Novell Inc., which last year bought SuSE Linux and Ximian, is working on a single desktop product to ship before the end of this year. eWEEK has the details. Elsewhere, OrangeCrate has an interview with Herr Holger Dyroff of SUSE Linux, Novell while ZDNet.UK writes on their review of SuSE Linux 9.1: “Although this latest version of SuSE Linux only warrants a point upgrade, there’s actually more going on under the surface than the numbers would have you believe. Both user interface and underlying services have received upgrades in version 9.1, which also includes more bundled software.”
Novell’s Linux Desktop Zeros In on Integration
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
everytime I read about this integration nightmare that Novell is planning it makes me ill. I would love to rant more but know that it would just lead to a flame war.
History shows us Novell screwing up time and time again .. and now I can see that they are going to have a great time f**king up Linux and our DE’s … Go Novell!
This is just one persons opinion and thus means absolutely nothing.
Im really looking forward to this new linux distro, hope its just not another plain old linux distrobution…
Suse + Gnome + Mono = Heaven
But only if pulled off in a good way.
Well, I’m still mystified as to what Novell is going to do and what this desktop is going to look like. If Novell are trying to make up for a supposed shortcoming of open source software in providing a roadmap, then they’ve failed spectacularly.
I’m always amused as to how it always seems to be Nat Friedman on his tod giving these interviews, but we’ve got the same confused messages coming from Suse itself.
Suse’s commitment to KDE, particularly in the personal edition of 9.1 produces a very well done desktop environment. Kontact is clearly favoured here with Konqueror as a browser, along with a Qt-ified Open Office. Their commitment to Qt/KDE apps is quite large as well, with a vested interest in Scribus and the Qt/KDE Open Office. All of this produces something pretty well-integrated from what I have seen and in all the reviews I’ve read. In view of what Suse currently offers, you have to ask yourself where the integration will come from in these areas, and why. Someone seriously looking at buying into what Novell are doing will find that utterly confusing. This isn’t going to convince anyone to trust Novell in looking at desktop alternatives.
Holger Dyroff: We have been working on the unification of the configuration files since SUSE LINUX version 8, and nothing will change about that. We are also heavily working on interoperability of applications programed under each of the desktop environments. This is what our customers are asking us for.
Business customers will be asking you for something to browse the web and something to read their e-mail with – they won’t ask you for unification of GTK and KDE/Qt apps.
“We will support both the KDE and GNOME desktop environments and, from an application perspective, there will be a set of defaults that we will support: Evolution, OpenOffice and Mozilla.”
Suse have said that technologically you can’t combine KDE and Gnome. Well, they’re reportedly trying to combine Evolution, Mozilla, Open Office, KDE and Gnome. The right technological infrastructure could actually make this happen, but the problem is that it doesn’t exist. It will take many, many years of time and investment to build that infrastructure and it certainly won’t be done by the end of the year.
Since Open Office and Mozilla are separate in terms of their technology, then Novell are trying to combine four different environments. If you talk about using these applications within Windows in addition, then that is five or more. Quite how all this might work is anybody’s guess, and I can see this leading to a real dog’s breakfast that will cost Novell a lot of time, money and embarrassment. If this fails then there will be no chance of people considering Linux on their desktops. This is a serious issue, and is way, way beyond any stupid KDE vs Gnome cat-fight.
The objective here is to put into motion a medium to long term objective within Novell of not relying on Windows or any Microsoft software within the desktop sphere. Within the context of the software industry, that is absolutely huge and I’m not sure that Novell have grasped just how serious it is. If you’re going to do that then you have to get it absolutely right. Just ask any of Microsoft’s rivals who have tried it, including Sun and Corel. Novell needs to nail its colours consitently to the mast, or give up on the desktop avenue.
You’re probably better off with something like Xandros or someone who is actually going to give you support like Mepis. I think there is a big opportunity for one of the smaller companies here, because I don’t see any sort of a future here.
That if the open source community wouldn’t do this, The Corporation would. Next up … AOL Linux. Mark my words.
-default apps: gaim, mozilla, OOo, evolution
-Novell going towards mono as their standard devel platform
– possible mozilla-gnome collaberation
– Novell’s ifolder being intergrated into nautilus
-gtk# preferred binding since its the only one being offically supported. The QT# binding seems to have stopped development
Looks like Novells “hybrid” DE is going to be Gnome with some KDE apps.
or does anyone else has the feeling that novell has yet to figure out how to digest/puzzle together the classic novell stuff as well as the ximian and suse part (or en evif they fit together at all)?
if i take a look at their hp their product line is simply a mess, with several overlapping or non-integrated products.
also, the hierarchy inside novell is pretty confusing, and i could imagine that the suse-staff ist pretty pi##ed about nat friedman and to a a lesser extent miguel de icaza who seem to make themselves important at all cost, given ximian is/was a dwarf in terms of employees/marketcap compared to suse.
i’m pretty curious how this all plays out…
“That if the open source community wouldn’t do this, The Corporation would. Next up … AOL Linux. Mark my words.”
I agree with you completely. Once you get the corporations playing the Linux game, all of the air is going to get sucked out of the room. Next up…. Very proprietary modules for Linux, at very high prices too. The open source part will get totally lost in their proprietary modules.
Looking forward to see more integration between KDE and Evolution..
