Linux Orbit reviews OEone’s HomeBase DESKTOP: “Unlike Ximian GNOME, the HomeBase DESKTOP product doesn’t take over the default GNOME installation included with Red Hat 7.x versions. It will create it’s own session type in the graphical login (gdm) used with Red Hat 7.x systems. Why is this important? Well, from my experience, this makes HomeBase DESKTOP the most painless test drive of any Linux desktop product I’ve tried to date. If you don’t like it, just go back to GNOME or KDE or whatever else you use, since nothing has really changed in those installed environments.“
OEone HD: A New Experience for Linux Desktop Computing
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Sounds like they took Be, Inc.’s idea for BeIA and copied it for the Linux platform.
Hmmm….
Ah, you lost many episodes…
The OEone started life as an Internet Appliance indeed. The company used to sell an iMac-like full PIII PC for about $800. The sales were bad, and after seeing that all these Internet Appliance plans are good only in paper (funny how IAs and communism are similar
they decided to scrap the whole business plan, opensource it and then pray that more people will get interested in it, mostly for some specific kiosk-mode applications. So basically, the company is trying to make money from very specific uses of the suite mostly, as “pure” IAs just don’t pay off.
Ahhhh!!!
Thanks for the information!
“funny how IAs and communism are similar”
Too bad JLG didn’t have this information. If this is correct, then of course BeIA was doomed to fail!!!
( he! he! he! )
Well I don’t know how well it will do, but it sure does look slick. It certainly makes linux usuable by any avergage person which no linux distro has really done to date. Even with something like Lycoris, you still have that nasty plumming underneath which you usually have to end up dealing with. If this product can truly hide what’s underneath I’d be very impressed.
For people who just want to do the things this software offers, it might work out well. For those of you who scoff at this, your obviously not the intended audience. More screenshots here BTW http://www.oeone.com/products/screenshots.html
The screen shots look very nice and neat and professional. But what is this? Is this another desktop environment? It looks very nice but I am not familiar with this. What is HomeBase DESKTOP? Doesn’t look like GNOME, doesn’t look like Xfce, doesn’t look like Equinox. I would assume it is a totally different desktop environment?
Which libraries is it based on? Is it a different desktop environment? Sorry about this but I’ve never heard of this thing before.
With the net sites moving to their new pay models, IAs will become more popular… Why have a desktop powered by an Intel chip w/ DRM inside, when you can do spend ½ as much money on this cheap IA that will do everything you want to to.
(funny how IAs and communism are similar)
Leninist/Trotskyites/Stalinist versions of Communism never looked good on paper. That is why during their first election they lost.
>Which libraries is it based on?
It is written using the Mozilla’s API. (thinks “slow”
> Is it a different desktop environment?
Yes and no. It is new desktop environment, but not exactly for a full computer use. It is for specialized kiosk applications. For example, let’s say that your 60-year old mother-in-law needs to learn about computers and how to use simple apps. This environment would be great to start learning…
>Sorry about this but I’ve never heard of this thing before.
We have already reported on it 3-4 times, since last February.
[i]It is written using the Mozilla’s API. (thinks “slow”
[i]
I’m pretty sure i read that its UI wasn’t slow.. i may be wrong.
Except you can’t run it with GNOME. Or at least on my end the HomeBase Desktop installer tries to remove several key GNOME2 packages…
>For example, let’s say that your 60-year old mother-in-law needs…
Exactly. The one other thing I think my 60-year old mother-in-law (yes, literally) could use is some kind of semi-automated backup procedure. She doesn’t grasp the idea of folder hierarchies too well, not to mention backing up her computer. If anything happened to her system, she’d be screwed. A system restore CD only goes part of the way. A simplified desktop like this could prompt you once a week to insert a blank CD, back up the entire /home directory, and spit it back out. After a system restore, you could press “Restore From Backup” and insert your latest backup CD. I think even my mother-in-law could handle that, and trust me, her /home directory will never exceed the size of a CD.
Thx Eugenia for that info.
“We have already reported on it 3-4 times, since last February”
I must have missed it then
I did not like it at all. it was as cripled as a basic lycoris desktop (last part is MHO of cource)
Eugenia about OEone’s libraries:
>It is written using the Mozilla’s API. (thinks “slow”
XUL is slow but improving, maybe very soon Mozilla will be usable without needing for Galeon or something. That’ll be interesting.
Hm… if I remember well, Microsoft destroyed Netscape because of fears that the browser will take over the desktop. Some years later, we have this
“Hm… if I remember well, Microsoft destroyed Netscape because of fears that the browser will take over the desktop. Some years later, we have this
“
You make an excellent point there, Cesar. If the Netscape people had the brains and the vision to go in this direction to compete with Windows 95, say, 5 years ago or so, things might have turned out much better for them (who knows?).
I think HomeBase has great potential for the future, now that it is open-sourced and more people can expand on it and make it more powerful (while maintaining the simplicity of its design, hopefully). IMO, it is a true piece of innovation and ‘thinking differently’, unlike KDE and GNOME (with all due respect). I hope that it becomes popular and standards become built around it.
“The sales were bad, and after seeing that all these Internet Appliance plans are good only in paper (funny how IAs and communism are similar
“
Please stick with Os related stuff and don’t use this forum to bash persons with different ideas.
