Today Nokia announced the introduction of the Nokia 770 Internet Tablet device along with the Open Source based Maemo Development Platform. Update: Correction, it is using Opera 8 as web browser.The typical use case for the Nokia 770 is to be the internet usability extension to your mobile phone or other wireless internet access equipment.
It is extremely portable by its small formfactor, usable for almost all internet applications thorugh its exceptional resolution of 800×480 pixel and its multimedia capabilities by making use of a TI-OMAP CPU and a accompanying digital signal processor (DSP) core.
The consequent use of open source software and technology basing on the Linux kernel 2.6, X11-server technology and the GTK+ toolkit the resulting new Hildon graphical user interface creates a fully new user interface experience for portable Linux devices.
That is soo cool. This may definitly replace my dead laptop
with 128 mb of storage? i highly doubt it.
btw, they use debian packages for packaging their apps 😉
let’s hope there won’t be mono on it
I don’t see why putting mono on it would be a bad thing. You can argue about patent issues, but if Microsoft did retaliate, it would retaliate against Nokia and not against the Linux/OSS community itself.
I’d want 1G flash memory at a bare minimum to see this thing as a laptop/PDA/Ipod replacement. This looks like a smarter take on what Palm’s trying to do with the LifeDrive, without the complications of a platter hard drive.
So now we know why nokia supported porting KHTML to GTK
Other sources talk about Opera on it.
And this isn’t a pda. It’s “internet tablet”. It is meant to replace your 2nd or 3th pc when it comes to surfing on internet in living room.
So now we know why nokia supported porting KHTML to GTK
not KHTML, is Apple’s WebCore.
It uses a standard expandable memory card format, you should be able to get at least 1GB storage into it without any grief.
My biggest bugbear – the product page doesn’t damn well list Vorbis audio support! For Pete’s sake, it’s an open-source, Linux / GTK+ / Gstreamer based device with tons of horsepower, and they can’t even be bothered to either (worst case) support or (less worse but still bad case) mention that they support the major open source audio format? I wouldn’t blame the Vorbis guys if they just give up and go home after this.
I agree with AdamW. That was the most strange thing about the announcements: no mention of vorbis. Given the open nature of the platform, adding it on wouldn’t be hard, but still…
the product page doesn’t damn well list Vorbis audio support!
Since is using GStreamer I can suposse the support for Orvis is included.
It shouldn’t be too hard to code your own audio player for it.
Nokia has been playing with these portable devices for almost a decade now. One of the first mediascreens had a built-in DVB-T tuner, web browser, and other functionality. The company I worked for at the time was showing prototypes of this in 2002, walking around with mobile TV and downloading files / browsing cached websites. It seems this current variant is a step backwards (or maybe sideways if they pair it to a media hub device).
All the media processing are done with special dsp devices and no such are yet available for supporting Ogg Vorbis and Ogg Theora. None of the involved parties, including Nokia, is happy about this and a solution is being looked at for upcoming revisions.
Wow.. a whopping 3 hours of battery life..
a whole “1500” mAH.. jeez, I cant wait till battery tech catches up. this is just pathetic.
useless with no hard drive. I don’t want another PDA
You are an expert in that field, I know that because you are from fluendo, but are you really sure? Isn’t Nokia one of these DRM-favouring companies that don’t even want free codecs? Or does Nokia plan free codecs and DRM side-by-side? Nokia does some stuff together with RealNetworks, especially DRM-related things, what about that?
It seems it uses Opera, and not the KHTML port. Can anyone confirm?
> It seems it uses Opera, and not the KHTML port. Can anyone confirm?
It’s Opera.
Special DSP devices? Whuh? I’ve got a DI Neuros. It’s three years old and runs on tin cans and string. It cost me $199 new. THAT can play Vorbis happily. I find it hard to believe this thing doesn’t have a processor inside it _somewhere_ capable of the same.
The Neuros uses a TI TMS320C54X DSP, and you can download the firmware for it at http://open.neurosaudio.com/ . When you say there are no Vorbis supporting DSPs available, is this one not suitable in some way? Or did you just not know about it?
Can we say that future GStreamer versions are issue of patent infrigment and we need to expect getting sued from Nokia ? How does this legal issues affect future versions of GNOME who use GStreamer with Nokia patents ? I am worried here because of this:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/25/1827259&threshold=-…
– What does GStreamer have to do with GNOME?
– What does GNOME have to do with Nokia’s Internet Tablet?
– What does GStreamer have to do with the Linux Kernel?
– In which way does this differ from other multimedia engines like XINE, for example?
– Is this posting another part of a strategy that has nothing to do with this news article?
Cool device… i am looking for a PDA able to do real browsing… that might be it. Plus Maemo – still in developpement – could be a cool OS. I am sure Vorbis support is/will be possible.
@Anonymous : funny you are worried about an article saying the opposite of your claim
Nokia has been playing in open source field for a while as it seems. See Contribution page on Maemo webpage (www.maemo.org).
Finally a web browser I can use in the living room to access my network and random light browsing. It’s perfect for that. I don’t need another pda, I don’t need a music machine, I need an in-home portable access device that I can use on the couch or in the kitchen. I see a Christmas gift!
do you really, really, _really_ need one, or are you just too rich for your own good? Would walking three feet to the PC kill you?
