Novell, RedHat and Sun Commit to a Linux Desktop 542
DeckerEgo writes "InfoWorld reports on the Linux desktop and how Novell, Sun and RedHat (wha?) are working on making 2004 the year corporations start adopting open desktops. But which desktop? Most interesting to note is how Novell is planning to beef up the number of Ximian, Gnome, Mozilla and OpenOffice developers after its SuSE aquisition is complete. Does this mean that SuSE will stop being one of the best KDE distros out there and follow the way of the Gnome?"
good news (Score:5, Insightful)
Some top players committing to bolster the options available to those looking for an alternative to the stuff from Redmond. VERY good news.
Novell, Red Hat and Sun to Open Source Community (Score:4, Insightful)
Mandrake (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the will pick Gnome. (Score:4, Insightful)
Everyone Wanted Consolidation (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone that has ever commented on the state of the Linux desktop has begged for consolidation. And now with Novell/SuSE, RedHat, Sun, HP, and IBM all backing Gnome it would appear that said consolidation is finally going to happen.
To what effect? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only thing that really bothers me is that Random Corperate Giant is making the decision, not the users. When it comes down to it KDE and Gnome are both on top because they are both Really Good, and that fuels competition, etc. They've stayed "euqally" as popular because their respective user bases like them so much. So the most well known, in my opinion, Linux, Network OS, and Unix providers get to pick what they like and back it... Frightening.
LInux Desktop vs Longhorn (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why the will pick Gnome. (Score:3, Insightful)
Bad for both KDE and GNOME (Score:5, Insightful)
Just look what happened with CDE and OpenLook in the previous UNIX desktop war. After people standardized on CDE, it started stagnating until KDE was founded and eventually GNOME killed it off.
I've been a GNOME user since GNOME 1.0, and I would hate to see Suse switch to GNOME, since they've been a driving force behind KDE, and thus a driving force behind GNOME.
Re:Everyone Wanted Consolidation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Gnome-KDE thread here! (Score:5, Insightful)
KDE's better. Hell, even Linus uses it. But just because KDE's better doesn't mean Gnome sucks. Gnome's faster, GTK is better than QT and GTK apps look better in Gnome, and Gnome is overall less bloated. But KDE is far more configurable, so I like it better.
-1, trollbiter
this promise may mean very little (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why the will pick Gnome. (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Most users, by the very definition of the term, do not develop software.
2. $2000 USD is practically nothing in terms of software development costs.
Re:Everyone Wanted Consolidation (Score:4, Insightful)
The question becomes a little murkier when you realize that a sizable percentage of the KDE hackers will soon work for Novell, and that Nat Friedman is heading up Novell's desktop Linux division.
Don't get me wrong, I don't expect KDE to disappear overnight, but the Gnome crowd now has the majority of the professional KDE hackers by their paycheck. At the very least you can expect their to be a lot more talk in the KDE world about "integration" (and it will be the Gnome crowd calling the shots).
Re:Debian+KDE (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why the will pick Gnome. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Devide and rule (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why the will pick Gnome. (Score:5, Insightful)
The price of a similar set up (OS + Development Studio + ToolKit + Database Server + groupware APIs + web server +
And, if you decide to use QT to develop GPL software, your cost goes down to zero. On the other platorm, the cost remains the same... and probably you cannot GPL the whole code.
Of course, you can opt to build GTK-based applications.
So, in short:
- it is cheaper
- you have choice of toolkits
- you have choice of license for your code
I say developing for Linux is better.
Peace
Noone said 'drop KDE' (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally i prefer KDE for business reasons, but hey, if a better GNOME helps the cause.. why not..
Re:Everyone Wanted Consolidation (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of us wanted healthy competition. I'd hate for corporate America to standardise Linux distributions like Microsoft have standardised the intel personal computer.
Maybe I'm just nervous because I hack on KDE.
Re:Why the will pick Gnome. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:good news (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure about 2004 being the "Year of the Linux Desktop", but the battle for the desktop is definately on again. With a vengance.
Me, I'm smiling. This is almost certainly going to be fun to watch. For the first time in quite a while, I'm really interested in desktop technology again.
Soko
Re:Why the will pick Gnome. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Everyone Wanted Consolidation (Score:1, Insightful)
But these people had been working on KDE/GNOME integration issues for years before Novell bought SuSE.
