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Linux Software

SOUP is Good for You 89

Posted by michael from the waiter,-there's-a-gnome-in-my-soup dept.
raelity writes "CNet is running a story about Ximian, nee Helix Code, planning to bring Web Services a la Microsoft's .NET to *nix operating systems by incorporating "SOUP" (a play on SOAP) into the Gnome user interface. "While tech kingpins such as Microsoft and Oracle have rushed to one-up each other in introducing Web-delivered software, Ximian is doing work behind the scenes to make sure Web services can run on the Linux and Unix operating systems.""
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SOUP is Good for You More

SOUP is Good for You

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  • Give me a spoon so I can enjoy this SOUP.

    //Pingo

  • Microsoft... (Score:3)

    by Isldeur ( 125133 ) on Saturday March 10, 2001 @03:40AM (#372454)


    You know, you can mod me down for this little observation - though I don't think it's justified. But isn't it a little interesting that people always mock KDE because it is so Microsoftish and all the "cool geeks" use Gnome when, in all actuality, the lead Gnome man always seems to praise and follow Microsoft openly? Bonobo for instance, then SOUP?

    I'm not making a judgement on all of this, but it always seems so hypocritical to me.

  • Roadmap to the future? (Score:3)

    by roguerez ( 319598 ) on Saturday March 10, 2001 @03:57AM (#372455) Homepage
    I'm having serious doubts whether leveraging this technology is the way to go. Considering that Microsoft hasn't a good track record for introducing useful and really open standards, the SOUP-crew might expect too much from .NET.

    Wouldn't it be wiser to continue to create new and enhance existing standards. This would garuantee that new concepts will be available to all platforms, without being dependant on a single vendor which has a track record that isn't too rosy-colored (especially in the open source world).

    Web technology as it exists (ranging from the simple interaction of web server & client, to databases which are integrated in webplatforms and internal information systems) has a lot to offer right now, and we can expect a lot in the future. I don't see why the direction should be altered towards a single-vendor 'solution'.

    The Internet concept is largely the product of inventiveness of academic minds who did not have profit motives. This proofed a wonderful thing. Let's us not part from that now.
  • Not really...
    Just because some people are vocal (and sometimes without facts) doesn't mean that they represent all people.
    Remember: The general consensus at /. is that there is no general consensus at /.

    And what do a few GNOME users mocking KDE have to do with the Ximian developer making choices about his project?

    Sorry for the little rant. I just don't want a small group of loud people to make people think that there have to be a GNOME/KDE camp.
    Can't we all just get along?

    --
  • This embrace and extend strategy can work many ways, not only in the favour of Microsoft.

    Whatever M$ does, it will be extended (polluted) be their accumulated enemies.

    //Pingo

  • Is really SOUP a play on SOAP? (Score:3)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 10, 2001 @04:08AM (#372458)
    There is something called SOUP [hp.com], which is something like a SOAP for binary data: The Simple Object Update Protocol (SOUP) specifies an content-transfer model for digital "appliances" like cameras, printers, scanners, picture frames, personal digital assistants, cell phones, machine control systems, and so on. SOUP standardizes simple but important communications between content-rich devices. It uses Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) messages to push content from one device into another. The approach resembles the way web browsers pull content from web servers. SOUP works with only two device "actions": 1)HTTP GET to obtain the device or service object state as a SOAP serialization and 2)HTTP POST to set the device state as well control the transfer of content. SOUP supports simple transfer, transfer with job control, indirect transfer (URL based), and content negotiation. SOUP does not preclude additional actions on devices; it exists to make simple actions simple.
  • I've had a serious infatuation with SOAP since Microsoft started talking about their .NET framework. With Ximian/Helix Code releasing SOUP I think it's going to blosson into love.

    --
  • ...and next I'll learn to spell.

    --

  • Re:Roadmap to the future? (Score:3)

    by tjansen ( 2845 ) on Saturday March 10, 2001 @04:13AM (#372461) Homepage
    SOAP is not a single-vendor solution anymore. SOAP 1.0 was, but with the help of IBM and a few others version 1.1 became a very powerful and flexible (read: somewhat difficult to use, at least when you want to do more than just RPC) framework for platform-independent communication, and is now controlled by the W3C. In other words: I like it. You can read the specs here [w3.org].
  • Umm, this post is somewhat at odds with what I understood SOAP to be. Isn't it an open standard? There's a spec here [w3.org], and it certainly doesn't appear to be 'single vendor' as you put it (see here [soapware.org])
    Q: Am I seriously missing something here?

