Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Red Hat Software Businesses

Red Hat And Eazel To Partner 91

Posted by Hemos from the getting-together dept.
_ZorKa_ writes "Yahoo.Com is running an article about the latest partnership of Red Hat and Eazel. The future versions of Red Hat will include Eazel's Nautilus software package. The idea is to use the software as a desktop interface which also automatically updates Linux."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Red Hat And Eazel To Parntnering More

Red Hat And Eazel To Parntnering

Comments Filter:
  • Hey hey hey!

    Parntner is a perfectly fromulent word, just like embiggen.


    ---
  • Interesting...

    So where does Slackware fit in all of this? I hardly think it springs from Debian seeing as it predates it. Also, Slackware is not non-profit, but neither are they targeting the end-user/pretty startup screen/corporate market with support contracts and proprietary add-ons.


    +++

  • RPM is better than deb - you're confusing the package format with the layer above, apt.

    Currently, up2date is better than apt at updating systems (signed packages, authentication of both server and client, encrypted communication) while apt is better at installing new packages (which up2date doesn't do yet).

  • Slashdot is adopting Mark Twain's plan for improvement of English spelling. Here's the uncensored, unedited version of the plan:

    For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s," and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.

    Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c," "y" and "x"--bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez--tu riplais "ch," "sh," and "th" rispektivli.

    Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

  • Witout mispelings, Schlashdot woodn't be quiet the saim! I meen, its the teknical aspacts of the artikles that weir supossed to be consentraiting on!
    ----------------------------------
  • Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.

    OMFG. That was the funniest thing I've seen in a while.
  • The idea is to use the software as a desktop interface which also automatically updates Linux.
    ...probably because plenty of people are sick and tired of the prolems involved with simply downloading RPMs and updating that way, over an extended period of time.

    Somehow, though, I just don't see it as appropriate that my desktop software is updating my OS. Is it just me, or has RedHat lost the feeling along the way that systems administration on a Unix system should be just as easy remotely (and without X) as it is locally? Now sure, I can write my own tools to get the job done, and they DO supply us with a really crappy windowed tool, but I want something that'll work on a teletype, if need be.

    What's wrong with redhat's current update daemon, anyway? (This is a serious question, mind you. I know jack about redhat these days, except that they have a daemon of some sort which is supposed to take care of updates for you. And a new graphic version of lilo, or something similar.)

  • why is nautilus such a revolution? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 29, 2001 @09:02AM (#473425)
    Konqueror does now what nautilus wants to do soon. Have you looked at www.kdenews.org? You can write great plug-ins for it with about 20 lines of code. I have yet to encounter a page that was fubared in konqueror. It loads faster than netscape and hasn't crashed once. What more do you want? Now, I think Nautilus is good, and GNOME surely should have its counterpart to Konqueror. But I cannot understand that this "new and revolutionary software" is such a great thing. KernelPanic
  • WOW, wait a minute here. Why is Mandrake bad? They I'd pick them over Red Hat anyday. And if you say "they're just a ripoff of Red Hat that is optimized for pentiums" then i suggest you download 7.2 and give it a whirl. How bad can it me? Torvalds himself says the three distros HE uses are Caldera, SUSE, and Mandrake.
  • I havent always agreed with Redhat's decisions in there distros, but for the most part I think that they know a good thing when they see it. The whole Sawfish/GTK/Nautilis/RPM/Evolution/AbiWord should be a good combo. This is basically the desktop that most linux geeks us right now.
    It is interesting that people used to yearn for the days when linux would be a viable desktop alternate to windows. Now that it is starting to happen, all everyone can talk about is how RedHat is selling out.

    I have mixed feelings about RedHats products. On on hand they produce a nice tight distro with easy to use installers, good packaging systems and consistants UI's (aka GNOME/GTK). They usually go with what the main stream linux geeks are using, and they arent afraid of using the latest and greatest in their products. Sometime this gets them in trouble (aka XFree4, and a dev version of gcc).

    In the end I am glad that we have RedHat as the lead linux distributed. There are only a few companies that I would wish this on. Suse or RedHat. At least we dont have companies like Caldera or Corel taking the lead. At least Redhat has a sense of commitment to the geek community. Maybe becuase the people at Redhat are geeks themselves and they understand. On the other hand they have to make money if they are going to survive, and integrating with the marketplace is one of the things that have to do to stay afloat. The founders are living their dreams... Getting paid for what they would be doing even if the doe wasnt rolling in. I know this sounds like flamebait, and there are many distros I think are good, some are them are commercial and some are not. Here is a list of the good:

    • Redhat
    • Suse
    • Debian
    • Slackware (needs to get up to date)
    And the bad
    • Corel
    • Caldera
    • Mandrake
    Anway have lots of fun :)
  • Screw RPM and DEB. Give me tar and a couple of
    slack-packs and I will rule the world.