Re:Why the will pick Gnome. (Score:3, Insightful)
But in the home-OpenSource-contributor/hobbyist world, $2000 is a buttload of money. And if the goal is to provide software under the GPL, it might as well be an infinite amount of money.
Commercial adoption of Linux is a great thing - and a welcome evolution.
But one must not forget the roots of the platform, and how Linux got to where it is today.
Not to rant.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Not... just... yet. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Everyone Wanted Consolidation (Score:5, Insightful)
The rest of us wanted healthy competition. I'd hate for corporate America to standardise Linux distributions like Microsoft have standardised the intel personal computer.
Regardless, everyone wants or should want interoperability. That means the object models must have a way to pass data and pointers back and forth. It means lots of fit and polish thing like the applications not looking or acting jarringly different from one another. When all is said and done, applications are king. Neither of the desktops possesses all of the best apps. Most of us run a mixture and we want them to work together.
It fine if you don't want consolidation but things like unified theme sets and standardized ways to cut and paste more than just text are not evil.
Some bad, some good (Score:5, Insightful)
The fight for the open desktop is a tiny battle compared to the fight for all desktops. Perhaps KDE and GNOME have reached a maturity where greater focus on the large battle might be beneficial.
Re:good news (Score:2, Insightful)
I don't really care what they have to say until they turn back from their stated commitments (see Fedora fine print) to make Fedora not-fit-for-the-enterprise and Red Hat Linux a monetary expense of Windows proportions.
The debate on what Linux distribution to migrate to is rich at my organization. At this point I would have to suggest SuSE or Mandrake, and I'd give the nod to Mandrake. I wish I hadn't just rebuilt my workstation with Red Hat 9. I should have used Mandrake 9.2 like I use at home.
Re:Buisnesses first? (Score:2, Insightful)
By the time they get to the business world, will win2k be that applicable either? It seems to me that kids will pick up on it faster (particularly then the 55 year old grandmother you mention above), and when they do get into business, maybe they will have more of a clue and won't be "average (read as DUMB) users".
Sure Linux still isn't (yet) the mainstream solution, and you would be considered a bit of a vanguard, but is that so wrong?
If nothing else, having a mixture of OSes for students to learn on, including MS if you will, would be very advantageous to students, and I think would give them a much better education, allowing them to adapt easier to change, as they would understand concepts better, instead of relying on rote (?) memory.
And for those that excel in computer sciences, in particular, you would be doing them a great service, as I think they would stand to learn much quicker than being boxed into one way of thinking and doing things.
By limiting their choices for them, I think you are limiting their opportunity to learn.
Just my 2 red pennies...
"Linux desktop" yes, but not an "open desktop" (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:"Linux desktop" yes, but not an "open desktop" (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:good news (Score:2, Insightful)
RedHat is far from being my favourite distribution, but I get very tired of hearing people lump RH in the same category as MS.
RedHat have contributed a lot of work to the Linux user community, which has not been required to pay them a cent for it.
Nobody can say that about Microsoft.
Re:good news (Score:5, Insightful)
However, in my opinion, if these coporporations want to really start working on making 2004 the year corporations start adopting open desktops, they need to consider heavily sponsoring and help develop the freedesktop.org projects.
After all, KDE and Gnome need a base. That base is an X server. Improvements have to be made there as well.
Again, this is only my opinion
Re:[OT] Americanisms (Score:2, Insightful)
Americans typically like to talk present tense so it would sound odd to use a present tense form of a verb in the past tense, completed sense.
I asked because I've noticed a lot of books written by American authors use the word "spit" where I would have used the word "spat" - it always leaps out at me because it "sounds wrong". Indeed, I've noticed that American writers (be they professional or otherwise) almost never seem to use the word "spat", which is why I worded the question as I did. It seems to be a word Americans avoid - I just thought there might have been some cultural reason.
For example, an American would probably write "I was drinking coke, but after reading that post I spit it out all over my keyboard", whereas I would write "I was drinking coke, but after reading that post I spat it out all over my keyboard".
As for petting vs. patting, petting connotes a caring, loving manner (http://m-w.com) while patting connotes merely showing approval. Again, cultural interpretations put a broader sense on these nuances, however slight.