  • Re:Microsoft... (Score:4)

    by evand ( 2571 ) <esd@@@cmu...edu> on Saturday March 10, 2001 @04:24AM (#372463) Homepage

    It would be stupid not to take good ideas from your competitors and integrate them into your own system. Where would we be if every interface had to be reinvented? Sure, there would be a lot of innovation, but also a lot of terrible, terrible software.

    In my opinion, KDE looks more like Windows than GNOME does by default, but this depends of course on how your distribution or package maintainer set up the package.

    But would you really expect de Icaza to look at a cool system that Microsoft has worked on or developed and say, "Hey, that's really great and useful, so let's do something different!" Would he be a good developer if he did that? I don't think so.

    Bonobo makes sense and is useful, no matter what its inspiration. SOUP, I hope, is going to be the same way.

  • Most unix apps and frameworks are already network transparent anyway.

    --
  • Doing a find and replace on some of Miguel's quotes gives a result that looks remarkably similar to a Microsoft Java press release I read a few years back.

    "We're making it so you can write services in the Java environment and bring them to the (Windows) platforms, as well as do the reverse," said Gates. "We think Java looks sweet," Gates continued. "Sun is supporting Java for creating network services. But we will let these services become available to Windows."

    Boot. Foot. Other. Funny.

  • These Helix Code (er, Ximian) guys aren't very good at picking a name the first time around, eh?

    --

  • SOAP==the end of free software (Score:5)

    by lukel ( 142033 ) on Saturday March 10, 2001 @04:37AM (#372467)
    I'm going to say something that may appear controversial, but please hear me through.

    While tech kingpins such as Microsoft and Oracle have rushed to one-up each other in introducing Web-delivered software, Ximian is doing work behind the scenes to make sure Web services can run on the Linux and Unix operating systems.

    While web-delivered software seems like a good idea, I wonder what the consequences for free software are. Obliviously free software isn't going to go away - but I see it becoming a less viable alternative. There are several reasons for this.

    (1) If software is delivered via the web, you will require someone else's computing power at the other end of the line. Someone has to pay for this. As the recent experience of the dotcoms shows, business models based on giving stuff away free almost invariable don't work. Software provides will have to be paid for the service they provide. So an end to the free beer aspect of software.

    (2) If software is running on remote server's, then even if it is covered by an open source licence, in many cases, the people running the severs will not be distributing binaries, so won't be required to provided source code for any changes they make. Hence an end to the free speech aspect of free software.

    Sure, not everyone will use web delivered software, so open source software will continue to be used by niche users. However, once the mainstream embrace web delivered software (and this is likely since its being pushed by MS and Sun et al), open source software will be permanently confined to the backwaters. This will mean its benefits will only be enjoyed by a select few.

  • I though a good answer to SOAP would be something like Distributed Information Retrieval Technology - no, that would project the wrong image to the laity.
  • Tog [asktog.com] sez: Window's take on the Mac WIMP GUI was to do many widgets the opposite for the sake of being different.

  • You might be able to pipe text utils over sockets, but that's a long way from a general programming model. CORBA is slow and a pain to use, RPC is pretty limited. Map memory over the network? In 4k chunks??? I disagree w/ most Unix apps being network transparent, but I'd love to be wrong. Is SOAP and different or better than RPC? Is there something wonderful out there that I don't know about?

  • I really hope that the GNOME-team has been in contact with the KDE-team here, to create a protocol that will make the protocol a common standard rather than a GNOME-specific invention. Sadly, I don't hold my hopes up on this one...

  • Well, only that small issue of GNOME 1.4. The beta is available from Ximian and the final release is due in a few weeks.

  • Re:SOAP==the end of free software (Score:5)

    by Pengo ( 28814 ) on Saturday March 10, 2001 @05:18AM (#372473) Journal

    Nahh...

    Think of it like this. I will compare web content to driving a car or using public transportation.

    Public transportation on paper a better idea. Leverage of shared resources hence savings, better for environment, easier to manage, more reliable (arguably).

    Now, why do people choose to still purchase vehicles in conjested city areas?

    ... ownership.

    You can't feel ownership of a remotely managed and remotely owned application. Human nature tells us to achieve to OWN not RENT. (There are soooo many paralells in society that have 'washed' us to believe this.)

    I know this mentality pretty well as I co-own a fairly sucessful ASP business in England (.. but I am an american, btw) . I go to market and I face these same 'issues' every day.. even in dealing with something such as a business-to-business workflow integration system.

    I believe that this could be the big blow for MS that frankly they don't need right now. They seem to have forgotten the most important factor in the tech-market.. the fickle consumer.