    Dependancies? We don't need no stinkin' dependancies


  • Do you think Red Hat wants to go to the desktop market? Do you think it is a potential danger to Linux-Mandrake? (which appears to me as the current de facto Linux-desktop distribution standard)
  • I installed the latest version and its pretty decent, I didnt like the previous version due to bloat city, and I am more of a GNOME guy then KDE2 (not to say one is better). Its funny that you mentioned it becuase I was thinking of taking Mandrake of the bad list. Maybe mandrake is a bad canidate for the "bad list" I just got burned by previous versions. I a little more old-school
  • Yes, and no. The partnership doesn't just mean that Redhat will ship with Nautilus. That was obvious. What it means is that you'll be able to upgrade your Redhat linux packages through Eazel's Nautilus update framework. They are working together to make updating all aspects of your system in one place. Hopefully this means that eventually you won't have to launch 3 different update agents to get various aspects of your system updated.
    ----
  • Microsoft, though really horrible at what it's supposed to do (code), is the best example ever of capitalism and marketing in a capitalist society. If you don't follow in the footsteps of such a well thought out plan of market attack, then you're a moron. As good as linux is at being free, the profitable sections of linux should do what works (so as to bolster the free sections even more). Microsoft's marketing is brilliant. Their products leave much to be desired though. And since people are blind to the suckiness of the product because of the marketing razzle dazzle, they don't complain.
    ______
    everyone was born right-handed, only the greatest overcome it.
  • RPM is better than debs, some people think apt is better than the RPM front end, but that's if you like random packages installed as root. Plus apt was made to support multiple package formats, theres allready an apt frontend to RPM. Hopefully debs will die soon!
  • RPM is GPL, that's why so many other distros use it. Ezeal is also GPL so debian will include it also. If RedHat makes shoddy .deb support impliment it yourself, it's allready there so you'd just have to keep up, not that hard with 2 people.

  • What I wonder is: Why there aren't more partnerships between Helix^H^H^H^H^H Ximian and Linux distributions?

    Ximian's upcoming package manager, Red Carpet [ximian.com] looks like it will provide everything that Eazel Services and Redhat Network provide and be more flexible, as they already support nearly every major distro. The features I'm most looking forward to in Red Carpet are the channels for updates to your distribution and the unstable/ cutting-edge channel.

    So why not partner with Ximian, since they will be providing the same service anyway? Is it because they haven't been making enough noise in the press lately?

  • Please, using terms like "synergy" presupposes a person who is unable/unwilling to think. This is an example of the classic "old school" buisness philosophy of: "When you can't grow anymore on your own, buy a smaller company with potential." The sad thing is that RedHat is showing that it needs to cannabalize smaller companies because it's out of internal steam internaly, and it hasn't even made any money yet.
  • WHY does the name of EVERY KDE app has to begin with the letter "K"?

    It is VERY annoying, to say the least.

    Can the developers be any less creative?

    A good desktop environment does not regularly remind you of what you're using. And unless KDE application developers change their stupid naming convention, it's not going ot happen.

    (There are a bunch of GNOME apps that starts with "G" or "Gno" too, but not ALL of them, like KDE apparently is)

  • Not Red Hat specific (Score:3)

    by JCCyC ( 179760 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @08:05AM (#473439) Journal
    AFAIK Nautilus is going to be THE file navigation tool for the next version of GNOME, period. This sounds like just marketing hoopla to me.
  • It seems to me that Red Hat is becoming more and more commercialized these days, as with Linux in general. I just hope Linux doesn't forget it's roots. Personally, I'm a FreeBSD user, but the same concept applies. I'd much rather use an opensource OS and opensource apps developed by individuals rather than huge, multi-milliondollar companies. I only use M$ stuff on my current workstation because I have no choice. The new system I'm building will have FreeBSD on it.

    -=-=-=-=-=-=-
    The COBOL Warrior
  • Anyone else notice that linux is just following microsoft footprints?

    Correction: Anyone else notice that RedHat is just following microsoft[sic] footprints?

    Linux != Redhat, though [insert RedHat world domination conspiracy theory here].

  • I agree... currently I'm using Red Hat on all my linux systems, but after their series of bloopers I'm inclined to start experimenting with other distro's. I've used Red Hat since 1996, but my next distro will be Debian.