See, to me pet is only a noun - it's a word for some domesticated animals like cats and dogs. I would never use it as a verb, nor would it ever occur to me to use it as a verb - saying it as a verb just "sounds wrong". Again, this is something I've only ever noticed in American writings, not British or Australian ones and it always leaps out at me because it just looks so wrong. I've always just assume that there's some weird reason you use the word "petting" the same way everyone else uses te word "patting".
Do return the favor and tell me why you use the form 'USians'. US is not a geographical area, nor is it a regional declaration. It is a political delineation, however, its principle stands on the unification of distinct and disparate elements. (Remember, the US was and is conceived of nations forgoing sovereignty to better guarantee their liberties.)
On informal forums like /., I use the terms "Americans", "USians", "Seppos", "Yanks" and the like pretty much interchangeably and at random. I don't consider them to be - and hence don't use them with the intention of being - derogatory or derisive. But then again I'm an Aussie and we call ourselves and others all sorts of nasty names without ill intent, so I can see how others might not realise that.
Having said that, I was under the impression "Americans" was not technically the right word because it theoretically included residents of both North *and* South America. My understand is "The United States of America" is designated name for the home country of people generally referred to as "Americans", but technically the term "Americans" also includes those indigenous to Canada, Mexico, etc, etc. Thus, "USians" - as a slang term - is a reasonable abbreviation.
Re:Why the will pick Gnome. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think anyone said that nobody should be able to make money from classy software. Red Hat makes money and yet you can download ISOs, so there's something going on there.
Frankly, I think TrollTech should have (back in the day) made Qt, handed it out under the LGPL, and then sold a good set of Qt development tools, and tried to get adoped by folks porting commercial software to Linux. There would never have *been* a GNOME, since the license wouldn't have been an issue. It'd be a little harder to make money, yes, though I think they could have made it. They wanted to go for a bigger gamle, though -- commercial control of a major Linux library. There is *tremendous* resistance in the Linux developer community to becoming beholden to any one company. They really didn't want Qt to become another Motif. You don't want the OS that you work on, that is built almost entirely of volunteer-built software, to have as a fundamental component, a non-free set of libraries that all "standard" GUI apps use. And so, I think that the GNOME movement was reasonable, well-founded, and justified. They were not stopping folks from using Qt -- people just said that they wanted to donate time and effort to providing an alternative.
TrollTech held out for a long time -- perhaps long enough to kill their opportunity. Their licensing system is *still* not as free as GTK's, and I think that they will have a tough battle if they attempt to regain their position -- there is currently a significantly larger developer mass behind GNOME, even aside from Linux distributors tending towards GNOME. The only major advantage that they had was early maturity and stability -- and GTK can pretty much go toe to toe with KDE these days.
I can't figure out what you dislike about GTK, frankly. You may prefer C++ to C. That's particularly legitimate if you're an experienced Windows high-level programmer, where C++ and MFC has long been standard. However, GTK is a *very nicely* (IMHO, of course) built example of how to do OOP well in C. It is faster and more modular than Qt, and provides a number of significant features (such as built-in runtime user-level key rebinding) that Qt has not kept pace with.
A number of Qt design decisions were quite reasonable at the time of its production, but are now rather unfortunate in the presence of more solid C++ compilers. Qt contains its own string class, and reimplementation of a good deal of STL functionality. If Qt were being built today, it's doubtable whether these decisions would go the same way.
That being said, choice is nice, and in the end, it's probably a good thing to have two desktops -- if the maintainers of one project don't like your idea, get it tried out on the other desktop. If it works well, the other folks should accept it, and everyone wins.
Re:Everyone Wanted Consolidation (Score:3, Insightful)
Okay, I agree that KDE beats GNOME on:
* Making toolbars always hideable (though this isn't exactly "advanced")
* Tearable panes
However, GNOME beats KDE on:
* Tearable menus
* User rebindable accelerators for menus (KDE has a systemwide version of this, but it's far less powerful).
Both of them lack a couple of advancements that I'd like to see, like trying out pie menus, having a DOCUMENT_UNSAVED window manager hint a la Mac OS and NeXTStep, having a GUI environment for hooking up scripts to sending menu-item/button-clicked signals, a WINDOID window type with the window manager (to do tool palettes a la Mac OS) and a system for working with the window manager to group windows (all GIMP windows together, so that if the user wants he can have WINDOIDs come to the front when raising a window in a group).
KDE's DCOP is nice but not friendly enough and underused. GNOME needs a user-accessable way to send messages to apps.
