I know there has been expressed interest on the part of the GnuCash developers to have GnuCash be right there in Gnome Office with the other applications. What specific plans do you have along those lines? Any plans for integration with Gnumeric, e.g. to allow quick importing of financial data into a spreadsheet or vice-versa? Or being able to pull in GnuCash reports into an AbiWord or Open Office document?
The real problem with GnuCash 1.6.0 wasn't really it's large number of dependancies. It was the the binaries provided didn't seem to be built for a specific platform. It required some new things found in the latest Gnome 1.4 while also requiring an older version of guile, e.g. It wan't too bad to build the rpm's for the latest Ximian platform. I rebuilt them for Red Hat 7.1 against the latest Ximian packages:
Incidentally I think it's very worthwhile to upgrade to GnuCash 1.6.0. It's slick Play around with the reports for a few minutes and read the excellent documentation. The documentation gives an excellent summary of the principles behind handling your finances and covers the new features in 1.6.0.
:) It does take some practice. The real practice is in the converting from pictures to numbers. The easy part is visualizing the crazy pictures, for most people...since the mind is very visual. ----
I'd like to point out an alternative method that I have found. I started out with a method that I read in a memory improvement book and made some modifications for the sake of simplicity and speed. What I came up with is described in the Memory Howto I've written. The method requires the memorization of 12 one-digit numbers (one for each month) which will be extraordinarily easy if you learn the other tricks in the howto such as the peg. It takes a bit of practice, but it can be very fast and IMO is simpler. Link to entire essay is in my tagline below: ----
You don't have to know what's going on under the hood. I was just describing the process of changing the default font in Gnome if you want to use a different one. If you're happy with the default, which many users are, you don't ever have to touch that. And if you do want to change it, it really isn't difficult. It's all done graphically from the control center. ----
What the study is saying, in that slide, is that many users who had never seen Gnome before were confused by the logout icon in Gnome (i.e. the picture of a monitor with a half-moon in it). It makes sense that a user who doesn't know what that icon is supposed to represent might think it puts the monitor to sleep or something. The icon itself is not obvious. ----
Sun also ships numerous workstations and the Gnome environment is far better than CDE, IMHO as a workstation environment. Solaris is not just used for serving pages, running databases, and the like. It is used for Unix programming at many very large corporations (Unigraphics Solutions, e.g. where I used to work). It's used in the graphics industry, and it's very prolific in academia for workstation use. Many campuses have several sparc/solaris labs for engineering/programming/graphics work. ----
Who said anything about a "special version"? What Sun is releasing is Solaris binaries. Someone has to do the build, and Sun is releasing their binaries. Also Sun has made numerous contributions which have gone right into Gnome CVS. These contributions include patches to fix certain quirks with running on Sun hardware. For the most part, GNOME is highly portable--and has been from the beginning. GTK+, Glib, and the gnome libs were implemented and designed using highly portable C. And yes, you can "just build it on Solaris and be done with it." ----
To those who claim that Eazel was naive and foolish and had no hope of ever being profitable, I have this to say. They may have been naive, only in the sense that they didn't think it would as hard as it was to find investers with some foresight. One of the big problems was the fallout of the dot coms--whether you believe it or not. Most of these dot coms never had a prayer and most didn't really have anything to offer that would turn a profit. I can see how one could look at Eazel and say that all they delivered was a file manager and some services that no one would really pay for. However, the real shot at profitability is far more long term than that. What Eazel was betting on was changing the face of desktop computing--betting that they and the other gnome developers could produce a desktop, development environment and platform that users would really embrace en masse. That is a long term goal. At that point, they, along with others (Ximian, Red Hat, etc.) would be in position to leverage their expertise in a profitable manner. If, hypothetically, Gnome ran on 75% of desktops right now, do you think Eazel, with it's talented resources, knowledge, innovation, vision, would be closing it's doors? To me that's a no-brainer. It's a long-term investment, full of risks, but it's that level of commitment to free software that Andy Hertzfeld and the others at Eazel have had from the beginning. And while they couldn't find resources with the funding/vision to partner with them for the long haul, they are as commited now as ever. Hats off to all of them. I'm not saying they didn't make any mistakes as a company or couldn't have had a better plan on how to get to their long-term goal--that's going to be the ongoing challenge for the next few years for companies banking on free software--but damnit, their model/vision was not fundamentally flawed. We are present in the beginning, really, of a change in paradigms for software/service delivery. ----
GNOME is supposed to be Solaris's new desktop of choice... what happens when Ximian integrates config helpers that are specific to a certain OS?
