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Red Hat Software Businesses

Interview with Taylor & Pennington from Red Hat 295

Posted by chrisd from the free-software-means-freely-customized-too dept.
RH-Gimp writes "OSNews has put together a long and informative interview with Havoc Pennington and Owen Taylor from Red Hat. They discuss about the KDE issues, the UI on Red Hat 8.0, the future of the Linux desktop and XFree and other interesting stuff."
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Interview with Taylor & Pennington from Red Hat More

Interview with Taylor & Pennington from Red Hat

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  • All haters aside; (Score:3, Insightful)

    by glrotate ( 300695 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:13PM (#4421622) Homepage
    RH 8 is slick. Kudos to RH for raising the bard for other dists that claim to be for the desktop. RH has shown consistent improvement from release to release, that's all we can ask.

    • Re:All haters aside; (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Alas poor Bard, we -new- him well. A grave man no more, it seems!
    • Heh... I don't normally pick on misspellings, but this one's too good to pass up...

      Would a mile-high minstrel also qualify as "Raising the bard"?

      Mark Erikson

      • Re:All haters aside; (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I read it as an unsubstantiated rumor that a RedHat necromancer brought Shakespeare back to life.

    • Re:All haters aside; (Score:5, Funny)

      by Soko ( 17987 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:28PM (#4421699) Homepage
      Kudos to RH for raising the bard ...

      To KDE, or not to KDE: that is the question:
      Whether 'tis GNOMEbler in the mind to suffer
      The flames and trolls of outrageous UserInterface,
      Or to take arms against a sea of disparate apps,
      And by opposing end them? To kill -9: to sleep; ...

      Soko
    • raising the bard? What does this story have to do with Shakespeare?

  • Dear Havoc: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:15PM (#4421631)
    Give us back the fucking virtual desktops! (aka viewports)

    What the hell were you thinking when you said that "Multiple Desktops" had all the functionality needed, so viewport people were out of luck?

    I mean, come on. With viewports, all you needed to do was turn off edgeflipping and you were done. Instead, you rightly say that changing your current code to allow edgeflipping would be a pain in the ass.

    • Re:Dear Havoc: (Score:5, Informative)

      by The Original Yama ( 454111 ) <lists.sridhar@dhanapal a n .com> on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:53PM (#4421808) Homepage
      I was pissed off about that, too. The GNOME2 release notes has info on getting workspaces back [gnome.org]. It works well, but unfortunately the GNOME Pager can't see them.

      Fortunately, somebody has managed to emulate most viewport functionalies with workspaces [skylab.org]. The only thing that missing (from what I can see) is edge-flipping, but this script provides the infrastructure with which to implement that.

      More scripts can be found at the WikiSawfishLibrary [skylab.org].

      • Of course, Red Hat and Mandrake have both decided to make metacity the GNOME window manager.

        I still dislike Fred Crozat's (Mandrake's soel GNOME guy... oddly he does a better job with GNOME than Mandrake's KDE team with KDE) decision on that matter....

      • Gnome1.4 vs. Gnome2 (Score:4, Insightful)

        by nkv ( 604544 ) <nkv@noSpaM.willers.employees.org> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @02:56AM (#4422391) Homepage
        I was pissed off about that, too.

        A lot of goodies which 1.4 had missing from GNOME2 IMHO.

        The ability to dynamically bind keychords to menu items, lot of customisability options (panel behaviour etc.) etc. are all missing. I tried to customise Metacity and I get a small menu from the gnome-control-center with two or three options which is definitely less than what I can do with sawfish.

        You have to love the fonts though :)

        Cheerio

        • Re:Gnome1.4 vs. Gnome2 (Score:5, Insightful)

          by GauteL ( 29207 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @05:59AM (#4422647)
          I don't miss options at all. Page-flipping could be sort of nice, but I'm seriously glad that there is only one choice for workspace/viewports now.

          If I had a dime for every time I've heard someone scream about some option being removed from GNOME I'd be rich by now. If everyone was to be satisfied we would be back to the mess that was GNOME 1.4. Instead I have a beautiful, easy to use and clean desktop.

          The point is that while an individual outcry for an option might be acceptable to include, including options for everyone will not because everyone wants different options. One thing people never seem to remember is that preferences do have costs. They are not something to just throw in so that everyone is happy. If the GNOME-team starts backing down on option after option then eventually NOONE will be happy because GNOME would be a bloated and unstructured mess.

          Unless the requestor has some more insightful arguments about why the option needs to be included other than "this prevents GNOME 2 from being useful" it won't be included, simple as that.

          I'd like to quote the questions put forward by Havoc Pennington when someone requested panel configuration:

          "For all those options you need to go through these questions:

          - why do you want the different behavior

          - why would someone _not_ want the different behavior

          - if _everyone_ wants the different behavior, we should just switch to it, not make it an option.

          -Does everyone want it? Why or why not?

          - if there are two different behaviors needed, can the two cases be autodetected? if so let's do that, no need to make the user configure it manually.