    Moz.

  • Heading for consolidation (Score:5)

    by mfterman ( 2719 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @08:10AM (#473443)
    This development is nowhere near surprising. My personal feeling is that we're going to see far fewer Linux companies and distributions in the future, falling into three categories.

    The first category will be Linux distributions that form out of the merger or shutting down of all the various commercial vendors. I know, this Red Hat/Eazel thing isn't a merger but I would not be surprised to see it turn into a merger eventually. We're already seeing buyouts and shutdown of rival Linux distributions. I honestly don't know how much room there is in the market for different commercial Linux distributions. I see room for at least two in each regional market more likely three, but probably not much more than three. And if things head in a certain direction, that third could be Microsoft.

    The second one will be major hardware vendors going with their own Linux distribution. Vendors that sell specialized hardware or hardware with special functionality might well go with their own optimized version of Linux. A company that sells graphics workstations would quite likely ship a version of Linux with their own optimized drivers and all sorts of performance tuning to squeeze maximum performance out of the hardware. Or a company might decide that licensing costs from one of the above vendor are higher than the cost of doing it in house. Personally, I think it more likely they'll end up doing a customized version of a regular distribution, but some really exotic varients might need more.

    The third category will be specialized distributions that are non-profit or serve niche markets. Debian will last until the heat death of the universe and will be the source from which all non-commercial distributions spring. There might also be distributions for ready-made beowulf clusters and so forth. I think more often than not they will be volunteer efforts or a minor division of some company making its fortune in other ways.

    The first time will make its money off of support contracts and subscription auto-update features especially for things like security fixes. The second sort of company will be using Linux to sell hardware with minimal software development costs. The third category won't be trying to make money or won't view this as their main source of revenue.

    The first category, in terms of investiment in Linux development, will be focusing on ease of installation and deinstallation as well as ease of use. The second category will tend to focus on driver development and hardware support. The third category will focus on either things that aren't viewed as commercially viable or at best niche categories of software.

  • Re:Good news/bad news (Score:5)

    by Enry ( 630 ) <enry.wayga@net> on Monday January 29, 2001 @08:11AM (#473444) Journal
    Ways RPM is better than Debian:

    rpm -Va (validate packages)
    PGP signing of packages
    better CLI and GUI tools
    apt-get dist-upgrade usually hoses my system

    Ways Debian is better than RPM:

    Kernel building is very easy
    apt-get update
    Multiple sources for .deb files
    apt-get dist-upgrade (when it doesn't host my system)

    I'll stick with Debian.

  • Well, IMHO Slackware is pretty non-commercial, even if it's slackware.com and not .org. ;-)

    Slackware is interesting from the standpoint that it has been around a loooong time on the Linux scene, but most people don't think to list it when they talk about distributions (i.e. usually they break it down into RH, RH derivatives, and Debian). Wonder why?

    Personally, although package managers can be OK, I've been screwed around by them often enough (yes, dpkg and friends too) that Slackware just seems to be my friend more than any other distro. Plus compiling from source means the highest degree of binary optimization for my machine... Oh, and having to dig through a ton of SysV initscripts is a huge PITA. Augh, I'm turning into a moss-backed old-timer! :-) YMMV, IANPV (I am not Patrick Volkerding).


    --
    Fuck Censorship.
  • Slackware uses a very rudimentary package database based on .tgz's and human-readable files. So far, this package management scheme makes the most sense to me. It's all completely standards-based and I don't need any special software to use it. I can untar and even fiddle with the install scripts before applying the packages if I want to. Otherwise a simple run of installpkg gets the job done in one step.

    The only problem with it is that there's no real dependency checking and upgrades aren't always done cleanly. However, both those problems can be fixed in the install scripts of the package itself rather than the "database manager" or lack thereof.

    With some fine tuning of standards, we could have a killer standard package management system that would work on not only Linux, but any UNIX-like OS.


    +++

  • Slightly OT: Any benefit to IBM buying Redhat? (Score:3)

    by PRR ( 261928 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @08:19AM (#473447)
    Just slightly OT, does anyone out there think there might be some benefits of IBM buying Redhat? I realize IBM has said they wouldn't do a distro, but Big Blue + Redhat (along with Eazel and Cygnus) seems like a good mix. I mean, IBM already heavily supports Linux, and much of the original Redhatters are ex-IBMers from RTP.