Hmm, I guess even Nokia, biggest Symbian partner, doesn’t believe it enough. Or maybe they try to lure the Linux people to think that they are the good guys. But seriously what would you do with this machine? It’s too big(compared to PDA), has crappy battery life (3 hrs), too small memory (64MB+ memory card which is RS-MMC, sigh), it probaply has too slow processor (like all Nokia cell phones have) and it has no purpose. Too big for MP3-player and PDA, too small for serious web surfing. But hey it’s nice marketing.
> Or maybe they try to lure the Linux
> people to think that they are the good guys.
Why would they want to do that? What sense would it make? Nokia has been experimenting with Linux and GTK for quite a while now, it’s not that surprising. I don’t think that this is pure marketing because it doesn’t make any sense.
Yeah, it definitely sounds to me like they’re looking for an alternative to Symbian… I wonder how long it will be before they start putting this on their phones….
i dunno about you guys but that s h i t looks cool. The battery life does suck pretty bad, I’m all about battery life. 5 hours at a minimum, preferrably weeks without recharging like the old palm Vx–3 hours is childsplay.
I like the tablet features, this is definitely cooler than my psp, but i gotta say, the battery life and gtk don’t make me interested.
i want long battery life, wireless + mpeg4 capabilities and i want it for a reasonable price and size ratio.
and look at all the cool nokia phones, it’s time for me to a nokia.
If it had a thumb board, it would be useful in healtth care. got to have better battery life too.
Without a GSM/EDGE transceiver, I’d sooner get a Sharp SL-C3000 even at twice the price. At least it’s getting closer. (My ideal PDA:
Linux-based PDA
256MB RAM
GSM/EDGE
Bluetooth
WiFi
GPS
>1MP camera
640×480 touch-sensitive display
* some of the wireless connectivity can be card modules)
Can you put a GPRS internet in there?
Oh, I see now, it’s in the FAQ. So you need to carry a phone around too.
By the way, how does it compare to Zaurus?
What’s really amazing in this announcement is the list of applications and technologies which it utilizes. This is perhaps one of the biggest endorsement of GNOME centered technologies to date.
Let’s look at whats being used:
Gstreamer
Dbus
Gconf
Gtk
Abiword
The use of Gstreamer is really interesting. I have been following Gstreamer development since shortly afters it’s debut-I was and remain deeply impressed by the architechtual goals which underly Gstreamer. Yet Gstreamer on popular Linux distros has always been somewhat iffy-aparently the guys at Fluendo managed to close the gap and solidify the great concepts behind Gstreamer making it usefull and reliable. I guess it’s about time to give Gstreamer another round-I do use it for my audio applications but have had little luck using it for video-many of the apps that support Gstreamer also offer support of Xine and well Xine, for the most part, simply rocks.
They also use Dbus-in it’s 0.23 incarnation- wow!. Havoc mentioned on p.g.o that Skype is also using dbus. What a nice endorsement of the tech….
And Abiword ! woot ! way cool …I just have to wonder what the folks were thinking when they took the screenshot of the Maemo Abiword version- the document one sees in the screenshot is the OASIS 2.0 file spec…Perhaps this was meant as a gentle prodding gesture
And of coures the system uses Gconf-the one one aspect of GNOME which perhaps has been most vocally criticized. The software used on this device is itself almost enough to motivate me to buy one–although I doubt i’ll be able to aford one anytime soon….
It appears as if the porting of webcore to gtkhtml didn’t really pan out. I tried to build the software 2 weeks ago but the source code appears to have been abandoned in an unusable state. Now we find out that this system uses Opera/Gtk- now of course I don’t have a clue as how one manages to make Opera use Gtk -I imagine a whole lot of the QT stuff used in Opera had to be ported. But in all likelihood *lots* of the stuff used in this new system will find it’s way back into Linux land, from whence it came, bring us lots of new goodies.
Then of course the whole system uses Debian- which is a *nice* endorsement of the hard work the Debian folk have been up to.
All told this is neat stuff-kudos to the guys who developed the software upon which this new system is based…
3 Hours? heck, they’d be better off installing a VIA or UltraSPARC IIe in that puppy, atleast you’d be able to squeeze out 5 hours.
Any left-handed people who are put off from getting a tablet PC, due to the unfortunate de-facto standard placing of scrollbars on the right-hand side of windows: I have been working away on a GTK+ patch to make the placement a user-configurable option. Details here: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=121523
Dbus gnome centered? You mean freedesktop.org is a front for GNOME?
>Now we find out that this system uses Opera/Gtk-
Opera and GTK-? Where did you get that from?
helf wrote: a whole “1500” mAH.. jeez, I cant wait till battery tech catches up. this is just pathetic.
1500mAh are a full 10grams of active material in the battery, which means that the device alone weighs about 50/60 grams. It depends on how much portability you are willing to sacrifice. I prefer to have a cable plugged than my arms sore, but hey, S/M has got a lot of flavours.
Hello Karl,
You sound more like a Marketing person than someone who has some knowledge in software development and design. You hype DBUS as if it’s comming from the messiah himself but DBUS is the wrong approach and definately not the correct approach to walk around issues that come from the Kernel. We could achieve much more if we on Linux wouldn’t have the monolithic approach of a Kernel and instead that would have had a micro Kernel.