          - is the reason for wanting or not wanting a minor issue that doesn't matter much? if so, then we should just pick a default, it's not worth a preference."

          • What if:
            - 33% wants behavior A, 33% wants behavior B, and 33% wants behavior C?
            - the situation cannot be autodetected unless we invent a mind reading device?
    • What the hell were you thinking when you said that "Multiple Desktops" had all the functionality needed, so viewport people were out of luck?

      They do have all the functionality needed.
      If you need more pixels on your screen, go buy a bigger monitor. For everything else, there is Mast^H^H^H^H the multiple desktops functionality. Duplicate features must be occamed out. And boy, did I ever cringe over the clipboard implementations galore that coexist in Emacs.

      To be true, I too have issues with over-simplification. Right now, I cannot drag windows between desktops with the deskguide applet, but I don't think it's infeasible to implement without re-inventing yet another way to provide more than single desktop.
    • Hear hear! I submitted a bug to Red Hat about this. They closed it after commenting that it would be better handled upstream. While that might be true, I'm still pissed. We've had virtual desktops for , what, at least 10 years? Maybe I'll go back to fvwm2 to get them back.

      -Paul Komarek

  • Man I Love These Guys! (Score:4, Funny)

    by coupland ( 160334 ) <dchaseNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:17PM (#4421641) Journal
    Man, Penn and Taylor are my favourite comedians of all time, I had no idea they worked for RedHat... Guys I totally loved that time you threw the glass of water in the talk-show host's face, and you rocked on Fear Factor! ;-)

  • It's funny.... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mao che minh ( 611166 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:17PM (#4421644) Journal
    I have read alot of interviews, press release notes, and newslist postings by Redhat concerning it's UI in the past, and most seemed uninspired. It is interesting to see the developers/designers interviewed here so enthusiastic and impressed with their own and each other's work.

    At first I criticized Redhat's blending of KDE and Gnome, but now I am beginning to appreciate it. It is adding yet another dimension to Linux on the desktop, and seems to be doing so in the same spirit of creative development that has driven Linux as far as it has come. Maybe having only two choices wasn't enough?

  • My god! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:18PM (#4421646)
    The article states that after many years of "It's not a bug, it's a feature!", real resolution changing has just been added to XFree86's CVS.

    About bloody time.

    • Re:My god! (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Frank Grimes ( 211860 )

      How long till XFree86 resolution changing is supported by your favorite window managers and desktops? And then how long until it gets included in your favorite distro?

      A while, I'd guess.

      • Re:My god! (Score:4, Informative)

        by stefanlasiewski ( 63134 ) <(moc.ocnafets) (ta) (todhsals)> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:08AM (#4422080) Homepage Journal
        XFree86 resolution changing is supported by your favorite window managers

        X controls the resolution, not the window manager or desktop.

        Your Window Manager will support any resolution change made by X .

        A while, I'd guess.

        Unfortunately, this is true. It will take a while for X4.3 (or whatever) to make it into the next major versions of most distros.

        But if your impatient, you can install XFree86 on your own. It's not that hard.
    • I really do hate displaying my ignorance like this, but what does this mean? Admittedly, I've never really played with resolution, but as I understood it, if you really wanted to, you could set it up so ctrl-alt-[KP+|KP-] rolled you up or down one resolution level... and at any rate I know that certain apps (eg tuxracer) run at an apparently lower resolution than I usually have... so what exactly is "real resolution changing"? I don't doubt that it's something extraordinarily exciting, I just haven't the foggiest idea what you (or they) mean...

      • Re:Umm... help an ignoramus... (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:28AM (#4422156)
        It means that the desktop is resized to the given resolution. I look at ctrl-alt-+/- as more of a 'Zoom' function than anything else.

        The effect of this change will be so that when you zoom in, your desktop does not extend outwards by about half a screen in every direction.

        Think of the way Windows changes resolutions, if what I say isn't lucid enough.
    • The article states that after many years of "It's not a bug, it's a feature!", real resolution changing has just been added to XFree86's CVS.

      Also, I wonder how long will it take to support multiple mice "on-the-fly", i.e., without having to manually setting XF86Config-4 and restarting X.

      That too would be really useful, mainly in the laptop arena.

  • Smoke and mirrors... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Soko ( 17987 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:20PM (#4421659) Homepage
    Oops!

    Sorry - that would be Penn and Teller. Silly me. ;-)

    Soko

  • No brainer (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SomeOtherGuy ( 179082 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:22PM (#4421670) Journal
    It was really a no brainer that some distribution would finally decide to try to piece together the different UI's, and at least try to make them look similar to one another. Imagine a bathroom with a gold shower head, a chrome drain, and marble knobs. Things look much better when they are in sync. Kudos to RH for finally getting the ball rolling in this area.

    • Re:No brainer (Score:5, Interesting)

      by coupland ( 160334 ) <dchaseNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:36PM (#4421734) Journal

      I would tend to agree with you, making interfaces look similar is overall a good thing, particularly when it's only the distribution doing it, not a more central or insidious group.