I could easily talk about the 40 000 000 poor of the USA of about the 100 000 people the CIA help kill in Argentina, to citicize the capitalist policy of the USA. But I feel it’s out of place. Like you joke.
C.
all these Internet Appliance plans are good only in paper (funny how IAs and communism are similar
The same could be said for capitalism. I really doubt that Smith would have been particularly more thrilled to see Bush’s socialist America than Marx would have been to see Stalinist Russia.
This is an excellent product, and I would very much /like/ to stick with it and give it a go…. but at THAT resolution its a no-gooer.
Do you know how bad 1024×768 looks on a 17″ flat panel monitor. Eugh..
They seriously need to address the resolution issue. Its locked at 1027×768 and wont run above that.
🙁
>>You make an excellent point there, Cesar. If the Netscape
>>people had the brains and the vision to go in this direction
>>to compete with Windows 95, say, 5 years ago or so, things
>>might have turned out much better for them (who knows?).
If AOL have the brains and the vision to go in this direction think about where they could be in years to come
Actually, that would be an absolutely brilliant move. Slap this on an AOL CD, make it an option in the AOL installer(with lots of warnings about losing your data during the format), and give a couple hundred million of them away free.
It would also give PC OEMs some leverage against Microsoft, if they manage to grow spines at some point in the near future. A kiosk-like desktop environment would be perfect for office machines.
IAs is a profitable business. The problem is NOBODY does it right. First: pricing. Why buy something that does little task when there is an equally as good PC out there? Then come functionality: since it is priced the same as PCs, it does less, nobody buys it.
But now, this is what that is needed to make it work
1) Make it cheap. For example, ommit PC processors and go for stuff like StrongARM and XScale. This is meant to be an IA, after all.
2) Make it work with the PC. That means, in the kitchen, you are browsing for an recipe, got a really good one, you saved it, and started cooking. Later you went to your computer, and viola, your file is there!
3) Digital media. Make something like iMovie, iPhoto, iTunes, Quciktime blah blah blah, all integrated into the IA. That means when you come home after a vacation, you on your IA, and plug in your digital camera, and viola, all of it in in you My Pictures folder on your PC.
4) Like a PDA, make the process of boot time instanous. Firstly, use a RTOS, like QNX. Then keep the OS always on the memory, which is powered always (or you could wait till Magnetic DRAM gets adopted). That way, it would make it much more convinient using the IA for simple task, and go to the PC to do task like editing your photos.
The problem is that ALL IAs I have seen is just a dumb down interface on standard PC components, and most of the time, with PC OSes (Linux).
The same could be said for capitalism. I really doubt that Smith would have been particularly more thrilled to see Bush’s socialist America than Marx would have been to see Stalinist Russia.
Actually, Capitalism/Objectivism CAN work, it is just politicians prefer MONEY over the GOOD. 🙂 Read about it it at http://www.capitalism, the only thing that would not work is a taxless society.
Remember, 19TH Century America was a almost capitalist goverment (besides the taxes and some racist laws). And it was during that time did America has its golden days – fast economic growth, practically no social problems etc. And notice as soon as America turned its backs on the old system, it started dwindling down 🙂
Capitalism isn’t utopian, unlike communism. It banks on human greed, while communism tries to get rid of an integar part of human nature: greed.
Besides, as for the Soviet Union, Stalin adopted it because it was popular among the working class, not because he believe in it.
C.: I could easily talk about the 40 000 000 poor of the USA of about the 100 000 people the CIA help kill in Argentina, to citicize the capitalist policy of the USA.
America is not even close in being a capitalist country. Learn your facts right. Being a capitalist country, it won’t be able to use its forces outside their country except during war time.
> The same could be said for capitalism.
But capitalism works. Communism is just a pipe dream used to enslave the masses and empower the elite.
> Being a capitalist country, it won’t be able to use its forces outside
> their country except during war time.
Yeah, if America were really a capitalist country, they would not be able to snarzblat their thingamajiggers.
ok this is an old…….
“World Ideologies Explained by Reference to Cows”
FEUDALISM: You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.
PURE SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else’s cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you a glass of milk.
BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM: Your cows are cared for by former chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs the rules say you should need.
FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.
PURE COMMUNISM: You share two cows with your neighbors. You and your neighbors bicker about who has the most “ability” and who has the most “need.” Meanwhile, no one works, no one gets any milk, and the cows drop dead of starvation.
RUSSIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. You take care of them but the government takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the black market.
PERESTROIKA: You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the Mafia takes all the milk. You steal back as much milk as you can and sell it on the “free” market.
CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.
DICTATORSHIP: You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
PURE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbor decides who gets the milk.
REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY: You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.
BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.
CAPITALISM: You don’t have any cows. The bank will not lend you money to buy cows because you don’t have any cows to put up as collateral.
PURE ANARCHY: You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price, or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.
ANARCHO-CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.
SURREALISM: You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.
ROFL!
i think i like the anarcho-capitalism it sounds like what i would do anyway
and surrealism on mondays =)
> BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. At first the government regulates what
> you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not
> to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours
> the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms
> accounting for the missing cows.
Ain’t that the truth! 😛
he he he lol nice one, “null_pointer_us”….ha ha ha forgot that one…