OSNews

The blog followup on keynote reactions is a good place to get some ideas on where this is going.

http://log.ometer.com/

Merely because the online services run Free software does not help you without the ability to completely duplicate their infrastructure. What any end user will probably care more about is open access to data so that you get the hell out if the service you use turn out to be nasty.

Yeah, not such a great idea. GNOME may want to be Mozilla really badly, but that's not their destiny. KDE realized that as a free software desktop environment, their primary objective is to work hard at making the desktop development environment more productive. That's what KDE4 is about.

GNOME is a desktop project. Their next step is to think about how they can make the task of developing applications for the desktop easier and more compelling. Now is not the time to give up on the desktop and refashion GNOME as a window manager for Gecko.

After all the work Havoc Pennington has done for the free software desktop, now he's surrendering. He's saying that it's time to admit that the web has won, and that free software must scale back its ambitions to become a portal to the web. Or maybe he's surrendering to KDE. But either way, he's giving up.

The desktop is only dead in Havoc's self-fulfilling prophecy. A lot of free software developers are really excited about the innovative new development frameworks emerging for the free software desktop. Maybe not so much is happening on the GNOME side of the aisle. But that doesn't mean there isn't interest in an effort to reinvigorate the GNOME development environment.

Edited 2007-07-19 04:27

Apple don't seem to have a problem with exciting their developers about their APIs and developer tools. Heck, even as a Windows user before I knew about their APIs and developer tools, that's one of the draws to the platform.

GNOME need to be more public, inviting and transparent with their developer features and APIs to attract people to the platform. They also need to show some excitement. KDE is beating them in every way - they've Plasma and QT4 which a lot of people will have heard of, even if they don't know what they are, and an exciting new vision for the desktop with KDE4

If anything, I'd say GNOME are overreacting... and setting themselves up for a fall. Get developers excited about what you've got now - not some pie in the sky ideas that just arn't practical. I don't want a gecko-box. I like being offline sometimes thank you.

You obviously didn't read much about the project. What proprietary web services are you talking about? Mugshot is completely open source.

Edited 2007-07-19 15:01

While mugshot is open source, Google/Picasa, Yahoo/Flickr, MySpace and Facebook are not. If you read online-desktop.org it makes it pretty clear their goal is to provide an api that uses if not requires social networks.

Also who's to say that gnome could keep up with web services anyways? It has been only a couple days and it looks like they will have competition. (There implementation actually sounds better since they aren't ignoring the fact the internet isn't always accessible)

http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2007/07/facebook-aims-f.html

by the way, I am a gnome fan. Never really liked the over used K app names in KDE.

But the initial post was talking about vendor lock-in. Gnome online desktop will be tied to mugshot, but that doesn't mean you'll have to use it, or any other web services (proprietary or free) that would work with gnome.

As a 56k dial-up user, I can assure you that you are not the only one. Transferring anything over 56k is a pain, having to transfer _everything_ over it would be prohibitive.

That's only half the story; in countries such as Australia and New Zealand, flat rate plans are prohibitively expensive and the connections are castrated at peak times. The only alternative are the cheaper but metered plans which give a certain number of megabytes/gigabytes downloads per month.

Like I said in a chatroom last night, the GNOME development is far too US or more correct, western focused/centric rather than realising that not all countries have the same level of infrastructure and it would be prohibitive for many users regarding many of these pie-in-the-sky ideas.

It goes further, for example, take Apple for example, in their dash board, its all very nice for those who live in the US, but how about those who live outside who want financial data from their own stock exchange - for example, there isn't that ability.

This reminds me very much of Microsofts notion "create software and the hardware will eventually come up to meeting the requirements" - which completely ignores that those in developing (and even non-developing nations), that a NZ$1500 is expensive and unreasonable to expect an end user to invest that much money into a computer merely for surfing the internet and typing up things.

The 'network desktop' is doing the same thing, but replace hardware with bandwidth.

Actually I don't even think it makes sense in the US yet.
Many areas still are on 56K modem and many /. articles
cry foul over the situation in the USA vs say South Korea or Japan.
But yes , Western-centric..

FWIW, the US is pretty much a 3rd world country when it comes to internet pipe. Sure, we control many of the internet resources, but most places still have crap for connectivity, and the teclos are largely to blame.