Suse+Ximian KDE/GNOME+Evol seems nice
or does anyone else has the feeling that novell has yet to figure out how to digest/puzzle together the classic novell stuff as well as the ximian and suse part (or en evif they fit together at all)? if i take a look at their hp their product line is simply a mess, with several overlapping or non-integrated products.
Nope – you’re absolutely spot on. People are assuming that because Novell are a fairly large company and give an impression of corporate support that they somehow know exactly what they are doing. Those people are dead wrong.
also, the hierarchy inside novell is pretty confusing, and i could imagine that the suse-staff ist pretty pi##ed about nat friedman and to a a lesser extent miguel de icaza who seem to make themselves important at all cost…
Well, I’ve no idea about this and neither does anyone else. Even Suse are coming out with some very bizarre messages at the moment that seem to have absolutely no relation to their products or what they’re doing.
i’m pretty curious how this all plays out…
Join the club.
that’s my current impression, too, which would be – again, compared to the size/personnal -ratio of former ximian and suse – a very strange decision.
if so, i would question if this move is wise, because the suse staff as well as the userbase in europe will be pretty angry and disappointed.
makes me wonder about how decisions are being made within novell…
ps: i prefer gnome myself, but nevertheless…
I wish people would stop guessing as to what Novell is aiming toward. Its almost getting annoying… this is what I got from the discussions:
Novell is going to set a bunch of default, will use Mono as much as possible, will be integrating existing clients with Novells technologies…
Nothing is really being stated about KDE vs GNOME… however, they did state one thing I found interesting “Ximian’s userfriendly technology”, which could be contrued as GNOME being new default…
I really don’t think they will go straigh for GNOME though… and I do believe they will do things right. SUSE and Ximian both have a lot of experiance in the Linux space, and I believe Novell will be using those people to dictate the Linux stratigies. Statements about Novell skewing up again are irrelivent here, the people involved currently are very aware of the Linux landscape…
I dunno, I know for a fact that I am looking forward to seeing what they come up with however… and if they can do this right, it will be a huge plus for Linux in general…
>>” Next up…. Very proprietary modules for Linux, at very high prices too.”
The important thing to remember, which is alost always overlooked by the hobbyist/home/advocate crowd is that Novell, RedHat, etc., want the corporate market. Unless you’re a corporate VP or CEO, that’s not you.
You may not want to pay $1500 for Twin Object Oriented Confabulators for your Linux desktop, but corporate types will if they need one to get their work done. They pay even more to be able to call someone in the middle of the night when the servers crash. The money is in the support contracts. Remember, carrying even one systems guru on staff will cost you upwards of $250,000 per year (most of that does not go to salary; think insurance, benefits, training, etc.) That’s the reason support contracts are so popular.
-default apps: gaim, mozilla, OOo, evolution
– Says Nat Friedman in an interview, of which we have had a great many over the past four or five years.
– Is there a Novell/Suse desktop with these apps installed by default right now? No.
– Suse 9.1 – KDE, Qt Open Office, Konqueror, Kontact by default. Their Personal Edition only has KDE on it.
– Response from Suse? Zilch, and certainly not what Nat Friedman is saying.
-Novell going towards mono as their standard devel platform
– That’s not what Nat Friedman is saying, although he gives that impression.
– Is anyone else from Novell or Suse saying what Nat is saying about Mono? No.
– Has anyone else from Novell/Suse made an official announcement on Mono, or even Qt, as the standard development platform? No.
– Novell’s ifolder being intergrated into nautilus
– Doesn’t mean anything at all. The Ximian people are focused on Mono/GTK/Gnome. I’d be very surprised if this wasn’t done.
– Are Novell and Suse re-engineering everything with Mono? No.
-gtk# preferred binding since its the only one being offically supported. The QT# binding seems to have stopped development
– GTK is favoured because the people developing Mono are favouring GTK. Why do you think it is the only one seemingly officially supported?
– Qt# has not stopped development, but the Mono developers only seem to want to support GTK.
Looks like Novells “hybrid” DE is going to be Gnome with some KDE apps.
Nope, sorry. You can’t infer anything like that from the hotch-potch of untruths, half-truths and confusing messages coming from Novell and the Ximian and Suse people at the moment.
“I really don’t think they will go straigh for GNOME though… and I do believe they will do things right”
trying to “merge” gnome and kde at a userapp-level sounds like a recipe for totally unnecessary BS, not as one for getting things right (contrary to the necessary interop. under the hood which fd.org is providing)…
risk is huge to end up sitting between all chairs!
“SUSE and Ximian both have a lot of experiance in the Linux space, and I believe Novell will be using those people to dictate the Linux stratigies”
yeah, but just exactly who is dictating who is the interesting point (at least for me…:-)
well, let’s wait and see…
“trying to “merge” gnome and kde at a userapp-level sounds like a recipe for totally unnecessary BS, not as one for getting things right (contrary to the necessary interop. under the hood which fd.org is providing)…
risk is huge to end up sitting between all chairs!”
One thing I am certain of, there will be no “merger” of the DE’s in any way… Novell doesn’t want to fork both, that would be far to much work for them, and it simply doesn’t make sense from a business or technology standpoint… I believe they will use as much from fd.o as possible, and work as much as possible on integration, avoiding utter merging… This would appear to be best case scenario, and very good for Linux in general…
“yeah, but just exactly who is dictating who is the interesting point (at least for me…:-)
Well, one of the guy’s from SUSE is in charge of the desktop direction, with Nate being second in charge. It would appear that this is mostly fair, as SUSE made an Operating System, while Nate and Ximian only modified a desktop… I don’t believe they will make too many mistakes in the “new” product, although I agree utterly with the general sentiment of what they’re saying being very unclear at the moment…
“well, let’s wait and see…”
Yes lets, like I said, I can’t wait to see what they come up with
“Statements about Novell skewing up again are irrelivent here, the people involved currently are very aware of the Linux landscape…”
I would say you are correct; IF it wasn’t for the fact Novell has such a long track record to look back upon.