We could stuff the entire IPC mechanism inside the Kernel like the Amiga had many years ago with the perfect nice Messaging system, the benefits here would be that we might be able to get rid of the /dev as well as /proc system found on ancient technology Kernels and we wouldn’t need hacks such as HAL or DBUS to achive things where the Kernel has failed. A proper written IPC system inside the Kernel would allow us to sent messages to all types of processes such as Desktop where we could easily sent a message that a USB device has been connected, or sent message once we connected an IPOD or other things to the system.
Don’t get me wrong. UDEV and DBUS are nice alternatives but they are far from being the right or ultimate solutions and announcing them in a way to the public as if it’s the only right solution is wrong.
You speak about GStreamer in the same tones and I need to ask whether after six years of development if GStreamer finally came to an API freeze so people can use it ? and if so how mature is it and how does it operate inside the GNOME plattform itself ? Right now when dealing with GNOME from CVS I still getting trapped that GNOME requires different versions of GStreamer, while some packages have been driven forward to use 0.9 already some other still require API from 0.8 which leads into a lot of manual work to get things compiled and operational.
Now speaking about Immendio, Fluendo, Red Hat, Sun, Novell some more or less companies who employee the majority of GNOME hackers. Also make me ask how the future of GNOME as Desktop will look like if those people focus on their own business rather than wasting time into improving GNOME as Desktop itself. Look Uraeus work for Fluendo (maybe one of the key people behind it and probably some other GNOME hackers work there), Immendio with Hallski and Richard, Red Hat with key people like Havoc Pennington (and many others), as well as Sun and Novell, then we also have Codefactory who still employ some former GNOMERs. Looks like most of the people who spent time working and improving GNOME seem to spent a lot of time with their own business lately or work together with other companies such as NOKIA for this mobile thingy. Following CVS commits towards GNOME and following CIA here makes me scared since I see rarely any new commits happening towards GNOME the process of further development came to a halt somehow.
We shouldn’t forget that the more the former GNOME hackers start working on their own business the less attention GNOME as Desktop will receive. How can you comment on this process that has happened lately ?
Right now we see more communication about what second big language to use inside GNOME (MONO vs. JAVA) and more marketing and cooperation from one company with another than real improvement of GNOME itself.
Karl,
Here is also a little update, I spent some time yesterday and today reading planet.gnome.org and it looks to me like people are more into politics and promoting their products or themselves rather than spending the time they waste with a lot of hot air, into productive coding. I somehow have the feeling that most of them are sitting down on the fruits they having earned with GNOME 1 days. What are they waiting for actually ? Some packages in CVS seem to have maintainers with a long hiatus. I know plenty of patches alone for gnome-applets which are urgently waiting to get committed. I wonder what prevents them from doing so ? Same for other packages that seem to look quite orphaned without maintainer. Anyone has an idea, what’s going on here ?
yea i am a gnome fan but i feel a lot of wind and not much else happening from the gnome end of the world…..
HEY how did we get off topic
Your two postings are full of crap and unsubstantiated claims.
To address just a few of the things you are claiming:
a) NOTHING in gnome cvs have been moved to GStreamer 0.9 yet, and there is nothing in there using GStreamer 0.6 for a loooong time. Every thing is using GStreamer 0.8 which have been API/ABI stable for a long time.
b) Codefactory went bankrupt over a year ago, nobody works for them anymore, maybe except the lawyer handling their bankrupcy.
c) How you can claim that the work of people employed by Fluendo and others companies are not benefit the desktop itself is beyond me. Fluendo hired for instance Ronald Bultje for the last half year to focus on fixing gstreamer issues and totem to improve the desktop experience. The work we have been doing with Nokia will also directly benefit GNOME and all others using GStreamer.
“Here is also a little update, I spent some time yesterday and today reading planet.gnome.org and it looks to me like people are more into politics and promoting their products or themselves rather than spending the time they waste with a lot of hot air, into productive coding.”
LOL and that from the guy who spends his time trolling every linux discussion known to man. Hilarious.
Being unnecessarily rude towards others seem to be the only way of communication for you and accusing others for being clueless (while having taken the time in correctly reading what was written) is another rude behavior.
a) The part of the Kernel is correct and not clueless. A good microkernel with IPC mechanism embedded, like the Amiga EXEC is indeed the right and correct approach. Such an IPC mechanism is able to sent messages, receive messages, reply to messages which is a good thing. Assume this, your kernel would be able to talk to the desktop via IPC, sending a message to the kernel that a new USB stick has been put in or that an IPOD or Printer has been connected is in my opinion the better approach. HAL, DBUS, UDEV wouldn’t be needed, nor would any /dev or /proc entry be required. But yet it’s required to hack up some solutions which then gets promoted as best there is only to bypass weak aspects of the kernel. Every kernel designer will agree with me here. Stuff you seem to not understand at all.
b) I had to alter quite some stuff in Rhythmbox from CVS to match some changes in 0.8 dunno why this is required but it was so (even arch seem to have same issues) not to mention that I wasn’t refering to 0.6 at all, dunno where you get that from.
c) Codefactory might be a mistake but also not the point of my worries. What I wanted to say is if you people spent a lot of time doing your promotions, working in the company and working with other companies to offer solutions then you most likely spent all your time and energy into exactly this goal. This means lack of time to work on GNOME as we can see, as everyone can see when visiting CIA. There hasn’t been much substantial changes in CVS recently besides breaking more and more stuff. Everyone can check this up if they want.
d) Of course we do benefit from the work from NOKIA let’s assume this, now we have a better GSTreamer than we had before and now ? Rest of the GNOME architecture is still in bad shape and worse condition. Now imagine why this is the case, because people like you flaming ahead, accusing others and calling them to be clueless are the cause why nobody feels like contributiong anything to GNOME (the only exception are those who are getting paid to do so). How much more do we need to tell you to simply change your bad attitude towards people ?