    Who knows, maybe Apple will learn from their mystakes..... but believe me. Free software ain't goin anywhere.




    --------------------
    Would you like a Python based alternative to PHP/ASP/JSP?
  • It's funny, M$ made some poor guys like you belief that M$ invented webservices. That's pathetic!!

    BTW Ximian is not GNOME. They just make sure that webservices work with Linux and that they can earn money with it. This is their job since they are a company.

    You could identify GNOME with SUN or HP and make the same complaints, but that would be stupid as well.

  • Amazing. One of my friends has for several years had a stuffed penguin named Soup.
    No, we don't know why. And we're none of us Linux geeks. Funny how these things work.

    -J
  • The other analogy that can be made is with houses. Especially in britain, most people either own, or aspire to own their home. Just as with public transport, renting accomadation *should" be better, someone else looks after the property, if something is wrong, they fix it, and if you want to move, it is much easier. Despite the theoretically reduced hassel of renting rather than buying, the latter is still the idea that people aim for. There are several reasons for this...
    • As mentioned in the parent post people like ownership
    • The total cost of renting is always higher than buying, especially if you rent for a long time
    • People feel that renting is money down the drain, you don't actually get anything, it's why people buy movies that they may only watch a few times, despite renting being cheeper.
    • When you rent (be it a house or software) you have less control over it, while your landlord may pay to have the boiler fixed, chances are that they won't let you paint the ceiling black, or build an extension. when you own you have complete control.
    • People don't always trust (often for good reason) their landlord to do the right thing. Not all landlords are efficient and keep good care of their property. But when you own, any problems are in your power to fix.
    The cost of ownership may be lower for a company to rent software, where the reduction in tech personell can save a fortune, and savings can be made on "mass production" by a service company, those savings are not there for the average home user. They pay more for bandwidth than a large company, and don't have the cost of management etc to make savings on. Also people are unlikely to trust that the companies will always be there. if they buy hardware and software, they have something concrete that no one can take away (ignoring burglars :->), even if the company that made it goes bancrupt.

    Ultimatly I just don't see home users being that bothered about hireing software, business yes, but not individuals. Especially as the power of home computing systems is growing much faster than bandwidth and the kind of applications that will be used at home are likely to be much more processor and media intensive than those used by businesses.
  • cool geeks dont use gnome. f that bloatware. kewl d00ds use windowmaker!!!!!!!
  • Not knowing much about SOUP (and still not knowing much, the CNet article wasn't terribly informative) I'm wondering: will SOUP have interoperatibility with .NET? I mean, will SOUP try to understand .NET calls and make some sense out of them (in the limited constructs of not being a Microsoft system, and thus shut out of some proprietary features)?

    Or is SOAP a replacement for .NET, much like TeX was touted as a replacement for a majority of the word processors out there? Not that that strategy worked entirely (an overwhelming number of TeX users seemed to jump ship when StarOffice came on board). It would be nice if the two were able to recognize each other, or at least SOAP recognize .NET.

  • "you dont need a computer anymore, we'll just give you this handy dandy nifty spiffy little web appliance deal, and we'll runn all of your apps from our server farm. for only 49$/month....." thank you. no thank you. f that. i'll keep my motherboards and procs please.\

  • Soup? (Score:2)

    by zCyl ( 14362 )
    In the software testing community, SOUP degradingly refers to "Software Of Unknown Pedigree"
  • I wonder why GNOME, KDE, and anyone else even worries about running M$ apps in an open source environment. Why don't they/we just build apps that work as well if not better? Who cares if .NET worx on linux dude! GNOME needs to concentrate on their GUI a little more. it is crappy IMHO. and KDE could add more drag n drop support to their apps. (it kix GNOMEs ass tho) i use linux because it doesnt crash, why would i want to introduce M$ crap into my perfectly running hand-rolled linux dist? GNOME needs to get a clue.
  • I don't disagree with most of what you're saying.

    But, SOAP itself doesn't neccessarily have much to do with what you're talking about. All it is is a way to do RPC's through XML. While you could call it an "enabling technology" to application subscription, it can be easily used for benevolant purposes as well. SOAP is a useful little bugger.

  • (1) If software is delivered via the web, you will require someone else?s computing power at the other end of the line. Someone has to pay for this. As the recent experience of the dotcoms shows, business models based on giving stuff away free almost invariable don?t work. Software provides will have to be paid for the service they provide. So an end to the free beer aspect of software.

    "Software at the other end of the line" -- you mean like the programs you run on a server over telnet or ssh? I see a direct parallel between software that you run by typing a command and software that you run by entering a URL.