      After all, RedHat is strong because of its popularity, not its monopoly power. If RedHat genuinely ignores consumer interests they will crash in flames. They understand this, so don't think they took the united UI lightly. They must ride the crest of user desires or perish in the process.

      The marriage of two UIs was inevitable and will make the KDE vs. GNOME debates more objective. We can stop hearing about how KDE/GNOME "looks" so much nicer and know that soon the market will decide solely on technical merit. We should be excited about this, consistent interfaces may help a WM to win based on its abilities, not the skins it has available...

  • Future developers (Score:3, Funny)

    by kingkade ( 584184 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:23PM (#4421675)
    It's good to see young developers getting involved is OSS. I mean, what are these guys, 11, maybe 12 at most?

    :P

    • Re:Future developers (Score:5, Insightful)

      by messiertom ( 590151 ) <tomNO@SPAMcrystae.homeip.net> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:07AM (#4421869) Homepage Journal
      As a young developer (14), I couldn't agree more. I see a lot of young programmers who don't know what this whole "open-source" thing is all about. This is not a good thing: at the least, they should know about what OSS is and what values it stands for.

      I for one, think that the best place to reach out to get OSS rolling past the Juggernaut is to get our young programmers involved. After all, I don't think even Linus can hack from the grave.

  • Many unanswered questions remain (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jeff Probst ( 459812 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:24PM (#4421677) Homepage Journal
    It is a shame that OSNews did not question the UI designers about the removal of the taiwanese flag from redhat [kuro5hin.org]. It is even more shameful that no one on slashdot cares about it.

    The average reader appears to take the stance that "Redhat exists to make money, and if this is what they have to do, then so be it." I find this insulting coming from a movement which is supposedly all about freedom.

    It appears that free software is merely all about not paying for software and the downfall of microsoft.
    • The average reader appears to take the stance that "Redhat exists to make money, and if this is what they have to do, then so be it." I find this insulting coming from a movement which is supposedly all about freedom.

      It appears that free software is merely all about not paying for software and the downfall of microsoft.

      Jeff, kindly go to http://www.redhat.com/ and find me a link to the FSF. Or even a reference to "Free Software."

      Not everyone who uses Linux thinks that Free Software is a viable moral argument; some of them just use it because it is free-as-in-no-cost, not free-as-in-freedom.

      But, even if they were advocates and zealous supporters of the FSF, it wouldn't be at cross purposes to kotow to Chinesse bullying over Taiwan. Free Software is about software freedoms, not necessarilly any other freedoms. (Sure, they probably go hand in hand, but there's a difference between a Linux Users Group and a Free Tibet concert.)

      • Re:Many unanswered questions remain (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MisterFancypants ( 615129 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:56PM (#4421821)
        Jeff, kindly go to http://www.redhat.com/ and find me a link to the FSF. Or even a reference to "Free Software."

        Not everyone who uses Linux thinks that Free Software is a viable moral argument; some of them just use it because it is free-as-in-no-cost, not free-as-in-freedom.

        How about right on their MISSION STATEMENT?

        http://sources.redhat.com/mission.html [redhat.com]

        The one where they not only reference "Free Software" MULTIPLE TIMES but include 3 links to the FSF in the space of about 2 paragraphs?

        Feel like a fool? You should. On the plus side, you could probably get a job as a Slashdot editor considering the skill you just showed in spouting off without doing any basic double checking to make sure you're right before you post.

    • The movement is about freedom. But that in no way guarantees that any company forged by that same movement, in a capatilist setting, will even vaguely treasure it's original values once money comes into play.

      Besides, this site is full of people that busted a gut at the expense of some poor Korean guy that "played games to death". Why would these same people care about whether or not the bitmap of a flag for some little island nation off of the coast of China can be found in recent Redhat distributions?

    • Re:Many unanswered questions remain (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jasonditz ( 597385 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:43PM (#4421766) Homepage
      Why is it freedom only goes on to the point where it offends you, and then it becomes money-grubbing?

      Seriously, if you're so all-fired worried about freedom, why not defend the freedom of RedHat to do something which is implicitly allowed in the GPL in the first place, namely adding and removing parts of a program to suit tastes?

      I think the reason OSNews didn't bring this up is because either

      1) They didn't know
      or
      2) They knew but didn't care

      seems like a safe bet, because I didn't know, and now that I do I don't care.

    • Re:Many unanswered questions remain (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Bingo Foo ( 179380 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:46PM (#4421779)
      Ummm... What's stopping you from putting the flag back in yourself? Write a patch. Write a script. Link to that. You and I are free to put it back in.

      I do sympathize with you though. It seems pretty spineless, but RH still can't get in anyone's way who wants to implement a retrofit with the Taiwanese flag.