About the kernel – OK, go run hurd, and help them make it work. In five years, when it’s usable, it might even be better than the Linux kernel, at which point I’ll happily switch to it. Until then I’d rather carry on using and improving the *viable product we currently have* rather than say it’s so bad we should all stop using it and spend a decade writing a microkernel instead.
Good point. It would be nice if they make a 5200mAH extended life battery as an option ;P
Firstly I actually stated very little about DBUS-and nowhere did I make any claims about it-regardless of ones take on the relative value, quality, or usefullness of DBUS- a heck of a lot of work from a lot of people went into creating it. DBUS being adopted for use in this new Nokia product surely means something to many of those who were involved in developing it , it is a sign of recognition and appreciation of their work.
We could engage in some speculative discourse about the most optimal form of IPC-but frankly I don’t even see the point in bringing up any of this in the context of the comment I made or its relevance to the new Nokia product.
AFAIK Gstreamer is nowhere near 6 years old. In my original comment I noted how my experience with Gstreeamer hasn’t been all that positive-but obiviously if Nokia is paying (some of)the people who write Gstreamer(Fluendo) readying it for use in a commercial product this means that all of us who use Gstreamer will benefit from the dedicated time and energy being poured into it.
………..
to other responders:
Each of the technologies I listed are closely associated with GNOME, some of these are F.D.O projects which have been embraced by GNOME. Some of these technologies have also been embraced by KDE. I imagine that some of the KDE devs working on DBUS, and on Gstreamer also felt that their work is being recognized and appreciated. Can I not mention GNOME without triggering hard core polemics ?
I read about the use of Opera in the new product over at p.g.o and it is there that I saw the reference to Opera/Gtk. What that means or entails is beyond my knowledge. I can’t realy imagine them using the normal QT-based Opera if for no other reason than due to the differing look and feel of QT and GTK apps-and all the other apps mentioned so far are using GTK……
I wonder when there will be better integration between GTK and Opera. Using Opera on a Gnome desktop can be annoying as it isn’t environment aware and wants to use KDE based apps for all it’s external compatability.
Would be really nice (no problem with the QT libraries they choose to use) to have Opera detect the Desktop environment it’s in on Linux and set itself up to work within it.
this is one of the coolest gadgets i’ve seen in a long time. especially that you can use it as voip phone. i gotta get one as soon as they come out.
The Amiga had fast IPC because it had no memory protection (no context switches). Slow IPC is a problem with Mach which is why the Hurd is moving to L4. L4 has been redesigned multiple times (with no backwards compat) in an attempt to speed up IPC.
Good point. It would be nice if they make a 5200mAH extended life battery as an option ;P
LOL. True; chuck a 4gig flash in there, along with a UltraSPARC IIe, tune the kernel to use as much of the VIS as possible, and you’d have a *very* good device. Low power consumption, low heat, nicer performance given its clock speed ( see the G4 vs. UltraSPARC IIe on spec.org for further details ).
For the life of me I cannot see that I engaged in any namecalling or defamation. The style and content of your writing suggests to me that you are oGALAXYo. I maybe mistaken-but your response seems to validate my suspcision.(I am standing by the assumption that you are in fact oGALAXYo.) I have nothing against you personally- for what it’s worth I even downloaded and installed the browser you wrote and followed up on the gtk webcore port.
I did have a problem with some of things you wrote about GNOME-but honestly my problem was that you stated the same things over and over and over again with such vile contempt for the GNOME developers. I would certainly grant that your skills in coding far exceed those of my own- I am not a developer. But being a developer does not automatically grant someone a more profound insight into relative merits of a technology-if that were the case all programmers would think and hold the same opinions about a given technology. I feel *somewhat* competent to comment on software technology in some areas- I am by no means an expert and I certainly make mistakes. In all likelihood I was writing programs before you were born….the last larger scale application I wrote was in 1982….
You still speak like a Marketing person here and the explicit mentioning of Nokia in all your sentences makes me wonder whether you are under contract by them or whether you received one of those free devices.
I appreciate the huge work spent into DBUS but still I am allowed to have an own opinion! right? My personal opinion is that I believe that the work would have been better spent to get a full IPC system inside the Kernel rather making it a userland system. What happens if DBUS for some purpose crashes or people remove the library by mistake from their distribution and wonder that nothing works anymore? Just some easy and simple things to think about. Rather that, the KDE people don’t seem to be that impressed about replacing their DCOP system with DBUS as you can go into the kde channels and talk with the developers as they are there.