No you are not. While on-line services will become
more common , people will never j
treat their computers as X terminals only.
Hardware integration , games, ..for many
things like playing your mp3 collection or watching videos it simply makes no sense to do it over the internet even if there was the bandwidth to do it.
But the most important thing is privacy. P2P and bittorrent are not going away soon and I don't think anyone would want their possibly illegally downloaded tv show to be on a public server and thus more vunerable
to the legal mood of the day.
The genie can't be put back in the bottle(though the RIAA will try)

The problem is that we are training in the public schools and universities a generation of SHEEPLE that will surrender important freedoms (like private offline computing) for the "next big advancement in technology" the "conveninece" of not having to install their own software or supposed "security" of having their information centrally controlled. Gun grabbers, Neo_CONs and internet software renters all depend on this basic fact of how our current society is being developed.

I'm actually surprised that the Open Source community actually contains enough SHEEPLE to be involved in an anti freedom scheme such as this. Even done with F/OSS centralized control of comoutung is a worse offense against freedom than anything the PROPRIETARY software manufactueres have done so far (Even though they are also talking about participating in this disgusting treasonous business, particularly Microsoft.)

Edited 2007-07-20 05:09

I agree. But I'm also amazed that people let the only copy of their massive amounts of email reside on Google's servers. These same people will probably have no trouble with storing the only copies of their CVs and vacation photos on someone else's computer as well.

But I don't think we have to worry about offline storage becoming obsolete until we can stream an HD movie with no noticeable lag from the other side of the planet. But maybe that will happen in your 10 year estimate? Who knows?

No, you're certainly not the only one. Back in the dark ages (1981), I wanted a PC because it was just that - a personal computer. No more annoying mainframe outages. No worries about someone else losing or messing with my private data.

If I have something to share, I'll put it on the web. If I need to be able to work on a computer wherever I go, I'll either carry my laptop or place my os, apps, and data on a bootable flash drive.

I can see something like this in 10 years or so, but it's not very viable now.

With the amount of time it would take to get something like this done, you have to start early.
By starting now, they will be ready to take on the future.

You keep talking of tedious work yet by your second bullet(*) point you've already thrown a large % of the wider open source communities work in the trash.

You know a lot of people don't write open software because they want to compete with Microsoft or Apple, they write software because it's fun or because it fills *their* needs and open sourcing it is a good relatively effortless way of sharing their work.

At the end of the day it comes down to what you're used to, I've used a Linux/GNOME desktop exclusively for 18 months, and when I occasionally use Window's (which I have no quibble doing) a lot things irritate me about the UI and the overall user experience...and I'm sure there must be at least one level headed Apple user who could say the same in switching to something else.

I'm tempted to say you're being an arrogant prick. GNOME 2.0 has undergone massive *incremental* improvements in every release. It's a stunning example of hard work, project evolution and collaboration.

KDE 4. Vista. Mac OS X Tiger. What do they all have in common? Hype, and lot's of it. In the proprietary commercial world it's about marketing and profits, but in open source it's just one of the ways people in the unfortunate position of trying to put together something as complex and tedious as these projects keep themselves going and gain the support of others. Now... whats wrong with that?

I completely agree with you. There have been massive improvements in gnome. It seems like he just wants a free version of osx so he doesn't have to pay for it.

Well much as I love free software and linux I do think that the reasons people write open source are more complex than it just "being fun" - which it is.
Some want to work in IT and what better thing to put on
your resume when applying for that first job?
And compete? When I use Rhythmbox or Amarok I sure hope they ARE competing against propriatory stuff because I'm a cheap *** and don't want to be forced to use windoze
for feature X.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt on this ambiguous comment and assume you didn't really mean to compare KDE4 to Vista and OSX in terms of the proprietary commercial world compared to GNOME, since that would be egregiously wrong considering the fact that GNOME is heavily dependent upon the largesse of "commercial world" paid-developers working for companies that have their own particular agendas (mono, java, gcj, whatever).

KDE and Gnome may move in different directions, but they're heading to the same destination and still giving each other help along the way. Please keep that in mind. 18 months on GNOME is hardly enough time to chart the direction or gains of either desktop in an authoritative way.