    Some of the benefits of an IBM-Redhat Linux I can think of would be:
    -more acceptance of Linux by PHB's
    -even more funding behind it all
    -GPL some of the OS/2, AIX, and Lotus stuff into it
    -maybe even an IBM-funded forked alternative kernel
    (re: the /. thread from a few days back about Linus)
    -much of IBM is service based, which is what RH and Eazel are trying to do anyway.
  • if configure can tell me what I have on my system without looking in a database, then why can't rpm or apt?

  • Well, Linux needs a good user interface (although I don't believe it should bet all on one horse). Integrated system administration is also great and helps creating a consistent work environment.

    However, Linux benefits greatly from the competition between the distros and between the GUIs. A nice, cross-distro administration interface would be much better than every distro creating its own variant. This is wishful thinking, but if such a project was started, don't you think it could succeed?

  • They want the *whole* market. If RedHat becomes better, it just helps everyone because they release the source to thier software. Mandrake can take what redhat changed. blah blah blah
  • Ok, you like mergers. And, to the extent mergers can give us best-of-breed solutions, I am too. And the Eazel guys have a really nice file browser. But Eazel for update software?? The Eazel guys are reinventing the wheel badly--- update software is a solved problem. The best solution is apt-get. It just works.
  • I just notice that since their change from
    "Hacker News Network" to "Security News Network"
    my slashbox is spelled "Securtity News Network"

    Geez.
  • specifically the mess that is their init scripts, but then I think that SysV-style init is just beginning to annoy me in general

    apt-get install file-rc

    It converts your init scripts into a more BSD style while still playing nicely with the Debian package system.
  • Actually, the main difference between the two (from a features standpoint) is that Nautilus includes SERVICES. Thus you can install and upgrade software from Eazel's library through Nautilus, as well as online file storage.

    I personally use KDE, but Eazel's services are definitely a cool idea.

    .technomancer

  • I have a feeling that the number of Linux companies will skyrocket. The number of mainstream distributions will probably drop considerably, but the number of companies will increase. There's going to be consulting/ASP/specialized industry/VAR Linux companies popping up all over the place. An uncountable number. They'll probably all run Debian or RH of some description.
  • Why do you say that? At my company, we have librarians and designers using the Linux shell quite successfully. And no, they've never use any sort of UNIX or command-line before. All it takes is a little training (not even a lot), and the shell becomes a productive environment for just about anyone.
  • like it seems some people are. Let's face facts, the partnership of Red Hat and Eazel is an evolutionary move for both parties - and for the Linux movement in general - because it will force other commercial distributions to look for less traditional ways of servicing the customer.

    The likely benefits for Red Hat would be
    1. a better, easier mechanism for updating and installing errata, making Red Hat even more appealing to neophytes and impatient users.
    2. Adds badly needed software on demand online services to keep in stride with MicroSofts .NET stategy.
    3. More administrative options like remote system backups

    Likewise, Eazel benefits:
    1. Exposure to a large user base and an affiliation with a highly visible product.
    2. Hopefully, the [tighter] integration will result in faster deployment and performance, (I find Nautilus painfully slow).
    3. Extend it's capabilities because of it's customisation to Red Hat's architecture. One click online kernel upgrades might be an example.

    As i eluded to earlier, with .NET threatening like a black storm cloud, these types of alliances need to be forged if Linux is to thrive in the next 10 years.

  • Somehow, though, I just don't see it as appropriate that my desktop software is updating my OS.

    I thought this was a case of the tail wagging the dog too. I've been using the Helix desktop (Oh - excuse me. Ximian [ximian.com] Feh.), which at least integrates with apt-get to some extent.

    My understanding is that RedHat's update service is a pay-for-play kind of deal. Somone better versed in their products can correct me here if I'm wrong.

  • oh, well thats understandable. Mandrake, when i first heard about it, was one of the first companies to "rip off" one of the beg distros. Although it's success is due mostly in the fact that they really only took red hat as a base to start from. Then all of a sudden corel and stormix(stormix was ok, just a late player) come by and try the same thing. Corel was in only because of the hype(when are they not).
  • Red Hat has been losing mindshare as of late, especially with the disaster that was Red Hat Linux 7.0
    Why do people insist on repeating this mantra every time Red Hat comes out with a release (I started seeing this around 5.2). Every release of every OS has it's problems, but Red Hat 7.0 was probably the single most stable ".0" release I've seen from any vendor (including Microsoft, Sun, HP, etc).

    The crypto is all there and as solid as can be. People whine about the GCC version, but even the GCC folks admit that there was no option that could have preserved any kind of compatibility with C++ binaries past-and-future. That's really a GCC problem, not a Red Hat problem. Red Hat just took the more obvious and therefore less politically acceptable route.