GStreamer is six years old which you would have realized if you would have had spent some time on GStreamer’s web page and by reading some stuff presented there. Let me help you a bit by showing you a reference:
http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/news/
At the bottom you see that the first public GStreamer with the version 0.0.9 got announced 9:10pm PST Oct 31, 1999 and yes this is around six years ago. This clearly shows that I spent some time with the matter.
Speaking about fdo. I fully agree that some projects have been stomped out by KDE but most of the stuff found there are coming from the GNOME people because of the urgent requirment of those. GNOME has realized that it’s going to go nowhere with bonobo, ORBit2 and it’s interface description language called libIDL and thus are working on DBUS to find a slim, fast and responsive replacement for all the stuff above. I don’t know whether bonobo will get DBUS interfaces or not since I am not involved into all this process but I can imagine that stuff will look quite messy for another while.
I have no problems for Nokia to chose what they like and it’s also not my business where they are going to burn their money but I somehow have the feeling that they have decided for the GNOME products due to wrong marketing sold to them. I have a picture in my head where GNOME people have rung their door, promoted them GNOME and made everything to get the contract signed and work on these things. But it would have been fair if you had told them about all the caveats that still exists.
Now most of the companies like fluendo, imendio, <add another company here> spent all the time into working together with Nokia into creating this device. Which of course is a nice thing and of course these companies seem to be doing the only right thing. Why working and wasting their time on GNOME as volunteer project when otoh you can get a lot of cash by working together with Nokia in form of a contract. To say the truth, I would have done so, you would have done so and the vast majority of attentive readers would have done so too.
But by focusing on your own projects, by marketing GNOME, by telling eveyone how great GNOME is you forget that people seem to spent more time into doing exactly these things than spending time into improving GNOME. The time spent on other projects is the time missing on working and improving GNOME and as we all seem to agree with GNOME needs quite a lot of work to head forward. Look at the competition KDE for example. Their big SVN switch, their SVN code can be compiled anytime without any issues, you don’t need all types of old automake and autoconf versions laying around and there are also no missing files in SVN that prevents you from proceeding with your compile. I don’t want to say that KDE is perfect it definately isn’t but GNOME is in a by far worse shape and condition than KDE is. Packages inside GNOME are orphaned, patches in no way committed and the overall impression is quite poor. Even XFCE is doing better here as GTK+ alternative – for people who like to have a GTK+ solution rather than going with KDE. Not to mention the recent resignation from a core GNOME developer as well as some followups and then the little really frustrating war between MONO vs. JAVA which really worries developers as well as users.
This is no secret, OSNews.com, Slashdot and other places have publicly reported about these issues and worries and still these sites continue reporting about these worries. I do appreciate the huge work people spent into GNOME but sitting on the tail and still eating the fruits that you have harvest a few years ago with GNOME 1 is getting you nowhere. If you really believe into GNOME then you need to continue working on it and show the public that it’s worth it. Right now the competition are doing significant much better than GNOME itself. Is this a sign of resignation or a sign of regressions inside the GNOME camp ? A lot of packages are orphanes and the work going inside there is halfhearted, loveless and only the minimal required to get your daily JHBuild working (somehow).
Sorry but this is wrong marketing in my opinion and you do understand this and to say the truth you and most people here even do agree here but I also understand that you try to defend your GNOME because its so great and so brilliant, sadly it doesn’t help anyone and it doesn’t make it better or more correct if we keep celebrating GNOME as the ultimate choice while competition are miles ahead. Even your boards director has realized that the competition like KDE has been miles ahead of GNOME and he has put the leveling down from focusing GNOME as competitor for Windows to GNOME as competitor for KDE. So what I say here is nothing wrong neither is it a rant nor a flame, it’s quite speaking the truth.
If one looks at the comments I have made about GNOME in general here on OSNEWS one can all too quickly see that I have given GNOME more than a certain amount of criticism. I would hope that some of my criticism has been usefull-but often such criticism doesn’t rise above the rank of being an ill-spirited rant. I could probably write over 100 pages about all of the problems that I have with different parts of GNOME-if you add Linux to it it would be over 500 pages
But I also am an enthusiastic supporter of GNOME- supporter of the people working on this project, from which I profit so much and with which I identify myself to the extent that I offer a GNOME-based desktop to the 300 users who regularly use our LTSP server which I administer(Institüt für Soziologie uni-freiburg.de). Just for the record: I have never bought anything from Nokia-and honestly I have no use whatsoever for this new Nokia product-it looks sexy and it has embraced a lot of the software which I support…so it is not difficult to understand a bit of enthusiasm for the new product even if I will probably never even see one.
I have written extensively here on OSNEWS about my concern about bonobo and those technologies being used to replace bonobo. In my view the combination of DBUS and the MIME system in GNOME account for about %60 of the functionality that bonobo once provided. I know from mailing lists that bonobo was the source of lot’s of intractable errors and that there are many dev’s, who are active in GNOME, who are wishing to free themselves of anything to do with bonobo. But I still don’t see a viable component technology in GNOME-which I think is crucial for the platforms future.