The Ximian Setup Tools are being designed to work with multiple Unix variants and Linux distributions. ----
Re:Miguel - have you guys given up or is it just m
on
Ximian gets new CEO
·
· Score: 2
I'm passionate, what can I say? ----
Re:Miguel - have you guys given up or is it just m
on
Ximian gets new CEO
·
· Score: 2
sponsored? I wish. cheerleader? No, I tried out but didn't make the team.:)
I'm just a computer consultant working for a hospital network who contributes to the GNOME project where I can in my spare time. ----
Re:Miguel - have you guys given up or is it just m
on
Ximian gets new CEO
·
· Score: 3
Is anyone besides yourself actively involved in this project anymore? And if so, why is KDE kicking our asses in the progress department?!
The answer is, they aren't. GNOME is in a transitional phase as we try to build a really solid and flexible platform. Many of the new technologies upon which future GNOME applications will be build are just now ready for prime time. The arhitecture upon which apps like Evolution, Gnumeric, Nautilus, etc. are based is now ready. GNOME 1.4 is a stepping stone to GNOME 2.0; applications will begin to take advantage of gnome-vfs, bonobo, etc. The process of porting to GTK+ will take place. Service delivery platforms such as reef and SOUP are coming into their own..NET has nothing on the GNOME project except maybe a few months developement time. We have apps, lots and lots of them. Just take a look at The Fifth Toe apps to get a small picture of some of the really solid, tightly integrated applications available for the GNOME platform. Nautilus is being developed at a blistering pace. It's only been a month or so since 1.0 was released and already the new developments and features I've seen in the nightly builds from CVS are incredible.
At this point i have no choice but to begin using kdevelop to port my GNOME app over before all my users leave me.
If your application is useful and you keep up with existing GNOME technologies and developments, your users won't go anywhere. GNOME has an estimated 1.5 Million Users and one of the focuses of GUADEC was to think outside the box, coming up with ways of getting new users. One of the ways to do that is not to compete with KDE as such; let's share the same user base. Expect to see a lot more cooperation between the KDE and GNOME projects in the coming months and years. I personally have demonstrated GNOME to probably about 20 - 25 windows users in the last year--every one of them has been impressed, several have asked me to set up a cheap box for them with GNOME as the desktop environment. People get excited about GNOME. I know I do. The future is very bright.
I don't know how many GNOME applications you use regularly, but here are a few applications I have fallen in love with:
Galeon They have come up with more browser innovations than any other project I've seen. Tabbed browsing kicks arse!
GnomeICU, Gabber, X-chat The dynamic trio of chat programs. All are outstanding.
Gnumeric and Abiword These should cover most of your spreadsheet/word processing needs. Both are being developed rapidly and are incorporating new GNOME technologies for tighter integration and use of components.
Nautilus Wow. The basic architecture is there. To you skeptics who look at Nautilus and say "it doesn't have feature X" or "it's too slow" I say, watch development closely, check out the hourlies, watch CVS commits, read the mailing list archives. A lot of cool stuff is coming.
Evolution If you use the snapshots, you might find that at times it's rough around the edges or unstable, but it's coming along nicely and promises to be a very good PIM suite. I love vfolders.
Ximian Setup Tools Looks great so far and so much more is planned. Good-bye, Linuxconf.
Red Carpet Only in beta. If you're testing the beta you're not going to see updates nearly as often as you will in the coming weeks. But, RC is slick.