They are and always will be lead by the wishes of their board of directors and accounting departments. Best wishes if you believe either of them give a damn about the “Linux landscape”. Novell is a really odd fit for anything with the words “free, open, or cheap” attached.
More than a few of us here have had numerous dealings with Novell over the years. The one constant in all of that; Novell never gave anything away. A few changes in personel are not going to change that, it’s the “way” they operate.
It’s not really about what specifics Novell decides to include within their desktop system, as that has likely long ago been decided. Now it’s more about how they plan to make money at it.
They will figure out a way to make money off this, or they will yank the plugs and boot everything related to the project and the people involved straight out the front door.
For running a win sys site you can keep dreaming that troller
Most of the posts so far are rants about people wishing that Novell would do what they whould like Novell to do.
Novell is going to make a choice, and that choice may not be what you like. Get over it! Stating your desire as if it were a fact of what Novell would do even when all their interviews are pointing otherwise is simply massaging the truth to your desire. Get over it!
“There are ultimately only two alternatives in intellectual live: You either conform your desire to the truth, or you conform truth to your desire. — Michael Jones (Degenerate moderns)”
What alternative have you chosen as you post?
New definition of a troll: Someone who twists the truth to suit their desire.
“Novell never gave anything away”
They did release YAST and Connector as open source, didn’t they? Anyway, I don’t think they can afford f***ing up their linux strategy…
Maybe it would be a good idea to wait for the final Novell Desktop before saying in advance that it will suck.
“One thing I am certain of, there will be no “merger” of the DE’s in any way”
ok, fair enough… the interview with nat friedman states:
“We will support both the KDE and GNOME desktop environments and, from an application perspective, there will be a set of defaults that we will support: Evolution, OpenOffice and Mozilla.”
but, may i ask, what then is the point of shipping kde at all if the supported apps are evolution and mozilla which are much more associated with gnome?
why not just shipping gnome?
because at least for me, the main point of kde is the tight integration of apps like konqueror (file- _and_ webbrowser)
if you say that the suse-folks within novell wouldn’t allow that – fine, but that would just retirate my view that it’s more about a shallow compromise to keep the folks of ximian happy and not pi##ing the suse-stuff totally off then to provide a solution that customers are interested in.
if you want to provide choice, then pls provide both desktops (maybe gnome as default for US and kde as default for europe/germany, maybe with a unified theme like red hat does for ages) and support both fully.
if not, then pls just gnome _or_ kde.
but pls, a crippled (even if just support-wise) choice is no choice, just BS.
sorry…!
“For running a win sys site you can keep dreaming that troller”
LOL…. It used to be a Novell support site. History is an interesting thing…..
“The important thing to remember, which is alost always overlooked by the hobbyist/home/advocate crowd is that Novell, RedHat, etc., want the corporate market. Unless you’re a corporate VP or CEO, that’s not you.”
Well, very true of RH at least who only wants the corporate market. Novell has stated they are not just after the corporate market but the home market as well. As a matter of fact, Novell has stated they plan to be first to market for the home desktop, and that is thier current focus. Capturing the home market is key to capturing the corporate desktop as well, as the users use at work what they use at home.
I for one actually hope they can pull off the next version of SuSE Linux to use a unified desktop GUI. Combining the best tools from Ximian Desktop 2, Gnome and KDE in a simplified GUI is what the Linux community and in general SuSE users need. In the past SuSE Linux AG has been seen as being a leader in the Linux community by offering what the global market needs and wants both for coporations and homes. Novell since taking the helm has continued this tradition, starting with offering Ximian Desktop 2 for SuSE compatability, then with open sourcing Yast and now plans for creating a unified desktop. Microsoft’s only real competitor is with Novell since they are agressively working on creating a better desktop for a variety of platform users while at the same time simplifying Linux for people transitioning from Windows. I wish them well
I find it interesting that everyone keeps harping on about intergrating KDE and GNOME like it’s some big problem.
At the desktop environment level, it’s never going to happen, why? Because the two DE’s have radically different ideas about how to approach things. GNOME is intelligent defaults, KDE is options galore.
However, the important parts already work. I use GNOME, and GTK apps almost exclusivily – but, if I start konqueror from a terminal, I can drag and drop files seamlessly between my Nautilus desktop and konqueror window. The ~/Desktop folder is now common to both, and a common notification area is being intergrated as we speak. Copy / paste between the two _works_ (except when things like X-Chat over-write the secondary buffer, which isn’t a GNOME thing, it’s an X-Chat thing, since X-Chat is a GTK, but not a GNOME application)
I’ll also point out that OpenOffice.Org and Mozilla are not GNOME applications. Just because people associate them with GNOME, doesn’t make them right.
As for Novell shipping Evolution instead of KMail – perhaps, because for it’s target customers, Evolution is a better program?
The work isn’t finished, but people seem determined to ignore the hard work that has been done.