I won’t get into a debate about the relative merits of KDE, either as a desktop environment or as a development community. I am far to ignorant of both to say much. I like some KDE applications and I like that KDE is highly componetized and I value the high code reusage which is evident in all things KDE. But I don’t actively follow or use KDE. I imagine my preference of GNOME has about as much deep meaning as my preference for one kind of music as for another. We like the things we like-and we offer post-hoc rationalizations to justify our tastes after the fact, something which isn’t very convincing for me.
My choice to use GNOME as my desktop and to enthusiastically support the project is completely orthogonal to the issues with which is confronted when one is developing applications. My problem with much of what you have written is that you always speak as if GNOME has failed- but GNOME is what I use and what is most usefull to me and to those who use the desktops I administer. When you are not saying that GNOME has failed you are saying that it is broken- but then again why is it so damned usefull, with so many applications that I value, if it is *in fact* broken ? If it were as broken as you say it is- and we may actually agree on many points- why are people developing for it ? And whether you want to admit it or not when a major corporation like Nokia actively embraces such technologies this is an endorsement – a sign of recognition and appreciation for these technologies.
Attributing this endorsement to misguided and misleading marketing is simply schwachsinnig, um es aufs Gut Deutsch zu sagen. When I read such it sounds as if you believe in some grand conspiracy on the part of GNOME dev’s to convince others that there oh-so-horrible stuff should be used by naieve-ignorant corporations. Perhaps we should switch topics and talk about the Illuminati….I don’t buy all of this paranoid stuff.
Just think a bit about what you are saying: how is it that time spent by GNOME dev’s working on projects like maemo is taking away time that could have been spent improving GNOME ? The guys were getting paid to work full time on fixing and finishing up software which GNOME uses. I don’t understand how GNOME cannot profit from such. The work the Fluendo guys did results in all of us having a better Gstreamer. The work done in using DBUS will eventually help the DBUS authors themselves-ie. more people using the software, more software using DBUS, more bug reports, new creative talent being introduced into the pool of developers. Maeomo uses a modified GtkFileSelector- if this product succeeds and new apps are ported to this new device this will provide valuable feedback for the Gtk devs likely resulting in an improved Gtk. There is no contradiction here.
I am routinely frustrated with the priorities of some of the GNOME dev’s-it really bugs me when I see them going off on tangents and not focusing on what *I* think they should be focusing on. But these guys are doing the actual work of developing the stuff- stuff that I use. I try not to attack them due to *my* issues- their work is far more important than my concerns. I have a certain amount of faith in these guys and have a grand sense of patience- what they are providing is priceless and I am not one for looking a gift-horse in the mouth.
Karl,
Besides some small things I would say that your last reply can stand as is and you have given yourself quite some answers to the things that I globally call as broken.
Though you are wrong with one part, the one with the gifts-horse. Please understand that it’s GNOME itself who do all the promotion and marketing, it’s them who announce in the public, it’s them who spread all the evangelism around it.
You probably understand that if you do exactly these things that you also generate a lot of expecations in peoples mind. GNOME is being introduced as the corporate desktop, as the desktop to get work done, as the ultimative desktop choice for open source. I am not sure whether I quote all the points correctly or if I missed some but all in all we can say it is going like this.
Unfortunately GNOME can’t come up with the simpliest task for people to get their job done which makes the desktop environment become quite frustrating. One needs to ask whether the organisation is bad, the goals are chosen false. I don’t have any problems with the people working on GNOME but as soon as someone stands up and criticise GNOME in the public or give constructive feedback everyone else shouts back and excuse the problems that exist with the fact that GNOME is a volunteer project and that it’s just the coder who decide what GNOME is and that you the user can’t expect more than what you get. This so far reflects reality.
But then there is the marketing talks which exactly sounds the oposite as mentioned above. The sound that the marketing talks make gives people the feeling to get something complete, to get something that works, to get something where they know that some global players pull a lot of money in the throath. Unfortunately it is exactly this kind of marketing that is misleading. GNOME is by far not better than XFCE or Enlightenment or any other project, it doesn’t have any special things nor does it offer anything to get real work done, nor is it able to accomplish simple tasks due to incomplete or broken features.
Ok no problem with that, GNOME has time to mature, but people who want to get their stuff done today have no time to wait. You can’t come up and thank all the people for having installed GNOME and then once they seek for support or come up with critics or constructive feedback that they should go away. It’s GNOME who got stuck and trapped in their own marketing, they are totally swamped with fulfilling the demands of users. Maybe they would be happier and more productive and even get fun back if GNOME would step back from this wrong marketing and the illusionary goal to beat Microsoft or Apple. This won’t be happening anytime soon either. Maybe KDE is doing better here because they focus more on coding, focus more on cool talks with people and being nice to each other than wasting time on silly blogs and marketing stuff. It’s time for the remaining GNOME followers and developers to wake up from their disillusion and start working on GNOME so people can at least get basic tasks done. Promoting OOo or Firefox together with GNOME is nice but you can use OOo and Firefox without GNOME at all it doesn’t say anything about productivity nor does it fulfill real life demands. There is still a lot of tool missing for GNOME to get at least something done. Software for science, education, university etc. You are not even there, nor close to this goal, not even close to the goal in having a functional desktop to get basic stuff working. KDE passed all this miles ago, can you tell me (or anyone else) whats up with GNOME ? Why it’s not going to get out of this stagnation ?