    On the other hand, the integration of XFree86 4.0 and GNOME are beautiful as are many of the new features in up2date and the "preview" materials including a well-integrated 2.4 pre-release kernel.

    All things considered, not a release for the front-end-production-server (mostly because there are so many new things that you should be taking a few months to figure out how to best deploy them), but then what ".0" release is (Solaris 2.0? 8.0? NT 4.0?) Seriously though, if you bought Red Hat 7.0, and you didn't like it, feel free to mail me the unregistered box, and I'll be happy to sell it off on ebay for my own benifit ;-)

  • A user that actuall checks the spelling of his words: priceless
    It's generally a bad idea to spell "actually" wrong in a flame about spelling.

  • Wen U 1/2 to reed /. lik it wos writen bi Bascule thi Teller, it bicums a bit hard on thi Is.
    --
  • The first category, in terms of investiment in Linux development, will be focusing on ease of installation and deinstallation as well as ease of use. The second category will tend to focus on driver development and hardware support. The third category will focus on either things that aren't viewed as commercially viable or at best niche categories of software.

    Reminds me a bit of how BSD has evolved:

    One distribution for "mainstream" (FreeBSD).
    One distribution for portability and hardware manufacturers (NetBSD).
    One distribution for some special niche needs (OpenBSD, with their security focus).

    So, I think you managed to hit the nail on the head here. We will naturally have more than one distribution in all categories since Linux is so decentralized, but history has shown with BSD that these are the three categories we are likely to end up with.

  • Linyukyuk to Linyuks
  • Looks like the NC influence on Red Hat is really starting to show through. "Swing your parntner round and round!" :)
  • rpm command line options are a bit better than debian. Also using the -Uvh options give you a pretry little fill bar made of hash marks.
  • I bet if one takes all the typos in all the Slashdot articles, and compile them into an expert system, one can make a fairly decent "automatic typo recovery" system.

  • Re:It all comes down to the user (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    actuall

    +1 Ironic

  • It all comes down to the user (Score:4)

    by OlympicSponsor ( 236309 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @07:51AM (#473469)
    Red Hat And Eazel To Parntner

    RedHat development of a spell-checker: $2000 Eazel development of a spell-checker UI: $1500 A user that actuall checks the spelling of his words: priceless
    --
    MailOne [openone.com]

  • I too made the RH 7.0-inspired switch to debian. It's OK, but it's starting to annoy me as much as RH did (specifically the mess that is their init scripts, but then I think that SysV-style init is just beginning to annoy me in general[1]). I think my next distribution for my main workstation will be Slack 7.2 when it comes out, becuase I'm beginning to appreciate the simplicity and elegance therein (been using Slackware off and on since 3.0; mainly for servers).

    [1]why on earth do people feel the need to keep screwing with init scripts, adding layer upon layer of complexity and indirection? It's not like changing runlevels, starting up, or shutting down is all that complicated! Baaaaaaaaah! It's enough to make me want to strip naked and curse.


    --
    Fuck Censorship.

  • Re:To focused towards Red Hat? (Score:4)

    by Goronguer ( 223202 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @08:25AM (#473471)
    They seem to be aggressively postioning themselves as the 'only' Linux distro to be worthy of consideration by companies.

    What's wrong with them aggressively marketing their product? What would you rather have them do? Print a disclaimer on the front of the box, reading, "We think our distro is o.k., but other distros may be just as good or better."???

    They are, after all, trying to make money, and that is a Good Thing. I'm all for everyone, from Red Hat to Debian to tomsrtbt, each marketing their distro as aggressively as possible. More aggressive marketing = more people getting into Linux = more fun for all of us.

  • yur speeling is jest as gud as Hemos's's. And so I say, "Adieu for now".
  • Using a db is a lot faster than looking for libs on the fly. I wouldn't like to see a deb take 1 minute to install because of dependancy checking.
  • Nautilus is not very good-looking, or useful. It takes up WAY too much screen space, and simply is not productive for the advanced user, and probably even the newbies will get sick of it quickly.

    I hope they included a lot of customization options, that is all I can say.

  • Konqeror is nice, but: 1) Doesn't have the backing of multimilion dollar companies behined it, for marketing and development.
    Agreed...but I feel this is a good thing. The direction of development should not be heavily effected by a few key companies...or one company for that matter.

    2) Doesn't have integrated software installation/maintainence.
    True...but currently gnome has no polished product either. Eventually, KDE will have one as well. The key difference is that KDE's maintainence program will not be best suited for a RedHat system. With RedHat's influence on Eazel, I'm not confident Eazel will be a general Unix tool...not just linux...or RedHat.