Its not going to happen - and why should it; given that both have standard(ising) on DBUS, the need to have one is moot; applications can share data between them, the themes can be homogenised so that all applications appear to look the same - but ultimately it doesn't look any worse than the 6 widget kits I found in Windows Vista in a space of a few hours - ranging from win16 widgets to the latest and greatest - all Microsoft software.



Which is the crappest way of installing applications; I had a Mac, and I remember the litany of crap that software would leave hanging around. Crap in my user library/preferences directory, crap left in my home directory, it was awful.



Who said they need to do that? no one needs to do it if you have a modern Linux or Solaris distribution.



http://www.geocities.com/kaiwainz/Screenshot.png

There is something *terribly wrong* with that screenshot? btw, thats running on Solaris Nevada (opensol-20070716)



What is wrong with the GTK widgets? "UI widget alignment in applications"? what the hell is that?! more gobblygoop to make one feel sophisticated? that sentence has no meaning.



Interesting, I hook up my HP M307 camera, load up GTKam, selected my camera from the list, and voila, I can download all my photos - what is so difficult about that? as for iPods - again, Rhythmbox supports it out of the box along with Banshee. MTP devices are also supported as well.



Again, have you actually *USED* Linux or *USED* any X based desktop system, because all of those already exist *RIGHT NOW*.

http://www.geocities.com/kaiwainz/Screenshot.png

There is something *terribly wrong* with that screenshot? btw, thats running on Solaris Nevada (opensol-20070716)

Yes. The letters a, s, w and the number 8 have a heavier weight than the other glyphs. It sticks out like a sore thumb.

Font rendering has never been the strong suit of any UNIX desktop.

Pardon? sure, the 8 definitely does, but where in regards to a, s and w?

Also, does this profoundly affect the readability of the text or detract from the over all desktop experience? Stop digging up 'excuses' that either don't exist or need to be exaggerated before they're actually recognised as issues.

Quite frankly, font rendering on *NIX is at a stage that there are bigger fish to fry that *TRULY* impact on the end users experience in a substantial way that affects their ability to use the operating system effectively than any so-called artefacts that exist in the font rendering.

"font rendering on *NIX is at a stage that there are bigger fish to fry that *TRULY* impact on the end users experience"

You may not care about font-rendering but, rightly or wrongly, people do. The poor font rendering is the first thing I notice when I boot up Gnome after using OS X, or even Windows for that matter.

I don't see why fixing it should be any different to peple working on Beryl/Compiz. Some people think "eye-candy" is frivolous and unnecessary.

They're different open-source projects, and those "bigger fish to fry" are completely independent tasks.

Edited 2007-07-19 16:39

What? I've never seen an easier installation method than http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9c8ENqUqnA
And if anyone prefers the "Linux way", there's Fink.
I also don't know why you're complaining about a few KB of application settings left of the HDD. It's not that they matter in a 80+ GB HDD environment.


You demand that other people actually use Linux and you (by your own words an ex Mac user) don't even have used Interface Builder?
Interface Builder helps the developers to align an application's GUI widgets. This way even a developer who is not a usability expert can design windows that look organized and clean.

Excuse me, for me, its pkgadd -d [package] and when I want to uninstall it pkgrm [package], want to find a package, pkginfo | grep [package] - what is so hard or difficult about that. Apple uses packages and yet there is no uninstall for them - how do you explain that one? packages that use install scripts and yet, no way to remove those pieces beyond searching through the hard disk. The configuration files are a symptom of a bigger issue.



Excuse me, but given that all one has to do is read the GNOME HIG and follow those instructions, I'd say its laziness more than anything else.

Oh, and if there are alignment issues - then lodge a bug; numerous bugs relating to widget alignment have been made to the Pidgin and XChat projects, and they all get corrected in a timely manner.

Name *ONE application that is messy and disorganised that are of 'high profile'.

And -- as I said -- on Mac OS X there's Fink to do exactly the same.


If you really think that those few config files waste gigs of HDD space (they don't), you could use tools like AppTrap: http://osx.iusethis.com/screenshot/apptrap.png



There also Apple HIGs. So? What's wrong with a tool (in this case Interface Builder) that helps the developers with perfect widget alignment?




GIMP, OpenOffice, Konqueror, VLC (the preferences window), etc.