Bonobo is released through the evolution snapshot channel because Evolution depends on it. Bonobo will be available through Ximian's 1.4 channel once that is available. The folks at Ximian are working very hard to get that out the door. Give them some time. They have to incorporate their own patches, build and package for something like 11 supported platforms, do internal QA and support two different delivery methods (helix-update and red carpet), one of which is still in beta. ----
Responsive, fast, smooth, clean looking, no errors up the arse, and konqueror.... that alone puts the mozilla/gnome guys to shame....
Shame? I feel no shame. I feel quite proud of my meager contributions and I know the Gnome hackers feel similarly. Gnome 1.4 is quite a step forward.
It just prves once and for all that qt IS a better toolkit... whether they lik eit or not.
What proves that qt is a better toolkit? Your statement? Proof requires evidence. In the world of computer programming; we want numbers and facts. Not trolls, blantant assumptions, or FUD. Give some real meat to discuss. ----
The Gnome Project releases packages in source format. It will take a bit of time for Ximian, and others to incorporate their patches, build, and bundle the release and get it out on the red carpet channel. The source release always comes first...binaries will follow. ----
PRESS RELEASE -- The GNOME Foundation announces the release of GNOME 1.4. The release offers a stable, powerful and tightly integrated platform that features the most extensive documentation to date, making the help features very user-friendly. GNOME 1.4 includes Nautilus, the new graphical shell for GNOME that features advanced file and Internet browsing capabilities. Developers will find a set of new and updated tools, making GNOME the ideal programming platform.
"GNOME 1.4 has a wealth of new features, from an updated Sawfish window manager to enhanced support and interoperability with other desktop environments." said Havoc Pennington, GNOME Foundation board chair. "This release represents a major leap forward in the GNOME desktop environment. Users will instantly see an improvement in the usability and power of components like Nautilus. Developers will enjoy the strategic advantages of improvements to the component architecture and streamlined tools for greater internationalization and localization of GNOME-based programs."
New or enhanced features of the GNOME 1.4 desktop environment include:
Nautilus - a new file manager and desktop environment that
allows users to easily manage their files, browse the web and
access web-based services through a sophisticated,
customizable interface. For example, GNOME users can select
any word in a text document and do a Google search on that
term or look up the word in an online dictionary.
Better support and interoperability with KDE and legacy X
applications
New Application Launch Feedback lets the user know when a
program is in the process of being loaded.
Sawfish window manager is now a standard part of GNOME. All
aspects of the user interface are customizable through
Sawfish, including complete configuration of the look and feel
of the desktop.
Easier to use and more intuitive help browser and help system,
boasting extensive documentation covering all aspects of GNOME
operations.
GNOME Fifth Toe, a broad collection of applications that run
on GNOME.
Medusa, the new GNOME searching/indexing package. Medusa is a
content and file indexing system that performs quick searches
of a users hard drive.
GNOME 1.4 will also include a number of enhancements for developers, including:
GNOME-VFS - The GNOME Virtual File System provides an
abstraction to common file system operations like reading,
writing and copying files, listing directories and so on.
GNOME-VFS is extensible and usable from any application on the
GNOME desktop.
Updated Bonobo Component Model - 1.4 will include developments
in the interfaces that provide standard component programming
and program interoperability in Linux and Unix.
Xml-i18n-tools - a set of tools for better
internationalization and localization of GNOME. Xml-i18n-tools
contain some utility scripts for internationalizing various
kinds of XML files. In addition, it has a merging feature,
which will be extended to handle desktop and MIME files in the
future.
GConf, a sophisticated system for storing configuration
information. It provides a notification service so
applications can be notified when a configuration setting
changes. changes. Gconf also allows for pluggable storage
backends (text files, databases, etc.) and gives
administrators control over default and mandatory settings.
Enhanced Language Bindings - facilitating the use of GNOME
from a number of programming languages. Language bindings
included with GNOME 1.4 for Gtk+ include C, C++, Objective C,
Ada, Perl, Python, Guile, TOM, Eiffel, Dylan, JavaScript,
Pike, Pascal and Haskell. Many of these languages also have
support for GNOME widgets available.