There is a lot more about it at:
http://www.linuxdevices.com
and
http://www.mobileburn.com/gallery.jsp?Id=1381
a) The part of the Kernel is correct and not clueless. A good microkernel with IPC mechanism embedded, like the Amiga EXEC is indeed the right and correct approach. Such an IPC mechanism is able to sent messages, receive messages, reply to messages which is a good thing. Assume this, your kernel would be able to talk to the desktop via IPC, sending a message to the kernel that a new USB stick has been put in or that an IPOD or Printer has been connected is in my opinion the better approach. HAL, DBUS, UDEV wouldn’t be needed, nor would any /dev or /proc entry be required. But yet it’s required to hack up some solutions which then gets promoted as best there is only to bypass weak aspects of the kernel. Every kernel designer will agree with me here. Stuff you seem to not understand at all.
There is no reason that an IPC mechansim can’t be implemented in any kernel, micro or otherwise. And, in case you didn’t notice, the kernel does send a notification to user space when a new device is connected to the system. How do you think the userspace side of udev knows to create the device node? HAL (and FAM and other similar technologies) are there to isolate the kernel specific notifications from what is supposed to be portable software. Unless every kernel starts to use the same notification mechanism then a portability layer will always be necessary. Your reasons for harping on /dev and /proc also allude me since, to the best of my knowledge, every operating system in widespread use released in the past 5 years has those exact constructs or something functionally identical.
d) Of course we do benefit from the work from NOKIA let’s assume this, now we have a better GSTreamer than we had before and now ? Rest of the GNOME architecture is still in bad shape and worse condition. Now imagine why this is the case, because people like you flaming ahead, accusing others and calling them to be clueless are the cause why nobody feels like contributiong anything to GNOME (the only exception are those who are getting paid to do so). How much more do we need to tell you to simply change your bad attitude towards people ?
Continually repeating that the GNOME architecture is in bad shape doesn’t suddenly make it so. You’d be called clueless much less often if you stopped parading opinion as fact. Either support your comments with facts or be prepared to be called clueless.
> Your reasons for harping on /dev and /proc also allude me
> since, to the best of my knowledge, every operating system
> in widespread use released in the past 5 years has those
> exact constructs or something functionally identical.
It seems to me that you haven’t dealt much with Kernel architectures or other operating systems at all. There are plenty of operating systems existing which don’t have a /dev or /proc system (See AmigaOS, MorphOS, AROS for some examples). Sure you can embedd an IPC mechanism in any Kernel that you wish though doesn’t show this proper Kernel design at all. A well designed Kernel still is a micro Kernel which only has the IPC system – End. Ontop of that you create drivers, libraries and other stuff that can easily be installed or removed – End.
> Either support your comments with facts or be prepared to
> be called clueless.
I don’t like to jump on the flaming mode over and over again and I also think that these issues that I am refering too has been repeatedly been repeated over and over again. I think you should learn some programming to understand the problems that I refer too and maybe you need to get at least 20 years experience ontop of that as well and maybe a long way in computer history would help too so you figure out that at the current moment GNOME is making some similar mistakes that other systems have shown in the past.
For some rants please read here:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=150592&cid=12627995
I wish it could have been avoided but maybe this small example might help you.
> Your reasons for harping on /dev and /proc also allude me
> since, to the best of my knowledge, every operating system
> in widespread use released in the past 5 years has those
> exact constructs or something functionally identical.
It seems to me that you haven’t dealt much with Kernel architectures or other operating systems at all.
Nice ad hominem attack. And you complain about people being impolite to you.
There are plenty of operating systems existing which don’t have a /dev or /proc system (See AmigaOS, MorphOS, AROS for some examples).
First of all, I said any OS in widespread use released in the past 5 years. I didn’t say trot out ancient (AmigaOS) or irrelevant hobby OS (MorphOS/AROS) kernels because you then open the flood gate to any random kernel design that some guy thinks is cool (exo kernels anyone?). Then we get people like you running around telling everyone how microkernels are the only way to do things right. Next you’re going to be telling everyone to rewrite their kernel in Java because JNode does it, right? Fact is, every modern kernel that is actually used by more than 50 people have the same structures as /proc and /dev even if they don’t necessarily expose them to the user (Mac OS X, for example).
Sure you can embedd an IPC mechanism in any Kernel that you wish though doesn’t show this proper Kernel design at all. A well designed Kernel still is a micro Kernel which only has the IPC system – End. Ontop of that you create drivers, libraries and other stuff that can easily be installed or removed – End.
Seems to me that most of the kernel designers around the world have decided that microkernels are nice in theory and useless in practice. Besides niche kernels like QNX, every mainstream kernel available has gone the hybrid route. You can sit there and play the high and mighty kernel designer, but given that you’re some random guy posting on OSNews and the best kernel designers in the world all seem be doing something different, I’m gonna go with the real kernel designers.
You also don’t seem to remember that whole fact thing I was talking about before, remember, where you offer real facts, not just your opinion. Just because you think it, then say it authoritatively doesn’t make it a fact or make you an authority.
And if you really want to make my day, explain to me how Mac OS X (not a microkernel) and Linux (not a microkernel) allow you to “create drivers, libraries and other stuff that can easily be installed or removed” if that is the realm of microkernels. You read like someone who has read about microkernels and thinks they’re cool but doesn’t actually understand what features make them unique versus what features any random kernel could implement. For example, microkernels don’t just have an IPC system, they also handle memory management, interrupts and low level device access.