KDE's system bar sucks in terms of flexibility. Frankly, GNOME 2's system bar ain't as great as GNOME 1's.
Both of the two are bloated compared to most other Linux software, and suck far more RAM and CPU cycles than is necessary.
Oh, and there's no window manager hints for PROCESSING and ERROR states, both of which could be terribly useful once WM authors get their hands on them.
The commercially-backed KDE developers may go away, but Linux software has always lived and died on the strength of volunteers. GNOME may become more dominant, but KDE will always be there.
Double speak (Score:2, Insightful)
Was going to implement RH9 to showcase Linux in our data center(Oracle on one and Network monitoring on another). Well EOL on RH9 was announced and my boss asks "what the hell am I doing showcasing on an OS at EOL?". After a few months of back pedaling I finally get the green light on Linux again. Do you think it will be Redhat? Hell no. You only have to burn me once. Matthew Szulik does the double speak almost as well as Darl Mcbribe. The guy has come off sleazy in his defense of the asinine decision to stop workstation support. ass talking like a jackass [slashdot.org]
The greatest advantage about Windows/Solaris server is that admins can run the same environment on their desktop. The same process of installing apps on the server is mostly the same for the workstation. RH had this advantage before but sadly not for a very long time. The EOL on RH9 was just a post mortem. When RH separated the workstation and server lines I was so pissed I started working with SUSE and Mandrake but unfortunately my hardware was not as compatible with them as RH out of the box and it was just too time consuming to track down all drivers and dependencies so back to Redhat I crawled like the unwashed admin I was. Now though both SUSE and Mandrake are on par with Redhat's server product and workstation. So I am moving on. No Redhat on my workstations no Redhat on my servers and I feel fine. How are you feeling Matthew? Nervous I bet.
Congratulations- I think you'll never go back (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't want a teletubby desktop. I don't want arbitrary restrictions driving my costs. I don't want to keep track of licenses. The SPA tried to extort some money from us and the ensuing audit took many, many hours that could have been spent doing cool shit with our network. Figure that in the TCO. Figure end of life forcing an otherwise unecessary upgrade. RH pulling support for 9.0 is a bit of a problem, but I have learned to compile from source! I can even build an rpm. So I don't need Redhat to support my now-legacy servers. I can nurse them along until the pain of that outweighs the pain of switching. My call. Staying on NT 4.0? Not if you connect it to anything. Uh uhhh. Not your call.
It is cool to use stuff made as a labor of love, an act of generosity, or simple itch-scratching. We can go so much farther with the source!
Re:Why the will pick Gnome. (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, it's not native Python (does have some native widgets though) but if you've never looked at it, try wxPython. On *NIX it uses GTK(1 or 2)/wxGTK, on Windows it uses mostly native win widgets. Easy to learn, less kludgy than py-gtk. Quite well documented API. Should also be able to run on OSX I think. There's also wxPerl and wxRuby BTW. WxWindows itself is C++.
The Fox toolkit also has python bindings and also is cross platform. Wx looks somewhat better though IMHO. I haven't coded anything with Fox so can't comment on it much. It looks to be fairly easy though.
Tk is fading away slowly I believe. Not sure if that's good or bad.
People talk about
What's missing? "Office" or manageable formats??? (Score:2, Insightful)
>> notably Microsoft Office, still hangs in the air.
Huh? Is it "Office" or "applications compatible with the inscrutable, obese, proprietary POWERPOINT and WORD formats"?
Why don't companies just stipulate "junk the proprietary formats"?
In my opinion, from there onwards, moving to alternatives to MS is a downhill race.
* Desktop behaviour is relatively easy to tune up.
* Dumping Outlook for Evolution by migrating the whole message and contact base AUTOMATICALLY is just a few scripts away.
* Office productivity functionality is basically there, 'cept a large number of baroque MSFT flourishings few will miss
- and BY THE WAY... I see it's only fitting that corporations and governments are beginning to bite: they may WANT a well targeted, limited-scope desktop for their worker bees to replace the MSFT bottomless gusher of uncontrollable, undocumented, unrequested, useless funkshownality.
Re:Microsoft has large companies by the balls (Score:3, Insightful)
Now if your bosses are playing games with the MS rep, its a good idea that the salesdrroid thinks this is for real. So, just deploy a few Linux systems for 'evaluation'.