Linux way is much easier, remember that you first have to find a way to download Skype? With Linux, open the software installer, select skype, and press "ok"...
I know wich one I prefer

Sadly I can't mod you up any higher. Well said!

Couldn't agree more

Actually if I were selling computers with Linux pre installed I would choose Mandriva as the distribution to pre install over Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora or any hundreds of "minor players". I have used Mandriva since I found it under its old name Mandrake after dropping Red Hat and find it to be one of the best "middle road" distributions around. (By middle road I mean it is easy to install and use for the amateur GUI jocky but still has the command line power that genuine Linux power geeks like.)

I also find GNOME and KDE to be more integrated in Mandriva than any other distribution and find I can switch desktops at leasure and use the same softwares (Either KDE or GNOME with no problems.

the computers I sell would come with DVD players and would come with the Mandriva PowerPack DVD as their "OEM" software disk as this version is ready with everything from programming, to office work, to games, to servers, to music composition through Rosegarden probably the best music composition program currently under Linux.

unify gnome and kde?!

no need, as they use a common message passing system (thanks opendesktop) and, as long as the base libs are installed, can the others apps without a problem.

ok, so they dont look the same but to me at least thats a lesser issue. but it appears that to the osx crowed, thats a cardinal sin for some reason.

hell, im itching to take apart your points 1 by 1...

so here goes:

1. not going to happen. just not going to happen.

2. already covered.

3. hmm, maybe it will show up some day. im writing this in gobolinux and i know someone was working on a script to monitor the copying of package into a specific directory as a sign to install that package. as for removal of a program? delete a directory not sure what your trying to say with bundle tho, but i think there is work being done on metapackages. but if your talking about packaging the libs a app use with the app, take a look at pcbsd or something.

4. or better yet, the end of the end user having to do any config at all? kde today have support for doing samba and cups configure in its control panel. using randr it can change resolution on the fly (as long as the screen and card is properly configed in said x config file). the real issue here is the need for correct hardware info, something the pnp system that microsoft drummed up for win95 (remember that?) should take care off, in theory. in practice its not so well. hell, from what i have heared apple have a habbit of having their screens present verifiably false info thru the pnp system.

5. being worked on i think. was some stuff about that recently. but all in all its a question of what you want, readability or correctness on paper. one will result in a tradeoff on the other. now if there was a interesting way to reconfig that one the fly...

6. woho. i have yet to find out whats to marvelous about the osx gui. to me it looks and experiences just like another gui. but maybe im drinking the wrong cool-aid?

7. dont know what these iapps are, sorry. but interaction with hardware i have already covered. it requires the hardware people to play nice when it comes to standards, so that the programmers dont have to apply 1001 small patches to take into consideration the small quirks of the hardware. maybe having the cameras follow existing protocol standards?

8. hell, yes. lets use osx as the benchmark for everything linux. but first, define the common user. the impression im left with when it comes to users of apple products is that they are less then common

still, notified of updates, application or otherwise, check

rip, sync with music player of choice, play said music, check

camera support, check

single click to download apps? i can do one better. same app that does updates also holds a comprehensive list of app apps that can be installed on chosen distro. and can do the uninstall at any point. basically, one stop show to install, update and uninstall. imo, thats on par with the osx way.

oh, and stuff actually work. im burning cd's and dvd's, downloading all kinds of stuff, and "consuming" it, right now.

hell, im getting better bluetooth support when using linux then i did using windows.

want to transfer music or pictures to and from my mobile phone (music player and camera of choice), check. over both cable and bluetooth btw. transfer files to or from a windows computer, check. samba works.hell, i can organize images right in the file browser. no need for special app.

I think these peoples last experience with linux was redhat 5, my how we've come a long way since then

I wouldn't give up my Ubuntu feisty for quids, the others (MS and crabapple) can go take a long jump of a short pier

true that. there is something to be said about a lost reputation. ones burned, always afraid of fire or something like that...

almost the entire post is a bunch of crap. really, try harder to troll next time

* Standardize on Ubuntu or whatever. Pick one.

This will not and should not happen. I know the gut feeling tells you one distribution is a good idea, but it would not be healthy for the market or good for the users (same thing, really) and it is not happening. Ever.