    • She did not bring this up because when the questions were written & sent RedHat 8.0 was in beta and many issues hadent came to light yet. Here is a quote from her :

      "I sent these questions to the Red Hat guys, BEFORE I actually installed Red Hat 8, get pissed off with the nvidia drivers, and wrote that review. If I had sent it later, my question would have been different, more direct, and maybe even a bit rude (eg. "you are a big company now and nvidia has the gfx market. Why don't you PARTNER with nvidia to make sure the damned driver works with your OS?"). Count on it."

    • Re:Many unanswered questions remain (Score:5, Insightful)

      by coupland ( 160334 ) <dchaseNO@SPAMhotmail.com> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:03AM (#4421853) Journal
      You don't understand free software at all... Free software is about letting the market decide, and if they decide that the removal of the Taiwanese flag from Redhat 8.0 is acceptable then you should know where you stand. Don't assume that market forces will support you just because your story is sad...

    • Re:Many unanswered questions remain (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:14AM (#4421891)
      Well I'm not gunna even begin to care about the Taiwanese flag until the Texas flag is in there.
      • Thanks for your comments Mr. President

    • Re:Many unanswered questions remain (Score:4, Insightful)

      by bilbobuggins ( 535860 ) <`moc.tnujtnuj' `ta' `snigguboblib'> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:59AM (#4422254)
      first off, why are you looking to redhat for moral role models?

      second, let me let you in on a secret about open source software...
      if company X packages/distributes OSS in a way you don't like, you are FREE to do it differently yourself.

      face it, redhat doesn't owe you anything, nor do they lead/represent/speak for 'the movement' and yes the majority of people use free software because of the free part and not the road to world peace part

    • Oh crap. Now all the MS zealots will continue to claim that Gnu/linux and "open source" is communist...

      Having said all that, my wife is Taiwanese and I have yet to get her to switch to Linux. While Chinese seems to display just fine, the input system is a bit clunky. Of course, that may be because I don't know how to set it up - everytime I try all I can find is documentation which my wife doesn't understand because she is not a technical type, and I don't understand because it's in chinese. So moral of the story, not sure it will be missed that much.

  • GUI (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SexyKellyOsbourne ( 606860 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:25PM (#4421683) Journal
    I'm glad they're busy tweaking out a decent interface and making it more readily-usable -- making sure everything's aligned right, implementing an xFree86 that can actually do dynamic resolution changes, sticking to a GUI standard, and so forth.

    But if people spent more time working on or with Redhat and less time talking about/flaming it, it would have a lot more commercial success and would serve as a better bulwark against you-know-who.

  • Hooray for -someone- making decisions (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ars-Fartsica ( 166957 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:41PM (#4421755)
    There are dozens of linux distros you cn get that meet any specific desire. Kudos to RedHat for actually trying to differentiate themselves with continued enhancements. If you don't like what they are doing, fortunately there are dozens of other distros out there and surely one is right for you. Everyone wins.

    RedHat is one of the most important companies involved in getting linux accepted and used outside of its traditional audience, along with IBM and now Sun. I personally like RedHat 8 and wish them coninued good fortune.

    • If you don't like what they are doing, fortunately there are dozens of other distros out there and surely one is right for you. Everyone wins.

      Exactly. Check out Distro Watch [distrowatch.com] for a list of the best distributions. They even have the packages that are included in each, as well as pros and cons, and reviews.

  • Issues, but all in all I am moving... (Score:5, Informative)

    by ACK!! ( 10229 ) on Wednesday October 09, 2002 @11:42PM (#4421762) Journal
    Listen, you have to run out and get an exta rpm for playing mp3s. As always you have to download Nvidia drivers and if you have an ATI card I suggest going to the gatos.sourceforge.net and using those drivers. Fonts are an install away from the corefonts sourceforge project and dvd playback requires an ogle download.

    I can understand every single bit of this. However, apt-rpm needs to come with the distro.

    Also what is the deal with the extras submenu? I understand simplifying the menu structure. The SuSE distro menu is a huge mess with a hundreds of programs organized fairly well but still hard to find and half with no icons in the menu! Still, when a new program is installed the user should have a choice of whether they want it merged into the main or the extras menu (can't they come up with some better frickin' title for the thing?) not very easy for an end user.

    Finally they need to be hit by a clue-by-four from of all places with the dipsticks at Lindows. Every desktop OS has at one time or another a compatibility layer to ease users over to its use. Mac OS X has one for old OS 9.2 apps. Windows had one for dos and Win 3.11 apps. We need a compatibility layer that runs Windows apps and it is called Wine. It is time that the distros come together and I mean everyone including the OpenLinux distros, Redhat and Mandrake and figure out how to make Wine as good as it can be without it being completely taken over by codeweavers and transgaming.

    A good compatibility layer that works as well as CrossOver Office does right now out of the box with no messing around. Install Redhat, and then install Office 2000 and it just works. This is needed not by me but the newbie easing into Linux use.

    It is still going to take a shift in thinking to get Linux to the desktop in any numbers even within IT departments.

    Currently the Distro is still seen by too many as simply being the OS layer -- kernel, GNU shell and the GNU utilities.