Enhanced GNOME Display Manager - A re-implementation of the
well-known xdm (X Display Manager) program that features X
authentication, default and per-display initialization
scripts, pre and post-session scripts, pluggable
authentication modules and TCP wrappers for access control.
"Since the GNOME project is a free software project, we were able to incorporate advances from some of the most talented programmers in the world," said Maciej Stachowiak, head of the 1.4 Release Team. "Hundreds of people from every part of the world contributed to this release. The result is a mature, stable, powerful and fun-to-use desktop, with the promise of a host of new killer applications, due to the programming enhancements."
GNOME is a free software project that is developing a complete, easy to use desktop for GNU/Linux (more commonly known as Linux), BSD and a variety of other Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. More than 500 computer developers, including over 100 full-time, paid developers, contribute their time and effort to the project.
----
Re:Top 21 most requested features
on
Eazel Tells All
·
· Score: 2
For heaven's sake, keyboard navigation, speed, and ability to move files around?
Nautilus already has keyboard navigation, is decently fast, and you can move files around quite easily. What the Nautilus developers are doing is soliciting feedback on how they can improve these qualities--i.e. complete and consistent keyboard navigation, even faster performance, and better methods for managing files. Nautilus 1.0 arrived at the basic framework; it's very usable and impressive. But now the developers can look ahead to adding some serious features. Since the framework is there, some of these additions have been quick to arrive. Already in the hourly builds there is cut/copy/paste functionality, arbitrary script execution on selected files, preferences for displaying directories before files and adding an option to delete directly instead of moving to trash. There have been some speed tuneups I've seen tossed into CVS as well. ----
Cut/Copy/Paste has been working in the Nautilus hourlies for about a week now, FYI, not that it's something you should necessarily expect from a file manager. There are many different paradigms. Windows Explorer is the only file manager (or at least the first--others have copied it) that uses it. There's also the Take/Do paradigm, or the shelf idea. Lots of possibilities. ----
The economic slowdown has had a profound effect on a great many companies. I was layed off a couple of weeks ago at a company that a year ago was making a lot of sales and things were looking up. Economy slows down, sales go down, people get layed off--happens.
As far as how Eazel will make money, you have to be creative and think outside the box a bit. The answer is corporate partnerships, services, support. I don't claim to have the inside scoop on what things Eazel is exploring behind the scenes, but a few things jump out readily:
1.Customizations, enhancements, add-on components and feature requests funded by other companies. As the Gnome platform gains popularity there will be an increase in the need for third party products to integrate well with it. I can see Eazel writing custom views, components and services that integrate with Nautilus for third party vendors.
2.Services. Read anything about.NET web services? Read the interview where it talks about Reef? The possibilities are endless here and it's hard to say where it will be 5 years down the road; it's a rapidly evolving paradigm. Not only can I see users paying for network delievered services, but I can see third party vendors paying Eazel for integration so that their service becomes part of the suite of services integrated with Nautilus.
3.Support. With Gnome popularity rising rapidly there will be more and more demand for support and on-demand fixes and enhancements. Who better to do it than the companies (Ximian and Eazel) who employ some of the best Gnome hackers in the world?
4.Actually selling the software. This one may come as a shock to some of you. Yes, you can sell free software. Red Hat and others have done it. Eazel could too. I could see Eazel selling, for example, a boxed set containing Nautilus (and perhaps the entire Gnome platform) along with a manual for newbies and perhaps gobs of extra stuff--backgrounds, Nautilus themes, icons, more emblems, viewers and components that work with Nautilus (Open Office, various media plugins, etc.), perhaps some extra media files like mp3s and.wavs for previewing in Nautilus.