So the your all for this because
1. they did the XD2 for suse? woot you can now install a workable older version of Gnome on SuSE .. err wait suse already has Gnome 2.4 .. never mind
2. Creating a unified desktop to become our defender against the evils of M$. I dont need Nohell to do that for me thanks .. linux was moving along on its own without Nohell and would have continued to do so. And as for trading the M$ vision for the Nohell vision of what linux should be .. no thank you.
I for one was excited but worried when the Novell purchase of Ximian happened. But now I see that rather than take what Ximian had built and creating something above and beyond .. they then went an bought SuSE (good distro) and now are once again doing what they have done before. The confusion around what is really going on in Nohell is just the warning lights to let you know that NO ONE is at the wheel here .. please review Nohell history to see how this has played out for them before.
The only good thing out of this as far as I can see so far is Yast and Connector going OS .. but then if this does collapse down the road and SuSE and Ximian get cut lose .. they both just lost their strongest advantages .. oh yea thats the way to build a business.
Grats to Nat and Miguel for gettings paid.
Again just the opinion of one angry user with his own opinion that really means nothing in the grand scheme of things.
The reasons for these decisions are quite simple. Some people will want GNOME, others KDE. So let them choose either desktop environment. The application decisions are more interesting anyway. OpenOffice and Mozilla are pretty obvious. They are pretty much the de facto standards in the open source community for their tasks. Evolution is the most complete groupware/PIM client that’s open source. And Evolution supports Groupwise and Exchange backends. Gaim has already been integrated with Groupwise messenger. And Mono makes sense as the development platform of the future, for Novell. There’s already iFolder, and Rendevous, LDAP admin, etc. implementations on NovellForge written in C#/Mono.
I think it’s all very exciting. The prospect of a well integrated Ximian Desktop/SUSE distribution with iFolder/Groupwise/Groupwise Messenger support, and tools for developing Mono applications such as MonoDevelop, is extremely sexy.
For now I’m running Fedora Core 2….but a day may come when that changes.
We all have to “wait and see”, right? I will say, though, that regardless of Novell’s past, they’ve gotten some marvelous raw material to work with: SUSE, GNOME, Evolution. The opportunity is there to create a desktop of unprecedented quality.
Will they? That’s another story.
Just acknowledge that Novell has at least gotten the right tools to work with, and withhold judgment on the product until it exists.
Capiche?
>>”…very true of RH at least who only wants the corporate market.”
RH has made it clear that they will return to the home market when they think Linux is ready for it, and it is ready for Linux. Recent RH comments indicated they believe a successful home product must also include tech and installation support requiring large staff increases, a simple updating mechanism, preloads, and product placement in the retail chain, among other things. Those are not easily accomplished. (I’ll add the prospect of security attacks targetting the first commerically popular Linux distro.)
More power to Novell. We’ll see who guessed right.
>>”Some people will want GNOME, others KDE.”
Go knock on the door of 50 or so people in your neighborhood who run Windows. Ask them if they’ve heard of something called KDE or Gnome.
Choice of desktop environment or window manager is only of interest to people who know such things exist. When a prospective corporate client hears “works just like Windows”, he’s happy because he won’t have to spend time and money teaching grumpy employees how to use KDE or Gnome.
Solakris,
From the start of your post it’s obvious that you have some biased views against Novell and the company aquiring Ximian and SuSE Linux (ie: “Nohell”). I’ll try to answer your comments in simple English since you obviously misunderstood what I wrote in my previous post.
Point #1. I commented on Ximian D2 because if you paid any attention to the desktop you would see that Novell has been improving on this. It’s not the main reason why I am excited about Novell’s future plans for a unified desktop but it’s a good example of where they are taking their customers and the Linux community on a whole. You may not want a unified desktop but a lot of people out there do. These people are either current Windows users that Linux developers are trying to attract or former Windows users looking for some unified approach with simplicity in mind. After all the majority of PC desktop users are Windows users not OSX, Linux or Unix. SuSE Linux doesn’t necessarily have to look like Windows but it does have to provide common ground for both business users and home consumers. This is one reason why Novell released Yast to Open Source developement. This was basically done so that distro developers could implement a unified OS Manager that can become a standard in the Linux community.
Oh and as for Gnome 2.4 that comes with SuSE Linux 9.1 if you did your research you would of noticed that Gnome 2.6 was released after SuSE Linux 9.1 was released to the public. Gnome is known for being slow on releasing updates and I don’t expect SuSE developers to sit around waiting for them and thus cause delay of releasing SuSE Linux 9.1.
Point #2. You say you don’t need Novell to be your defender against Microsoft. Since when is Microsoft attacking you directly? Anyway, Novell has done a lot to protect not only it’s customers but basically fight for the Linux community over the SCO litigation. So knowing this I don’t understand why you wouldn’t be happy knowing they support their customers unlike some developers that shall remain nameless.
As for Novell’s idea about a unified desktop that isn’t to compete against Microsoft but instead benefit the entire Linux community. Novell is actively working to promote Linux to both businesses and home users. Unlike Red Hat and some other distros that either focus on one particular market Novell is taking it’s assets and building on them to benefit a global market.
I feel sorry for you because you seem very disgruntled with out knowing all the facts or even willing to open your mind to the possibilities Novell is considering. It’s almost like you’ve either been sucking on a lemon or that you need to switch to decaf
i’m pretty curious how this all plays out…
Join the club.