    The only difference, IMHO, is that software on a URL can be made much more easily available to "anonymous" use, i.e. the public. But there is nothing to say that you couldn't make the source code available for such a program any more than the source code for any program you use on a corporate, university, or hobby server.

    We've always had closed source sofware (and always will) and those who publish closed-source will probably move quite easily over to web-based systems. I *prefer* that - why? Because when a Win program crashes on my computer there's no easy way to report that crash with any meaningful information to a programmer. Whereas in a web-based model, the developers responsible are closer to the software, closer to the logs, usually very familiar with their server environment which is standardized, and can make incremental improvements easier. (I should know, I program a lot for the web.)

    Those of us who believe in open-source can still download the source to web program x and play with it, provided that the developers make that source downloadable. Witness Slashcode. I will concede, though, that these programs are typically more complex in regards to dependencies on outside configuration, software, etc. (any mod_perl script, which I believe Slashdot runs as, for example, is heavily dependent on the way Apache is configured and compiled)

  • Re:SOAP==the end of free software (Score:3)

    by zCyl ( 14362 ) on Saturday March 10, 2001 @07:01AM (#372484)
    (1) If software is delivered via the web, you will require someone else?s computing power at the other end of the line. Someone has to pay for this. As the recent experience of the dotcoms shows, business models based on giving stuff away free almost invariable don?t work. Software provides will have to be paid for the service they provide. So an end to the free beer aspect of software.


    Actually, I see this as a great benefit to free software. The reason is that the remote application market provides a clear distinction between free software and commercial software. Any software which is distributed is easily pirated, simply because by "nature" such software has no intrinsic value or cost overhead to reproduce, other than what we artificially assign to it. Remote applications however are not so much SOFTWARE as SERVICES. And it is this service that people will be willing to pay for, because it DOES have intrinsic value and cannot be reproduced at no cost.

    So while with the exclusion of donations or advertisement funded services (such as, in simple form, we are seeing with freshmeat, google, download.com, etc), remote applications will provide a commercial market in the areas where corporate coordination is necessary, such as say an application that automatically gives you access to almost every academic paper in existence (a service, while the papers themselves have no "intrinsic" value since they can be copied), it still leaves the free software market wide open for all the applications you run on your pc.
  • Ownership is too meaningless for me.
    Think of it more like freedom.

    The freedom to go where you want, when you want, is very important to many people. Sometimes we call it 'convenience' but it is truly a freedom. Cars give you this freedom that todays public transport cannot provide.

    And we all know the freedom that free software brings. It doesn't feel anything like 'ownership' to me, but I do feel free.
  • <i>I would be very happy i Ximian would focus on getting their Gnome distribution back on track. There have not been any updates available for a long time.
    </I><BR><BR>How did this post get a +2. It's ver <i>un</I>informed. Helix does a great job with the gnome distribution. After all, they're not the only ones doing it. Redhat has one; Debian has one; Mandrake has one; etc. As was mentioned, Gnome 1.4 is on the way, maybe in a week or three.<br><br>Your statement implies that Ximian is working on SOUP, SOAP, Wuteva, to the detriment of their Gnome packages. Well All I have to say is, it takes a genius to implement SOUP, SOAP, whateva, and a trained monkey to package a distro. If Ximian had to choose (which Id say is a fallacy) then Id rahter they build out the infrastructure of the already-good GNOME.<BR><BR>First Corba, Now Bonobo. Tomorrow SOUP AND SOAP. With Nautilus making its way and Evolution having a Cambrian explosion. I think times are looking good for GNOME.
  • I feel inclined to comment.

    I think the notion of the mainstream embracing web-based software is a major misconception. Why?

    1) Quality of application execution. First, you have to consider bandwidth. Second, you have to consider CPU cycles, as most of the web delivered software uses interpreted languages.

    2) Consumer issues. Would a customer like the idea of not owning something? Or a possible loss of privacy (depending on the delivery method... I will agknowledge I haven't read that much about it, mainly because I don't believe it's the future of computing)?

    3) More focused on corporate use to begin with. It's obvious the majority of web-based applications will be created for/by and used in companies for certain niche tasks. That's where it's target is.

    MS and SUN can push this all they want but their level of success and penetration into the market depends on the technologies appropriateness for a given segment. As I stated above, I really think this stuff is more toward corporate environments then actual consumers. Also, let's not forget that a company can fail if an offerring isn't well suited enough; i.e. the network computer. I think that all this promise of web delivered apps is decorated with the slogan people were calling a sham: The Network Is The Computer.

    (In any event, more power to the open source programmers who want to implement it in ways that Microsoft never can -- developed for every platform.)