    The Distros need to think of the Linux OS as being made up of three parts as most OSes do --

    OS layer -- kernel, GNU shell and GNU utilities.
    Compatibility layer -- Wine
    GUI layer -- kernel frame buffer support to Xfree86 to finally the desktop

    Redhat is almost there and considering how quick the shift in focus came from Redhat they did a pretty good job.

    • Re:Issues, but all in all I am moving... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Papineau ( 527159 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:01AM (#4421845) Homepage

      For being subscribed to wine-devel, Red Hat seems to be (with Lindows) the only distro with someone actively working on Wine. I don't recall seeing somebody with a @suse.com or @debian.org email address, but I do know a @redhat.de (yes, Germany) and a @lindows.com participate on a regular basis. Unless employees of other distros prefer to use another e-mail address than their job's one...

    • i wish (Score:2, Interesting)

      by asv108 ( 141455 )
      Redhat would never put apt-rpm in by default because then why would anyone pay $60/year to get their system updates via up2date? I would gladly pay for up2date if it were $60/user but there is no way I'm paying a $120/year for free software updates on my 2 redhat boxes at home. So I installed apt-rpm on my redhat machines, and gave my $60 to the mandrake club.
      • You wouldn't pay $120 for two systems. RedHat Network gives one free to each user (email address). As far as I can tell there is nothing preventing you from having multiple RHN accounts (each gets a free subscription) but you know, I personally don't do that. As a stockholder of RHAT I'd like them to make some money soon :)

    • I just installed Red Hat 8.0 on my laptop. I had some issues.

      Somehow, someway the GRAPHICAL installer messed up on the configuration for X. Go figure that one out. It more than likely has something to do with my crappy video adaptor, though. I don't think it is a universal problem. At least I hope not.

      Then I discover KDE has been messed with. That's okay, since I like to tweak my KDE a bit anyways no matter what. As far as everything else, the Bluecurve KDE theme is nice looking and probably will be welcomed by new users.

      I agree on the apt-rpm bit. That would have been nice to have with the distribution. It is a very useful tool for getting the stuff Red Hat neglected to put in.

    • No no no!!! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bogie ( 31020 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:03AM (#4422061) Journal
      we do not need a compatibility layer, we need native apps!

      "Every desktop OS has at one time or another a compatibility layer to ease users over to its use. Mac OS X has one for old OS 9.2 apps"

      Yea so what's your point? These compatibility layers were for running apps from the previous OS, NOT apps from an entirely different OS! OS 9.2 couldn't run windows apps, and Win 3.1 couldn't run Mac apps. We already have an OS that can run all of the windows apps, it called Windows.

      Making wine work perfectly only serves to enforce the Windows monopoly. Do you now want the MS Office monopoly, proprietary file formats and all, to dominate the linux platform? Because that is what your idea leads to.

      How is a "compatiblity layer" even a marketing tool?

      You: Hey switch to linux you can run all of your old apps.
      Customer: But I can already do that now.
      You: Yes but you also get to enjoy zero tech support because your running in an unsupported configuration
      Customer: runs away

      Wine is a crutch that keeps people stuck in the windows world. It's not like I don't understand why you or anyone else wouldn't want to stick with some old app you've been using for years, but the fact remains native apps are better in every way imaginable way.

      I look at Open Office when I'm in Redhat 8.0 and think God, I remember using Netscape composer for word processing because there were no gui word processors for linux. It apps like that and Evolution that will over time surpass the very same MS versions you want to bring over. Don't you think that end result is better?

      Linux gaining the ability to run all windows apps natively leads to a windows clone, and I didn't switch to linux so that I could use IE, Office and Photoshop.

      • Re:No no no!!! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by JSCarr ( 312656 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:30AM (#4422165) Homepage
        I understand where you're coming from with your argument, and in many ways I agree with you. I have a slightly different point of view, however, that might help make the case for continued work on Wine. I know I'm not the only one in this position.

        I'm a Linux user (well, a newbie really, but trying and learning fast) who really prefers to work within the Linux environment for many reasons. The problem is that I have work and school requirements that force me to use Windows for some very specific applications.

        First is Microsoft Access. Yes, I know, but work dictates that that is what I use for database development. Access is used where I work as a front end to interface with a variety of other databases (Oracle, SQL Server, DB2, Paradox, etc). Whether we like it or not, there just isn't any other software out there that is better at doing the things that Access does well, and therefore I'm stuck with it.

        For school I have to have Outlook Express, and until there is a newsgroup reader for Linux that supports Secure Password Authentication (I've tried, believe me. Mozilla's working on it, fortunately.) again, I'm stuck. I can't even begin to tell you how nervous it makes me feel, running Outlook flippin' Express in Windows with all of the rampant virii (is that a word?) out there.

        Get those two apps working on Linux under Wine, or replace the functionality they provide with other software, and I'm out of Windows.

        we do not need a compatibility layer, we need native apps!