Anyway, just a few ideas that sprung to my head. The bright folks at Eazel no doubt have many more ideas being lined up right now... ----
Re:Issues w/Nautilus and GNOME
on
Eazel Tells All
·
· Score: 2
And after you put your troll-filters on and read the useful posts from the Gnotices thread, be sure to actually read the interview this/. article is about to see how the issues are being addressed. ----
The Gnome project itself releases the packages in source format. The best way to get binaries currently is from Ximian; they'll be releasing binaries for Gnome 1.4 sometime soon after the final release. They currently support about 9 different platforms, one of which is Solaris. Both Sun and HP are doing internal testing of the Gnome 1.4 platform also. ----
Slashdot Mirror
I know there has been expressed interest on the part of the GnuCash developers to have GnuCash be right there in Gnome Office with the other applications. What specific plans do you have along those lines? Any plans for integration with Gnumeric, e.g. to allow quick importing of financial data into a spreadsheet or vice-versa? Or being able to pull in GnuCash reports into an AbiWord or Open Office document?
grab them here
Incidentally I think it's very worthwhile to upgrade to GnuCash 1.6.0. It's slick Play around with the reports for a few minutes and read the excellent documentation. The documentation gives an excellent summary of the principles behind handling your finances and covers the new features in 1.6.0.
:) It does take some practice. The real practice is in the converting from pictures to numbers. The easy part is visualizing the crazy pictures, for most people...since the mind is very visual.
----
I'd like to point out an alternative method that I have found. I started out with a method that I read in a memory improvement book and made some modifications for the sake of simplicity and speed. What I came up with is described in the Memory Howto I've written. The method requires the memorization of 12 one-digit numbers (one for each month) which will be extraordinarily easy if you learn the other tricks in the howto such as the peg. It takes a bit of practice, but it can be very fast and IMO is simpler. Link to entire essay is in my tagline below:
----
You don't have to know what's going on under the hood. I was just describing the process of changing the default font in Gnome if you want to use a different one. If you're happy with the default, which many users are, you don't ever have to touch that. And if you do want to change it, it really isn't difficult. It's all done graphically from the control center.
----
What the study is saying, in that slide, is that many users who had never seen Gnome before were confused by the logout icon in Gnome (i.e. the picture of a monitor with a half-moon in it). It makes sense that a user who doesn't know what that icon is supposed to represent might think it puts the monitor to sleep or something. The icon itself is not obvious.
----
Then just click the font button and select the one you want.
----
- Sun's Slide Presentation
- Test Script used in the study
- Comments and conclusions taken from the study
Enjoy.----
Sun also ships numerous workstations and the Gnome environment is far better than CDE, IMHO as a workstation environment. Solaris is not just used for serving pages, running databases, and the like. It is used for Unix programming at many very large corporations (Unigraphics Solutions, e.g. where I used to work). It's used in the graphics industry, and it's very prolific in academia for workstation use. Many campuses have several sparc/solaris labs for engineering/programming/graphics work.
----
Who said anything about a "special version"? What Sun is releasing is Solaris binaries. Someone has to do the build, and Sun is releasing their binaries. Also Sun has made numerous contributions which have gone right into Gnome CVS. These contributions include patches to fix certain quirks with running on Sun hardware. For the most part, GNOME is highly portable--and has been from the beginning. GTK+, Glib, and the gnome libs were implemented and designed using highly portable C. And yes, you can "just build it on Solaris and be done with it."
----
To those who claim that Eazel was naive and foolish and had no hope of ever being profitable, I have this to say. They may have been naive, only in the sense that they didn't think it would as hard as it was to find investers with some foresight. One of the big problems was the fallout of the dot coms--whether you believe it or not. Most of these dot coms never had a prayer and most didn't really have anything to offer that would turn a profit. I can see how one could look at Eazel and say that all they delivered was a file manager and some services that no one would really pay for. However, the real shot at profitability is far more long term than that. What Eazel was betting on was changing the face of desktop computing--betting that they and the other gnome developers could produce a desktop, development environment and platform that users would really embrace en masse. That is a long term goal. At that point, they, along with others (Ximian, Red Hat, etc.) would be in position to leverage their expertise in a profitable manner. If, hypothetically, Gnome ran on 75% of desktops right now, do you think Eazel, with it's talented resources, knowledge, innovation, vision, would be closing it's doors? To me that's a no-brainer. It's a long-term investment, full of risks, but it's that level of commitment to free software that Andy Hertzfeld and the others at Eazel have had from the beginning. And while they couldn't find resources with the funding/vision to partner with them for the long haul, they are as commited now as ever. Hats off to all of them. I'm not saying they didn't make any mistakes as a company or couldn't have had a better plan on how to get to their long-term goal--that's going to be the ongoing challenge for the next few years for companies banking on free software--but damnit, their model/vision was not fundamentally flawed. We are present in the beginning, really, of a change in paradigms for software/service delivery.