  • If each group develops its own protocol, which will of course be open source, than maybe we can just choose the better of them, or combine the best of each.
  • The headline should have been: "SOUP is good food". Not making the Dead Kennedys reference disappoints me
  • It appears SOUP is just going to be a GNOME interface to the .NET SOAP (XML based remote object invocation) interfaces.

    There's no reason KDE can't also use the .NET SOAP interfaces.
  • ownership.

    You can't feel ownership of a remotely managed and remotely owned application. Human nature tells us to achieve to OWN not RENT.

    An interesting point, but just because the software is on a remote computer doesn't mean you cannot own it. I.e. M$ could give you the choice between a $14/month licences for office or a $800 lifetime one.

  • SOUP is Good for You

    Actually, the title of the song is "Soup is Good Food," for anyone out there who's a fan of the Dead Kennedys.

  • I don't give a fuck about a CNet interview,
    Show me the code, then we can talk.

    Daniel Veillard
  • ... I mean, except the evil influence of M$...

  • > Human nature tells us to achieve to OWN not RENT. (There are soooo many paralells in society that have 'washed' us to believe this.)

    Indeed... never confuse human "nature" with human shallow-mindedness and stupidity 8-)

    To give my own examples as to why I believe these sort of remote applications won't work -

    Users such as myself appreciate *control* of their working environment (computers being a massive part of my own). I prefer free software, and free OSen (I won't proclaim which one in order to pacify the dunder-headed trolls out there) because they tend to give me that control.

    At this point in time, I'm not sure a lot of people want this control of their applications and computers... they just want to get on with it. In the future and as people become more aware of their computers as environments rather than tools, I think they will begin to crave the very same thing.

    People prefer cars to public transport as a matter of empowerment... the same will be true of computers.

    Si
  • Agreed!

    What's wrong with, for instance, remote X? While it might not be the most effective choice over the Internet, I have a feeling these companies are re-inventing wheels (in the case of M$, square wheels ;).

    I once discussed with a friend about developing a remote working environment for her company. I hardly remembered remote X because I'd got so used to it, I thought we simply have to develope something new.

    This discussion on technologies like .NET again shows the problem with Microsoft trying to extrapolate the PC of 1980 into something more widely useful - something the Unices have had forever.

    --

  • I'm not so sure it is a good idea. I mean, i don't want to have to be on the internet just to do some word processing or whatnot.
  • I really hope that the GNOME-team has been in contact with the KDE-team here, to create a protocol that will make the protocol a common standard rather than a GNOME-specific invention. Sadly, I don't hold my hopes up on this one...

    Step one: implement a SOAP engine using Qt. Not hard, since Qt already has an XML engine.

    What I'd really like to see is SOAP implemented for wxWindows. But that's because I'm a wxFreak.

    ObJectBridge [sourceforge.net] (GPL'd Java ODMG) needs volunteers.

  • No, kewl d00ds use ksh, or emacs f3wL.
  • If software is running on remote servers, then even if it is covered by an open source licence, in many cases, the people running the severs will not be distributing binaries, so won?t be required to provided source code for any changes they make.
    This is indeed a problem. There are plans to address this problem in the GPL version 3.0 as referenced in this slashdot article [slashdot.org].
  • Personally I stay away from KDE and related apps because I'm still pissed about the pathetic licensing for Qt in the early days. It was already painfully obvious that people weren't going to pay for yet another toolkit; know anyone (no, not your company) who owns a real copy of Motif? I didn't think so.
    Too little too late. So fuck 'em.

  • Who cares? They're both just chasing Microsoft's tail lights. Not that Microsoft doesn't appreciate these guys evangelizing .NET for them, I'm sure they do.


    Cheers,

  • does anyone know of a Microsoft product that is actualy compliant with published Microsoft standards? Home can GNOME comply if the standards creators can't
  • What a ridiculous argument. By your argument, anyone who has ever done anything "wrong" (and I'm not yet sure that charging money for a high quality products is "wrong"), we should never forgive them or give them a second chance. Utterly ridiculous.

    You're doing yourself no favor by staying away from Qt. It is an oustanding toolkit, and you should take a look at v3.0 on the way soon.

    know anyone (no, not your company) who owns a real copy of Motif

    No, but I know more than one company that has a Qt license.

    I give trolltech lots of respect for giving away their flagship product for nothing. If they want to make money on it by using two licenses, more power to them. It works for them, and it works for me (and other free software developers).

    But hey, don't let logic convince you... go on denying yourself access to a slew of amazing free apps.