        I agree, but until then...
        • In your opinion, what are the main strengths of Access? I don't know all that much about its extended capabilities.
          • > In your opinion, what are the main strengths of Access? I don't know all that much about its extended capabilities.

            It's integrated. You design a schema, do data entry, define queries, run ad hoc queries, design forms and reports, all in one place. It can now use SQL Server as a native backend -- a real database -- or continue using ODBC to other databases, with basic functionality. From the perspective of a DBA, it's still a steaming pile of excrement. Using the SQL server backend makes it a passable front end to a sql server db, but it's definitely not something you'd do heavy lifting with. But as far as desktop data solutions go, it's surpassed only by Filemaker.

            I personally use it to edit stored procedures on a SQL server db. The syntax hilighting of the SQL editor is pretty nice.
  • Now all the other desktop distributions that wants to attract users should also create a unified desktop. The problem is if all the desktop distribs create their own standards, it will create more confusion. What the distribs needs is the committee that actually makes worthwhile decisions like a desktop standard.
    • First of all, there is a committee for free desktop standards[freedesktop.org]. Secondly, all other distributions have no need for creating a unified desktop. Red Hat did it because it felt that it was its responsibility, as market leader, to provide something that offers new users that extra cushion. Distributions like Slack, Gentoo etc, on the other hand, don't command such a high market share, and therefore, do not feel the need to spend thousands of $$ developng a unified desktop. The user base of such distros(Slack etc) is already well accustomed to the idea of two separate DEs and a bunch of WMs. If these users want a unified desktop, they should go for Redhat. If RH users want the full freedom of choice between DEs and not something modified by RH, then they should go ahead and try out other distros like Mandrake, Suse etc. Linux is all about choice and every distro has something unique to offer. If distros start copying each other, then linux bubble will burst, just like the unix bubble did a few decades ago. Kudos to RH for trying to stand out from the pack.

  • Tayler brought up a good point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Pros_n_Cons ( 535669 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:00AM (#4421842)
    I never thought about:

    "OWT: A lot of it was misunderstanding, but there are certainly real issues as well. Red Hat is interested in a desktop that is well integrated into the OS. The KDE project is interested in a desktop that is well integrated with itself. These goals don't always completely coincide. "

    Now that I think about it this is so true KDE seems to try and do everything itself, gnome apps seem to add onto things while KDE makes its own program for something already there.

    "of course thats just my opnion, I could be wrong" --Dennis Miller
    • nah - I'd argue that KDE is interested in building a desktop that is well integrated into a number of different OS's - that necessarily means they often need to do stuff themselves so that it works in places other than Linux. Redhat is just one corner of the KDE universe

    • Re:Not That Good A Point (Score:5, Informative)

      by krmt ( 91422 ) <therefrmhere@yah o o . com> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:30AM (#4422163) Homepage
      I think this is somewhat true, but not really. If you look at KDE, there are plenty of examples (at least on my system) of the desktop trying to integrate with the OS.
      • The control center contains an incredibly useful "Information" section that unifies a lot of the info that can only be found on the console with a bunch of different utilities or cat'ing parts of /proc.
      • The incredible integration of konqueror with manpages and infopages (if you haven't tried this, you really ought to, the manpages are much easier to read in a konq window.)
      • I haven't tried the gnome-terminal from gnome2, but the kde2 terminal allows multiple terminals from one window, which allows very easy access to those console utils. KDE can import gtk+ themes quite handily if you like.
      • There's a wealth of basic KDE utilities to do OS specific functions like changing password, managing users, and runlevels.
      • The power of Konqueror as a file browser. Easy Samba browsing. Automated CD ripping and ogg encoding with drag and drop. Multiple window configurations. Embedded terminals. FTP and web browsing.
      • The KPackage program for use with RPM or dpkg/apt.
      These are just some of the basic things that KDE2 does to integrate in to the OS (I haven't even tried KDE3 yet). The KDE project just focuses on integrating with itself because they want to have a very well integrated environment. And they've obviously succeeded in that (just look at the programming model for evidence). Sure, they don't go out of their way to integrate with the Gnome folks, but then Gnome isn't doing any better. I think Redhat has a bias towards Gnome (there's a lot of historical evidence of this), and it's on display here. KDE does a good job of integrating with itself, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't integrate with the underlying OS as well.
      • This is all fine and good, but how about giving to the rest of the OSS world something to use and build upon, without pulling the entire project with it?
        Like, a powerful C portability/utility library, a standalone signal/slot framework, a lightweight ORB (this means CORBA the standard, not another crippled-by-design object framework?), a configuration management server, or a fully internationalized font rendering system?
        • That's true, the KDE project isn't too big on making individual components that separate well from the rest of the project. But the entire point of the project is to have some kind of unity within the system. Say what you will about CORBA, it's hideously complex and overkill for the desktop. The KDE solution is lighter weight (not crippled-by-design any more than XML is crippled in relation to SGML) solution to their particular problem.

          The KDE team didn't need something like a standalone signals/slots library because it's built in to the Qt toolkit which the whole project is based on. Why reinvent the wheel?