    3) I prefer Gtk+ :)
    I know it's just preference, but wow.... I can't stand heavy Object oriented programming in C. It feels like such a hack to me. Granted there's gtk-- if I really felt that inclined, but I'm definitely a qt fan:)
  • #include "debian-has-done-this-for-years.h"
  • We've seen the shift from desktop PC's to appliances and servers. You should either make a minimal LCD interface on a portable device or a web interface for a back room server but the idea that users should interact with the Linux interface directly is a failed experiment.
  • I think it would be bad to focus on one company in this fledgling industry and try to convince ourselves that that one company has or will become a new Microsoft. At this stage in the game, Linux needs a champion. Here in the US that champion is Redhat. Yet the nature of Open Source insures that Redhat will never be able to abuse the type of monopoly power that MS now holds.

    -Absolute power corrupts absolutely-
  • I'd love to see parts of the WorkPlace Shell GPLed...yet, much of OS/2 is licenced by both IBM and Microsoft, so the chance of that happening is minimal. If this wasn't a resctriction, there would be porting headaches and that the WPS isn't a natural thing to port to X.
  • I don't think it's so much that Nautilus is "revolutionary" though the Eazel folks certainly have done some innovative work. It's more the fact that the Gnome platform with the addition of the Nautilus framework is coming together very nicely and will be an outstanding environment for users and developers. Often users look at a few screenshots or run one of the pre-releases and make hasty judgements such as, "Oh, wow, so it does thumbnails of images..blah blah, Kondquer does that too, so does Windows explorer" or "It doesn't let me copy or move files the way I want to and am used to doing." or "Damn thing crashes way too often and is slow." All of these comments are short-sighted and naive. If you really look at the architecture behind Nautilus and Gnome in general, you'll see the pieces falling together very rapidly. Personally, when I take a look at the snapshots of Evolution or Nautilus from CVS, I'm not so much looking to see if they have fixed this particular bug that's annoying me or if they've implemented this little feature (though I do look at those things), I'm primarily looking to see where it's heading. Where I can see it in the future. And then I get excited. Running out of time on this post, but if anyone relatively new to Gnome would like more information on how to get involved, I'd be happy to assist in any way I can.
    ----
  • ....Big Blue + Redhat (along with Eazel and Cygnus) seems like a good mix.


    A Big Purple Hat?

  • Likewise! If it's good enough for Yahoo and Hotmail, it's good enough for me.
  • now, in order to take the discussion further off topic...

    Slackware (needs to get up to date)

    being a loyal slack user, i'd appreciate an explanation of this. what in slackware is not up to date? if you mean linux 2.4.0, the distribution is updated to the point where you can just compile the kernel and install it. sure, i'll admit that slack has been behind in the past, but these days it's just as current as any sane distro should be.

    but thanks for including slack as one of the good
    --
    steve
  • One problem with the third distribution being Microsoft. I think that Microsoft signed the away the right to make a *nix distribution when the sold Xenix to SCO.

    But when has previous agreements stopped Microsoft from doing anything?

    - subsolar

  • hey, have they already registered it ? Last time I checked windowsdowngrade.com was also available :)
  • I have Linux running on a personal server and an old laptop of mine (P150 w/ 48 MB RAM). As KDE 2.0 was approaching, I was all excited about its new features and look. I had the opportunity to try it, and overall I was impressed by functionality but found it was several times slower then KDE 1.1.2.

    This was a major dissapointment, as I found that KDE 2.0 just wasn't very practical on older hardware. Sure, it looked pretty, but I just had a hard time with more than a browser and terminal window open getting anything done. I'll grant you, Konqueror was impressive, especially for its short development time. However, I did watch it crash, and not display some of the graphics on SourceForge (try it, then look at it in Netscape).

    I decided to give Ximian Gnome a try (because I didn't feel up to messing with a huge host of source files, and it claimed to have an easy install). Did it ever, after a small initial download I was presented with an impressive install manager, which allowed me to quickly install Gnome without any documentation, and I had no problems with libraries or breaking compatibilities (I had installed KDE 2.0 over 1.1.2 by the RPMs, it was nasty..having to do every package in specific order..I've had worse, but it definately wasn't a polished or user-friendly upgrade).

    Best of all, Gnome provided most of the nice UI of KDE, but was much faster. With a faster computer and processor/RAM to spare I'd still go with KDE, but Gnome proved itself to bring a better UI for the resource buck.