    --
  • people always mock KDE because it is so Microsoftish

    I really wish I knew what this meant. I'm sick and tired of hearing it. How exactly is KDE more windows-like than gnome? Can someone enumerate the points? To me, they look pretty fucking similar, and neither looks like windows.


    --
  • hey d00d. i thought the topic was GUIs nig. btw. bash kix ksh's ass. and vi rulz forever d00d. ok...enough of the stupid linux/unix rivalries. peace.
  • And ms is always chasing apples taillights. That's the way it's allways been.
  • I agree more should be done to make X lighter weight so that it could be more usable over the net. It would give unix a leg up on anything .NET.

  • Apple came up with SOAP?


    Cheers,

  • SOAP is already a cross-platform standard. So what is this SOUP thing actually? The only clue in the C|Net article is where it says "Ximian is creating a tool that will allow Web services written for Linux to be compiled for SOAP. De Icaza said the compiler could be available to developers within two months."

    Ah. So it's a tool of some sort, not a protocol. A google search on "Ximian SOUP" only turns up this message [ximian.com], which isn't that helpful (the "synapse" server it refers to is maybe https://synapse.ximian.com/ [ximian.com], which isn't publicly accessible. Anyone actually know what this thing IS?


    --

  • As I understand, not only M$ app will run on .NET. Actually, it is backed by other compagnies like Sun and IBM.
  • What's interesting is a whole lot of this .NET initiative (the Common Lanuage Runtime, the C-sharp programming language) came about after Sun sued Microsoft out of Java.
  • SOAP is basically a series of XML specs saying how you access objects/functions/arguments etc on the server machine. So you pass an XML document to a SOAP server, it processes it, and returns you an XML document with the results.

    .NET's Web Services is simply an easy way of processing this, as is Sun's similar project, as is soap. You just write your code with your objects, functions, etc and let .NET handle the XML bits.

    You could, however, write a SOAP object just using, for example, a Perl script which parses the incoming XML manually (it comes through HTTP POST) and then spits out the XML response just like any other web page.
  • Free software is not there to be innovative, just free. Those of you who are afraid that this idea may look a whole lot like another from a proprietary vendor do not get it. That is part of the point of free software - take something that you would otherwise have to pay for, write it yourself, and give it away for free.
  • One thing that makes KDE feel so much like Windows and makes it such a nuisance for non-Windows users is the fact that it uses CUA bindings. A UNIX, Gnome, or Emacs user that tries to go four lines down in a text widget is faced with four new windows popping up. Or they may want to go to the beginning of a line, hit Control-A, type a character, and see all their text disappears. That happens again and again, and makes it difficult for many UNIX users to ever feel really at home in KDE. And the CUA bindings were really pretty poorly designed to being with.

    In general, I think you are right, though. Both KDE and Gnome follow Microsoft quite a bit. And while that may be useful for mass market appeal, overall, I think it's a shame. Linux's GUI could be so much more useful than merely doing well what Windows already does.

  • Despite its generality and power, neither Microsoft's nor the W3C's SOAP spec provides enough information to create interoperable RPC services; clients and servers need to know a lot more about each other in addition to supporting the SOAP spec and what data they want to exchange. For example, as it stands, the spec doesn't tell you the format for something as simple as a string that might contain arbitrary characters or a number.

    I can't tell whether this is a strategy by Microsoft to appear open and get others to adopt SOAP without actually delivering interoperability, or whether the SOAP designers just don't care and don't think it's important

    Either way, I wouldn't get my hopes up that Linux and Windows-based services can always reliably talk to each other through SOAP. As it stands, SOAP is not a complete RPC spec and cannot replace even many simple uses of CORBA or DCOM. If that's what you want, Sun XDR/RPC is probably a better choice for you: it's much better specified. Or, of course, we can try to track Microsoft's actual implementation (as opposed to their spec) as much as possible.

  • While SOUP can use the slogan "SOUP is good for you"
    MS will be able to have "Use SOAP"
    Which is clearly a better play on a common phrase.

    Then they could have "You are not the car you drive....You are the OS you use instead" to go along with it.

    I'm not sure what is going to make this .NET thing so big. It won't be able to run alot of apps that some ppl need to use. Only basic type of apps, and then they'll all be MS. For someone who uses the same computer all the time, Is this going to have any advantage? Other than having to wait a long time to do something because the server is busy? Or is this intended for something completely differnt, like internet devices?

    I'm I even slightly on the right track in terms of what the MS .NET thing is?

  • lbxproxy ships with X11. dxpc is another X11 protocol compressor you can find on the web.