Have faith. They’re being so ridiculously secretive about everything they’re doing…one possible explanation is that they’re banking on the fact that it’ll be SO GOOD it’ll blow the socks off everyone and take the world by storm.
“RH has made it clear that they will return to the home market when they think Linux is ready for it, and it is ready for Linux.”
Agreed. I was referring more to the fact that Novell said they were targeting the home now, where RH made the statements you referred to in your post. Only time will tell.
“Novell never gave anything away”
“They did release YAST and Connector as open source, didn’t they? Anyway, I don’t think they can afford f***ing up their linux strategy…
Maybe it would be a good idea to wait for the final Novell Desktop before saying in advance that it will suck.”
I never said a word about if it would suck. Novell does many things very well, they just don’t give their toys away at OSS prices. I’m simply offered the opinion Novell isn’t likely to play the FREE everything game the OSS crowd has become accustomed to.
Try to overcome the notion that large corporations getting involved in an open source project is a good thing…..
It might well prove to be extremely far from it.
“RH has made it clear that they will return to the home market when they think Linux is ready for it, and it is ready for Linux.”
redhat was never into the desktop market in the first place. they have just started a corporate desktop product. no consumer version has been announced ever
The statement that Novell never gave anything away… not completely true. Their Zenworks used to be packaged with NetWare, you could download/install their “Starter Pack” that would give you enough to do desktop management (S/W installation) that was really quite powerful. Now, that didn’t include Remote Control, H/W inventory, but it was enough that you could cleverly work around that (batch files, call other programs, etc). We used it to roll out software (before/after snapshots, package it up), update virus DATs (took all of 3 steps to update a package and push it out to everyone), update applications seamlessly (think regularly updated CD-ROMs with tricky setups). It was great, and integrated into NDS. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve screwed up plenty, but they’ve done some things that seem to come up in the ranks “organically” that are pretty cool. So, they have a bit of work ahead of them, but I’m curious to see what they can do.
Acrually I see ONLY three way for this unification of the desktop idea to work. (I don’t count Managed Software layers like Mono, Python, .NET or Java as real unification as they (with the exception of .NET) are designed precicely to be cross platform and cross desktop in an UNunified computing environment.)
This would be to Either:
1. “ReInvent the wheel” and make a whole new unified desktop by re writing KDE with a GTK based C++ wrapper like WXWidgets or VDK. This would give us a modern C++ based desktop but with GTK still available for C developers as well.
2. Petitition TrollTech for a small business friendly priced QT license (Say 100 dollars) for Linux commercial “proprietary” development based on the Free Edition that ships with Linux distros ONLY!!! (Cross platform development would REMAIN expensive to keep the basis of the Trolls’ curent profit base.) and make KDE as it currently exists the unified desktop for GUI linux development for BOTH free and proprietary software under Linux.
3. Adopt GNOME as the unified Desktop with a SINGLE C++ wrapper like WxWidgets or VDK declared the “official” GTK
mased C++ wrapper for Gnome for those prefering to use that language.
These ideas are based on the following facts of software life.
1. Proprietary software will continue to exist weather RMS and The Free Software Foundation like it or not. (particularly in the game, recreational and specialized software areas as opposed to the commodity software areas like OSs and office suites)
2. Where proprietary software is concerned it is usually
small business “shareware” developers that lead the way to
making a platform or desktop environment a success commercially. (Even Bill Gates recognized this and this is why he developed “Visual Basic” along with windows 3.0 to make development easier and less expensive for Windows “shareware” developers. In fact I believe that the reason for the failure of OS/2 and the Mac to really catch on was the lack of inexpensive development environments for “shareware” developers to port their wares to those systems with.
I read somewhere some time ago that they would use different DE’s. Like using GNOME for corporate environments and KDE for personal environments or similar.
As many has pointed out though, people have heard many different things, and it may have no basis in reality at all
It sort of makes sense, in the way that GNOME would work perfectly in a corporate environment and KDE has some properties I think many home users would appreciate.
But who knows…
I think switching to Decaf might help .. not sure .. is 3 pots of coffee a day to much?
As for the rest.
I have become agitated because I see the possiblity for amazing things that Novell,SuSE and Ximian could do together. Then I see this .. reality is yes Novell has done some great stuff.
But lets be honest if Novell didnt have a large financial investment in linux, I doubt they would be fighting SCO over this, I could be wrong though but I dont think I am.
As for the new users. I agree. But the work that needs to be done for that and the BACK end stuff is great and being done by fd.o. And yes I know folks from Novell SuSE and Ximian work on the fd.o project .. as well as individuals from many other companies.
I would argue some more but I think the decaf is needed.
Thanks DK for the kick to the side of the head to wake up a little. I will attempt to breath and not post in anger in the future.
I am not an IT expert at all, but comparing your comment with David’s one i must say that you might be as wrong as Novell is. As i said, I don’t know, …. the next six months or so will tell who was right ….
Good post Coral Snake. Imo the best would be the second way. The KDE people seem to be more pragmatic with regard to commercial software. I thought that Miguel de Icaza would understand the points that you made as he now works for a real commercial company, but after reading the latest post on his blog (http://primates.ximian.com/~miguel/archive/2004/May-17.html) i am not so sure. It really seems that he thinks that all non-opensource software is bad. Yes, the Movable Type people made some mistakes, but they are just a couple of software developers that try to make a living. What is wrong with that? It is easy to condemn such people if you are working for a large commercial company that pays you for writing opensource software. For me it leads to a question: why would any Windows software company use Mono to port their software to Linux if the main coder seems to have an aversion to their business model?