    Sure, maybe Nautilus isn't revolutionary, but my guess is in the end it'll end up faster than Konqueror, if the rest of Gnome is any indication.

  • Give a web browser the following checkable option;

    [ ] Spellcheck text entry field larger than [XX] lines/characters/whatever.

    You'd probably use a Hangul style red-underline spellchecker for speed. It seems dead obvious and I'm surprised it hasn't been implemented yet.

  • It was an international mistake.
  • I'm not normally one of the grammar nazis on Slashdot, but this is just getting ridiculous. They shouldn't even need a spell-checker to spot errors like that...

    Next thing you know, Slashdot is going to switch its official language from English to 1337 5|>33|.

    CmdrTaco and Hemos--why not incorporate a spell-checker into slashcode? It's badly needed.
  • As the article points out, this will back-fill a "bullet point" in comparisons to Windows Update. My one regret is that it spreads the use of RPM. Is there anyone who really thinks that RPM is better than Debian?

  • To focused towards Red Hat? (Score:3)

    by Urban Existentialist ( 307726 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @07:57AM (#473491) Homepage
    Is it just me or does every week bring news of a fyrther alliance between Red Hat and some other company? They seem to be aggressively postioning themselves as the 'only' Linux distro to be worthy of consideration by companies.

    In Europe, SuSE has been doing much the same thing, but more focused towards KDE based companies. Are we seeing Linux regionalise into different camps? I am all for openness in the Linux world, but these lates moves by Red Hat and SuSE seem to be blocking the rest of the world off from their borders. With Turbo Linux becoming ever more dominant in Japan and the Far East, we seem to be seeing Linux Distro's being all powerful in their own spheres of influence, and growing apart gradually.

    I can only hope that the wonderful technology that Eazel have will be spread around all three trading blocks. Nautilus is an excellent tool, and deserves to be developed for a wide, cross distro audience. I hope that Eazel will also strike deals with SuSE and Turbo Linux.

    You know exactly what to do-
    Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-

  • EazelHat?

    What does this spate of mergers mean for non-commercial distributions like Debian? (are there any others left?) I'd hate to see the Linux world degenerate into an RPM-centric heap. Not that RPM is neccessarily bad, it's just not as good as dpkg (IMHO), and is dominated by one company...

    rr

  • Smart move all around (Score:4)

    by IGnatius T Foobar ( 4328 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @07:59AM (#473493) Homepage Journal
    This is a smart move all around: think synergy and value. Red Hat has been losing mindshare as of late, especially with the disaster that was Red Hat Linux 7.0. Eazel is on the verge of delivering something very cool that's going to make Linux far more friendly to the end user. Eazel are people that truly "get it."

    Everyone gets something out of this deal. Red Hat gets a much more usable end user OS. Eazel gets to deliver real product to real customers (read: revenue stream). Linux users win because the entire OS moves forward, more users come on board, the network effect kicks in, etc.

    The whole is truly greater than the sum of its parts in this deal. Good luck to all involved.
    --
  • IBM are already "partners" with a number of distribution makers -- among them RedHat, Pacific HiTech, SuSe, um, others.

    IBM is publicly and heavily behind Linux, as you'll find if you go to http://www.ibm.com/linux/


    --

  • Re:Talk About A Secutity Hole (Score:3)

    by MSG ( 12810 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @08:35AM (#473495)
    Now that just sounds like a load of FUD to me. If not, it's probably the least educated thing I've seen this morning. :)

    Seriously, a statement like that without any evidence is FUD. It's not worth the bits I recieved to read it.

    How? How, how, how would automatically updating signed packages introduce a "security hole"? If all of the Red Hat boxes our there today were to update themselves with security fixes regularly, then they become _more_ secure, not less.
  • Somehow I think that that was an intentional mistaike.

  • What about KDE (Score:3)

    by Pilchie ( 869 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @08:38AM (#473497) Homepage
    &ltrant&gt
    Is it just me or does KDE's konqueror already have everything GNOME is promising to have RSN?

    I always wonder why people make such a bid deal about GNOME and nautilus, but not KDE and konqueror.
    &lt/rant&gt


    >~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
  • Konqeror is nice, but: 1) Doesn't have the backing of multimilion dollar companies behined it, for marketing and development.

    2) Doesn't have integrated software installation/maintainence.

    3) I prefer Gtk+ :)

    Course, all of these things could change, apart from the last one....probably.
  • I haven't actually heard of or dealt with the eazel package manager. I *hope* it's like redcarpet (the helix^Wximian yet-unreleased project). Red Carpet (at least what I saw of it at LWE last year) works by reading off either the rpm database or the dpkg database, making it completely usable on either rpm or dpkg based systems.