* Unify KDE and Gnome

That's also a bad idea. Windows and OS X don't even have one unified widget set and development API. OS X is closer than any, but still... I know what you wanbt. You want look-and-feel to be the same between the apps. You want seetings (e.g. default font browser, etc.) to be the same. You're going to get it, slowly, but you are not going to get the two projects to merge and youa re not going to get one of them to die off.

* Drag and drop application installation and deletion and bundle support to the same level OS X has

You can get this today, if you use a distribution which works this way. You'll find that in many scenarios, and for certain types of people, this is really bad behavior. Making it something done by a 'desktop-oriented' distribution and not by e.g. a workstation-oriented distribution or a server-oriented distribution makes good sense. Even if you could get most distributions over to using this installation/package management model it would not be a good idea and would (among other things) simply cause more distributions to spring up and serve the people who don't like app bundles.

* The complete and utter end to any end user ever having to touch X config files - or any other unix text config file

For X this is coming Real Soon(tm). For the other htings, it depends on what you're doing. You will probably have to hand-edit config files for most server-type programs (daemons: postfix, apache, slapd) for the forseeable future. The fix for this is debatable.

* A complete overhaul of font rendering so that it is out of the box on par with OS X

OS X fonts suck as much as Linux fonts, in my opinion. Making fonts render in a more OSX-style will just spin wheels, not improve things.

* A complete overhaul of UI widget alignment in applications.

You can't make people do things like that. You can suggest it and beg for it but you cannot enforce it. While it would be nice if all apps acted the same way in this regard where doing so made sense the reality is that it is not necessary and will not happen any time soon.

* A complete set of open source apps of the calibur of Apple's iApps.

Mostly done. Equivalent functionality mostly exists in one app or another. Getting a unified look and feel for all of them is a pipe dream (herding cats...). The reality is that polish takes time and dedication, which is easier if you're paid full-time and not so easy if you're writing the app in your spare time. Each application's usability will need to be incrementally patched to correctness. I expect *you* to do this, since you seem to think you know what changes are needed.

Be notified of system software updates. Be notified of application software updates

You've got it, if the distribition wants to bother.

Rip, sync with your iPod, and play music

I think this is a laughable feature. Playing music? Check, got that one years ago. Sync with an ipod? Syncing with portable music players is not a killer desktop feature. And, anyway, it mostly depends on a good music playing app, of which we have several some of which already sync with the ipod.

Import, organize, tag, show photos from digital cameras

If your camera is supported this is essentially done. Again, the distribution would need to make sure the existant software is tied together to make it work out of the box.

Single click to download apps, drag them anywhere, have all app resources packed in a bundle type structures, and all dragging to the trash

Not a good idea. See above.

Making consumer grade software is grueling and time consuming and very unglamorous.

Agreed, but making stuff work like OS X is not a good goal.

We've had all this already for a long time.
It's called Windows!
And we don't like it!
That's why there is KDE and Gnome, and many other WMs.
We don't like autorun (hello Sony rootkit), prefere fstab and manual mounting.
Some like Slackware instead of Ubuntu.
We don't like being notified of anything and don't like auto updates.
We like being in controll of our computers.
We're long time Linux users and we like things the way they are.
You want in? Learn to think for yourself and stop relying on the OS to do everything for you.
Otherwise go use Windows or buy a Mac and stop trying to change Linux.
Windows sucks big time, Mac sucks less, Linux is perfect.

* Standardize on Ubuntu or whatever. Pick one.

Who makes that decision? The very nature of open source prohibits someone from standardizing on an OS or application. That's kinda the point. You're free to use whatever application you like, as long as your data is in open formats.

* Unify KDE and Gnome

Same thing applies here. You might as well say that we should all use Vista. It's not going to happen. Choice isn't a bad thing.

* The complete and utter end to any end user ever having to touch X config files - or any other unix text config file

That's not an issue on preloaded machines and if Linux does ever become mainstream that is how it is going to happen. Most current desktop distributions do a pretty good job at graphically configuring settings anyway.

* A complete overhaul of font rendering so that it is out of the box on par with OS X

My fonts are better than OSX and Windows in my opinion. Fonts haven't been an issue on Linux in years.

* A complete overhaul of UI widget alignment in applications. Spend as much time in Interface Builder to understand why OS X apps look and feel so good to users in the same way professionally typeset pages are easiest to read

I see where you are going with this rant fanboy. Just buy a Mac and let other people decide what they want. In fact I don't think emulating a Mac is going to get a lot of marketshare considering Linux already has more desktops than OSX.