----
The Ximian Setup Tools are being designed to work with multiple Unix variants and Linux distributions.
----
I'm passionate, what can I say?
----
sponsored? I wish. cheerleader? No, I tried out but didn't make the team. :)
I'm just a computer consultant working for a hospital network who contributes to the GNOME project where I can in my spare time.
----
The answer is, they aren't. GNOME is in a transitional phase as we try to build a really solid and flexible platform. Many of the new technologies upon which future GNOME applications will be build are just now ready for prime time. The arhitecture upon which apps like Evolution, Gnumeric, Nautilus, etc. are based is now ready. GNOME 1.4 is a stepping stone to GNOME 2.0; applications will begin to take advantage of gnome-vfs, bonobo, etc. The process of porting to GTK+ will take place. Service delivery platforms such as reef and SOUP are coming into their own. .NET has nothing on the GNOME project except maybe a few months developement time. We have apps, lots and lots of them. Just take a look at The Fifth Toe apps to get a small picture of some of the really solid, tightly integrated applications available for the GNOME platform. Nautilus is being developed at a blistering pace. It's only been a month or so since 1.0 was released and already the new developments and features I've seen in the nightly builds from CVS are incredible.
At this point i have no choice but to begin using kdevelop to port my GNOME app over before all my users leave me.
If your application is useful and you keep up with existing GNOME technologies and developments, your users won't go anywhere. GNOME has an estimated 1.5 Million Users and one of the focuses of GUADEC was to think outside the box, coming up with ways of getting new users. One of the ways to do that is not to compete with KDE as such; let's share the same user base. Expect to see a lot more cooperation between the KDE and GNOME projects in the coming months and years. I personally have demonstrated GNOME to probably about 20 - 25 windows users in the last year--every one of them has been impressed, several have asked me to set up a cheap box for them with GNOME as the desktop environment. People get excited about GNOME. I know I do. The future is very bright.
I don't know how many GNOME applications you use regularly, but here are a few applications I have fallen in love with:
----
Bonobo is released through the evolution snapshot channel because Evolution depends on it. Bonobo will be available through Ximian's 1.4 channel once that is available. The folks at Ximian are working very hard to get that out the door. Give them some time. They have to incorporate their own patches, build and package for something like 11 supported platforms, do internal QA and support two different delivery methods (helix-update and red carpet), one of which is still in beta.
----
Actually it is available. Go to the Evolution snaphost channel.
----
Shame? I feel no shame. I feel quite proud of my meager contributions and I know the Gnome hackers feel similarly. Gnome 1.4 is quite a step forward.
It just prves once and for all that qt IS a better toolkit... whether they lik eit or not.
What proves that qt is a better toolkit? Your statement? Proof requires evidence. In the world of computer programming; we want numbers and facts. Not trolls, blantant assumptions, or FUD. Give some real meat to discuss.
----
The Gnome Project releases packages in source format. It will take a bit of time for Ximian, and others to incorporate their patches, build, and bundle the release and get it out on the red carpet channel. The source release always comes first...binaries will follow.
----
PRESS RELEASE -- The GNOME Foundation announces the release of GNOME 1.4. The release offers a stable, powerful and tightly integrated platform that features the most extensive documentation to date, making the help features very user-friendly. GNOME 1.4 includes Nautilus, the new graphical shell for GNOME that features advanced file and Internet browsing capabilities. Developers will find a set of new and updated tools, making GNOME the ideal programming platform.
