE because it means that Windows will have less software than Mac or Linux. cool.
Helix actually has something like that in development-- it's called the "Foo Bar", although that name may not last. It looks to be pretty cool.
http://www.spanishdictionary.com is a redirect to a pornographic site, as i discovered while looking for a spanish dictionary. (yes, i'm opposed to blocking/filtering software, but this is one of those exceptional cases where porn can indeed show up unexpectedly. even so, all you have to do is close the window. don't like it? don't use it. porno, MS Windows, whatever.)