Choice isn't a bad thing.

It can be if the user doesn't have enough knowledge to make the choice or doesn't want to make the choice, just wants something that works.

It can be if the user doesn't have enough knowledge to make the choice or doesn't want to make the choice, just wants something that works.

I guess Microsoft better take Vista basic, Vista home premium, and Vista business off the market then. Apple should stop selling computers too. In fact there should only be one chip maker, one gfx card maker, one monitor maker, etc. Hell lets get rid of all the other computer manufacturers and just leave Dell, I'm sure they can make a one-size-fits all computers that everyone will be happy with. How can we expect people to know the difference between processors, graphics cards, or even manufacturers anyway?

I said it can be. Please take that into account.

And too much choice can be bad as well.

In the case of Vista, those likely to be not wanting to make a choice will just get it installed for them on a new computer. If not, they can run the upgrade advisor from Microsoft and it will tell them which version they recommend (no it won't always try to sell them ultimate).

From your post, it seams that you havn't used Linux for a while as many of yuour items are allready fixed in modern Linuxes.


Be notified of system software updates
Be notified of application software updates

Most Linux systems do this allready.


Rip, sync with your iPod, and play music
There are apps for that too, I have no idea of their quality as this is not something I normally do.

Import, organize, tag, show photos from digital cameras
Single click to download apps, drag them anywhere, have all app resources packed in a bundle type structures, and all dragging to the trash
And so on.

Most Linux distros support digital cameras. on connection you get asked if you want to import the images into your album. Again I don't want a single click download of applications when I allready have a single click install. Users should not need to bother abaout the location of their application files. When a new application is installed the functionality should just be there for the user in the Application menu for the user to use.

There are however some things from MacOS-X have that I would like to see on the Linux desktop. First of all I would like to hide directories that only are of use to sysadmins and developers such as /etc, /proc, /usr, /lib, /bin, /sbin, /boot, /dev,... Gnome allready have a mechanism to do this, at least in the file manager, but unortunately they still appear in file dialogs.

Removable media should open in the filemanager as top level hierachies. i.e. you shoulnd be able to navigate up in the filestructure and end up in some unfamilliar place. The same thing should apply to electronic artifacts that have a well known representation in the real world such as the Trash.

It should be possible to have a MacOS-X like top menu regardless of what GUI toolkit you use. Today this allready possible in KDE. Having one menu saves desktop real estate, and according to Fits law it is much faster to uses.

The best way to do this would probably to let menus be handled by a separate program, a menumanager, just like windows are handled by the windowmanager or the session by a session manager.
Such a menu manager would make it possible for much more flexibility on future desktops, and it would also be a good place to add hooks for accessability.

There's a patch to add that functionality to GTK apps, but the GNOME developers refuse to add that patch. See http://gnomefiles.org/app.php/Mac_Menubar_for_GNOME_and_Xfce

GNUstep/Étoilé also offer that functionality. See http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=427649481&size=o

Rlwimi,

Essentially what you're asking for is Linux to be an OS X clone. That's a horrible idea. There are nice aspects of OS X, some horrible aspects that should never be imitated (font rendering - great for print, horrible for on-screen reading. Yet another place where usability is sacrificed for art).

And making Linux *just as good* as Mac OS X would never make it successful (I may as well buy a Mac) - and certainly not revolutionary, by any stretch of the term.

And considering what you're suggestion (no more distributions, just one flavour - and KDE merging with GNOME despite the enormous structural differences), I think you have no idea what you're talking about.

Full disclosure: I'm getting a Mac soon. I just recognize that OS X isn't all that great, it just sucks the least.

Bin playing with Linux for years and gave up Microsoft for SuSE three years ago.

Ended up running mostly Ubuntu on my machines.

Bought a Mac Mini out of curiosity a month ago to see what all the fuss was about.

Now I know. What a pleasure! And plenty of excellent free stuff or cheap shareware if you know where to look for it.

And you're quite right.

But unfortunately I don't think it'll ever happen. Too many people running in different directions.

So it goes...

Gnome Online Desktop = GOD...

OMG I laughed till I cried on this one... Nice find

or try
Desktop Online Gnome