"GNOME 1.4 has a wealth of new features, from an updated Sawfish window manager to enhanced support and interoperability with other desktop environments." said Havoc Pennington, GNOME Foundation board chair. "This release represents a major leap forward in the GNOME desktop environment. Users will instantly see an improvement in the usability and power of components like Nautilus. Developers will enjoy the strategic advantages of improvements to the component architecture and streamlined tools for greater internationalization and localization of GNOME-based programs."
New or enhanced features of the GNOME 1.4 desktop environment include:
GNOME 1.4 will also include a number of enhancements for developers, including:
"Since the GNOME project is a free software project, we were able to incorporate advances from some of the most talented programmers in the world," said Maciej Stachowiak, head of the 1.4 Release Team. "Hundreds of people from every part of the world contributed to this release. The result is a mature, stable, powerful and fun-to-use desktop, with the promise of a host of new killer applications, due to the programming enhancements."
GNOME is a free software project that is developing a complete, easy to use desktop for GNU/Linux (more commonly known as Linux), BSD and a variety of other Unix and Unix-like operating systems. The GNOME desktop is used by millions of people around the world. More than 500 computer developers, including over 100 full-time, paid developers, contribute their time and effort to the project.
----
Nautilus already has keyboard navigation, is decently fast, and you can move files around quite easily. What the Nautilus developers are doing is soliciting feedback on how they can improve these qualities--i.e. complete and consistent keyboard navigation, even faster performance, and better methods for managing files. Nautilus 1.0 arrived at the basic framework; it's very usable and impressive. But now the developers can look ahead to adding some serious features. Since the framework is there, some of these additions have been quick to arrive. Already in the hourly builds there is cut/copy/paste functionality, arbitrary script execution on selected files, preferences for displaying directories before files and adding an option to delete directly instead of moving to trash. There have been some speed tuneups I've seen tossed into CVS as well.
----
Cut/Copy/Paste has been working in the Nautilus hourlies for about a week now, FYI, not that it's something you should necessarily expect from a file manager. There are many different paradigms. Windows Explorer is the only file manager (or at least the first--others have copied it) that uses it. There's also the Take/Do paradigm, or the shelf idea. Lots of possibilities.
----
As far as how Eazel will make money, you have to be creative and think outside the box a bit. The answer is corporate partnerships, services, support. I don't claim to have the inside scoop on what things Eazel is exploring behind the scenes, but a few things jump out readily:
1. Customizations, enhancements, add-on components and feature requests funded by other companies. As the Gnome platform gains popularity there will be an increase in the need for third party products to integrate well with it. I can see Eazel writing custom views, components and services that integrate with Nautilus for third party vendors.
2. Services. Read anything about .NET web services? Read the interview where it talks about Reef? The possibilities are endless here and it's hard to say where it will be 5 years down the road; it's a rapidly evolving paradigm. Not only can I see users paying for network delievered services, but I can see third party vendors paying Eazel for integration so that their service becomes part of the suite of services integrated with Nautilus.
3. Support. With Gnome popularity rising rapidly there will be more and more demand for support and on-demand fixes and enhancements. Who better to do it than the companies (Ximian and Eazel) who employ some of the best Gnome hackers in the world?
4. Actually selling the software. This one may come as a shock to some of you. Yes, you can sell free software. Red Hat and others have done it. Eazel could too. I could see Eazel selling, for example, a boxed set containing Nautilus (and perhaps the entire Gnome platform) along with a manual for newbies and perhaps gobs of extra stuff--backgrounds, Nautilus themes, icons, more emblems, viewers and components that work with Nautilus (Open Office, various media plugins, etc.), perhaps some extra media files like mp3s and .wavs for previewing in Nautilus.
Anyway, just a few ideas that sprung to my head. The bright folks at Eazel no doubt have many more ideas being lined up right now...
----
And after you put your troll-filters on and read the useful posts from the Gnotices thread, be sure to actually read the interview this /. article is about to see how the issues are being addressed.
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The Gnome project itself releases the packages in source format. The best way to get binaries currently is from Ximian; they'll be releasing binaries for Gnome 1.4 sometime soon after the final release. They currently support about 9 different platforms, one of which is Solaris. Both Sun and HP are doing internal testing of the Gnome 1.4 platform also.
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