    This is the sort of technology we need more of... not creating their own standards, but bending their own workmanship to work with other schemes/standards.
  • Isn't the aspell library available for Perl? .. I thought it was. I know PHP has had spell checking functions for a while now that use that library.

    --
  • Actually, TurboLinux market share in Japan is tiny in comparison to Red Hat, the even has outsold Windows 98 [admittedly at the time when 98 and 98SE, classed as a seperate OS, were out simultaneously].

    TurboLinux does dominate the rest of Asia, but Japan belongs to Red Hat.
  • consistants UI's (aka GNOME/GTK)

    Um, pardon me, but how exactly does this mean Red Hat (or any Linux distro) has a consistent UI? Non technical users don't give a damn about toolkits of the religion behind tham, and happily use whjat they see as the best tool for the job - ie, a combination of apps with different toolkits. There's no reason why GTK and QT couldn't have a combined style guide and attempt to match their widget behavior, but they both are too busy being eahc others enemy they seem to have foprgot they're competiting with windows, not each other (if they are comepting with each other it is pointless - neither will go away anytime soon).

    I'm yet to see a Linux distro with a consistent UI, and it saddens me I don't think I will see it for some time yet.

  • Remember, apt-get is cross platform [connectiva.com] too. The current release of Connectiva supports it (it was connective who created the RPM interface, and wrote an excellent set of packaging guidelines). The next major release of Linux Mandrake (still the best selling desktop Linux, and perhaps the most popular, depending on who you talk to) will also be APT based.
  • Correction: Anyone else notice that RedHat is just following Microsoft[sic] footprints?

    Yes. Why does it matter? Microsoft do lots of very clever things, like cultivate good relationships with admins and developers via Technet and MSDN, market their certifications and OSes well, have strong relationships with ISVs and developmewnt houses, UI design guides and standards, and have some really neat update tools.

    Just because they have done some incredibly horrible things to comeptitors and allies doesn't instantly mean anything MS does is bad, that Red Hat shouldn't follow any path MS has r\tread before, or anything NT does shouldn't beimplemented in Linux.

    I'd hate to think this is what's holding up ACLs from getting into the main kernel tree.

  • 1) Doesn't have the backing of multimilion dollar companies behined it, for marketing and development.

    Yes, and that is IMHO a good thing. I really do not like the way Gnome is currently heading. The influence of companies on Gnome will increase if you like it or not (I do not like it). You may argue that the steering commitee is independent, but you should know that economical power ALWAYS means political power.

    I have to admit that I am a bit disappointed of the Gnome community which tries to back such efforts. I liked Gnome more when Miguel was a hacker and not a manager. Look at Linus T. who had a lot of offers but strictly seperated his work from his LINUX activities.

    (with slight exaggeration)

    The day when marketing rules in the free software world will end the period of the hacking community.

    2) see ketbra reply

    3) I prefer Gtk+ :)


    Nice argumentation ;-)

    I first was a Gnome user until I decided to hack my own application. I had a look at Gtk+ and Gtk-- and at Qt and from that day on I am a KDE user because: Gtk+ is not a good solution for someone, who wants to use C++. Qt/KDE is easier to use (read higher productivity), has nicer documentation and has really powerfull tools (e.g. a web browser with 4-8 LOC).

  • Frustration over package management (Score:3)

    by sammy baby ( 14909 ) on Monday January 29, 2001 @08:00AM (#473506) Journal
    The idea is to use the software as a desktop interface which also automatically updates Linux.

    ...probably because plenty of people are sick and tired of the prolems involved with simply downloading RPMs and updating that way, over an extended period of time. It's pretty frustrating to see a "This version of RPM supports major numbers My frustration grew to the point where I abandoned RedHat and tried out Debian. It's hard to imagine going back. apt-get and dselect are happy things, even if they've made me somewhat obsessive compulsive ("9 PM - time for my daily apt-get dist-upgrade!"). And now, I get to join the ranks of people grumbling that folks just don't package up their software in .deb format.

    Can anyone familiar with the Eazel updating system post a comparison between it and apt-get? I'm assuming that Eazel's updater is RPM based, since RedHat wanted to enter into this partnership.

  • Re:Frustration over package management (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    show me your package big boy
  • R.H. has a lot of money. So I like hearing them working with other companies to get new stuff with R.H. linux. Hopefully we'll see some fruits of all those investment dollars. ;) -Moondog

Slashdot Top Deals

"Money is the root of all money." -- the moving finger

Close