          As for "a powerful C portability/utility library", I don't know what you mean besides libc, which isn't a part of gnome any more than libstdc++ is a part of KDE.

          Pango is great, no doubt about it, but on the other hand KDE doesn't have shabby international support. They also didn't have someone from Redhat who was paid to write Pango for them.

          On the other hand, why doesn't Gnome give us a complete development environment on the scale of KDevelop? A unified office suite (no, Open Office doesn't count because it's not really part of Gnome).

          KDE doesn't focus on providing standalone libraries for uses outside the project, but they provide a hell of a toolset for use inside the project. DCOP is simple and powerful. Kparts was ready and in extensive use well before Bonobo. The C++ object model is inherently easier to work with than the hacked on gtk C pseudo-object model for UI programming. The KDevelop environment is the best GUI development environment on Linux. And that's just for developers. The whole system is very well unified, which is the benefit of the project's focus. Whether or not you like it is a whole other issue. They have done a great job at making a unified system for both developers and users on *NIX. You can't say this as well about Gnome, with its shifting window managers (Metacity is the third standard one in the project's lifetime?)and multiple Office programs.

          Perhaps that's why so many of the KDE people are mad about the whole Bluecurve thing. They had already done a great job at making a unified desktop system, and to see it merged with Gnome in the name of unity was perhaps a bit insulting.
    • Most Linux veterans do not appreciate KDE's attempts at achieving the integration, uniformity and predictability that Mac and Windows have, because they are too used to the status quo. It's much more than putting a "k" in front of every app. I've addressed this point elsewhere [slashdot.org]. The trouble is that Red Hat has substituted a different app for every major KDE app. A typical user would use Red Hat's "KDE" and never use any of its apps nor see its potential. KDE-rh is essentially an oversized, overslow window manager. There is no good reason to use KDE in this form: you might as well use a lightweight environment like xfce instead.

      Owen's comment that "these goals don't completely coincide" is an understatement. KDE wants to be the desktop. Red Hat wants to own the desktop. They are completely at odds.

  • BeOS 6? (Score:3, Offtopic)

    by Xenex ( 97062 ) <xenex@nospaM.opinionstick.com> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:21AM (#4421913) Journal
    From page 3 of the interview [osnews.com]:

    "9. How do you feel about XFree's inability to fully function as a modern graphics subsystem? (e.g. you can't change real resolutions on the fly, no support for OSX's and BeOS6's smooth window moving etc)..."

    BeOS 6?

    Did I miss something? Yes, the R5.1 'Dano' developer release leaked, but I hadn't heard anything about R6.

    • Re:BeOS 6? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 10, 2002 @12:38AM (#4421974)
      That WAS supposed to the the BeOS 6. The "BeOS 5.1 Dano", which was the internal codename, is what the Be marketing wanted to call "BeOS 6". But they sold out everything to Palm, and now everything went the way of the dodo..

  • "attention to detail" (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tomlord ( 473109 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @01:18AM (#4422117)
    Hmm. "attention to detail" was a phrase they used a lot. Ok, sure, these systems need polish.

    But -- fuzzy icons -- unified shortcuts -- moving text around by a few pixels. Not _bad_ things to do, by any means. Still.

    What about -- "attention to architecture", so that all of these "details" don't turn into infinitely long task lists, so that apps are far better and more consistent at being self-documenting, so that it doesn't take a ton of new code for every little app, so that interactive extensibility is built-in to the core, so that process are managed less horribly....

    • What about -- "attention to architecture", so that all of these "details" don't turn into infinitely long task lists, so that apps are far better and more consistent at being self-documenting, so that it doesn't take a ton of new code for every little app, so that interactive extensibility is built-in to the core, so that process are managed less horribly....

      You are talking about kde man... but it wasn't invented there

  • It's not the blending, stupid. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ndogg ( 158021 ) <the@rhorn.gmail@com> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @03:12AM (#4422418) Homepage Journal
    A lot of people seem to misunderstand that most of the debate surrounding Red Hat's changes has to do with unified look and feel.

    It's not that that I, and many other KDE-philes, have a problem with (in fact, I and many others support the idea), it's the seeming favouritism for GNOME applications for the default shortcuts. In fact, I don't know if any of the default shortcuts link to a KDE-based application. For example, why not setup a default shortcut to Quanta [sourceforge.net]? It's a highly respected web-development editor.
    • There is 1 GNOME application that has been set up as the default
      application in RH KDE and that is Evolution for mail. The other two major defaults are OpenOffice and Mozilla which unfortunatly isn't GNOME apps.
    • I can only think of a single KDE/Qt app that blows the GNOME/GTK equivalent out of the water, and that's licq, which Red Hat *does* ship.

      * Konqueror? Not as widely used as Moz.
      * Anything in the KDE office suite? Not even close to Open Office, even for the most die-hard KDE fans.
      * Kmail? Not as comfortable as Evolution for people used to Outlook, and doesn't have PIM/schedule management a la Outlook (frankly, I think everyone should be using mutt, which has the best PGP support of all time, but...:-) ).