>> 1. “ReInvent the wheel” and make a whole new unified desktop by re writing KDE with a GTK based C++ wrapper like WXWidgets or VDK. This would give us a modern C++ based desktop but with GTK still available for C developers as well.
Heh, no.. wxWidgets is definitely not a good choice.
The API is pretty nice, but the Gtk port isn’t and there’s too many issues (eg. the wx font API just sucks) and bugs.
I’d rather see GNOME and Mozilla (XUL!) mixed together to become the one true desktop.
Only the use of XUL would already improve things a lot:
– No more the ugly Glade/libglade mess
– People who aren’t developer can create (good) user interfaces (and using XUL it’s more fun, too)
– Themes would become much easier to create (for non-devs, too) and again, more fun
– HTML/SVG integration on the desktop would rock (especially SVG)
– Simply put: it would beat Longhorn years before it’s actually available
Edward you hit the nail on the head. As was stated by Holger Dyroff work has been ongoing since SuSE 8.0 to integrate the GNOME and KDE .desktop system. Using the latest and greatest from fd.o SuSE has been trying to integrate GNOME and KDE at an administrative level. Of course this does much for system administrators wishing to implement SuSE software this move was motivated just as much by the pragmatic concerns internally within SuSE.
I really noticed a massive step forward with 9.0 regarding this level of integration. Prior to 9.0 the configration system for the DE’s-ie. the placement of the files and the structure of the file hierarchy, issues like redundance etc. was an absolute nightmare-both for SuSE developers and anyone else using their products. Having to search through 10 different directories for the right .desktop files of which 1/2 were simply redunant copies of the same files, was a nightmare. In reality the DE configuration file structure on SuSE was an ugly, ugly hack tring to work out issues with build both the GNOME and KDE DE’s-instead of patching the sources they modeled the filesystem layout to accomadate these things. Yuck.
One has to keep in mind that integration means various different things to various different modalities of usage. Integration at the administrative level has little in common with desktop application integration. Novell is in a situation where they have to perform a lot of integration work at the administrative level-only in so doing can they meaningfully combine the offerings of Ximian/GNOME and KDE. And this merely from a distributors point of view. Without a massive reduction in terms of complexity there is no way that Novell can package the product for distribution that they want.
There at least 3 primary levels of integration to look at-each yielding a different set of problems and different solutions.
1. Administering/designing from a distributors point of view.
2. Administering from a system administrators view, ie. someone implementing some large number of SUSE desktops.
3. An individual’s desktop application usage.
Most of the stuff being done at fd.o is targeted at the first of these three. Slowly but surely movement is being made towards tackling the second level-which is much harder, due to massive distribution-specific implementation details. Work contributed to the first level makes the second level easier and work at the second level make the top layer, ie. third, much, much easier.
Novell is strongly support fd.o. Novell is taking the desktop raffiness of the folks from Ximian and merging this with their GNOME implementation-Ximian is and has always been about the small details, which when taken as whole add up to something more than the sum of its parts. Novell has Robert Love and a couple of other kernel hackers on board working to provide a really solid integration of udev/HAL all the way up to desktop config apps. Such develpments impact all three layers.
The former SuSE brought an in-tact broad configration system designed for system administrators. Unfortunately these tools from SuSE stopped shy of the desktop -ie. they were made to simply system configuration/adminstration-not for the desktop. The weakness of the old SuSE system was that it did actually very, very little for the desktop-desktop configuration was left to KDE’s control center. In the past couple of years SuSE did begin to work on more tightly integrating their tools with the KDE control center and slowly moving somethings from the control center into Yast. But aside from KDE SuSE left all other DE’s functionally useless with near zero in the ways of actuall integration work.
I for one hope that SuSE can finally make sense of their build environment with the new demands of Novell and Ximian. This would make package creation and management much much better than what has been the case. Until SuSE does it’s homework regarding their own build environment they will remain cut off from much of the development community. Moreover now is a great time for Novell/SUSE to endorse the concept of community-SuSE did not have a community, aside from brilliant KDE developers-they were hermetically sealed against other developers(just ask the folks at Ximian what it was like 1 1/2 years ago) and from users in general.
To wrap things up: integration work has already been going on. Pragmatic internal concerns right now are causing this to become much more of focus. Successful integration require cleaning up the build environment and simplifying and streamlining the haphazard hacked filesystem layout. Then means aggressively working with fd.o and implementing cutting edge stuff from the desktop initiatives. Then expanding Yast to interface effectively with the Kde contol center and gconf. Then integrating device notification stuff with indivudal apps creating transparent hardware config and access.
Then selecting standard file associations and determining the order of which apps are called when using “open with” and double clicking on files. This means homogenzing the whole mime type settings-ie. identical mime-types for KDE and GNOME. Additionally work can be made to create transparent cups access working towards seamless kde-cups and gnome-cups. Perhaps work will also be done to finally get xprint up to snuff(X.org is now open-Mozilla wants to work with GNOME-Epiphany is already being moved towards gnome-cups-manager)-fully integrated with cups and with the system configuration-this would make all non-KDE and non-GNOME apps have transparent printer access.
1.system wide integration of hardware-all apps use the same hooks to connect to the same devices
2. Universal Mime configuration
System wide integration of KDE’s fish and
3.gnome-vfs(abstracted keyring manager with central administration for both GNOME and KDE)
4.System wide streamlining and centralization of kde-cups and gnome-cups and xprint+cups for non-KDE and non-GNOME apps.