    VNC gives you full network transparency, is cross platform, and is pretty lightweight. The TightVNC version works quite well over ISDN-speed links. The client even runs on a PalmPilot through its serial port.

  • I know this has nothing to do with edible SOUP or unedible SOAP and might be deemed off-topic, but it has to mentioned someplace on this forum. Please, observe the the use of the article "an" in an English sentence. "an" is an indefinate article, the form of "a" used before a vowel sound. See here [mq.edu.au]. Here [slashdot.org] "content" does not start with a vowel, and here [slashdot.org] "German" does not start with a vowel sound.
  • So what if they copy Microsoft's look and feel and program features. Doing this will only make the transition from Windows to Linux easier. So is this really a bad thing?
  • One word: Icons. KDE icons look more like windows icons compared to GNOME's. Other than that KDE is much better than GNOME on all counts and that's why I use it. But to be fair GNOME does have nicer icons and I wish KDE developers gave up on the rule that evey icon must have a black border around it. It really gives them a "cartoonish" look. Other than that KDE is really superior to GNOME at this stage (though it's still behind W2K but they're moving so fast it's not even funny).
    This stuff seems a bit offtopic here anyways ;).
  • What about the fact that you can configure them yourself? Every fucking single one of them! KDE is the ONLY single frigging Unix desktop out there that you can use without the mouse. Once you get the carpal tunnel syndrome you'll appreciate why it's so goddamn important to some. Moron.
  • its most likely ximians implementation of the libarys needed to interact with soap
  • when i first started useing linux i used kde, then when gnome came out i started using it. i still use gnome, but i check out kdes progress when major releases come out, its a nice desktop, like gnome. but what i dont get is how all the kde people say its really superior, yet give not reasons, could you give me some?
  • Plausible. What's all this talk about a "compiler", then?

    --

  • Konqueror. Try it now and you'll know what I mean. They've made a tremendous amount of progress on it in the last two months alone.

    Integration. I mean it's not true that consistent look and feel is for weenies. It simply makes your desktop look that much more professional. Plus the fact that the KDE team goes the extra mile with all of their stuff. Take their help browser for example there I have all I need to have including KDE help, manpages and info pages all available from a single consistent 'shell'. Not a big deal to some perhaps but those nice touches really give KDE the polished feel it's always praised for. There are many other examples in KDE where I tend to go "wow this is neat. I like having it". You should try it for a while as some goodies are not obvious right away. You have to play with it a bit before you discover all the stuff it can do. There is quite a lot of it now.

    I have Helix GNOME installed on my system but I don't like it too much. It's godawful slow on my K6II 450MHz with 128MB ram. Any desktop should just fly on a system like this! Anyways GNOME is finally stable but they don't have the apps that KDE has. Konqueror is stellar, KOffice is quite stable now and probably a very nice suite if you're a person that uses this sort of stuff (I generally speaking have no need for an office suite). KDevelop has to be my favourite though. It's megacool how it nicely integrates into the autoconf/make way of doing things. Their front end to GDB rocks although it's not yet as feature complete as DDD but since it's nicely integrated with the rest of the IDE I tend to use it now instead of the old trusty DDD. Last but not least KDE is bigger than the sum of its parts. It boasts a lot of stable code that works here and now. GNOME may have great plans but until those plans become a working code they are just that: plans that may or may not pan out. In my opinion GNOME guys are overdesigning their architecture which will sooner or later get out of date anyways.

    Many people may not like my final remark but I can't fail to notice that many KDE developers are German and I think it really shows (think Volksvagen vs Chevvy). I don't like any kind of generalisations but it's hard to dispute that Germans have always had an impressive attention to detail. Oh, and I'm not German by the way.

  • Ummm we were talking about GUIs remember. BTW SOAP is nothing but a simple extension of XML-RPC which is Dave Winers baby. I think MS must be regretting throwing it's weight behind SOAP either that or they will find a way to make it break on all other operating systems. My guess is that MS operating systems will wrap GUIDs in SOAP envelopes thereby assuring that no other operating system can act on the package.
  • I don't know about others but yes VNC is very promising. Now how to make anonymous users run simple apps safely over VNC..
  • You're missing out almost entirely on .NET. Remember way back when when Microsoft announced ActiveX? Which was a fancy name for OLE which is basically building a large piece of software out of a bunch of pre-written components. .NET is the replacement for all such object communication technologies Microsoft's been using since 1994. Instead of using a binary packet to transfer objects between apps they're now using XML files. This has lots of benefits; everything will speak a common protocol and potentially non-Microsoft apps will be talking to Microsoft apps, besides different systems talking to one another, you can write components in your favourite language and have them talk to components written in different languages. Yet another aspect of .NET is the use of intermediary code. Components can be written in any language and compiled to the p-code which contains no architecture specific data structures which means any OS with a .NET interpreter will be able to run the component. Something Java's been doing for a while now.
  • Read: SOAP means passing objects as XML documents which enables them to be very simply parsed and read and also eases the transfer of data as objects can be passed by a plain old HTTP server (a standard) rather than by a proprietary method.
  • Open source != better. Why must people with UID's over 50,000 be so difficult. Besides the fact that being interoperable with SOAP is a good thing since lots of companies are getting into the groove of it. XML is easily parsed and transfered and was designed for the purpose of exchanging all sorts of information.
  • I'm running KDE 2.1 and have modified the key bindings as much as seems possible. Given the tools and documentation, you cannot rebind everything, nor can you rebind things to Emacs-like command sequences. Furthermore, key bindings that you configure in the control center are not consistently used by all applications (even Konqueror ignores some of them).