> Either support your comments with facts or be prepared to
> be called clueless.
I don’t like to jump on the flaming mode over and over again and I also think that these issues that I am refering too has been repeatedly been repeated over and over again. I think you should learn some programming to understand the problems that I refer too and maybe you need to get at least 20 years experience ontop of that as well and maybe a long way in computer history would help too so you figure out that at the current moment GNOME is making some similar mistakes that other systems have shown in the past.
Actually, what I see you is you repeating your opinions over and over again and then try to pass of those rants as fact. I also enjoy how you pretend to be an authority and belittle other people’s experience and/or capabilities. But I’m still waiting to hear some of those facts because, so far, your entire post is just random useless opinions mixed with a misunderstanding of how microkernels are different from monolithic kernels. Your preference for microkernels doesn’t change that you’re wrong about the necessity for HAL (don’t think I didn’t notice that you didn’t even respond to that). You’re distaste for /dev and /proc doesn’t change that every modern kernel is use has those structures.
For some rants please read here:
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=150592&cid=12627995
I wish it could have been avoided but maybe this small example might help you.
Again, posting your random opinions and then using those as a basis of fact doesn’t suddenly make them facts. Try and come back with a real fact or two.
… nice try … but what’s wrong with exokernels ? … for the other stuff, I think my opinion is quite good and reasonable too. At the end people can decide on their own what they want to believe or not it’s all on their system, they can launch and check the stuff on their own and make up their own mind … I only felt the need to make people aware of the situation … cheers …
… nice try … but what’s wrong with exokernels ?
Nothing except that they are irrelevant except in the realm of research and hobby kernels. When someone finds a real world application where they prove to have advantages that the modern hybrid kernels don’t have, then maybe they’ll be worth talking about. So far, micro kernels, exo kernels, pico kernels and all the rest are only worth discussing in the theoretical sense.
… for the other stuff, I think my opinion is quite good and reasonable too. At the end people can decide on their own what they want to believe or not it’s all on their system, they can launch and check the stuff on their own and make up their own mind
It’s your opinion, I wouldn’t expect you to feel otherwise. The problem is that other people can’t check and make up their own mind because there is nothing to check. Maybe if you provided actual facts for them to base a decision on they could. But I’ve challenged you twice now to back up what you’re saying with facts and the best you could do was to point out a slashdot posting that you made saying the same things you’re saying here.
… I only felt the need to make people aware of the situation … cheers …
You just felt the need to trot out your tired GNOME whining and pass it off as though it has some merit, again. Hopefully what you did make people aware of is that you don’t understand the technologies you’re talking about and, thus, shouldn’t be relied upon as an authority.
Not so easy my friend. The point is that not everyone who spent time reading OSNews.com or Slashdot is a technology zealot or has programming skills. So presenting them something they don’t understand won’t help anyone. So what else can be done ? Writing up some text with some screenshots to demonstrate the stuff and tell them to try the same at home on their system. These actually are facts, facts that even normal people might be able to understand, stuff that they can check up on their own system to make an own opinion. My very own opinion are my own facts. The same as your opinion are your own facts. I do understand the technology perfectly and prepared my knowledge and investigation in a human understandable way. Just because you disagree with my opinion and don’t see any facts because you seem to have issues to understand the problem then this is your very own problem. Some get the point, others not, you seem to be part of those who don’t. That’s life. If you don’t understand the facts provided on the Slashdot writing then it’s your own problem. You can even come up and ask the third time for facts and even the fourth or fifth time if you want, it only demonstrates your inability to understand and shows your ignorance or simply lack of knowledge or skills in proper software development, user demands and requirements. But this gap you need to fill on your own. I only provided something which even simple people without an university degree can understand.
Thanks for namecalling, but know you are wrong! Regular namecalling, slandering and defamation don’t make the position better for the GNOME camp, it only shows how the reality inside GNOME is, but if this is the only way to excuse your big failure and the deep problems you have run on your own – then be it.
I saw a lot of former GNOME contributers resigning and leaving the project because they all seem to be “by your definition” troublemakers, poor pathetic illiterates and idiots, sure, you are doing everything right, so right that yet again you need to write a new IPC mechanism only to get rid of the mistake used before.
I doubt that one person can trash an entire project, the capabilities and resources are missing for this kind of task. Look GNOME has millions of happy chinese users, thousands of brasil universities are running GNOME.. but hey.. not one developer amongst them to help fixing GNOME. Quite curious ain’t it?
In the past years GNOME did a lot to get people off, to scare them away, to ignore their own charta, to be ignorant. All those so called “trouble makers” are no individual case anymore and the recent desktoplinux.com poll has paid you back for this. One signle person? I doubt!
The amount of the word ‘idiot’ that you spew out in your last comment clearly shows everyone who the real idiot of us both is. I doub’t it requires any further comments. Oh and for the ‘facts’ that you were asking for try this one. It’s not from me but still funny.
http://rapidshare.de/files/2030337/gnome-the-movie.zip.html
27 mb, 7 mins, click on ‘free’ and then wait for your download ticket.