Followed by ifolder integration in Nautilus/Konqueror and the Groupwise stuff….
wow.
After using linux for some time, it really isnt redy to be a desk top OS like others. great for a server, but suse has made it so easy to do everything. i wonder if there going to put cross over in it like zandros. but after windows used novels network consepts novels just been having in there. about time they have a client os to call there own. Good luck and love your work. Also a free trial verson can be downloaded from there site http://www.suse.com
>> “…redhat was never into the desktop market in the first place.”
No? Then what were all those shrinkwrapped RedHat boxes doing in all those big box electronic stores and all those big box bookstores? That’s where I bought mine.
And here we go again, all the gnome simpletons praying that because Novell now own Suse and Ximian that KDE will get a big kick up the but and lose out on their “new” desktop. Well, just remember a few points,
1. Suse is only one distribution.
2. 90% of Suse users use KDE. This is Suse’s estimation not mine and its a lot of potential pissed off customers. I cant see anyone used to the speed, stability and advanced features of KDE ever accepting a desktop thats going backwards on features and with the overall development rate of a glacier. KDE will continue to gain momentum and increase its user base due to the strength of their product, they dont need to rely on distros telling their customers what they should use. As soon as another disro comes along with YAST and KDE so users can have a complete Qt desktop again, who’s going to care what Novell does?
Oh, and here’s the link for the 90% thing.
http://www.internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/3307951
90% of Suse users use KDE.
<p>
That’s because SUSE’s support of GNOME has been lacking. Why would a GNOME user use a distribution that doesn’t offer a good distribution of GNOME? They likely wouldn’t. Instead they’d use something like Fedora. And guess what? 100% of Ximian’s several million users use GNOME. Anyway, the article wasn’t saying that KDE would lose out. Nat Friedman said that Novell’s Linux desktop will support GNOME and KDE with a set of default applications: Mozilla, Open Office, Evolution, gaim, and Mono for development.
>> “…redhat was never into the desktop market in the first place.”
“No? Then what were all those shrinkwrapped RedHat boxes doing in all those big box electronic stores and all those big box bookstores? That’s where I bought mine.”
Apparently a good chunk of all those shinkwrapped boxes collected a good deal of dust. Probably the major reason all those boxes are now gone from those big box stores.
> That’s because SUSE’s support of GNOME has been lacking.
No, GNOME is lacking.
>> That’s because SUSE’s support of GNOME has been lacking.
>No, GNOME is lacking.
Man, i’m happy that I’m not in desktop business 😉
Just a few comments from a happy gnome 2.4! user:
If novell is going to ship mozilla as default browser then there will be no place for konkeror. And without that konkeror, the whole KDE will be very likely not funktional, will it?
Sorry for the overuse of ‘k’ 😉
“ReInvent the wheel” and make a whole new unified desktop by re writing KDE with a GTK based C++ wrapper like WXWidgets or VDK. This would give us a modern C++ based desktop but with GTK still available for C developers as well.
Replacing Qt with GTK is never going to happen. Qt is an incredibly modern C++ toolkit, and it is the best you’re going to get from a developer perspective.
Petitition TrollTech for a small business friendly priced QT license (Say 100 dollars) for Linux commercial “proprietary” development based on the Free Edition that ships with Linux distros ONLY!!!
Good idea. However, I would like to see KDE grow and provide many development options that don’t bind exclusively to Qt, but simply use KDE infrastructure – even though Qt is still a big part of KDE.
Adopt GNOME as the unified Desktop with a SINGLE C++ wrapper like WxWidgets or VDK declared the “official” GTK mased C++ wrapper for Gnome for those prefering to use that language.
Mmmm. No idea how that is going to happen, or on what basis.
Proprietary software will continue to exist weather RMS and The Free Software Foundation like it or not.
Well, yer.
Where proprietary software is concerned it is usually small business “shareware” developers that lead the way to making a platform or desktop environment a success commercially.
No, shareware developers producing pointless little apps are pointless. The real use of a tool like VB is in producing applications rapidly within organisations of any size – from small to very large. Small VB developers work within these confines, but very few package and sell shareware.
-default apps: gaim, mozilla, OOo, evolution
– Says Nat Friedman in an interview, of which we have had a great many over the past four or five years.
– Is there a Novell/Suse desktop with these apps installed by default right now? No.
– Suse 9.1 – KDE, Qt Open Office, Konqueror, Kontact by default. Their Personal Edition only has KDE on it.
– Response from Suse? Zilch, and certainly not what Nat Friedman is saying.
They are the most advanced and multiplatform. Novell will support Gnome, KDE … and Windows. No Gnome Desktop, no KDE Desktop, no Linux Desktop, Free Multiplatform Desktop
Novell have added Groupwise support to Evolution and
Gaim, no Kontact or Kopete. Novell is porting Evolution to Windows
I don’t see where Novell has any problem for the future now. Remember its mascot is the chameleon
It can easily put out different brightly-colored envelope packages focusing on different configurations. Who says it has to have the one SuSE Linux 9.1 package focusing on the KDE desktop? Give them time, there may be one also available with Gnome (and subsequent support) as the default. Why not? 
If KDE is 90%, why shouldn’t they go for the other 10%, too?