      Actually, I take it back. There is no GNOME/GTK equivalent at all to kcheat, a program designed to let you cheat in video games by editing memory. Kind of silly that there's nothing else like this for Linux, esp. since kcheat is KDE 1...

  • nVIDIA (Score:5, Insightful)

    by 21mhz ( 443080 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @03:15AM (#4422423) Journal
    I cannot agree more with their stance on the closed-source nVIDIA drivers. Not only their closedness hamper the development of their open counterpart, it slows down their very adoption and resolution of real problems, as opposed to imaginary IP threats.

  • TrueType Fonts easy to install in Redhat 8 (Score:5, Informative)

    by whoopie ( 241535 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @03:39AM (#4422473) Journal
    Now it is easy to install TrueType Fonts in Linux
    Copy your truetype fonts in /usr/share/fonts/ttf and within 30 secornds the Xft2 font engine finds the fonts.

  • One thing not mentioned (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Arker ( 91948 )

    Is the decision to label the Flag of the Republic of China as a bug. Seems wourthy of mention. Read more about it here [kuro5hin.org].

  • Bluecurve is only a theme (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Plug ( 14127 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @05:34AM (#4422611) Homepage
    Red Hat 8.0's new consistency is provided using Xft2/Freetype with 'heavy modifications' and the Bluecurve theme. Underneath remember, it's still Gnome 2 and/or KDE.

    The world is a big free and happy place. Which means you too can have the Red Hat desktop goodness on your distribution of choice [debian.org] and not have to complain about Taiwanese flags, RPM, additional packages for MP3 playback etc.

    I haven't got a hard disc spare to install Red Hat 8.0 on (I'd really like to see it based on all the screenshots), but I do have a couple of Debian systems. Someone could make me a very happy man (and earn some serious karma) by taking the bits that are good about Red Hat 8.0 and making them available in other distributions [distrowatch.com].

    That's how Linux works. Take the bits you like, ignore the bits you don't. Is Bluecurve on Freshmeat's themes section yet?

  • Desktop is a breeze today on linux. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by miffo.swe ( 547642 ) <daniel@hedblom.gmail@com> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @05:40AM (#4422617) Homepage Journal
    The only thing i think needs attention is installing/uninstalling applications. Today that is a pain in linux and should be addressed. To get adoption on the desktop that have to be as easy as in Mac or Windows to install and uninstall software.

    Besides that i really like RH 8.0 and it works just fine for me and my wife.

  • Sys Admin Needed (Score:5, Insightful)

    by m_evanchik ( 398143 ) <michel_evanchikATevanchik...net> on Thursday October 10, 2002 @08:15AM (#4422817) Homepage
    It's notable that the interviewees admitted that RH is still not ready as a consumer desktop.

    Rather, RH is meant to be used by non-technical users on a carefully controlled system, installed by a knowledgeable systems administrator.

    A lot of the PR I've read on 8.0 are breathless in proclaiming 8.0 as a Windows replacement, but as RH's own developpers point out, this is not the case.

    • Most Windows users don't know how to install and administer it either.

      In most companies, every NT / 2000 / XP desktop is installed by the sysadmin, and the user doesn't have administrator access.

  • Changing the world... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by crath ( 80215 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @08:59AM (#4423055) Homepage
    One of the interviewees said, "But in general: say you woke up one day and everyone on earth simultaneously agreed to switch from windows/icons/mouse to some new paradigm. It would still take 20 years, trillions of dollars, and be mind-blowingly difficult."

    This is more than an understatement. We've been trying to make the metric system switch for more than 20 years and we're still only inches off the starting line.

    System/application developers frequently forget this point and underestimate the importance of backward compatibility. Evolution will always win in a war with revolution; even if revolution wins a few of the early battles.

  • directed at redhat users (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rsax ( 603351 ) on Thursday October 10, 2002 @11:02AM (#4423894)
    With the release of Redhat 8.0 I'm really tempted to try out and test the distro, maybe even propose it for workstations use to some of my clients (the ones who are willing to take the plunge and stray away from Windows anyway). I was hoping some system administrators who deal with Redhat would be able to answer a couple questions since I haven't been able to try it out yet (still trying to download the iso from a busy ftp.redhat.com).

    What's the basic Redhat Network service like? How fast are (security) updates available for the OS and 3rd party applications like Mozilla, Openoffice, etc. I noticed that a $60 US fee is required to register every system with the Redhat network. Is this mandatory or can I just download updates for one system and mirror them for the rest? I know that sounds cheap but I'm thinking about it from my clients' prespective; I deal with small businesses and the thought of asking them to fork up $100 canadian for each workstation annually on top of my fees for system administration might not work out too good. Failing that, what benefits have you seen by registering with the Redhat Network over just using scripts to automate the update/upgrade process for each server/workstation, do members receive the updates sooner?

    Any other issues you might want to address or point out will be appreciated.

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