    You are also wrong on your history. X11 toolkits traditionally had key and event binding support that was quite powerful, well documented, could be changed dynamically, and was consistent across applications. Neither KDE nor Gnome come close either on documentation or consistency or flexibility.

    Even if KDE bindings were fully and consistently reconfigurable, the default right now is not correct for what people expect on a current Linux desktop. At the very least, if it wants to shed its Windows-like image, KDE should address the consistency issues and ship with a set of Emacs/UNIX-like bindings out of the box that users can choose with the click of a button.

  • Thanks for the response. I did experiment with this and other things, and I think it's still pretty limited and doesn't quite help with overcoming the impression that KDE is very "Windows-like".

    The set of keybindings labeled "Unix" that ship with KDE 2.1 still contain bindings like Ctrl-W for "Close Window" and "Ctrl-N" for "New". It was nice that the presence of a "Unix" set of bindings indicates that the KDE project is aware of the issue, but I think a bit more still would need to be done to come up with bindings that really feel natural to a traditional Emacs/Unix user.

  • SOAP is a much more flexible Distributed Object Model. Essentially, it lets objects interoperate without them needing to have exactly matching interfaces. That lets object implementations evolve over time (i.e. changing the interface to an object doesn't necessarily break all its clients), and it paves the way to more dynamic forms of interoperability, where objects can discover each other's interfaces on the fly.

    I think that the differences between SOAP and CORBA/DCOM are analogous to the differences between Python's object model and that of C++ or Java (although Java does a little better here). Both SOAP and Python allow you a lot of flexibility and dynamic forms of interaction, but both come at the cost of efficiency and static type checking.

    SOAP can also be viewed as analogous to UNIX pipes and sockets in many ways. Because SOAP is so much simpler than systems like CORBA, and because of its reliance on XML, the hope is that it will be much easier for programs to interoperate. Much like UNIX programs can be "glued" together using pipes, to do things that the original designers of the program never foresaw.

  • I disagree. Free/open source software can/should be innovative. I think we're entering a golden era for free software, where there's a critical mass of people with the appropriate talents and interests involved, that free software can stop just imitating, and start innovating. Not that there's anything wrong with imitating a good idea/technology if it works. But when you get a diverse range of people involved in free software, rather than just hackers, you can start getting some interesting results. e.g., the GNOME folks are really starting to do some interesting user interface stuff, KDE is starting to look perty due to the artists getting involved, documentation is getting better for a lot of projects, etc.

  • As much as I hate M$, I think that .NET will be big. One thing the M$ has done right lately, is getting in league with language developers. For example, the Mercury [mu.oz.au] team were given an opportunity to take sneak peak at alot of the .NET technology, and to port Mercury to the .NET runtime. Having support for a wide range of programming languages will certainly bolster .NET, and may lead to lot's of non-M$ software available for it.

    Of course, it would have been nice if M$ had have extended a similar courtesy to the Java community :-(

  • although "cool geeks" use guhnome, COOLER geeks use Blackbox.
    _______________________________________ ___________
  • I'v had KDE2 and 2.1 on my system, i used konqueror last nite, its not any better than nautilus. konqueror and the rest of kde crash way more often than gnome and its apps on my system. you do have a point about kdevelop being nice, but the new gIDE in cvs that uses bonobo shows alot of potential now that its being hacked on. also gnome has always been faster on every computer i used, i used kde and gnome on a pentium 100 with 32mb of ram, and gnome always ran better.
  • woah buddy chill...are you even a sys. op.? ever tried to run apache w/o the source?? perl?? sure if you are lazy having the binary's may be great....but if you want to have a stable system the source is the only way to go.

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