Other than that thought, I have to say that I only vaguely considered Linux as an option before a month ago, but after having downloaded the new SuSE Linux 9.1 Live-Evaluation ISO, which I burned to CD and gave a test-drive, I am thoroughly impressed. It actually shocked me that Linux was so far along–more so than I had first thought. I knew it was up-and-coming, but I’m satisfied it’s better than I thought. The demo alone ran from CD, detected everything I had in the PC, and I went browsing the net immediately (with Konqueror). Coupled with WINE ( http://www.wineHQ.com ), I won’t even need Microsoft Windows to run applications written for Windows.
SuSE should install fine on the board I’m getting: the Abit KV8-MAX3, and supports my CPU of choice, the AMD Athlon64 3200+ (1MB cache). WINE will still run the 32-bit apps on this, too.
Go Novell! 🙂 Give Microsoft what-for!
–EyeAm
http://s87767106.onlinehome.us
> without that konkeror, the whole KDE will be very likely not funktional, will it?
Rubbish. And how do you manage files with Mozilla?
Yeah, so would I if I didnt have a choice. Like I said, thats the best option Gnome has. Removing features under the guise of dubious “usability studies” simply so they dont embarass themselves when compared to the rapid development of Kde goes against everything that Linux has ever stood for – power and freedom for the user.
Offer Ximians users this choice and see what they prefer. My guess would be somewhere around the 90% KDE figure SUSE and the rest experience.
… and you could shove your Gnome/KDE argument. Novell said that they will support *both* by year’s end when they finished merging/packaging all their stuff together with Ximian — huh, live can be easy.
To Novell:
Sell Miguel/Ximian to RedHat, buy Trolltech, make QT LGPL on all platforms (so you can forget about Mono), go KDE, konquer the desktop.
Regards
ZACK
They are the most advanced and multiplatform. Novell will support Gnome, KDE … and Windows. No Gnome Desktop, no KDE Desktop, no Linux Desktop, Free Multiplatform Desktop
Good in theory – doesn’t work that way in practice. Take this route and all you are doing is giving multiple applications on multiple environments. A desktop environment also provides infrastructure (which is vital to development), and you can’t really use that on multiple platforms – especially on Windows. If Microsoft applications run nicely on Windows, then why should I choose a bunch of apps that don’t integrate well but run on many platforms? It rather blows the doors off Novell’s integration strategy. Being multi-platform is achievable in many ways, bu you have to have something you can target.
Novell have added Groupwise support to Evolution and
Gaim, no Kontact or Kopete. Novell is porting Evolution to Windows
Well, it works well at a conference, but there is a big difference between that and actually shipping it and people using it. The Ximian people are porting these things, not Novell. You will not find them pre-installed anywhere. In terms of getting a box from Suse/Novell that you can actually buy (Suse 9.1), you will only find KDE and KDE apps by default; hence all the confusion.
“In terms of getting a box from Suse/Novell that you can actually buy (Suse 9.1), you will only find KDE and KDE apps by default; hence all the confusion.”
So from this then I am to think that evolutuion and mozilla are KDE apps?? They are certainly not, and they are installed with a default install of SuSE 9.1. Not only are they installed but they function excellent. Maybe I did not understand the statement?
Also, the Ximian people ARE Novell people as Novell owns and has Ximian on it’s payroll, so therefore Novell IS doing the porting.
Novell said that they will support *both* by year’s end…
They already support both – at least the Professional edition of Suse does. Novell have said that their customers want one desktop and that technically you can’t combine KDE and Gnome. Go figure.
…when they finished merging/packaging all their stuff together with Ximian — huh, live can be easy.
Well, there’s the confusion. Suse have said that the two can’t be combined, but the only way you are going to support both in one desktop is to bring the underlying technology of both together. To get integrated applications and architecture, which is what is required, you need a unified architecture.
A great deal has been made of multi-platform applications. Yes, they’re important but you can only get so far with thse. You need a unified architecture around those applications that that you can target really effectively. From a multi-platform perspective Novell can target Zenworks etc. for different environments. The applications and the desktop itself that you are going to target? Life isn’t that easy.
Novell had a decent OS and a superior product in NDS. Where is it now? they couldn’t keep Netware(a respectable system) alive what makes you think they can do anything with their current Linux holdings. Look to RedHat for the future face of linux.
So from this then I am to think that evolutuion and mozilla are KDE apps?? They are certainly not, and they are installed with a default install of SuSE 9.1.
No they certainly aren’t KDE apps and they are not installed by default:
If during the install you accepted the SuSE defaults, you will not have mozilla installed.
The default email client is Kmail, or Kontact.
From the earlier review of Suse 9.1 Professional on OSNews. The only thing Kontact doesn’t have yet is groupworking facilities, and functionally it is great, so I don’t know where the “Oh, it isn’t the best application” comments come from. I had used Evolution for about two and a half years previously.
It’s an all KDE distro with almost all KDE-centric applications. Internet browsing is handled by Konqueror, email and contact management is handled by Kontact, Kopete takes care of any instant messaging needs (covering most popular protocols such as MSN, AIM, Yahoo, Jabber, ICQ, IRC, and SMS), and OpenOffice.org for traditional office tasks.
From: http://www.madpenguin.org/Article1226.html
I’ve also installed it.
Also, the Ximian people ARE Novell people as Novell owns and has Ximian on it’s payroll, so therefore Novell IS doing the porting.
Not when their work and PR messages don’t fit in with what the rest of the company is doing or saying.